Mike

Thanks. T-Bone I appreciate this.

What I showed was that in modern books we have two kinds. One where the author encourages wild interpretations, and one where the author encourages tight following of the author's intent. Yes, comparing modern books to ancient can be dicey, but it is only this tight versus loose following of the author's intent that I am focused on. If there were multiple interpretations of the Bible possible, then Jesus Christ could have never known for sure what his mission was, and that it literally meant he had to sacrifice his life. If I am going to look to the Bible for guidance, it is the kind of guidance Jesus got from the scriptures that I want. All of life is at stake, and a dumb reader's interpretation of the scriptures just doesn't fit with the precision that was needed for Jesus to declare war on death. He needed very tight, precise, detailed, TECHNICAL advice on how to do it.

If they were really vain babblings everyone would ignore what I write. But because they are right on target, many feel a need to counter them. I did not HIJACK this thread, I commented on penworks post, and in the process I DISAGREED with this thread's original intent. I used very right on comments to say PFAL did not suck. You care little with other major derailments of threads, but when it comes to my right on comments disagreeing with and disrupting your applecart, then you cry "derailment." Your crying that I hijacked this thread demonstrates that you have no argument against my comments.

I think you nailed it accurately, for modern literature. But I don't think God had His writers handle things that way. There the Author's interpretation of what the Author meant is TRUE, and the reader's interpretation, where it differs, is WRONG.

Moving on, from the Bible interpreting itself, I’d like to add to your analysis of books and interpretations. I’d like to insert something right after your sentence “We're talking about reading literature here.” We could be talking about another kind of book, a technical book, like Physics or Math or Chemistry. With these books the idea is to get to what the AUTHOR’S interpretation of a passage is. If a reader fails to get the author’s interpretation of a particular chapter in a technical textbook, then that reader will surely get wrong answers, incorrect numbers, for the questions at the end each chapter. Often, a technical book will have the answers to each chapter’s questions in the back, so a reader can see if they are on track, or lost in a private interpretation, by how well they score in answering numerical questions. So there are books where it matters greatly to arrive at the author’s interpretation of a text, and to avoid private interpretations. Now comes your next sentence: “I'll say the obvious: Bibles are collections of pieces of literature...” To which I say: Not so fast! Some sections are like literature, and some sections look more like technical writings, where getting the cake recipe rightly divided, or not, will make a difference in what that cake tastes like. I reject your broad brush of categorizing the entire Bible as like man-made literature, and inviting all sorts of private interpretations. PLUS, those sections of the Bible that are more in the category of spanning the wide range of human feelings, must be handled and interpreted to fit with the more technical-text like sections of scripture.

The phrase "The Bible interprets itself" does not mean the Bible performs the action of interpretation. It means the source of information that is helpful to us doing the interpretation comes from within the Bible itself. Now, you can apply this knowledge to answer your question, yourself.

If a train leaves Chicago traveling at 23.7 miles per hour, how far will it be in 5 years?

I said that in 2018 I had SKIM READ a small portion of it, jumping around a few places. My concluding then was not conclusive.

That reason is you only know me in my current state, which is one of surety, after much effort. In the early 1970s I was genuinely scared at times about the trinity. I grew up with it as an RC. To cover my bases, after taking PFAL, I went to local Protestant churches and talked to their ministers about their point of view on the trinity. This was not an easy time for me. It was the preponderance of scriptures I collected, much like the canon issue, that fully persuaded me. My acceptance of VPW came in stages, fits and starts, even setbacks, over the decades. I settled on a pro-PFAL stance in 1998, with emphasis on the DOING of the Word that I learned in PFAL, doing it in love, face to face, with local people.

I always worked VPW's teachings one by one to get to the point of believing them. In the 1970s I was suspicious of several things he taught and had to make sure he was right. Heaven bound is one of them. I also had to get the trinity straight from the scriptures, and I did. That was before JCNG came out. There were several others. The Bible interpreting itself was a beautiful way of saying that God REALLY had His hand on what got written, and that He co-ordinated the whole Bible's production to His purposes.

I come here to discuss a limited number of topics, honestly and openly. I don't have time for everyone else's topics, but I try to include as much as I can. I do not attempt to talk about everything; it's just not humanly possible. Like everyone else, I must prioritize and accept what doesn't get done.

