@vachief an idolatrous object as you do. There are very real errors in Scripture, and they are there for all to see. If you are so idolatrous that you wish to place the observations of various men on the level with the Divine, then we leave you to your delusions and fantasies.
@vachief Orthodoxy IS Christianity. The pitiful spectacle of the more than 1000 split, divided and mutually contradictory Protestant sects could hardly be classed as anything but a continuously splitting, dividing and philosophically warring group of Gnostic sects. People who have turned thier multitude of contradictory interpretations of Scripture into ideologies are hardly Christians, but that is Protestantism as it really is. Of course we hold the Scripture, but we do not turn the book into
@vachief Orthodox Christans live in a world of Truth --- the truth of Christ Jesus, and we do not need your Gnostic misunderstandings of Scripture, nor you weak props for your own uncertain faith, in order to maintain our Faith. Orthodoxy is comfortable with truth and reality because Orthodoxy is a True and living faith, unlike the neo-Gnosticism of Protestantism
@vachief You can hold your fantasies if you like, but it is clear to anyone with a braincell working that not everything in the Old Testament is true. It is certain that Niniveh never accepted the God of Israel and certainly did not repent "in sackcloth and ashes." The history of Nineveh is very well known, and that just never happened. And, the earth is about 4.5 Billion years old. If you need to have falsehoods in order to prop up what passes for faith with you, then keep you delusions, but
@vachief Either God wrote every word of Scriptrue, OR He created the universe, but not both. You see, God knows that the sun does not rise, it does not set, and you would not make a day longer by causing the sun to stand still, because the sun is not moving. You force people into atheism with your fantasy, and present God as being ignorant with your Bibliolatry. You have turned the Bible into a form of sheer idolatry, an it is the book you worship and not the living God.
@vachief the real issue is the creation of man, his relations with God and his present condition and need for a Saviour? The truth is that you do not have faith and do not sincerely believe, because if you had real faith, truth would not cause you to doubt your faith as you so obviously do. Like it or not, the earth is +-4billion years old, and dinosaurs were long extinct before humand were created. If you cannot live with truth, you will never come to have a genuine faith in God and in Christ.
@vachiefThe creation narriative is about the meaning and condition of man and his relation with God, not about the creation of the universe. What good would it have been for the priestly author of the book to recite the Periodic Table of the Elements? Or to discuss deuterium or cosmic microwave anistotropy? All that is part and parcel of the coming into being of the Universe, but why would the author of the Scripture want to tell anyone, let alone a primative desert tribe, about all that, when
@vachief If you have to believe a lie in order to call yourself a Christian, then you are either psychotic or a living liar. I suspect a psychosis is the most feasible explanation for those of you who think that believing a lie is the only way to be a Christian.
Creation science is NOT a fraud. The bishop is not a scientist and is obviously not abreast in this field of study. Read "INTELLIGENT DESIGN," by Dembski. And watch all the Kent Hovind Debates.
"the creation narrative is by no means a scientific statement" clearly Genesis is talking about creation events in a particular order, everyone who reads this can see this, secuarlist also know Gensis is making claims that can be scientifically tested. We cannot tell the secularist nothing in bible can be scientifically tested, but you should bet your soul on the salvation parts that cannot be tested,this is dangerous and blocks many from converting
We will not be using "whig" science in these discussions. Whenever one attempts to find "science" in the Scripture, your evidence might be abolished when science changes. After all, the laws of thermodynamics which some think they find in scripture are only operative in a closed system. We do acknowledge roughly 6 geological epochs before the holocene, etc. But the sun does not "also ariseth," and nor does it "knoweth its going down," because it neither rises nor goes down. We look for meaning.
wedding a scientific interpretation, to a biblical interpretation of a particular age is a bad idea I agree, thats why wedding Genesis to a non-scientific , non-historical (I.E. Allegorical interpreatation)which allows enemies of God to play church and force fit the most atheistic version of "science" they can find at the time, is very dangerous, If Genesis is making testable statments we should let it speak for itself and not try and gag it even for the sake of atheists who like to play church
The Genesis Narrative is spoken in a poem in which the week is used to represent the time frame in which the universe was formed, it's not about the HOW my friend, there are many passages in the Scriptures that describe God creating the universe in other ways, they are all poetic and metaphorical in the way of a story (similar to but not 'like' the pagan myths).
