Steve Lortz

If we're going to have a serious discussion of languages and meanings, waysider, we have to talk about these things, unless a person simply wants to drive a float in a snark parade :-) Love, Steve

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOT THE SILMARILLION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (with that I will retire to Doctrinal... I posted an English haiku there about speaking in tongues, for anybody who is interested) Love, Steve

After purposefully regulating my last flow of words, I had to write an English haiku... whether as a steam trap or a relief valve, I cannot say, Mama's clock birds chirp aping nature's hymnody -- I will speak in tongues Love, Steve

Au contraire, my good friends, at least from my point of view... Objective reality is not what we have been taking it for granted to be. The only absolute is that there are no absolutes. Every generalization fails, including this one. We are entangled. It's all very zen. Speaking in tongues is the sound of one hand clapping. In the 17th century, Isaac Newton said some things which came to be interpreted to mean that the cosmos is governed by absolute laws, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, etc., etc., etc. It's interesting to note that the word absolute comes from Latin that means "free of imperfection." The laws of the cosmos are free of imperfection. Isaac's principles gained a great deal of attention because you can use them to purposefully regulate the flow of cannonballs. In 1810, when Schleiermacher wanted to include a theology department in the University of Berlin, he had to promise the royal Prussian government that his theology would be "scientific" theology... that is to say, his theology would have to conform to the Newtonian system of absolute laws... laws that are free of imperfection. Therefore, one of the presuppositions of Schleiermacher, and all the liberal protestant theology that has flowed from his, is that miracles CANNOT happen. A miracle would be imperfection in the laws of the cosmos, therefore none of the miracles recorded in the Bible could have really happened. Therefore the task of liberal theology is to explain why the authors of the Bible are lying about so much, especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The liberal protestant theologians made an absolute statement that the Bible is NOT absolute truth. Around the turn of the twentieth century, conservative protestant theologians reacted against the liberal protestant theologians by making an absolute counter-statement that the Bible IS absolute truth, free of imperfection. That is what's known as "inerrancy" or "plenary verbal inspiration." Denominations that believe the Bible is absolute truth are called "fundamentalist" because inerrancy was a plank in the platform of the Fundamentalist Conferences. After 1925, many fundamentalists switched to the word "evangelical" because of the publicity black-eye fundamentalism took in the Scopes trial. Wierwille was a fundamentalist. PFAL was fundamentalist. He taught that if the Bible were not absolute truth, if it included EVEN ONE imperfection, then it was an absolute lie, error without imperfection. Astonishingly enough, at the same time William Jennings Brian was notoriously tangling himself up in fundamentalist absolute counter-statements (the Scopes trial), Niels Bohr was articulating the fundamentals of quantum mechanics at THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN, the very home of liberal protestant absolutism. One of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics is that the laws of the cosmos are NOT absolute, that is to say, the laws of the cosmos are NOT free of imperfection in the Newtonian sense of the word "perfection." The laws are mathematically calculable, but there has to be an element of uncertainty injected into the calculation to get it to reflect the behavior of observable, objective reality. Cannonballs are sufficiently big that Newtonian mechanics can be used to purposefully regulate their flow. But electrons are not. The purposefully regulated flow of electrons, the flow that drives the life of our cells, the flow that constitutes our THOUGHTS, is NOT subject to the absolutes of the Newtonian worldview. A degree of uncertainty is inherent to the purposefully regulated flow of electrons. Likewise, language is not subject to the absolutes of Newtonian science, and the Bible is not subject to the absolutes of either Schleiermacher OR the fundamentalists. SOOoooooooOOOOooo............. What does all this have to do with he question under consideration? Raf