So sorry to refuse your supervision here. I have my own priorities to juggle... right this minute, on this thread, it is "the Bible interprets itself" is a good thing about PFAL.

On 3/27/2018 at 9:16 AM, T-Bone said: Hey Mike, i was wondering if you had a chance yet to read Penworks’ Undertow book Mike responded with: I have it and am slowly reading it. My first objection, though, is how she objected to the idea that "the Bible interprets itself." I find that objection very dim witted, even when pumped up with detail like with the posters that attacked it 15 years ago here. ... As you can see I spread the dim-wittedness out to the many posters of 15 years ago. I did not call her dim-witted. I called "that objection" dim-witted.

We may have mis-comunicated on one thing. It's the word "story." What I was objecting to is her handling (in that one post of hers) of the one tiny issue of "the Bible interpreting itself" or not. */*/*/* There was no objecting to the "story" in her book in my post. I haven't even read 5% of it yet, not even to the point where she took the class, and am in no big hurry to finish. For unrelated reasons, I've been recently looking at the John Scheonheit 1986 paper on adultery. It occurred to me there could be overlap between the two, so I already had "Undertow" and started reading it slowly. I have been thinking of writing a TWI history, where the totally white-washing style of official TWI publications can be avoided. Also to be avoided are the styles prevalent here, which I.M.H.O. are too extreme in the opposite direction. The Scheonheit paper played a prominent role in the ministry meltdown of 1986, so it must be included in an honest history of TWI.

From another thread: Excuse me, but this thread was set up for me to lay out my canon theory. Please document how I have diverted this thread from my laying out my canon theory.

I took up the issue, from penworks' post, and asserted that the Bible interpreting itself is a good and useful teaching in the PFAL class. How is that diversionary? ...other than disagreeing with the initial post of this thread.... Does all disagreement strike you as diversionary? Are we supposed to me in march-step here like the Nazi Corps?

Well, it is MY story that PFAL did not suck. How are you going to respect MY story?

I pasted in below my entire response you referred to. It looks like I was in a tough mood then. Maybe from the heat of battle. I said roughly the same thing an hour or so ago. On 3/27/2018 at 9:16 AM, T-Bone said: Hey Mike, i was wondering if you had a chance yet to read Penworks’ Undertow book Mike responded with: I have it and am slowly reading it. My first objection, though, is how she objected to the idea that "the Bible interprets itself." I find that objection very dim witted, even when pumped up with detail like with the posters that attacked it 15 years ago here. It slowed down my reading, but I still intend to finish it. That interpretation issue lowered my expectations and the book's priority in my schedule. In a nutshell: Imagine how quirky it is for God to issue His Word to communicate to us, but then He FAILS to put cues, keys, and signposts in there to guide sincere seekers. That sounds like a bad way to get a message out. It's like Him saying "I want you to know something but I will not help you understand it." The phrase "The Bible interprets itself" is an extreme abbreviation of a complex idea. She did not do that justice IMO. The criticism this idea got here 15 years ago I thought was similarly lacking. My impression was that she was leading uninformed readers into thinking God is supposed to be mysterious, an old Catholic idea. Maybe her book will get better later. If you can recommend a spot to skip ahead to I would appreciate seeing what you feel is an section important to me.

With those different writers, that later writer would almost always be familiar with the earlier writer. The Author knew what He was dealing with and coordinated the individual efforts so that the Bible would be a complete whole, with only one Author.

Do you think God will have any trouble sorting out who gets what at that time? I don't. I have enough trouble sorting it all out for myself right now. I don't bother to guess about other people's set of rewards or what rewards they will be denied. I just know that God sees absolutely all and that we see relatively nothing.

Did you get the verse wrong? Usually people point to verse 17 1 Cor 3:8-17 8 Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. 9 For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building. 10 According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. 11 For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; 13 every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. 14 If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. 15 If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. 16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 17 If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

