Steve Lortz

Thank you, RE. How do I find the doctrinal threads? Love, Steve

Thanks for the info on the books, Sunesis. I'll probably order them in a day or two. The thing that sparked my imagination about "pro kataboles cosmou" is that it may not be a phrase from 2nd Temple Judaism at all, but rather a reference to "the conflagration" of Stoic cosmology. Stoic cosmology was the default cosmology from about 300 BC to 200 AD. It was the cosmology that Paul's 1st century gentile converts took for granted. However, the default cosmology had changed to neo-platonism by the time Augustine wrote in the 5th century and church doctrine became set in stone. The question before me is, did the words "body," "soul" and "spirit" have radically different meanings when Paul used them from the meanings they had when Augustine used them? The implications are HUGE! I'm no where near to being able to resolve this question, but I think I know what I'll be researching for awhile. Thanks! Love! Steve

roberterasmus, I apologize and ask you to forgive me for calling one of your beliefs "foolish." I believed and taught it once myself. I value the contributions you make to the great conversations we have on these forums, and I need to be more diligent in recognizing and respecting the dignity of each and every poster. Otherwise, I should not in good conscience sign my posts, Love, Steve

Neither Paul, nor any other of the first century writers wrote in a vacuum. The things they wrote were part of a conversation that began hundreds of years before their time, and continues to this very day, even as I type. For their readers in the first century (as well as us), that conversation included everything they had ever heard or read. The best current New Testament scholarship I've found is from James D. G. Dunn, not because he declares "This is what it means!" He doesn't. But because he has spent his adult live reconstructing, as well as a 20th-21st century scholar could, the conversation that occurred in the first century. He has written a number of profoundly questioning books, most scandalously, one called Christology in the Making. He isn't anti-trinitarian. He just seriously considers who and what Paul and the others actually said Jesus was, and that's enough to raise the ire of some trinitarians. One of Dunn's books that I value highly is The Theology of Paul the Apostle (1998). Here is a quote from it that I find interesting in regard to the idea that there are no contradictions in the Bible, "...what can we say about the conception of Christ which Paul held in his theology? The range of imagery is remarkable. The most straightforward image is that of the individual seated on God's right, sharing God's kingly rule. It is not difficult to integrate with this the complementary imagery of heavenly intercession, subjection (or destruction?) of enemies (defeat of death, that is, by resurrection), royal parousia to earth (before or after? and where?), judgment ("the day of the Lord"), and finally submission to God. But Paul also envisages the exalted Christ in the image of the last Adam, the prototype of resurrected human beings, the elder brother of the new family, the firstborn from the dead. As we shall see later, the Adam aspect of this latter imagery correlates with the "in Christ" "mysticism" of paul's soteriology, where Christ is envisaged as a corporate person "in" whom believers can find themselves. More difficult to integrate is the Wisdom strand of Paul's christology. For preexistant Wisdom is less a person and more a way of speaking of God's universal self-expression, and if the exalted Christ is to be thought of in an analogous way, the problems of integrated conceptuality become still more difficult. The same applies to the seeming equation of the last Adam with life-giving spirit (I Cor. 15.45) and to the thought of Christ indwelling his own. "The obvious conclusion to draw from all this is that the different imagery is not in fact mutually consistent, and any attempt to integrate it in a single portrayal would be conceptually confusing to say the least. We would be better advised to recognize it all as imagery and not to overemphasize or concentrate exclusively on one or another metaphor. The common theme to all the imagery--God's purpose for salvation, now and in the future, as focused in and explicated by Christ--is what matters." (pages 314 and 315) Love, Steve

The idea of Biblical inerrancy is like the idea of a perpetual motion machine, they both fail to take into account the nature of reality. The process of communication requires two parties, a sender and a receiver. Even if the sender were perfect, and sent a perfect signal, there would still always be noise interfering with the transmission, just as friction and counter-electromotive force always interfere with a machine's ability to produce as much energy as it consumes. And if the receiver weren't also perfect, the communication could not be perfect, even with a perfect sender and signal. If I presume that I could receive what an inerrant Bible has to say, then I am presuming that my understanding is as whole and persistent as God's, which it manifestly is not. Hebrews 1:2 says God spoke in times past to the fathers through the prophets, but in these last days has spoken to us by His Son. I think God's primary way of communicating with us is by His spirit through our Lord Jesus Christ. I think the Bible is only a secondary witness to confirm or deny what we think God is communicating with us through the spirit. Even so, we still have to exercise judgment. To think that the Bible is our primary channel for hearing from God, and to treat it as inerrant, is to shirk from exercising judgment, and to cut ourselves off from the spirit. The freedom to choose entails the responsibility to exercise judgment. Love, Steve