comes out with his "confession" that he no longer believes that he ever actually spoke in tongues, and he interprets his previous experience as fakery... not malicious fakery, mind you, but a fakery resulting from naive gullibility. That's OKAY! We all have our own experience, and we all interpret our experience in ways that will make sense of it to ourselves. Raf didn't get himself into any trouble until he tried to generalize his interpretation of his experience to everyone else. When Raf says that he was faking it, I'm fine with that. When Raf says that I am faking it, I begin to take exception. Why do you find it necessary, Raf, to PROVE that everyone else was faking it, too? Why do you find it necessary to PROVE to me that I was faking it? I say, "In my experience, I was not, and am not faking it. I am speaking in tongues." You say, "Your interpretation of your experience is wrong..." and then you devise a system of absolute statements about language and tongues to PROVE that my interpretation HAS TO BE wrong. You make the absolute statement that "modern" tongues are NOT genuine Biblical tongues. When we look at what the Bible actually says, we see that there are only two restrictions the Bible puts on genuine, Biblical "speaking in tongues", one explicit and one implicit. The explicit restriction is that the speaker not understand the words coming out of her mouth. I would include deliberately forming nonsense syllables, as per theatrical improvisation, under the umbrella of this restriction as well, because the speaker understands that the syllables are nonsense. The implicit restriction is that it is not done as a result of willfully altering the speaker's state of consciousness. Though I recognize the force of these restrictions, I have to state that these restrictions are not absolute. The are not free of imperfection, BECAUSE NOTHING EVER IS! If a person who has received the gift of the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues without understanding the syllables coming out of her mouth, and without being in a willfully altered state of consciousness, then that person has met the Biblical requirements for genuinely speaking in tongues, whether that person is "modern" or not. To say anything else is to read into the Bible an absolute statement about speaking in tongues that just isn't there. You make an absolute statement that a person has to produce an identifiable human "language" or all speaking in tongues is fake. What does it mean to produce an "identifiable" human language? Do you know that if we heard Hebrew spoken as it was actually spoken in antiquity, we would not be able to recognize it as an "identifiable" human language? You wrote, "You should be calling in as many linguists as possible to get as wide a breadth of knowledge as you can to ID the language, not coming up with excuses for why they'll fail before they even start." If you want to find out scientific information about linguistics, go read Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure. I haven't read the whole thing, but I've referred to it in my debilitated state of scholarship. One of the things you'll find out is that you can't make absolute statements about language and/or communication, EITHER. To try to make absolute statements about speaking in tongues from a linguistic/communication standpoint, either to prove OR disprove it, is to chase a will-of-the-wisp. A person cannot make language do what you are trying to make it do, because of the very nature of language. ----- You wrote, "Like it's everyone else's job to prove it's NOT. News flash: if you're the one claiming it IS genuine, then it's your task to prove it's a language." It is not anybody's job to "prove" anything... You say that it is your interpretation of your experience that you were faking it when you spoke in tongues. As far as I am concerned, it is a wonderful thing that you have the self-awareness and the honesty to make sense of your experience and to carry on as the unique Raf that we have all come to know and love. I have no impulse whatsoever to try to "prove" to you that you were speaking in tongues. Why do you find it necessary to "prove" to me that I was not speaking in tongues? You tell me that I couldn't have really been speaking in tongues because (and these are absolute statements, free of imperfection) modern speaking in tongues is not genuine Biblical speaking in tongues, and if that's not enough, genuine Biblical speaking in tongues is not really speaking in tongues either... because it is and always has been a hoax. Why do people make absolute