The point of this story is that God created Everything, whether it be the universe or not, out of Nothing, through His Wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His Spirit, the Paraclete, and that humans were created in the Reason of God, so that they too are reasonable creatures (out of all the animal kingdom) with intellectual minds of free will and conscience. This is at heart what the story of Genesis is about.
Please do not ever speak on behalf of the Scriptures as a scientific textbook. They are TRUE Meaningful (but don't forget to look at the purpose of the writing before you conclude that it is taken 100% literally or not, I would have already castrated myself under the commands of the Lord Jesus if I took everything in the Bible 100% literally without having the purpose behind it in mind).
No one is saying Genesis is a geological textbook, that is a misrepresentation of us who simply want the bible to speak for itself , the bible contains metaphor, analogies, parables and some times literal history. calling a christian a "100% literalist" just because they can see Genesis contains the correct scientific order and events of that geology reveals, just so mare can insist Gen. is allegory so they can wedd Genesis to currect atheistic biology is the ridiculous position not us.
We are not, it has been clear since the Apostolic Age (when science was not advanced at all), that the Genesis passage did not literally describe HOW the world was created, but that in story form (based on the week) it describes that the Lord created the universe out of nothing by His Image (Jesus) and in His Spirit. St. Augustine knows this, just as well as St. Jerome, and as Master Origen and many others, they understood what was meant by the passage.
If you handed Genesis to a million people secular to Christian, english only to Hebrew scholars etc..young to Old , 99% of them will say Genesis may have differing degrees of literary devices etc. but it is Clearly speaking about testable creation events in a testable order only the person who wishes to wedd Genesis to the most atheistic science of the age will put the head in the sand and deny this.
I am sorry I am not so sure I am clear about what you are trying to say? Are you saying atheists and secularists will assume immediately that it is scientific? What has got to do with it being actually a set of scientific statements?
And if you handed it to a million people not raised and educated in a culture based on a scientific/materialistic worldview it wouldn't occur to them that a Story should be scientifically testable. Consider this excellent insight from David E. Fitch in The Great Giveaway:
And if you handed it to a million people not raised and educated in a culture based on a scientific/materialistic worldview it wouldn't occur to them that a Story should be scientifically testable. Consider this excellent insight from David E. Fitch in The Great Giveaway:
A bigger postmodern problem...is the way evidentiary apologetics undermines Christian authority in a person's conversion. In the earliest stages of a person's evangelism, evidentiary apologetics endorses the authority of science. The logic goes like this: if I can prove it scientifically, then Scripture must be true. In the earliest moments of one's conversion, science and historiography are set up as final arbiters of truth, the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, or the church.
Postmodern cultural psychology therefore exposes how the initiation process shapes authority and ways of seeing in the initiate for a lifetime. Evidentiary apologetics shapes the new believer to forever look over one's shoulder at science as the authenticating truth test rather than Holy Scripture and the Holy Spirit working in his people.
Consequently, evidentiary apologetics falls short and fails in postmodernity because it tacitly trains the new initiate to depend upon science as a higher source of truth than the Scriptures given in Jesus Christ. It teaches the new believer to trust science more than the Scriptures of the church, both of which are considered historical traditions in the light of postmodernity.
Your Eminence, do you recommend any readings that we can read about this in a much more detailed manner? I love the symbolisms you've given for the two trees and the thief on the Cross. I would love to learn more in depth about the symbolism of Genesis and the relationship of that symbolism and allegory with Christ and revelation and how these revelations speak to us.
@vachief an idolatrous object as you do. There are very real errors in Scripture, and they are there for all to see. If you are so idolatrous that you wish to place the observations of various men on the level with the Divine, then we leave you to your delusions and fantasies.