Sunesis... I don't think it was just a candle you lit with pointing out the "overthrow of the cosmos." I think it was a stick of dyno-mite! But I can't explain it right now. I have to go up to the University library and do some more research, but I have homework that will keep me busy until Tuesday. Here I am at 60, finishing a degree I started forty-three years ago. I've got some things to say about Paul, but that'll have to wait too. This is one of the most interesting threads I've read in years. I'm glad I get to interact with each and every one of you who have posted here! Love, Steve

It HAS happened to me... several times over. I've been studying the Crisis of the Third Century, when people saw Pax Romana, everything they ever trusted, everything they ever believed in, washed away within the course of a single lifetime, when they abandoned the stoic cosmology of the first century writers for the neo-platonism of Augustine and others. I think it's gonna happen a lot more times to many, many people over the next few decades. More later... Love, Steve

There are several levels of sleep that a person needs to go through in order to get the proper kinds and amounts of sleep. It is during sleep that the body heals itself. One of the levels involves dreaming, as indicated by rapid eye movement, but the others do not. It generally takes about 90 minutes for the brain to cycle through the sleep states. A good night's sleep is usually about five or six cycles depending on the levels of the neuro-transmitters, which vary from person to person and from time to time. After I got married, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and the mild form of bipolar mood disorder. I learned these things about sleep in learning to cope with these illnesses. When a person cannot or is not allowed to sleep, his body and brain cannot heal themselves, leading to the condition known as sleep deprivation. I think that there is a stage in the body's healing of the brain when it has to switch on some of the functions of consciousness without coming to full consciousness. I think that dreams are generally the brain's "screen-savers" during this stage of the process. Those things being said, I know of three dreams I've had during the course of my life that had real significance, and I believe it was God preparing me for things I needed to consider. I didn't dream much before I started sleeping with the CPAP (air pump) that keeps me inflated while I sleep. When I started getting enough proper sleep, my dreams became much more frequent and vivid. I tend to enjoy my ordinary dream-life. Wierwille wasn't trained in the science of though control. He just knew from experience what worked. But Dan Toccini, the perpetrator of Momentus, was trained. It was while considering how I had been manipulated during the Momentus training that I realized I had experienced the deliberate induction of sleep deprivation for purposes of thought control. I don't remember being taught that dreams are bad, but I don't put it past the ignorant know-it-alls that TWI is, and I was. Whenever I realize I'm dreaming, I always start flying around! Love, Steve

The shibboleth of "inerrancy" has a complex and fairly recent history. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the subject that can guide a person to primary sources if he isn't satisfied with the reliability of Wikipedia. After all, nobody claims inerrancy for THAT! I believe that the Bible provides an objective standard (the words don't change in a particular copy depending on the observer or over time) for knowing what its writers believed when they were composing it. Several places in the Bible indicate that in the mouth (singular) of two or three witnesses (plural) shall a matter be established. I believe God can use pertinent parts of the Bible as an objective witness to confirm what He is teaching a person subjectively by way of His spirit. To focus on the written Word and ignore the Spirit leads to Pharasaism and legalism, as happenned with TWI. To focus on the Spirit and ignore the written Word leads to emotionalism and spiritualism, as happened with CES/STFI's adventures in personal prophecy on demand. Holding to inerrancy is foolish on three counts. First, even if the original autographs were perfect, we don't have the orinal autographs, and there is no way to recover them. Two, even if the Bible were perfect, NO person's interpretation of it could be perfect, with the possible exception of Jesus Christ's. Third, if God committed His entire Self to a book, He would be putting Himself into an awfully small box. The Bible may be a means through which God can communicate with an individual, but it is still a book, and as such, is subject to the weaknesses of the flesh. To mistake the Bible for all there is to God is to turn its study into a work of the flesh, which I believe Wierwille did and taught. Love, Steve

