Nathan_Jr

Childish and childlike are not equivalents. Matthew 18:3 The value of a child in this verse (and connected to 1 Cor 13:12) is NOT that a child is obedient and will just beleeeve anything a self-proclaimed teacher “teaches.” Find out for yourselves what Matt 18:3 means. ——— Charity is a translation of the Latin caritas. The KJV relied heavily on the Latin Vulgate for 1 Cor 13. That’s fine. Charity works, but not super effectually. In modern usage charity takes on different shades of meaning than it did in Elizabethan English. Paul wrote in Greek, not Latin, not Aramaic/Syriac. The word love in this chapter is always a form of the Greek agape. ——- Just making sense of the Bible. Bless your hearts. I wish you could read it in the original.

Yes. Of course.

Hey, I didn't write the book. EVERYTHING? Is that everything without exception or everything without distinction. The context of this website is abuse survival and healing. No. Do you? I rest my case.

Unresolved? No. You miss the mark. Again. It sounds like abuse. It sounds like she has been letting it play out for years. It sounds like she has let it play out long enough. Hence, her fatigue. l can make inferences about her relationship, because what she describes sounds just like my experience. She can't change him. He has to wake up on his own. I hope she has a support system outside of her marriage and the cult. I hope she has the courage to stand up, declare her freedom, and begin the healing process.

Why not? She used the pronoun "his."

I see your point and I agree with you. You left out Yahweh telling Abraham to murder his own innocent son. That's about as f'd as it gets for me. But, but, but... Right, we could do this all day. I see the Bible as Mythos, allegory, poetry, propaganda. Man's attempt at explaining the unexplainable. And just man telling stories. And man writing poetry. And man writing propaganda. Some of the stories are based on historical fact. Jesus was a real man. Paul was real. There are lessons to be learned about ourselves in these stories. I do not believe God writes literature, scripture, instruction books. I do not believe God tells tells anyone what to write. I don't believe God requires binoculars, as Mike believes. Again, this is awkward to articulate, because it really depends on what one means by "Theopneustos" and "God." Ultimately, I can't make a logical argument for or against the theopneustos of any book, to your point. But it doesn't matter, because no holy book is required for one to understand Truth, Love, Principle... God.

When Louis Armstrong was asked, "What is jazz?" He said, "If you have to ask, you'll never know." Somehow this seems relevant.

Hot and steamy.

I'll go with theopneustos = divine inspiration, divinely inspired. A human's work that is thospneustos will reflect the qualities of God, which, I suppose does mean perfect: perfectly accurate, perfectly beautiful, etc. (This leads to my earlier question: What is God?) I've witnessed athletic feats that I could only describe as divinely-inspired. And the athlete, when asked, can't explain how he/she did it, rendering the reporter's question, "What were you thinking when...?", to be utterly stupid. I recently heard Bob Dylan admit in an interview that he could never write songs like he did in the 1960s. The interviewer was shocked, but Bob was nonchalant and matter-of-fact and humble. It was a magical time, he said. He doesn't understand it himself. Certain literature, poetry, scripture so profoundly affects me, I'm moved to tears of joy. I've heard writers admit that sometimes the sentences or verses seem to write themselves -- there is no effort or work involved, they can't explain it, they humbly admit. Same goes for art, architecture, photography, any creative endeavor. It seems to me anything in nature or any human achievement that I might call divinely-inspired is NOT so because someone claims it to be so. Self-proclaimed works as theopneustos are surely not. Are sacred texts from around the world theopneustos? Sometimes. That is, sometimes for ALL scripture, not just Judeo-Christian scripture. Is PFAL theopneustos? No. It's bullshonta. I suppose I know it when I see it, but I would be cautious to label it theopneustos, probably because I would be too overcome with wonder and awe. The effort to label it as such seems foolish. Just my opinion. I could be wrong. And I'm perfectly ok with that.

Well the topic is On God-breathed Scripture — rather broad in scope. And your opening post is a declarative statement. I’ve asked questions in an attempt to focus the topic, but I’m not really sure what that is anymore. Though I sometimes find Bolshevik’s posts to be cryptic, I don’t think he’s off topic here. Raf, what do you want to discuss? Is there a question?

Gross.

I saw this bumper sticker today: "A closed mind is a wonderful thing to lose."

7x70

I can accept that something divinely-inspired doesn't necessarily need to be perfect. How does one know if something is divinely-inspired? Is one of the criteria that it must only come from the ancient Near East written by Jews? I generally believe that anything or anyone proclaiming to be of God or by God or from God or inspired by God is certainly NOT. Those proclamations are for story tellers and story readers/hearers -- a device employed to advance narrative. Maybe it all comes down to the question: What is God? But this, it seems to me, is an absurd question that can never be answered on an internet discussion board.

That's it!

Ok. ”God-breathed” is figurative, right? Interpretation is subjective. So, what does it mean to be God-breathed?

I don't think I would ever be able to find the time.

You couldn't have said it better yourself. Amen. Even if PFAL claimed, explicitly or implicitly, to be God-breathed, the claim wouldn't make it so.

I feel like my questions are designed to further the progress of the discussion. Maybe they aren't perceived that way. IDK. Should I add my questions to the Unanswered Questions folder and gently read them at the gentle beach?

Can we clarify this? If something is God-breathed, it is without error or contradiction by definition. PFAL and the Bible both have errors and contradictions. Therefore, neither PFAL nor the Bible is God-breathed. Is this the proposition?

God-breathed = inspired by God. Right? Or does it literally mean written by God? All scripture is God-breathed? All without exception? Or distinctly Judeo-Christian scripture? Says who? The writer of scripture says so himself about himself. Oh... well that settles it.

"Say that reminds me, how’d you get that kid so darn fast? Me and Dot went in to adopt on account a’ somethin’ went wrong with my semen, and they said we had to wait five years for a healthy white baby. I said, 'Healthy white baby? Five years? What else you got?' Said they got two Koreans and a negra born with his heart on the outside. It’s a crazy world."

I wonder what the take rate of "grads" is -- for very 100 "grads" how many stick around? This is hard to know, I imagine, because TWI wouldn't want to track that kind of statistic -- a negative confession, dwelling on the negative.

Thanks for this, Rocky. A rather balanced account. One can't say TWIts aren't represented in the article. They're the ones denying everything. Michael Rood is mentioned. Doesn't he have his own cult now? Or am I thinking of a different Rood? Do you know how the membership numbers were calculated/estimated? 40,000! I thought TWI didn't keep membership records. It doesn't really matter. Just curious.

Narcissism everywhere with this cult.