What a crock of crap that Phil is shoveling.

The Jesus is not equal to the Father arguments, in all the various forms, are what the Arian heretics taught. We see some of their same arguments being used today, which I find troubling.

The Bible actually does say wives are to obey their husbands, the problem is this is in a proclamation from a pagan king in Esther 1, hardly an example for a believer to follow. Est 1:22 He sent letters to all the royal provinces, to every province in its own script and to every people in its own language, that every man be master in his own household and speak according to the language of his people.

So, to be picky, there is no “God-endorsed” statement that a wife is to obey her husband.

Timothy was circumcised as an adult by Paul, see Acts 16. Titus is the one who was not circumcised and used as an example of inclusion of gentiles.

And yet many believers believe differently, so I encourage believers to study all sides of this.

TS,
On Genesis, I see the toledots (generations of) defining the internal structure. This starts with Gen 2:4, so the question is what is before that? It is some kind of intro section.

One needs to realize that Hebrew poetry does not necessarilry conform to our ideas of poetry. Hebrew poetry is OFTEN characterized by repetition and parallelism, either of words themselves or of rephrased ideas. This is one reason I see Gen 1 as poetic narrative.

own question is to show me what kinds of things you are looking for. And also to show what your idea of the answer or type of answer you expect. It also shows that you are not asking a question that you do not know how to answer, e.g. are not playing epistomological games.

I agree genre is crucial to determine meaning. I see Genesis being covenant prologue establishing the relationship of the parties of the covenant.

I never used the word “primitive” but I did say that the Bible often words things by appearances and not actual reality, I see this as a good thing as it can be understood by anyone in any era. The church got this exactly backwards, it was OK (so said the church) for Galileo and co. to say things “appeared” to do something, but not OK for them to say it “actually” did something, like the earth move. That is, the church said it was ok to “simplify the math explanation” by “pretending” the earth moved, but everyone knew the Bible said the earth cannot be moved so it did not.

I do not see Gen 1 as prose, I see it as a Creation hymn, as it is highly structured.

I see you fail to understand me.

One reason to answer your

It is easier to ask questions than to answer them, it would help if you would answer your own when you asked them. so I can see what kind of answer you seek.

I see some comps putting their interp. into the core, I see this as a big mistake. I see some YECs putting their interp. into the core, I also see this as a mistake. So I try to limit the core. God exists and reveals God in the Bible. Salvation is by faith/trust in God’s promises, the primary one being Jesus Messiah, Savior and Lord. Ask the Spirit for help. Repentance.

On Hebrews, I read how others have interpreted, specifically Hebrew/Jewish believers, but also others. I try my best to understand any book in context as an original reader would have, knowing I may have many challenges to doing so in some cases. If an original reader would have seen something as literal, then that is a big clue I should also, but things are also often described in the Bible by appearances, not actual reality. The church got this wrong with Galileo. So “the earth cannot be moved” is not literal, even tho it appears to us as not moving.

(including prayer and insight I believe is from the Spirit).

What I have pointed out before is that the claim that there is only one legitimate interpretation of Gen 1-11 is similar to what the comps claim for their interpretation. When egals say there is another, they do not believe it. We ask for a level playing field and point out a lot of scholars are egal.

This is similar to what I ask on Creation, a lot of scholars are NOT YE. So do not be too quick to dismiss them.

Paula,

My argument is not that smart, Godly people reject a literal Genesis, so that view must be valid. And I do not think truth is determined by majority vote. And I do not think any and all views are equal.

My faith is like a bull’s eye target. In the core, I put the essentials, like trusting in/on Jesus. The elementary teachings are listed in Hebrews 6:1-2, yet there are believers that differ on some of these, such as baptism. I can explain my understanding if asked (believer’s water baptism and Holy Spirit baptism) but others may disagree. And guess what? I might be wrong, but I have a very high confidence based on the word (which is primary), my experience (includi, and the teachings of the church in history and among people I trust.

Creation is not an elementary teaching and I study the word and works of God. And guess what? I might be wrong, but I have a high confidence.

God is sovereign, but God is also a covenant keeper so this means God cannot break a vow of any covenant God makes. One can depend on the God of the Bible to keep God’s covenants, this is one difference from Islam and an important one.

On Jonah, the way I word it is Jonah truncated. This is allowed in Hebrew thinking but does not work with strict Greek logic.

Genesis is one of my focus study areas, so I have thought it out yet am still learning. When there are 2 or more sides to something, I encourage people to study all the sides.