statements, Raf, when they aren't realistic? Because absolute statements can be used as propositions in syllogisms. People think they can "prove" whatever they want to "prove" if they pick the right absolute statements and apply the rules of logic. A conclusion can be logically valid, that is, it obeys the rules of the game of logic, but if one or more of the propositions are not true, the conclusion is unsound... or false. The degree of truth of a proposition is the degree to which the proposition accords with objective reality. What quantum mechanics demonstrates for us is that NO absolute statement (including this one) accords 100% with objective reality. There is a difference between objective reality and our experience of it. Objective reality has integrity, that is, it is whole and it persists. Our experience of objective reality in NOT whole, and does NOT persist. Nobody else shares my experience of objective reality except for God the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ by means of the Holy Spirit. The world-views that we hold are conceptual models of objective reality (purposefully regulated flows of words). Those models consist of all the stories we've told ourselves since we first acquired the linguistic means to do so. When we have a new experience, we incorporate that new experience into our models of objective reality by telling ourselves a new story about what just happened. These are important considerations of the branch of linguistics called semiotics, which deals with finding and assigning meanings. When you write "it's your task to prove it's a language," Raf, aren't you really saying that I have to "prove" my interpretation of my experience to you? Not only could I NOT do that, I judge it would be futile and wrong for me to even try... ...as futile and wrong as it would be for me to try to make you "prove" that you were really faking it when you were speaking in tongues. When you say it's my responsibility to "prove" my interpretation of my experience, aren't you really trying to absolve yourself of your perceived responsibility to "prove" your interpretation of your experience? If that's the case, then don't sweat the load! You don't have to "prove" your interpretation of your experience to anybody, especially not to ME! ... and besides that... you COULDN'T... even if you wanted to... because of the nature of language... and of objective reality. ----- You wrote "And for the last time, when you take one position for decades, reconsider and change your mind based on overwhelming evidence, the new position you take is NOT A PRESUPPOSITION. It is the OPPOSITE of a presupposition, and disingenuously calling it a presupposition to discredit it does not make it a presupposition." Whether a thing is a presupposition or not has nothing to do with chronology. The prefix "pre" in this case means that it is a supposition that comes at the beginning of an argument, and that some features of the following argument will depend upon it, not that it comes from a previous point in time. And the word "presupposition" is not a pejorative. A supposition is an assumption, a guess we have to make when we have to take a decision with insufficient information. A pre-supposition is a guess we have to make at the beginning of an argument to prevent uncertainty from derailing the argument. A presupposition is a tacit assumption. Presuppositions may or may not accord with objective reality. Presuppositions depend on our interpretations of our experiences, because our experiences of objective reality are incomplete. That's why we have to make assumptions. Whether you were faking or not when you were speaking in tongues is up to you to decide. When you make the absolute statement that everybody was faking it, that is a guess which is necessary in order for you to argue that I was faking it. When you make the absolute statement that all speaking in tongues is fake, then you cannot use that statement in a syllogism to prove that all speaking in tongues is fake, because that would result in a tautology, a circular form of reason that is logically invalid. That may not be what other people mean when they call things that you say "presuppositions"... but it's what I mean. Thanks, Raf. It has not been easy to articulate these things, but it has been necessary. I've got a big job ahead of me at the School of Theology, and this has been a warm-up pitching practice for what I'm going to have to do up there! I am thankful that I can count you as my friend and speak openly with you. I am thankful for your responses, whether they agree with me or not! Love, Steve

