Oakspear

I've said it before on this thread...in any category or "rung on the ladder" it depended on the individual the degree to which they could be a victim or oppressor or somewhere in between. Surely there was enough variety to demonstrate that there is no one-size-fits all description. The degree to which a person who was inclined to be an "oppressor" actually was able tp act oppressively depended on the degree of authority that they had within the TWI structure. As a WOW, we could all be jackasses to one another, but it was only the WOW coordinator who could do it "officially". In a twig setting anyone could be judgemental and nosy about the details of others' lives, but only the limb coordinator could mark and avoid you...etc, etc.

How so?

Or, as I believe, Paul and the writers of the gospels simply had differing opinions; later church leaders and theologians had to find a way to make them fit together, a late example is dispensationalism.

I presume nothing in my observation that there are contradictions in the bible, they're all over the place, some major, some minor. There are different conclusions one can derive from that observation: one is that there are only apparent contradictions that need harmonizing, another is that the bible is a book wherein you would expect contradictions, because it was written at different times by different people with different agendas. Other conclusions are possible. I hold to the definition that if one self-identifies as a Christian, then one is a Christian. I do not believe that any one person can make that determination for anyone else.

Sky - good points, but I guess since I was kind of a knucklehead when I came to GSC, I'm cutting him some slack. It takes some of us longer than others

Skyrider - for many of us, the outcome, as you call it, was all that we ever saw, Wierwille just being a guy we saw on tape during PFAL or from afar at the ROA. It is not unreasonable for a person to view Way Corps people in a bad light if that's all that was seen. In my own experience I tended to blame individual Way Corps (and non-Corps) twig leaders & such, for their behavior at the time, but from the vantage point of many years later I see that it was a bit more complex than that. Wierwille was indeed the source of the evil, but individuals still had free will to act ethically or not.

MRAP - there are often very good reasons for concealing ones identity here. Since Day One here at GSC posters have always been free to reveal or conceal at their own discretion. You of course are free to believe or disbelieve what you see written here and judge whether you have enough information. Posters are not likely to publish their own names or previous positions in TWI just to satisfy your curiosity.

I can see some sense in holding questions until the end, sometimes you have to have more complete information before you can formulate a question, but that's not what was going on in PFAL. It wouldn't have been too bad if questions actually were answered at the end of the PFAL class, but more often than not you were still told to hold it "in abeyance" until you understood more, or took another class... In general, it's a good idea to question everything

Good point. I highlighted "hidden" - I cannot believe that the creator of the heavens and the earth caused his book to be written in such a way that you had to be a sudoku master to divine the "real" meaning behind it. How many teachings involve skipping all over the bible to make a point? Yeah, there are verses about confounding the wise and all that, but if you need a degree in advanced biblical Greek and hours a day of free time to wade through it all, it's not very accessible to the common man is it? Nice :evilshades:/>

One of the things that I try to apply the "outsider test" to is prayer I'm not talking about the kind of prayer where you talk to God, or praise God, or anything other than asking God to do something, or provide something I know a lot of people who are sure that "prayer works", and are vocal about providing examples of the many times where prayer "worked", i.e. they asked God for something and they received it, or it came to pass My outsider test in regards to prayer is that even a superficial look at the track record of prayer "working" would likely result in a very low success rate I understand that I am not proving anything - maybe your individual experience is that you receive 100% of what you pray for 100% of the time, but it has been my observation that people who make this claim employ rationales or weasel words to explain why not receiving what was prayed for: God answered, but he said "no"; the ever-popular "God works in mysterious ways"; "God gives you what you need, not what you want"...the list goes on and on Confirmation bias, selective reporting, rationalizing lack of success all serve to explain away the times when prayer doesn't "work" My own favorite reason for disbelieving in the effectiveness of prayer: disasters, either natural or man-made, when the survivors claim God's blessing for sparing them when many others were killed, or lost their homes Applying the same standard that is applied to psychics, fortune tellers and predictors-of-the-end-of-the-world to prayer and you'll get the same results