allsaintsmonastery 1 year ago
@vachief Orthodoxy IS Christianity. The pitiful spectacle of the more than 1000 split, divided and mutually contradictory Protestant sects could hardly be classed as anything but a continuously splitting, dividing and philosophically warring group of Gnostic sects. People who have turned thier multitude of contradictory interpretations of Scripture into ideologies are hardly Christians, but that is Protestantism as it really is. Of course we hold the Scripture, but we do not turn the book into
allsaintsmonastery 1 year ago
@vachief Orthodox Christans live in a world of Truth --- the truth of Christ Jesus, and we do not need your Gnostic misunderstandings of Scripture, nor you weak props for your own uncertain faith, in order to maintain our Faith. Orthodoxy is comfortable with truth and reality because Orthodoxy is a True and living faith, unlike the neo-Gnosticism of Protestantism
allsaintsmonastery 1 year ago
@vachief You can hold your fantasies if you like, but it is clear to anyone with a braincell working that not everything in the Old Testament is true. It is certain that Niniveh never accepted the God of Israel and certainly did not repent "in sackcloth and ashes." The history of Nineveh is very well known, and that just never happened. And, the earth is about 4.5 Billion years old. If you need to have falsehoods in order to prop up what passes for faith with you, then keep you delusions, but
allsaintsmonastery 1 year ago
@vachief Either God wrote every word of Scriptrue, OR He created the universe, but not both. You see, God knows that the sun does not rise, it does not set, and you would not make a day longer by causing the sun to stand still, because the sun is not moving. You force people into atheism with your fantasy, and present God as being ignorant with your Bibliolatry. You have turned the Bible into a form of sheer idolatry, an it is the book you worship and not the living God.
allsaintsmonastery 1 year ago
@vachief the real issue is the creation of man, his relations with God and his present condition and need for a Saviour? The truth is that you do not have faith and do not sincerely believe, because if you had real faith, truth would not cause you to doubt your faith as you so obviously do. Like it or not, the earth is +-4billion years old, and dinosaurs were long extinct before humand were created. If you cannot live with truth, you will never come to have a genuine faith in God and in Christ.
allsaintsmonastery 1 year ago
@vachiefThe creation narriative is about the meaning and condition of man and his relation with God, not about the creation of the universe. What good would it have been for the priestly author of the book to recite the Periodic Table of the Elements? Or to discuss deuterium or cosmic microwave anistotropy? All that is part and parcel of the coming into being of the Universe, but why would the author of the Scripture want to tell anyone, let alone a primative desert tribe, about all that, when
allsaintsmonastery 1 year ago
@vachief If you have to believe a lie in order to call yourself a Christian, then you are either psychotic or a living liar. I suspect a psychosis is the most feasible explanation for those of you who think that believing a lie is the only way to be a Christian.
allsaintsmonastery 1 year ago
Bless Master,
Your words are very wise and enlightening.
wattersm 2 years ago
Very interesting, thanks. Kind of matches up my own View of it.
But there is probably much more hidden inside the symbology of this Book.
The forbidden Tree of Knowledge I believe also represents the origins of the ancient Babylonian Mystery Religion and the Kaballa.
allymetoo 3 years ago
This comment has received too many negative votes show
I have two distinct questions:
1)Where can I get an outfit like that? I'd like to wear it to school in support of world religions.
2)I can't see because your feet are out of view, but do you rock that look with Nikes or Reboks?
UncleRico13 3 years ago
actually, I belive the bishop IS a scientist (a physicist) by training.
anyuta64 3 years ago 5
Creation science is NOT a fraud. The bishop is not a scientist and is obviously not abreast in this field of study. Read "INTELLIGENT DESIGN," by Dembski. And watch all the Kent Hovind Debates.
AlbertLeviValdez 3 years ago
I agree with everything you said except the
"the creation narrative is by no means a scientific statement" clearly Genesis is talking about creation events in a particular order, everyone who reads this can see this, secuarlist also know Gensis is making claims that can be scientifically tested. We cannot tell the secularist nothing in bible can be scientifically tested, but you should bet your soul on the salvation parts that cannot be tested,this is dangerous and blocks many from converting
grandconjunct 3 years ago 3
We will not be using "whig" science in these discussions. Whenever one attempts to find "science" in the Scripture, your evidence might be abolished when science changes. After all, the laws of thermodynamics which some think they find in scripture are only operative in a closed system. We do acknowledge roughly 6 geological epochs before the holocene, etc. But the sun does not "also ariseth," and nor does it "knoweth its going down," because it neither rises nor goes down. We look for meaning.
allsaintsmonastery 3 years ago
wedding a scientific interpretation, to a biblical interpretation of a particular age is a bad idea I agree, thats why wedding Genesis to a non-scientific , non-historical (I.E. Allegorical interpreatation)which allows enemies of God to play church and force fit the most atheistic version of "science" they can find at the time, is very dangerous, If Genesis is making testable statments we should let it speak for itself and not try and gag it even for the sake of atheists who like to play church
grandconjunct 3 years ago 3
The Genesis Narrative is spoken in a poem in which the week is used to represent the time frame in which the universe was formed, it's not about the HOW my friend, there are many passages in the Scriptures that describe God creating the universe in other ways, they are all poetic and metaphorical in the way of a story (similar to but not 'like' the pagan myths).