There are some things that are not that simple to explain in a thread format, people have written books giving comprehensive reasons for their understandings. I understand if you want/need to read and work on other things.

I have stated before and again now that I cannot find a way to integrate the 2 Creation stories starting in Gen 1 and Gen 2:4 into a single narrative because of the different sequential ordering of items in each narrative, rather, I see them as 2 narratives that are both true and then try to see how that can be. My resolution (and many others) is to see them less literally than you do and is why I gave the biologos link.

I have also stated that I understand Gen 1 along the lines proposed in “Paradigms on Pilgrimage” which is a very basic and simple way of understanding it and is how I believe the original readers would have understood it.

http://www.biologos.org/ is a new org. started by Francis Collins, of human genome fame. He is both a believer and a genetic scientist and like the foundation believes that both faith and science lead to truth about God and creation, as I do also.

My request is NOT that you agree with him or me, but that you agree that believers over many time periods differ on their understanding of the early Gen. stories and similarly, believers differ in their understanding of the end times. Or to put it another way, there is a range of orthodox understanding in both creation and end times.

For example, I do not think that non-egal believers are unorthodox simply because of their non-egalism, I think they are mistaken, but then again maybe it is me in my egalism that is mistaken and I will find out when there is unity in the faith and in the meantime I am to maintain the unity of the Spirit. And similar for my beliefs about Creation and end times.

I do not see salvation as an exception to the law, I see Torah teaching salvation is always by faith in God’s promises, specifically faith in Messiah as he has been revealed to you, e.g, Abraham.

Cheryl,

I agree with your post 23.

I see Titus being a gentile leader as another step in the gospel to all the world, one we might take for granted today, but radical in its time. And if God did not restrict church leadership to only Jews, why think he restricted it to only men?

Frank,

I like Bailey and Fee a lot. I do not see overseer as an office, rather a ministry. All believers are to have a ministry, some are called to a leadership ministry. The main diff in 1 Tim 3 between overseers and deacons is the ability to teach, all the rest of the lists are character qualities. So I see it as all believers have a ministry, some of these are recognized as church deacons/ministers, and some of these in turn are recognized as church elders.

FWIIW, I see Titus as a gentile overseer, as I see him as a (church) apostle in 2 Cor 8:23 and I understand a (church) apostle as one of the possible 5-fold leadership ministries of an elder/overseer.

Typo: Chloe.

I agree with your points.

Also, the “law/Torah says” is a ref. to the so-called oral law of the Pharisees. The “says” is an important clue as Scripture/Tanakh was written, while the oral Torah at this time was not, it was later written down about 200 AD.

No, you have NOT shown how to harmonize the accounts, you have not yet even identified the various things that are in a different order in the 2 sequences. I agree that each account is given in a sequential order, but the items in each account are in a different order. As this is tangential to the main point, I was trying to decline to go there; all I wished was affirmation that faithful people can interpret these passages differently and that remains my wish.

Yes, we will all give an account before God, I know I want mercy.

By restricting the idea to rib and some flesh, you are making an interpretive choice on what “one part/side” means. It might mean as little as you choose or it might mean more. Faithful people are allowed to see it as more by their choice. This is as aspect of the range of meaning of terms.

What has happened is that there is a TRADITION of translating these verses as “trustworthy is the saying” rather than “faithful the Word”. In the first base, both are possible meanings and if you do not see that, you miss the wordplay.

I see it differently. My recommendation is that you check out Bruce Fleming’s book. The wordplay does not come across in English, but does in Greek; but I can only point it out, you can decline to see it.

2 “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Just because someone is consistent does not mean they are correct. In this case, the church that restricts all 3 is even more hobbled to advance the Kingdom. Not a good result. Hence my pref. for the idiomatic translation, as this frees everyone to serve.

3 Just as there were 12 patriarchs in 12 tribes, there were 12 apostles of Jesus. When Judas disqualified himself, he was replaced, as there needed to be 12 for the mapping to succeed. As the 12 patriarchs died without being replaced, so did the 12 apostles of Jesus then die without being replaced.

On #1, the phrase is used to show the turning point. In 1 Tim 1, it is Jesus saving Paul and Paul makes a wordplay where the term has BOTH meanings. In 1 Tim 3, it is Jesus able to restore the deceived woman/women who aspire to teach, but no saying. In 1 Tim 4, it is Jesus in Timothy’s life who will support him in doing what he needs to do, but no saying. This is how I read it. I agree that one may not see the wordplay and if they do not see it, they do not get it.