If there was a "Like" button here the way there is on Facebook, I'd push it for this post, waysider! Love, Steve

I can understand why people are pieced off at Wierwille's toxic quackery. I'm pieced off too! And not just at him, but at all the other Pentecostal and charismatic quackery that takes something that is simple and beautiful and turns it into so much bull...spit? I'm not mad at you, Raf, or you waysider, for reaching the conclusions that you have. I'd be there myself if I hadn't unthinkingly given the Lord permission to screw up as many of my plans as he wanted to screw up. But I did, and he did, and I have to live with the consequences. Love, Steve -edited to subvert swear checker-

Did I use the word "spiritual" in what I said? No I didn't. You used it, waysider. You were modifying what I wrote to put it into a form you could make fun of. Making fun of what I wrote doesn't change the truth of it. Read what I wrote again without prejudice. The fact that the Holy Spirit guided people on the Day of Pentecost recorded in Acts chapter 2 to use free vocalizations that some other people could understand as their own languages does not mean that all SIT MUST be done in an identifiable human language or it is false. The only Biblical requirement for speaking in tongues is that the speaker not understand what she is speaking. The Holy Spirit can do whatever he wants to do. Love, Steve

I have seen you make this statement a number of times, waysider. You say "the type of speaking in tongues being observed today." What type is that? A type that SOME Pentecostals, but not ALL, do? Or the OTHER type that different Pentecostals, though still not ALL, do? A type that followers of J.E. Stiles do? A type that practitioners of Santeria do? And WHO is the observer who makes these assessments? What are their qualifications? A vast majority of the people who write about speaking in tongues call it "ecstatic utterance", and that IS the case with many of the types of SIT observed today. "Ecstatic" comes from the Greek word ekstasis which literally means "out of place". It is used to convey "an altered state of consciousness." There are many types of seeming SIT that involve altered states of consciousness, induced by various artificial means such as drugs, extreme stress, sleep deprivation, etc. These means are called pharmakeia in the Greek. There is only one account in the Bible where "ecstasy", an altered state of consciousness, is associated with SIT, Acts chapter 10. In verse 10, while on a rooftop praying, Peter "fell into a trance" -- egeneto ep auton ecstasis -- "an altered state of consciousness happened on him." In verse 45 and 46, those of the circumcision, the believing witnesses Peter had brought with him, "were astonished" -- exestesan -- "had their state of consciousness altered"-- because they HEARD the uncircumcised speak in tongues! Genuine Biblical speaking in tongues is not, never has been, and never will be, the result of an artificially induced state of consciousness. Genuine Biblical speaking in tongues is not, never has been, and never will be, ecstatic. Now there have been people all over the world and all throughout history who have done "ecstatic" utterance, but as we see, genuine Biblical speaking in tongues is not ecstatic. You wrote, "The type of speaking in tongues being observed today (glossolalia) predates Christianity..." Unless you can produce a proper historical citation that genuine, Biblical speaking in tongues, the non-ecstatic type, predates Christianity, then I suggest you stop making this statement, because it is demonstrably inaccurate. Love, Steve

I think your distinction between language and communications is artificial and tendentious. A specific act of transferring intention from one being to another is communication. The means of doing so... ANY means... is a language. The word "language" comes from the Latin word lingua which means "tongue", just as the Greek word glossa means "tongue". Since the communication being done in SIT is between God (I Corinthians 14:2) and the Holy Spirit, human language... or the lack of one... doesn't make any difference at all. The only thing that makes a difference is that the speaker desires in her heart to thank God... enough to move her lips, her mouth, her tongue, and her BREATH, to do so. And I am not referencing Wierwille or PFAL here, I am referencing J.E. Stiles' The Gift of the Holy Spirit, pages 108-121. Receiving guidance from the Holy Spirit to speak specific words in the speaker's language only comes into play when a person interprets the tongue they spoke, or when the person speaks the kind of prophecy described in 1 Corinthians 14:24&25. I am not sure how interpretation is supposed to work. I just know that the way the Way taught it was wrong. I do know from my own experience... before, during and especially AFTER my time in TWI... that the prophecy Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 14:24&25 WORKS! I have heard God speak directly to my heart in the conversation of strangers at the neighboring table in a restaurant... before I ever heard of TWI or knew how to read the Bible with understanding. There have been times when I have popped off and said something that seemed to me like a tangential comment, and the person I was speaking to broke down in tears and said I had answered a question they had been praying to God about. It seems to me that if the things Paul was writing about speaking prophecy by the Spirit of God were true (and they ARE), then I might be able to trust the things he writes about speaking by the Spirit of God in tongues also. Love, Steve P.S. - I don't mean to imply by this that I trust ANYTHING taught by Wierwille.