A point regarding the accurate use of technical terms: The word "ultradispensationalist" is not a pejorative. It applies to dispensationalists who believe the "oikonomia of the grace of god" began at some time later than the day of Pentecost. Bullinger held that the "oikonomia of the grace of God" began not at Pentecost, but at Acts 28:28 when "the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles." Wierwille was not an ultradispensationalist. CES/STF still professes to be aligned with conventional dispensationalism, but they hold that all of Paul's letters except the prison epistles are tainted by Paul's latent Judaism. Without realizing it, much less understanding what they are doing, CES/STF promotes an ultradispensationalist hermaneutic. Love, Steve

Yet another interesting book is The First Messiah by Michael O. Wise (1999). Wise is a noted scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In The First Messiah, he builds a case that a wave of messianic enthusiasm swept over Judaea about a hundred years before the time of the gospels. That wave was partially a result of events found recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and partially an impetus to the formation and continued existance of the Qumran community. If Wise is right, then the things he talks about in The First Messiah goes a long way to explain the popular messianic expectations at the time of Christ, and why those expectations took the forms they did. Love, Steve

And furthermore... I think 100% of the New Testament was addressed to Christians, with the possible exception of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. A strong case can be made that Luke wrote these two volumes as a legal background brief for the Roman magistrate who would hear Paul's case in lieu of Nero. I got the business about Luke and Acts from a book called Paul On Trial, The Book Of Acts As A Defense Of Christianity by John W. Mauck (2001). Love, Steve

For those who may be interested, I came across a couple of good books in the last year or two. The first one was Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible by Karel van der Toorn (2007), and the second was The Oral and the Written Gospel by Werner H. Kelber (1983). Both books go into the realities of the transmission of ideas in cultures where the vast majority of people cannot read or write, and they respectively consider how the "Old Testament" and the "New Testament" may have come into written form. The principles and ideals of writing were vastly different in antiquity than they were in the 19th century, when the fundamentalist response to radical rationalism came into being. I no longer believe in verbatim inspiration of the Scriptures, though I believe God can use them as an objective base for teaching individuals the things He wants them to know. I think Jesus' ministry was only a year or so long, mainly because I don't think he could have held the crowds at such a fever pitch for much longer than that without raising a rebellion against the Romans or crapping out (which, from an earthly point of view, he did). I think there are many interesting things to learn by considering the similar incidents in the different gospels, especially thinking about why the incidents might have been recorded differently in the gospels' differing contexts, but I don't think a literal harmony is possible. Love, Steve

Wierwille did stumble on a few acorns, but his research was bogus. He preached exegesis, reading the meaning out fromwhat is written, but he practiced and taught eisegesis, reading foreign meanings into what is written, sometimes in the very same lesson, as with "to whom addressed". Wierwille parroted Darby, Bullinger and Schofield, misapplying the meaning "a period of time" to oikonomia or "stewardship", obscuring the distinctions between what Paul calls "this present evil age" and the age to come. Genesis 2:7 says the Lord God formed MAN (not his body) of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (air in motion, man began breathing), and man BECAME a living soul. Man is a two part being composed of a dust component and a breath component (air in motion, literally; figuratively, life as evidenced by motion). A whole man can be viewed as a body. A whole man can also be viewed as a soul. And by the time of Paul, a whole man could be viewed as a spirit. When the breath or spirit (air in motion) leaves a man, that man becomes a dead soul. This stuff isn't rocket science! But the rat-poison in the package was when Wierwille taught that we are not to fear God. The fear of God is true humility, to recognize that God is God, and I am not. I need to change what I think to line up with what He says, not I need to change what He wrote to line up with what I think. The opposite of the fear of God is arrogance. The NIV version of Psalm 36:1-4 reads, "1 An oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before his eyes. "2 For in his own eyes he flatters himself Too much to detect or hate his sin. "3 The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful; He has ceased to be wise and to do good. "4 Even on his bed he plots evil; he commits himself to a sinful course And does not reject what is wrong." Self-flattery. That was the rat poison that got to Wierwille, and the rat poison he put in our kool-aid. That was the rat poison in PFAL, and the rat poison that has screwed up every one of the off-shoots that try to perpetuate "the package" first put together by Wierwille. Love, Steve