I see both Gen creation accounts as true, but I suspect you mean something different by true if you read them literally and I read them poetically, for want of betters words to succinctly describe our differences. The essential reason I read them thus is because I (and many others) cannot in good conscience join them into one account based on the information given in the text of each account. To be specific, if the days in Gen 1 are held to be literal and sequential and the order of events in Gen 2 is also held to be literal and sequential, I do not see how to harmonize the accounts; so this is a big clue for me (and many previous interpreters, I am far from alone on this) that one is to read these accounts in a non-literal (i.e., poetic) way. If you do not see it this way, I have no problem with it and can believe you are acting in faith, my wish is that you agree I am ALSO acting in faith to see it my (different) way.

My point on saying side and not rib is that MORE is involved; if someone talks about the side of a house, it is MORE than just a plank, altho it will include planks, a side can even be 50% of something. Further on rib, I once heard a sincere woman in a Bible study claim that all men had one less rib then women did, I disabused her as I thought it was a bad witness as it is so easily shown to be wrong.

I never said “created then formed”. I was only saying the 2 creation accounts use different terms, which are not identical in meaning or application; and I was trying to be precise by using the English equivalents of the Biblical terms.

I used the term “split” in trying to counteract the KJV “myth” of a rib, when a better translation is side, as the same term was used for a side of the tabernacle.

People may mix Scripture with anything else, that was not the question as far as I can see, it was how to interpret some text and how tight or loose to interpret some words and phrases and text. If I see a metaphor where you do not, then obviously, we will interpret the text differently. If I contrast the Hebrew creation narratives with pagan ones and you do not, we may see the text differently. And so forth.

I was not advocating either. My point was simply that both Jews and Christians before the modern scientific age figured out that the days in the first creation account MIGHT not be normal (24 hour) days, and they did this strictly from textual clues, they cannot be accused of conforming to the modern culture.

In Gen 1 animals are CREATED before Adam, in Gen 2 animals are FORMED after Adam and then Adam is split forming male and female. In the Gen 2-3 story, the man knows more than the woman and I think this is important to the story, as you also say.

As an egal, I agree with the conclusions but get there a different way.

1. I read 1 Tim 3:1 as referring to Jesus the Word as being faithful, per Bruce Fleming; it is not referring to a faithful saying at this point in the text. It did earlier, as a wordplay, in 1 Tim 1:15, where it is BOTH a saying and a ref. to Jesus. 1 Tim 4:9 is also not a saying, again just referring to Jesus. The thing about wordplays is that either one sees the play on words or one does not. The Bible is full of wordplays, as these help memory.

2. As they can be churches who exclude all you put in the box, I prefer to use the meaning of the Greek term “mias gunaikos andres” as an idiom meaning “faithful spouse” per Lucien Deiss, as quoted by Bruce Fleming.

3. On the 12, I do believe and teach that they needed to be EXACTLY 12, as they map to the 12 tribes of Israel. I see this as why Judas was replaced but James was not. So there are the 12 apostles of Jesus and the many apostles of the church after that, including the ones mentioned in the NT. The 12 also needed to be Jews, but the church apostles do not need to be and in fact should not all be.

“… no conflict between …”

“According to the widely accepted scientific account…”

These qualifiers indicate TO ME the nuance I mentioned before.

Also, I accept that there are fellow believers that happen to be Catholic. Yes, there are some (actually, many) things I disagree about in relation to Catholic dogma, so I am not a Catholic. But I do not believe for a second that Catholics are not ipso facto Christian, simply for being Catholic. Probably some are and some are not, which I how I see ANY denomination, altho I will agree that in some denoms it is HARDER to hear the gospel and in some it is easier.

I think it is an overstatement to claim that the RCC holds to evolution. Their official statements tend to be nuanced, sometimes so nuanced that non-Catholics can misunderstand them; I know that is the case with me. I think what the pope said was that there was nothing in the theory of evolution that was contrary to Catholic teaching. The Vatican has a science advisory board which I hear is top notch, I think they are trying their best to avoid another Galileo incident.

Alister McGrath recently (5/2009) wrote an article in Christianity Today on Augustine interpreting the Bible’s origins stories. It is here: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/may/22.39.html

McGrath is a debater of Richard Dawkins’ claims that evolution makes the Bible’s origin’s stories nonsense. He is well worth reading, both the article and his books.

This whole bugaboo started when I was simply trying to assist you Cheryl in pointing out you assumed YE in your argument and you might not want to do that. I had no idea it would go on like it has.