Ask a Theologian III

[classical_hero]

John 3:16 doesn't deal in absolutes (or in Sith for that matter). It says "whosoever believeth in him, shall not perish but shall have everlasting life". It does not say anything about not being saved.

It is just one verse is a discourse, so that one verse does not need to, but if you take itt as a whole, then there are absolutes later on as in John 3:18-20, considering that the whole discourse if from verse 10 to 21. IN the verse he does talk about condemnation for those who do not believe.

 

[Arakhor]

Yes, they will be condemned to die and not enjoy everlasting life. Where does it mention fire and damnation?

Interestingly, it also says that God sent Jesus into the world to save people, not to condemn them. Why do so many people forget this salient point?

 

[_random_]

In a sermon today, my dad referred to Jonathan Edwards (author of this gem for those unfamiliar) as the greatest theologian in American history. Just how inaccurate would you say this assessment is?

 

[GhostWriter16]

Yes, they will be condemned to die and not enjoy everlasting life. Where does it mention fire and damnation?

Interestingly, it also says that God sent Jesus into the world to save people, not to condemn them. Why do so many people forget this salient point?

That one passage I agree, all it says is they will perish, but it doesn't specify what it means. However, Jesus mentions Hell in other places.

 

[Plotinus]

In a sermon today, my dad referred to Jonathan Edwards (author of this gem for those unfamiliar) as the greatest theologian in American history. Just how inaccurate would you say this assessment is?

I wouldn't say it's inaccurate at all. Edwards was a breathtakingly brilliant theologian. Almost everything I have ever read by him was startlingly original and insightful. He is especially interesting in that he was a very orthodox Calvinist, and yet he managed to find original things to say within that quite rigid framework. It's unfortunate that his best-known piece is the rather grim Sinners in the hands of an angry God sermon to which you link, given that one of the major themes of his theology is the joyfulness of the natural world, which he think reflects the divine joy; he was something of a nature mystic. The popular image of him as little more than a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher is quite distorted. Another piece by him about spiders - his "Spider letter" in which he describes spiders using their silk to float in the air - is much more typical, with his assumption that spiders do this for fun. He was also a good philosopher and apparently developed a version of Berkeleyan idealism quite independently of Berkeley; he also wrote one of the most carefully argued philosophical defences of soft determinism of the early modern period.

I certainly don't know any other American-born theologians who could really compare to Edwards (given that Tillich, probably the most important theologian to work in the US, was German).

 

[Incodcito]

Do angels have free will? What do the various theologians think on this?

Also, what is the length of a faery's wings?

---

Seriously, my question is on the Catholic claim of the pope being a successor to Peter. Why is this, and what do they use to back up this claim?

 

[burleyman]

Jonathan Edwards also owned at least one slave - I wonder whether he thought she had a soul? And before anyone says 'don't make anachronistic judgments' it is not the case that most people in mid-18th Century New England had slaves.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Jonathan Edwards also owned at least one slave - I wonder whether he thought she had a soul?

Well, there were many people who acknowledged equality of everyone before God, but were okay with the most blatant non-equality here on our sinful Earth.

 

[Plotinus]

Jonathan Edwards also owned at least one slave - I wonder whether he thought she had a soul? And before anyone says 'don't make anachronistic judgments' it is not the case that most people in mid-18th Century New England had slaves.

While most New Englanders may not have owned slaves, most people of Edwards' class did. But what's relevant is not whether most people owned slaves but whether most people thought slave-owning was wrong. After all, most of us don't own Ferraris, but it doesn't follow from that that most of us think it is wrong to do so. There's an interesting article on Edwards and slavery here which indicates that Edwards adopted what was, for the time, a moderate position on slavery, seeing the institution as acceptable but holding that there are strict moral rules governing the treatment of slaves. In answer to your question, we know nothing whatsoever of what happened to his slave or how he regarded her, but there's no reason to doubt that he supposed she had a soul, especially as Massachusetts law required that slaves be given religious instruction. Edwards described the conversion of black people in his accounts of the Great Awakening and baptised some himself, giving them full and equal membership of the church, so he certainly didn't think they lacked souls or couldn't be saved.