I couldn't figure out what this post meant, because I remember (rightly or wrongly) seeing several different lists "of three propositions" (a very Greek artifact... not Hebrew at all) in recent threads. So I read back over the thread... If I am not mistaken, the proposition A in question was this: Modern SIT seems not to resemble Biblical SIT and does not seem to be supernatural at all, unlike Biblical SIT. While Proposition A seems not to make any doctrinal claims, it is rife with doctrinal suppositions which are papered over by using the word "Biblical." What does the Bible... and I mean Paul to the Corinthians... say about tongues? 1. There is one... and ONLY ONE... imperative associated with SIT, 1 Corinthians 14:39b, "...forbid not to speak with tongues..." No one is ever told that they HAVE to speak in tongues. The Corinthians were only told that they were NOT TO FORBID people to speak in tongues, in a passage of Paul's letter chiding them for OVERDOING tongues (which also implies that genuine tongues can be done improperly). 2. I Corinthians 14:22 says that tongues are a sign, not to those speakers who are confident that they have received the Spirit, but to those speakers whose confidence is not yet fully developed. Paul told the Romans in 4:11 of his letter to them that Abraham had received the sign of circumcision. In Philippians 3:3 Paul wrote that we are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit (SIT). The sign to Abraham was to cut off the end of his member (he got rid of a useless piece of flesh). There was nothing supernatural about that. The sign to us is to speak without reference to the meaning of the sounds coming out of our mouths. There is nothing supernatural about that, either. Speaking about "supernatural"... the word doesn't occur in the Bible. Neither the Stoic Greeks (the Corinthians were Stoic, not Platonic) nor the Hebrews thought there was a "supernature" in existence. Only the Platonists did that, and not in the current sense until after the 3rd century CE. Proposition A carefully uses the word "seems", which means it contains no statements of "fact" at all... Just my two cents worth... Love, Steve

Raf disagrees with me on a lot of things because our differing experiences have led to differing assumptions, but I respect Raf's critical thinking very much, and welcome his critiques of the things I write! And I think having a beer with him would be a lot of fun! Love, Steve

Nearly a year ago I was in critical care in the hospital with pneumonia. An amazing thing I observed while there was that every single person, from the top doctors to the people who were delivering my meals and taking out my trash, exhibited an un-self-conscious heart of service. I think the Lord was showing me that in serving me, they were serving him, because at that time, I was certainly the least of his brothers. And their hearts of service were of far more importance than any quibbles of "doctrine" that I might have had with them. We often neglect that praxis is more important than doctrine. We were incredibly arrogant in TWI. It was only because of God's mercy that he didn't strike us all dead... Love, Steve

And there are all sorts of other implications... When Paul wrote that we have the mind of Christ, it doesn't mean that we can tap into Jesus' stream of consciousness, it means that the Spirit has breathed into our hearts the heart-issues that Jesus deals with. When Paul wrote that the law is written in our hearts, it doesn't mean you can find a copy of the ten commandments in your heart. It means the Spirit has breathed into our hearts the impulse to do righteousness. The fundamental question of this thread was not to prove whether of not to Bible is "God-breathed" but rather to examine what it means for all scripture to be God-breathed. What does it mean for ANYTHING to be God-breathed? And I think the Spirit has been teaching me a few things. Love, Steve

No, Raf... it all fits together like a hand and a sock! And if the Spirit of God is NOT speaking into our hearts in a human language, it doesn't really matter if a human language comes out of our mouths when we speak in tongues. Articulating debarim into human language only becomes important when interpreting a tongue or delivering prophecy (prophecy as per 1 Corinthians 14:24-25, not all the other crap floating around that people call prophecy). Love, Steve

A couple of things have been influencing my recent thinking: first, a semester's worth of Hebrew, and second, contemplation of what words actually ARE, based on the hermeneutics class I took January 11-15, 2016. Here are the two simple conclusions I am considering: 1. The Bible is not God's primary way of communicating with us. The primary way God communicates with us is through Jesus Christ by means of the Holy Spirit. 2. Words, at least "words" the way WE think about them, are not the primary way that the Holy Spirit communicates with us. The primary way the Holy Spirit communicates with us is by means of "feelings" in our hearts. We articulate those feelings when we put them into words. The Hebrew word translated "word" is dabar, which literally means "a thing spoken." The word translated "to speak" is the same word, dabar, except it has different vowel points which make it sound like "da-VAIR." The noun is pronounced "da-BAR." A dabar is not limited to the sounds that come out of a person's mouth. The ideas of making, doing and being are much more closely associated with the act of speaking in Hebrew than they are in English (or Greek or German for that matter). So when the Old Testament talks about a "word" (dabar), it carries with it connotations of making, doing and being, as well as of saying. The "words" that the Holy Spirit breathes into our hearts are not in any human language. It is as we translate/interpret/articulate those feelings (dabarim) into the language we were taught as children that the "words" become linguistic artifacts. This is how the Tanakh can be "God-breathed" even though the human language into which it has been articulated necessarily contains contradictions and errors, because it is a HUMAN LANGUAGE. This is how speaking in tongues can genuinely be speaking by the Spirit of God even if it DOES NOT PRODUCE a recognizable human language. All for now... Love, Steve