One of the hallmarks of Wierwillism was the belief that the bible, in "the original", was inerrant, and that any contradictions are only apparent contradictions. This was not new or unique to Wierwillism (surprise!) but can be found in many fundamentalist denominations and is evident in the writing of E.W. Bullinger. It is obvious to anyone who reads the bible in any depth that there are contradictions, ones position theologically determines what you do with those contradictions. The early Christians bent logic into a pretzel to harmonize the many contradictions about the nature of Jesus, resulting in the doctrine of the Trinity, Unitarians (like Wierwille) bent things in a different direction in order to justify the lack of a Trinity. A couple of examples (one of which was pointed out to me when I was deep into WayWorld, but which I chose to ignore) are the number of people crucified with Jesus and the number of denials of Peter. Most people know that there were two other guys crucified with Jesus and that Peter denied Jesus three times. The reason that they know this is that in every mention of the others crucified there are two, and in every mention of the denials there are three. Readings of the Gospels in church generally will read one rendering of these events, that is, they don't stop to compare two gospels side-by-side. If they did, they would notice there are discrepancies, i.e. contradictions. Some people never notice the contradictions because they don't ever compare records, and don't "research", they just read. Others kind of know about the contradictions, but aren't bothered by them. But still others attempt to reconcile the contradictions, because to them there aren't any contradictions in the bible. These people notice that in one gospel Peter denies Jesus three times before the cock crows, in another before it crows twice; in one gospel the denials take place in certain places, in another the locations are different; the people that Peter denies Jesus to change from one gospel to another. At the crucifixtion the others are malefactors in one gospel and robbers in another; in one gospel one rails against Jesus and in other they're both silent; in one they are led with, in another at a different time. So what the inerrantists do is compare each detail side by side and see which details agree. If a detail appears in one gospel but not another, then that's a separate detail. What we end up with is four others crucified and six denials. The problem with that is that every gospel says that there were three denials and two crucified, not six and four. Believing that there were six and four requires inventing a fifth canonical gospel, one where everything is in harmony, but where the details contradict what it plainly says in the "real" gospels. Whether there were three or six denials, two or four others crucified may be a matter of biblical trivia, but this manner of thinking extends to matters of doctrine as well. Even though there may be (well, there are) differences in the view of the afterlife, sin, church government, etc. from one biblical writer to the next, the inerrantists naturally want to make it all fit together. Words are given meanings that the writers would be very surprised at! What inspired me to start this thread was a discussion that I had elsewhere at the cafe where another poster assigned a meaning to a word that contradicted every biblical use of the word, mainly because the implications of using the obvious and natural meaning of the word would be a contradiction of something that another biblical writer wrote. This is what we learned was "research" in TWI and is considered legitimate in many fundamentalist circles. If you throw out the notion that the bible is inerrant, that it is perfect in all particulars and can therefore contain no contradictions whatsoever, that the writers were mere mortals who were just writing what they thought was the truth about Jesus, that they had differing views about him and were emphasizing different aspects of his message and the meaning of his death, then the need to harmonize disappears. You can say, "Paul meant A and the writer of Luke said B" without having to twist and squish one or the other or both views to fit the other, or to come up with a third option that harmonizes the two.

You win the internet today

It's not either/or, in my view It depends on what the Corps person did and with what attitude they did it It depends on what individuals did with the power and authority that they had over other people From what I read here, some of you Corps grads were on the receiving end of mental abuse that I can't even imagine...but I also observed Corps grads dishing it out and who were (apparently) willing participants in the top-down abuse that originated with Wierwille, and I was lucky enough to know Corps grads who were good people who did nothing but "bless" the lives of those they came in contact with But you didn't have to be a Corps grad to be a victimizer, to be an abuser of power I did not go through the Corps (I signed up, participated in Apprentice Corps meetings etc, didn't get my money together and never tried again) but I am not proud to say that I was party to and complicit in abuses as were other non-Corps people. A couple of people who I categorize as those whom I would most like to hit in the face with a hammer were not Corps...you just can't make a blanket statement about a whole class of people

Well Roy my friend, there is certainly some disagreement regarding your thread topic, but it's evident that the church didn't have to invent hell, since a place of eternal punishment is mentioned in the gospels, by none other than Jesus. Whether it's correctly translated or interpreted seems to be an open question. Jesus evidently thought that certain sins would be punished by a "firey" eternal punishment, while Paul had a different view, a "sleep" culminating in a resurrection of all at some future time. The question of whether the church used the threat of hell/eternal punishment/torment to control by fear is a separate question that can best be answered by looking at history, rather than the bible, but I don't think you'd have to dig too deep to see that the threat of damnation was used extensively to control by fear.

Thanks for the effort, but I do not think that you have demonstrated that aionios/eternal means different things when describing God and his works or describing Satan and his works. It appears to require an assumption about what God would or would not do to ignore the fact that the same word is used to describe eternal life and eternal punishment.