The only writing Edwards made on the subject was a series of notes on slavery, intended to defend another minister who was attacked for his lavish lifestyle (including ownership of slaves). Edwards basically argued that there is nothing wrong with slave-owning per se, but he attacked the Atlantic slave trade and opposed the capture of new slaves from Africa - the idea being that slaves should all be local, either criminals or born into slavery, not captured free people.

 

[_random_]

I wouldn't say it's inaccurate at all. Edwards was a breathtakingly brilliant theologian. Almost everything I have ever read by him was startlingly original and insightful. He is especially interesting in that he was a very orthodox Calvinist, and yet he managed to find original things to say within that quite rigid framework. It's unfortunate that his best-known piece is the rather grim Sinners in the hands of an angry God sermon to which you link, given that one of the major themes of his theology is the joyfulness of the natural world, which he think reflects the divine joy; he was something of a nature mystic. The popular image of him as little more than a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher is quite distorted. Another piece by him about spiders - his "Spider letter" in which he describes spiders using their silk to float in the air - is much more typical, with his assumption that spiders do this for fun. He was also a good philosopher and apparently developed a version of Berkeleyan idealism quite independently of Berkeley; he also wrote one of the most carefully argued philosophical defences of soft determinism of the early modern period.

I certainly don't know any other American-born theologians who could really compare to Edwards (given that Tillich, probably the most important theologian to work in the US, was German).

Interesting. What do you think caused the shift in his reputation? Also, on the subject of American-born theologians, what are your thoughts on Seraphim Rose?

 

[Ajidica]

What do you think caused the shift in his reputation?

AP US History books for portraying him as exclusively a fire and brimstone preacher and representative of the Great Awakening. (Or was it the second?)

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

The Second Great Awakening?

That came later.

 

[Berzerker]

I have 2 questions:

1 what version of the Bible best reflects the most "original" language for the Torah, ie best translation? I find some translations seem to water down the terminology in favor of more generalized meanings. Like Heaven became the sky rather than a place in the sky.

I read that a bible scholar in the 1920s figured out some words came from Shumer and got confused; for example, we're told Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt, but the Sumerian word for salt also meant vapor. Another, Eve came from Adam's "rib", but the word for rib also meant life force, or that which animates. So Eve was from a rib and she's the mother of all the living.

2 In Genesis we're told man would exist for 120 years before the Flood, and the Nefilim were on the Earth. Does that 120 represent our time or God's?

According to Sumerian King's lists, 10 rulers reigned before the Flood and their combined years was ~432,000 years - 120 "Sars". The Flood occurred during the reign of the 10th ruler, Zuisudra or Utnapishtim, the Mesopotamian "Noah". And Noah was the 10th pre-flood patriarch. Whats the deal with all that? Consider the prevalence 432,000 in Hindu myth, we even find it in the Norse myth of Valhalla - thru 540 doors will 800 warriors file as they leave to do battle in the end time, thats 432,000. The number even shows up in the design of Angkor Wat.

Hamlet's Mill is a great book

 

[GamezRule]

I have 2 questions:

1 what version of the Bible best reflects the most "original" language for the Torah, ie best translation? I find some translations seem to water down the terminology in favor of more generalized meanings. Like Heaven became the sky rather than a place in the sky.

I read that a bible scholar in the 1920s figured out some words came from Shumer and got confused; for example, we're told Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt, but the Sumerian word for salt also meant vapor. Another, Eve came from Adam's "rib", but the word for rib also meant life force, or that which animates. So Eve was from a rib and she's the mother of all the living.

2 In Genesis we're told man would exist for 120 years before the Flood, and the Nefilim were on the Earth. Does that 120 represent our time or God's?

According to Sumerian King's lists, 10 rulers reigned before the Flood and their combined years was ~432,000 years - 120 "Sars". The Flood occurred during the reign of the 10th ruler, Zuisudra or Utnapishtim, the Mesopotamian "Noah". And Noah was the 10th pre-flood patriarch. Whats the deal with all that? Consider the prevalence 432,000 in Hindu myth, we even find it in the Norse myth of Valhalla - thru 540 doors will 800 warriors file as they leave to do battle in the end time, thats 432,000. The number even shows up in the design of Angkor Wat.