About a decade or so after she left TWI, my wife was diagnosed with the debilitating form of bipolar mood disorder and a whole potpourri of other mental illnesses. Not because of her involvement with TWI. We were acquainted with each other in TWI, but we didn't get married until several years after we had each left separately. After my wife was diagnosed, I became aware of the fact that I also have the milder form of bipolar mood disorder. We have both been involved with the National Alliance on Mental Illness for a number of years. We have come to recognize that mental illnesses are brain disorders that may have environmental triggers. If you are deliberately seeking safe places to deal with your problems, then I admire you for your wisdom and your courage. We try to see the individual first, not the illness. My bipolar mood disorder is no more a moral failing on my part than my diabetes, high blood pressure or the weakness of my abdominal muscles that led to a massive hernia. You are a precious person, brainfixed, and no more "fouled" than the rest of us. It's just that some people's problems are easier to see than other people's. There are some people who look like they have it all together that I wouuldn't trade places with for a million dollars. The only people who don't have really serious problems are the people we don't know very well. I say God bless you, brainfixed, and the best of luck to you! Love, Steve

Yes. Love, Steve

How do YOU explain Mike's outlandish claims and methods? I'm using his own words and explanations. As "juvenile,... presumptuous, ineffective and personal as my thoughts may seem, are they anywhere near as juvenile,... presumptuous, ineffective and personal as Mike's have actually been? And as for "superstitious", did you know that "superstition" was one of the earliest charges brought by the pagans against Christians, and it was also one of the reasons people flocked to the churches. The Greek word translated "superstitious" is "deisidaimonia", literally "demon-fearing". All the western ancients believed in demons, invisible beings composed of the element "air" in motion, or "wind" or "spirit", who inhabit the region between the surface of the earth and the sphere of the moon's orbit. They were generally considered to be as morally ambivalent as men (beings of earth) or the gods (beings of fire), but ordinary people feared them because they were invisible The intelligensia of the time said, "There's no reason to fear demons. Since they are a higher form of life, they must be better than human beings, therefore demons are not evil and should not be feared." The Christians said, "Yes, demons can be evil, but their power has been broken by Jesus Christ. Deliverance is available in His name!" That's why many ordinary people came to the churches. The power of the demons had been broken. But the people of vastly superior intellect and prestige continued to charge the Christians with "demon-fearing", not because they believed in demons, everybody did, not because the Christians were actually afraid of demons, the Christians were about the only people who genuinely weren't, but because the Christians said that demons were capable of evil. It may make you feel safe to believe that there are no invisible intelligences who wish you harm, but the only real safety lies in the mercy and grace and power of God through Jesus Christ. Do I believe that "demons" are composed of air in motion? No. I am presently inclined to think that information may be as fundamental a quality of the universe as matter or energy, and I think the invisible intelligences, angels as well as demons, may be entities "composed" of information. I spent six years in the Navy nuclear power program dealing with invisible things (radiation) that could kill me. I have had more personal experiences pointing toward the reality of demons than I have had personal experiences pointing toward the reality of radiation. The only way to stay safe from radiation, something we could not see or feel, in the engineering spaces was to trust and adhere to our procedures. The only way to stay safe from demons is to trust and adhere to the procedures God has set forth in His Word. I think I would describe "superstition" as a groundless, or unfounded belief. I have seen too much evidence to brush the existence of invisible intelligences off as "superstition". Love, Steve