Hi Charlene, I don’t think we ever met here at GreaseSpot, but I am sure we did meet once or twice briefly at Rye NY, or at HQ a few years later; maybe both. You probably did not know me much in either setting, because there were hundreds of others at those scenes to try and get to know. At Rye I was in the slow-lane socially, and regrettably the stereotypical science nerd, so I surely blended into the woodwork for you. At HQ we never interacted because I was a non-Corps second class citizen there, and I lived in town, not on the farm. But we both saw a lot of the same things; albeit from vastly differing vantage points as time progressed. My take on hearing that the Bible interprets itself is entirely different from yours, or at least what I picked up from you in this one post of yours. I remember getting the Kindle version of your book and in skimming it, I found a place there where you mention the same thing (objecting to the Bible interprets itself), and it kinda shut down my reading for a long time. I just picked it up again today, and am not skim reading, just going slow. There was another reason I put your book down a couple of years ago. It made me verklempt for the good old days, where we got to see things work on the field, relatively unsupervised. */*/*/* But this recent post by you seems to say that your objection to “the Bible interprets itself” is much deeper than I had previously thought. This tells me that maybe you just didn’t quite understand what was meant by that part of PFAL. I have spent 20 years here at GreaseSpot constantly pointing out that some of the things we were taught in the class were forgotten, and/or that some of the things we were taught in the class sailed right over our heads, and we never got them. The way I do this here at GreaseSpot is by pasting in long transcripts from the film class, or pages from the collaterals. But when I looked up “the Bible interprets itself” in my PFAL book I saw that it covered pages 145 thru 225. That’s a lot of homework for me to think of bringing to this discussion. So let’s try a super summary. My take on the good gist of “the Bible interprets itself” is this: It shows in a practical way how there is only one Author of the Bible, even though the writers are widely scattered in time, geography, and culture. */*/*/*/* What we were taught in the “the Bible interprets itself” teaching is a CLAIM that the Bible has one Author, and that He is interested in transmitting His message to us so that we can have something BETTER than anything we could come up with. The separateness of God’s writers does not thwart the Author’s ability to make clear what He wants to be clear to us. We were promised in PFAL that God put keys and sign posts in His Word so that we can discover HIS interpretation of His words to us. My impression, so far, is that it is your position that VPW was claiming that the Bible pretty much automatically interprets itself in a simple and complete way. It’s just unzips itself in a simple mechanical way, and there is hardly any work to be done to ferret out the correct interpretations? There are lots of places where is seems pretty difficult to find how the Bible interprets itself. But then there are the places where this method works pretty well. It would take me some time to verify this, but I don’t think the PFAL book ever says all of the Bible interprets itself. But I could use the review. The film class transcript on this is probably longer, but worth looking at. Sometimes VPW would say something in a contorted way in the film class, and later it got straightened out in the book. But unfortunately, most grads seemed to memorize the film class soundtrack more than the book. That happened a lot. But anyway, I just thought I’d run this by you in case I got your position wrong. My most important thought here, at the moment, is that it is very good to know the Bible is a cohesive whole, and that it CAN interpret itself, due to it having only one Author, expressing Himself in the vocabularies and writing styles of His many helpers, who were widely scattered in time, geography, and culture. */*/*/* As time permits, I’d like to discuss your analysis of literature and interpretation. I’ve done some looking into popular song lyrics this way. It is an interesting topic, how some authors purposely make their works indecipherable, and thus generating hundreds of interpretations. SNL comedy sketches have gotten laughs out this phenomenon of some song writers having deliberate disdain at their fan’s idiotic interpretations, and that they feed these fans gibberish for entertainment.

Most of God's justice seems to be in the future. First Corinthians 3 talks about Christians who have not built within themselves a home for God to hang out in will suffer loss when Christ returns. I am confident that the Just God will perfectly "even the score" for us all. We will all get what we earned in rewards, and we will suffer loss of rewards for where and when we blew it. To my best understanding, the rewards have to do with the ability to function. They have to do with being allowed to do work for God in the future. Makes sense, that those who love to work for and with God now will be allowed to do it more in the future.

So, quote me on it. Maybe you are mistaken, as they may be.

No, there were at least 4 posts I made lately about the Top-Down approach having it's strengths and some weakness also. Maybe more than 4. My materials in 1972 for researching the Top-Down approach were scarce, with no Internet. Libraries had a lot of the latest hip theology laced into it, which was Thomas Altizer's famous "God is Dead" theology. When I read about the Top-Down approach back then it was appalling to me how the writers were trying to make the Bible look bad and uninspired by one Author. So I ignored that approach, and tried the Bottom-Up approach. I was surprised at how many verses I could find. I worked them for ten years, up to 1982, and I closed my paper folder on that research. Then came this thread, and I re-opened my old paper folder and my memories.