I wrote a paper that included a rough exegesis of I Corinthians 12-14 over the holiday break a year ago (Christmas 2014-New Years 2015). I don't think I posted anything on this thread based on the research I did for that paper, but here's something I got out of doing that paper... You commented on a post about I Corinthians 13:1, TLC, "Though I speak with the tongues of men or of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling symbol." In my paper I wrote, "“If I speak in the tongues of human beings… or even of ANGELS! How spiritually cool would THAT be!?!... but I don’t have love, I am become a reverberating gong or a clamoring cymbal!” This is a plausible sense translation for verse 13:1. What are gongs and cymbals?... things without spirit." The context of this translation and exegesis stems from Paul's use of the word "spirituals" in I Corinthians 12:1, "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant." I believe "the spiritual ones" was how members of one of the factions at Corinth identified themselves, because they spoke in tongues "like a house afire," indecently and out of order, to show off how "spiritual" they were. I think Paul was making a sarcastic comment in 13:1 about these "spiritual ones," and wasn't at all implying that when people speak in tongues they sometimes use "the tongues of angels". In one very real sense, Paul was saying "speaking in tongues (indecently and out of order) doesn't demonstrate Spirit... love demonstrates Spirit!" Love, Steve

You know, Zen Buddhism, quantum mechanics and Judaism would say both realities are real... Love, Steve

Outstanding post, Sunesis! I've studied the Holy Spirit in Paul for a long time, and am still in the process, but the things I've been reading have made me curious about the similarities and differences between the Holy Spirit in Paul and the Holy Spirit in John. Your post seems to have opened some kind of window for me as to understanding the Holy Spirit in John. Thanks! To even think that there might be differences between the Holy Spirit in Paul and the Holy Spirit in John would be anathema in TWI, much less that we could learn things by examining those differences! Love, Steve

Ditto! Love, Steve

My wife, father-in-law, daughter and grand-daughter are all on the autism spectrum, which used to be called "Asperger's". I am coming to think that ALL people are on it to one degree or another. One of the seventh-graders in one of my classes was on the autism spectrum, and he taught me that there is no such thing as a genuine education that is not also a special education. If you are on the spectrum, TLC, then I applaud you for taking on subjects that are especially difficult for my wife and others... Love, Steve

I don't think Wierwille was interested in making his doctrine fit the Scriptures. What he did was to pervert the Scriptures to rationalize his sin... Love, Steve

That's one of the reasons I so value your input, Raf. Thanks! Love, Steve

No apology necessary, waysider, at least not to me! You haven't really gone off topic. The flow of thought on this thread has gone turbulent, but it hasn't ceased... that means it's still alive! If I remember rightly, Eve's first step on the road to perdition was that she "responded by considering." Wierwille taught that we shouldn't even consider whether or not the things he was teaching were actually so. If anybody raised any questions to us, we shouldn't even think about them. I would judge Wierwille's words as toxic in that case. How did Wierwille's teaching line up with other scriptures (the integrity of God's Word, you know)? "He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame to him." Proverbs 18:13 When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the adversary did so by asking Jesus questions. Jesus responded by considering those questions... DEEPLY considering them. Otherwise, how would Jesus have known how to defeat them so aptly? And you'll notice that Jesus didn't merely deflect the adversary's questions. He really did answer them! All for now... Love, Steve