No, I don't (just my thinking, I haven't received any "discerning of spirits"). I no longer have any confidence in the things we were taught in the Advanced Class. Demons have vastly less power than popular imagination makes them out to have. For the most part, they are con-"men" whose only real power is persuasion, pulling bluffs and scams. And Wierwille was certainly conned by his "devil spirits". It has been demonstrated in a book called "The Spiritual Mafia" (or maybe it was "The Psychic Mafia" I'll have to retrace it) that Arthur Ford was a fake. Ford's familiar was the "Fletcher" of PFAL. And ANYBODY can do "psychic surgery" once they know the trick. I remember all the hours I spent picking up litter and cigarette butts around ministry property because "devil spirits like to hang out in messy places." The motor coach was spick and span, but that certainly didn't stop the devilish work going on in it. The Bible doesn't talk in the Greek about people being "possessed". That's King James theology creeping into the text. The Greek word is literally "demonized", and I think it can be correctly understood in modern parlance as "influenced by demons". I think Mike is a man who is heavily influenced by a demon masquerading as "the mind of Christ". Mike is influenced by this spirit because he willfully surrendered his judgment to it. Mike can also take his judgment back if he decides to, by the mercy and grace and power of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. In I Corinthians 2:6 Paul tells us that the princes of this age... which Paul also calls "this present evil age" in Galatians 1:4, NEVER "the Church Age", NEVER "the Age of Grace", NEVER "the Age of the Mystery"... the princes of this age come to nought. The princes of this age come to nothing, rendered useless. They have no power but deception. Mike's "advanced Christ formed within" spirit keeps Mike dancing on its string through a mix of flattery and whopping big promises about what Mike will be able to do once his "Christ within" is fully formed (always somewhere down the line, never now). He will be like a giant, striding across the landscape, brushing away unbelievers like so many flies. Mike believes what his "advanced Christ formed within" spirit tells him more than he believes what he can see with his own eyes. That's why he can put such bizarre, nonsensical interpretations on Wierwille's straight forward words. That's why he thinks he has so much prowess as a debater. He finishes one of his rants, which leaves the rest of us nonplussed, and his "advanced Christ formed within" spirit tells him, "Way to go, Mike! You the man! You packed 'em all off, runnin' like whipped dogs with their tails between their legs!" And Mike believes it. Love, Steve

Mike has switched tactics again, repeating his stale old question to show that his tantrum wasn't really meant to kill the thread, yet he continues to studiously ignore all discussion of his "advanced Christ formed within" spirit, as if the subject had never been brought up. Love, Steve

Hey, Mike! He meant it's been a great leaning experience finding out that your ONLY rule of faith and practice is your "advanced Christ formed within" spirit. How come he had to find that out from me? Why aren't YOU telling him about it? I'm sure you can do a much better job of explaining the NEW man, the mind of Christ, than I can. Steve Lortz OLG Extraordinaire of the United States by Poopular Acclamation

Mark, you asked me if I was quoting directly from Mike's posts. I told you I'd have to get back to you after a bit, partially because I wanted to see what sort of direction Mike was going to go after having his "ONLY rule of faith and practice" exposed, the whisperings of his "advanced Christ formed within" spirit. The strategy he was using on this thread, up through my post, was a sort of obfuscation-through-convolution rope-a-dope: I said you said I said you said I said you said; with each iteration taking a slight twist to throw everyone off balance. This gave him the ability to drag out the conversation, advertising his new religion to attract potential recruits, without directly addressing any issues. After I exposed his "ONLY rule of faith and practice", he could have defended his position. That's what he did, quoting scripture references about the "mind of Christ", after I originally brought up his "advanced Christ formed within" spirit. But, after I parsed the language of his last defense, he decided to shut down this thread by throwing a tantrum. And to bury it as quickly and as deeply as he can. Five or six years ago, Raf started his "Actual Errors in PFAL Thread" to refute Mike's proselytizing for the "God-breathed PFAL". Along about the same time, Mike started a thread to entertain people who showed interest in what he was teaching. I went on his thread and asked him a number of probing questions, and he opened up about his "advanced Christ formed within" spirit. I've tried to locate that thread, even in the Soap Opera archives, but I haven't succeeded. I am probably the only poster who took Mike at his word, that he had received another spirit, and was getting his understanding from it. I can feature this because when I was younger, my "spirit guide" tried to convince me that I am Jesus Christ reincarnated. When I repented of my involvement with that spirit, it tried to kill me, but I called on God to help me, and the spirits (I'm sure there was more than one by then) had to go. That was long before I ever got involved with TWI. It was when I told Mike how he could get deliverance that he started calling me the SNL church lady. The phrase "advanced Christ formed within" is an exact quote. I don't put quote marks around the word spirit, because Mike was very reluctant to admit it WAS a spirit. He preferred to call it the "mind of Christ", but he did let it slip in one of his rants that it IS a spirit. He never used his phrase "advanced Christ formed within" together with the word spirit, so I don't include the word in quotes with the phrase. Mike said a person has to put off his natural man mind (deny the evidence of his senses and common sense) and accept PFAL as God-breathed in order to have the NEW man, the mind of Christ, born within. Mike described the process of reading the words of PFAL with a blank mind as the action that enables the "mind of Christ" to become fully formed and strong, similarly to the way Wierwille taught that speaking in tongues strengthens the gift of holy spirit. This was part of the reason God revealed PFAL to Wierwille, and gave the promise that Wierwille would learn the Word of God as it hadn't been known since the first century, so that people could have "advanced Christ formed within" spirits born in them, and so those spirits would have the food of PFAL to make them strong. The people who stick with the program of the God-breathed PFAL, who get their "advanced Christ formed within" spirits fully formed, are the ones of whom it was written, "...the works that I do shall he do also, and greater...". And the greater works Mike's "advanced Christ formed within" spirit promised Mike the HE would do are some real humdingers. I distinctly remember Mike using the word "whisper" in almost a seductive way, to describe how his "advanced Christ formed within" reveals to him the hidden mysteries of PFAL, invisible to the senses, while he reads PFAL with his critical thinking turned off. I seriously doubt that Mike will respond on this thread again. I think he just wants it to go away now. But remember this stuff, and ask him about it wherever you find him posting. I doubt that he will ever deny any of it. Love, Steve