I don't believe that the meaning or translation of the αἰών (aiōn) is in dispute. Clearly it refers to a time period which is limited in time, although it appears to refer to a long period of time. I think we derive our English word "eon" from it. You have, in detailed fashion, made your case that αἰών does not necessarily refer to a time period without end. However, no one was arguing the other side of this argument. I do not have time this morning to list individual verses with uses of αἰώνιος, (aiōnios) translated "eternal", however, in all but three of its 70 occurences, it is translated either "eternal" or "everlasting". Many, if not most, of these occurences refer to eternal life. There are a few options: 1. The translators got it completely wrong and "eternal" is a wrong translation and it should have been translated "long, but ultimately limited, life" 2. The adjective αἰώνιος has nuances beyond the strict, literal, meaning of αἰών and came to mean "unending" while the root word only meant "really, really long The implications of pinning a meaning of "limited time period" onto the word translated "eternal" when referring to punishment is that eternal life isn't really eternal life

Honestly I'm uncomfortable when people call me that, like I don't think I've earned it. But I think people get ideas in their heads about what people are and stick them in pre-grooved slots...maybe that's another thread I use the title "reverend" in my advertising in order to communicate that I'm "legal", but always introduce myself to couples by my given name

From my interactions with church people over the years, I have noted some variety in how these "gift ministries" (I know the term isn't strictly biblical, but I put it in quotes to stay in line with your thread title) In general, people call their minister their pastor. It seems to have become a generic term among many Christians. Catholics call the head, or senior, priest in a parish the pastor. I'm ULC ordained and officiate at weddings - I get called "pastor" all the time (although I discourage it) Evangelist seems to be a description of somebody who is well-known as a preacher, usually to large groups. I believe Billy Graham and Oral Roberts, among others, are referred to as evangelists I have never heard anyone described as an apostle I have heard some people informally referred to as prophets if they have demonstrated firey preaching ability, kind of "preacher" on steroids Teacher is a description that I have heard only ascribed to someone who is actively teaching, say at school, or in a formal setting, never as a "minsitry" per se Of course this is only my own experience and observation, which may be limited compared to what is actually out there

In religious discussions, what we call "Doctrinal" here at the ol' GS Cafe, there is often recourse to "what the Word says" in an attempt to settle arguments. This tactic is not only found here at Greasespot, but in many discussions that involve religion. On the national stage it comes up in debates about abortion, marriage equality and immigration. What is often missed by those who make these assertions is that for every person who pegs their position on the bible, there is an equally sincere and honest person who holds a different position also based on the bible. Sometimes one or both of the debaters are unfamiliar with parts of the bible that do not support their position, but sometimes complex biblical gymnastics are used to harmonize conflicting sections of scripture. We saw a lot of biblical contortions from Wierwille and his "research team" to justify non-traditional views, but look at the doctrine of the Trinity (which is a lot more complicated than just "Jesus = God) and you'll see a very complex maze of beliefs that attempt to not only solve contradictions among various parts of the bible, but to make sense out of the implications of the various doctrinal positions that led to the Trinity. It is my observation that we cannot assume that the bible will be free of contradictions (it has been amply demonstrated that it has them) or even that it is a product of inspiration from God (however you define that) but that it's an anthology of what various people, at different times, with different agendas, and (in the case of the New Testament) different views of who Jesus was and what he accomplished. I think that one can hold this position and still consider oneself to be a Christian.

WW, I haven't dug that deep. My purpose was to show that the word translated "eternal" refers both to eternal life and eternal punishment (specified as "fire") and that one couldn't logically define aionios as both limited in time and eternal in the same verse

Actually, what I said was that I don't see how this follows logically, but perhaps that is too fine a point. I'm not breaking any rules, or even using bad manners by expressing my opinion that you are not connecting the dots logically. I have stated on several occassions that my personal beliefs are not relevant to the discussion

The differences aren't earthshaking. My arguments have been more about peripheral issues and assumptions (for instance, that contradictory verses have to "fit")

Mark, this is a doctrinal discussion forum. My personal beliefs are irrelevant to the discussion and I will not be discussing them with you. I am asking you nicely to discontinue your attempts to make this about me and my beliefs, or what you believe are my beliefs. Once again I read what you wrote, but disagree with your conclusions, which do not really address what the author of Mathew is saying that Jesus is calling eternal punishment.

Just for fun I looked up Strong's Concordance online While the noun form is sometimes translated "age", here's Strong's definition: αἰών aiṓn, ahee-ohn'; from the same as G104; properly, an age; by extension, perpetuity (also past); by implication, the world; specially (Jewish) a Messianic period (present or future):—age, course, eternal, (for) ever(-more), (n-)ever, (beginning of the , while the) world (began, without end). The adjective form is not translated in a way that limits it's scope, here's its definition: αἰώνιος aiṓnios, ahee-o'-nee-os; from G165; perpetual (also used of past time, or past and future as well):—eternal, for ever, everlasting, world (began). I'm understanding just fine by the way, however I do not agree with your conclusions

I read your article I do not think that you make your case The same word aionios modifies both life and punishment in v.46 - if the punishment referenced in v. 46 is not eternal as we understand the word, neither is the life in v.46