Cheryl Schatz

Peter, You wrote: I think it is unnecessary to say that. When I am in conversations and people start to resort to ad hominem, I usually take that as a sign that they are unable to refute my points. That is not an ad hominem. It was a question. I am sincerely trying to figure out why you do not go through the verse point by point, inspired word by inspired grammar and why you want to see concepts before the inspired words. The inspired words and the inspired grammar will never contradict an inspired concept, but looking for concepts without looking at the building blocks is foreign to me. If I ask a question, it is a question. I rarely get caught up in attacking a person because I am first trying to understand, and then I want to influence a person to have faith in Jesus. Influence rarely happens by attacking a person. If you can give me the grace to believe that, we may go a step further without friction. You wrote: Some of this is starting to be recycled over again – I am thinking about your “grammar” attack and I don’t see the point of continuing if we are going to do that. I gave you a very good reason for reading verse 37 within the confines of the grammar there. You seemed to accept that I was grammatically on solid ground (given my premise) but it was the “expiration date” premise that you disagreed with. Now you are back to accusing me of tinkering with the grammar. I don’t know what to do with that… Listen, I have been through some really tough times with teaching teens about suicide and evil and the necessity to forgive those who have abused you. This was my full-time focus after the recent death of my mother. If I have forgotten your grammar that I somehow agreed with but cannot remember, you will need to remind me. And forgive me. I do not remember you saying that the present tense means an action in process or a state of being with no assessment of the action’s completion. If the completion happens in the future, the completion is noted. To have an “expiration date” at the very time that the truth statement is made by Jesus is a non sequitur. It cannot logically follow. Jesus doesn’t make those kinds of errors. You wrote: It seems that our words have different meanings. It might be helpful if you define divine inspiration so I can understand what you mean. If you don’t want to discuss this issue, that is fine. I enjoy answering challenges. And if you want to bow out should I take that as a sign that you are unable to refute my points? I haven’t bowed out. Let’s talk.