I'll have to get back to you after a bit. Love, Steve

Notice that Mike does NOT deny what I've written about his "advanced Christ formed within" spirit. His method of "studying" PFAL is to clear his mind of critical thinking, to read the words of PFAL, and to wait for his "advanced Christ formed within" spirit to explain the hidden meanings of the words. Mike wrote, "So, getting Christ formed within, or getting the mind of Christ, means successfully casting off the old man's natural mind [or common sense, our senses' grasp on objective reality], and acquiring via God's grace and His Word, a NEW man [another spirit]. This is the purpose of PFAL, to build within the mind of Christ...". Reading PFAL mindlessly (or "anoetos" as the Bible puts it) "feeds" the "advanced Christ formed within" spirit, the same way Wierwille said speaking in tongues fed the gift of holy spirit. The "advanced Christ formed within" spirit then reveals the hidden meaning of the words of PFAL, "the deep spiritual things that are not understood [by the natural mind], and are even rejected, even though pneuma hagion is present." "Christ formed within is Christ in you THE GLORY, whereas pneuma hagion is only the token, the hope of glory to come. It came." Mike's "Christ formed within" is a spirit. It is NOT the holy spirit that was first poured out on the day of Pentecost. It is another, different spirit. I don't know if Mike's "advanced Christ formed within" spirit tells him it came into the world at some specific date, but we know it came for Mike on the day he received it for the first time. Mike's "advanced Christ formed within" spirit tells him that he can't trust what his senses, his "natural man mind", tell him PFAL says. Mike's "advanced Christ formed within" spirit also tells him that he can't trust what God might be trying to tell him about PFAL by way of the gift of holy spirit, because "Pneuma hagion does not affect the mind." Mike has ONLY one rule for faith and practice, and that rule is whatever his "advanced Christ formed within" spirit whispers to him in his hours of thoughtlessly pouring over the words of PFAL. Love, Steve

Logical systems can be used to derive further truths from known truths, but simply because a system is logical doesn't mean its results are true. An argument is considered "valid" if its reasoning complies with the rules of its logical system. In order to be regarded as true, though, an argument must be both valid and "sound", that is, the premises upon which the argument is based must all be true. How do we determine whether or not a premise is true? The truth or falsity of a premise has to rest on how closely the premise accords with objective reality. Mike has taken as his assumption that PFAL is God-breathed, therefore PFAL can contain no errors, since God's words are perfect. Others of us say the objective reality is that PFAL contains many errors, therefore PFAL cannot be God-breathed, since God's words are perfect. Fundamentally, Mike is not here to argue the merits of PFAL, he is here to sucker those whom he can into accepting his false premise. Mike has elevated the "revelations" of his "advanced Christ formed within" spirit above the objective evidence of his senses, and he wants us to do the same. Love, Steve

The way I interpreted Godel's incompleteness theorem was this: Every logical system is a set of rules. The purpose of a logical system is to define "proof". Every logical system is built on a set of assumptions which are taken as self evident. If you try to use a logical system to prove one of the assumptions upon which it is based, you inevitably get into a circular argument, sometimes known as a "tautology" or a "recursive loop". Circular arguments are not valid. Therefore a logical system can never be used to prove one of its basic assumptions. Since Mike takes as one of his assumptions that PFAL contains no errors, then either he cannot use his system to prove PFAL contains no errors, or his system is not logically valid. Love, Steve