But TWI was and did! :-) Love, Steve

I've been thinking about what has happened in my thinking since I started this thread last Halloween eve. Thinking about what you're thinking about is one of the two key elements to exercising judgment, as I used to teach my seventh-graders. The other key element is paying attention to what you're paying attention to! I just went back and re-read my first post. How has my thinking changed? What conclusions can I draw from the experience? One thing that influenced the way I think now was Jesus' statement in John 6:63, "the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." This is a statement of poetic knowledge expressed in the form of a metaphor. This particular metaphor compares three things: life, spirit, and words. What do life, spirit and words have in common? How are these three things similar to each other? First, spirit... spirit consists of the purposefully regulated flow of air in and out of my lungs. My breath (spirit) supports the purposefully regulated flow of oxygen into and out of (eis and ek in the Greek) my cells. Cellular respiration is the purposefully regulated flow of electrons in my cells that powers all of the chemical and mechanical functions (purposefully regulated flow of component elements) of my cells. The flow of component elements in my cells are purposefully regulated by the information encoded in my DNA. That purposefully regulated flow of component elements is what constitutes life itself. If the purposefully regulated flow ceases, all the physical components would still be there. They just wouldn't be moving. That's what death is, on a cellular level. So we see that the thing spirit and life have in common is purposefully regulated flow. One of the reasons this comes home to me is because I am on oxygen as a result of my anemia. I am on three liters per minute in order to keep the O2 concentration as high as possible in what little blood I have. My body purposefully regulates the flow of blood around my body, depending on what I'm doing. I can feel the blood in me sloshing around when I am digesting a meal. I can feel the blood sloshing around in me when I get drowsy. Between my O2 tank and my nose-hose there is a little mechanical device called a "regulator." I can set the regulator to feed me any volume of oxygen up to five liters per minute, and I can change the setting from continuous flow to on-demand pulse flow. So you see, the flow of my spirit is very purposefully regulated... literally. So... in order to understand the poetic truth communicated by Jesus in John 6:63, we need to examine "words" with a view to discovering what the component elements are, how they flow, and how their flow can be purposefully regulated. Here's a kicker... the words Jesus spoke were life-giving, but it's not the case that ALL words are life-giving. "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." (Proverbs 18:21) If we view the purposefully regulated flow of words as "thought," then words that promote thought are life-giving words. Words that stop thought are deadly. Many of Wierwille's words were intended to stop people from thinking. That's why PFAL and TWI turned out to be toxic in the long run. So much for similarities between spirit/life and thought (the purposefully regulated flow of words). What are some of the differences? One big difference is that our words are taught to us from the outside. We have natural capabilities for language, but the actual use of specific language is something we learn from our parents, family and acquaintances. Where my spirit and my life are concrete and individual, my words (and thoughts) are abstract and communal. I can breath and live by myself, but can I maintain thought by myself? I know some of the ways my thinking changed on the submarine when we were on an extended run. I've heard and read accounts of people who were in solitary confinement or isolated in some other way. I have participated in mental health support groups for twenty-five years... I personally believe the Bible is God-breathed, but not because I read 2 Timothy 3:16. As Raf so aptly pointed out, "If you are going to tie your faith in the inspiration of the Bible to a belief that this book is an accurate telling of events that took place in history, without error or contradiction, then you are going to be walking on a very fragile faith." I believe it because the Lord who taught me to understand the things of my heart in terms of the purposefully regulated flows of a nuclear-powered submarine engine room ALSO led me to the Bible and taught me how to find the same things in it. It breaks my heart to see people lose their faith in a loving God because they were mistakenly taught that the Bible "is an accurate telling of events that took place in history, without error or contradiction." All for now, I suppose... maybe more later... Love, Steve Well, yes... there will be more later... communication theory says that there are four elements: the sender, the message, the channel and the receiver. These are components of the extra-individual or the inter-personal flow of words. This is how we receive our language as infants. It is how we participate in the great conversation..., and then there is the role of feedback in all this!