Hamlet's Mill is a great book

Great post, and I suspect those 10 kings were probably just long lasting dynasties.

 

[Dachs]

Not to intrude on Plotinus' territory or anything (even though that's kind of what I'm doing), but king-lists are notoriously flawed and usually very poor indicators of the political history of any given state, from Rome to Japan to, yeah, Sumer.

 

[Berzerker]

Great post, and I suspect those 10 kings were probably just long lasting dynasties.

incredibly long, according to the Sumerians these rulers were not exactly mortal humans, they lived far longer than even the biblical patriarchs. Dachs right about the problems with king's lists, but that could be our ignorance. If God's "120 years" in Genesis is related to the Sumerian sar of 3,600, then 432,000 years becomes the timeframe during which we were created etc - thats better than 4004 BC at 9 am on Monday (or whatever).

Not to intrude on Plotinus' territory or anything (even though that's kind of what I'm doing), but king-lists are notoriously flawed and usually very poor indicators of the political history of any given state, from Rome to Japan to, yeah, Sumer.

But if the various versions we have show some relevance to the # 120 in Genesis, they served one purpose. I think at least two lists show 10 kings before the Flood, Genesis says the Flood occurred during the reign of the 10th patriarch. And I just read somewhere of a myth (Egyptian or Sumerian) placing the Flood in the age of the lion ~13,000 years ago. I heard a Tlingit legend placing the Flood 14,000 years ago, so it sounds like these Flood myths came from catastrophic changes in the world when the ice age "ended" and sea levels rose, often in very sudden jumps. I'd imagine the Romans got plenty of hand me downs but I didn't know the Japanese have a king's list. Mythical, historical, or both?

 

[GamezRule]

incredibly long, according to the Sumerians these rulers were not exactly mortal humans, they lived far longer than even the biblical patriarchs. Dachs right about the problems with king's lists, but that could be our ignorance. If God's "120 years" in Genesis is related to the Sumerian sar of 3,600, then 432,000 years becomes the timeframe during which we were created etc - thats better than 4004 BC at 9 am on Monday (or whatever).

Another eerie connection I have noticed which lines creation up with evolution. Could the 7 days not be different time periods? Basically what I am saying is that the order things were created in Genesis is close to what evolution predicts.

 

[Ajidica]

Another eerie connection I have noticed which lines creation up with evolution. Could the 7 days not be different time periods? Basically what I am saying is that the order things were created in Genesis is close to what evolution predicts.

That was the same argument put forth by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes Monkey Trial. Needless to say, Bryans didn't go for it.
That argument only works so long as your opponent doesn't interpret 'days' as literal days.

Furthermore, it doesn't really mesh well with evolution as it gets the order of evolution wrong (twice).

 

[GamezRule]

I don't really believe in creation, I was just putting up a former viewpoint of mine. I have move far to the left in the last year, you should read some of my posts in the "ObamaCare Passes" thread.

 

[Berzerker]

Another eerie connection I have noticed which lines creation up with evolution. Could the 7 days not be different time periods? Basically what I am saying is that the order things were created in Genesis is close to what evolution predicts.

One theory says the days are planets, that the proto-Earth (Gen 1:2) was the 6th planet and became the 7th because of creation. But thats a subject for the evidence of creationism thread and I'm tired of trying to debate the trolls and flamers there.

That was the same argument put forth by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes Monkey Trial. Needless to say, Bryans didn't go for it.
That argument only works so long as your opponent doesn't interpret 'days' as literal days.

Furthermore, it doesn't really mesh well with evolution as it gets the order of evolution wrong (twice).

They weren't that far off, and the fact they even came close is impressive - a sequence does support the concept of evolution. Assuming of course the original terminology didn't get screwed up over time because later peoples couldn't understand the text with complete accuracy. They gave earth's history in a few lines and it wasn't a bad job by no means.