marephrem 3 years ago
The point of this story is that God created Everything, whether it be the universe or not, out of Nothing, through His Wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His Spirit, the Paraclete, and that humans were created in the Reason of God, so that they too are reasonable creatures (out of all the animal kingdom) with intellectual minds of free will and conscience. This is at heart what the story of Genesis is about.
marephrem 3 years ago
Please do not ever speak on behalf of the Scriptures as a scientific textbook. They are TRUE Meaningful (but don't forget to look at the purpose of the writing before you conclude that it is taken 100% literally or not, I would have already castrated myself under the commands of the Lord Jesus if I took everything in the Bible 100% literally without having the purpose behind it in mind).
marephrem 3 years ago
No one is saying Genesis is a geological textbook, that is a misrepresentation of us who simply want the bible to speak for itself , the bible contains metaphor, analogies, parables and some times literal history. calling a christian a "100% literalist" just because they can see Genesis contains the correct scientific order and events of that geology reveals, just so mare can insist Gen. is allegory so they can wedd Genesis to currect atheistic biology is the ridiculous position not us.
grandconjunct 3 years ago 4
We are not, it has been clear since the Apostolic Age (when science was not advanced at all), that the Genesis passage did not literally describe HOW the world was created, but that in story form (based on the week) it describes that the Lord created the universe out of nothing by His Image (Jesus) and in His Spirit. St. Augustine knows this, just as well as St. Jerome, and as Master Origen and many others, they understood what was meant by the passage.
marephrem 3 years ago
If you handed Genesis to a million people secular to Christian, english only to Hebrew scholars etc..young to Old , 99% of them will say Genesis may have differing degrees of literary devices etc. but it is Clearly speaking about testable creation events in a testable order only the person who wishes to wedd Genesis to the most atheistic science of the age will put the head in the sand and deny this.
grandconjunct 3 years ago 2
I am sorry I am not so sure I am clear about what you are trying to say? Are you saying atheists and secularists will assume immediately that it is scientific? What has got to do with it being actually a set of scientific statements?
marephrem 3 years ago
And if you handed it to a million people not raised and educated in a culture based on a scientific/materialistic worldview it wouldn't occur to them that a Story should be scientifically testable. Consider this excellent insight from David E. Fitch in The Great Giveaway:
rpankey 3 years ago
And if you handed it to a million people not raised and educated in a culture based on a scientific/materialistic worldview it wouldn't occur to them that a Story should be scientifically testable. Consider this excellent insight from David E. Fitch in The Great Giveaway:
rpankey 3 years ago
Oops. I was responding to grandconjunct's comment below beginning, "If you handed Genesis...."
rpankey 3 years ago
Fitch quote Part 1:
A bigger postmodern problem...is the way evidentiary apologetics undermines Christian authority in a person's conversion. In the earliest stages of a person's evangelism, evidentiary apologetics endorses the authority of science. The logic goes like this: if I can prove it scientifically, then Scripture must be true. In the earliest moments of one's conversion, science and historiography are set up as final arbiters of truth, the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, or the church.
rpankey 3 years ago
Fitch quote Part 2:
Postmodern cultural psychology therefore exposes how the initiation process shapes authority and ways of seeing in the initiate for a lifetime. Evidentiary apologetics shapes the new believer to forever look over one's shoulder at science as the authenticating truth test rather than Holy Scripture and the Holy Spirit working in his people.
rpankey 3 years ago
Fitch quote Part 3:
Consequently, evidentiary apologetics falls short and fails in postmodernity because it tacitly trains the new initiate to depend upon science as a higher source of truth than the Scriptures given in Jesus Christ. It teaches the new believer to trust science more than the Scriptures of the church, both of which are considered historical traditions in the light of postmodernity.
rpankey 3 years ago
Your Eminence, do you recommend any readings that we can read about this in a much more detailed manner? I love the symbolisms you've given for the two trees and the thief on the Cross. I would love to learn more in depth about the symbolism of Genesis and the relationship of that symbolism and allegory with Christ and revelation and how these revelations speak to us.
Remember me in your prayers.
minasoliman 3 years ago