Cheryl

Don,

You said:

Everyone SHOULD have a current understanding and should be teachable, but if something does not convince them, then it would be bad faith to pretend it did.

I agree completely.  We all should be teachable and we should have an understanding of what we believe.  I also think we should be able to explain why we believe as we do.  What specifically in the passage convinced us that this is what the Holy Spirit meant in that passage?  If we go by feelings alone, we probably should work a little harder to find a textual reason for what we believe.

Also most of the stuff that we are discussing is important but is not essential to Christianity or to our salvation.  One can be a Christian without believing that Eve was deceived.  Therefore while we can passionately defend our position from scripture, we are not to divide over it nor to treat others with disrespect or name-calling because they do not agree.  If we cannot find a way to convince the other that our view fits perfectly with the context, the grammar, the inspired words and the entire scope of the passage and the whole of scripture, then we can leave it and move on.

You said:

I am convinced there are believers that do not believe the same as I do about the milk things of the faith in Hebrews 5; BUT I am still to treat them as believers.  How MUCH MORE for the things that are beyond the milk stage.

Amen!  This is also where we can grow in patience because we get to love and respect those who may be opposite us in the secondary issues of faith.

You said:

One way to see my point is that God COULD have spelled things out step by step.  Instead of ONLY having the woman’s quote God could have written words showing how God DID say what the woman said he did and then have her say them and it all fits together, as we might wish.

Yes, that is true.  However if God would have done that, then we would not have given the woman as much credit in being a true witness.  This way we have only her testimony and so we must concentrate on what her testimony is instead of just moving on because we can see that it fits with what was actually said.  We have to work through the issues.  Did she add to God’s word or did she not?  Was she truthful?  Was she mistaken?  The answers to these questions, I believe are there within the text most in plain view.  We just have not given the evidence much weight because the world culture has historically been distrustful of women.  It is so easy to think that Eve lied.  We don’t trust her.  We are like Adam in that we can put the blame squarely on her shoulders.  But without a direct quote we are forced to face our prejudices and work through the issue of whether she can be believed or not.  I for one am grateful that God left it out.  God allowed the first woman to be a witness regarding the truth of his word and Jesus deliberately chose women to be the first witnesses to the resurrection.  God sees an importance in women as true witnesses and this started in the book of Genesis.

You said:

In my words, there are gaps in the account about things we might wish to know; and how one fills in the gaps tells others about oneself, not necessarily about God or what the Bible says or does not say.

I agree.  This is why I always want evidence of a person’s view.  If a view has solid evidence from the context, the grammar and the inspired words, I respect that view even if I don’t agree.  But if there is no evidence for the view, and a person is filling in the gaps by their own presupposition, I can get a feel for what the person’s own values and mindset are from listening to that view.

Sometimes I sit on a view for a long time before I accept it.  I like evidence and if the evidence isn’t solid or supported I tend to file it away until I find what is solid or I find a scripture that solidly supports the view from another portion of the bible.  Hosea 6:7 was one such scripture that filled in the gaps for me as I saw God’s personal view of Adam’s sin.

You said:

And if my words do not convince you, nor your words mine, we each go in peace, I see this as a very small piece of the puzzle, there are much bigger fish to fry.

I agree to a large extent.  I do not give up so easy and my background in working with the cults has me look at the problem from every direction.  I will look through the back door and open a window and peer around from that angle.  I will explore the problem from underneath and from the top view.  Once I have hit every angle that I possibly can, I admit that is all I have and leave it at that.  I am not responsible to convince everyone.  If another person has information for me that I can test and check out, I welcome that.  If there is no evidence but only speculation, I tend to stay back in the background.  I am a big “fact” person and I end all my testing with a “so what?” test.  Why is this important to God and why did he place this in the scriptures?  What meaning is there in the passage for us and how can I learn to be more of a faithful person because of the lessons I have learned?

My personal presupposition is that for every spiritual problem, God has the answer in scripture.  I may not know what the answer is right now but if I work hard and trust the Lord eventually I will be able to find it.  I have found many answers that others have not seen before in the areas of working with the cults because I have been persistent and wouldn’t give up.  I believed the answer was there because that is the kind of God we have.  He cares and he is also a detail person. When I am done my research, my work is thorough and persuasive because I have been diligent in my homework.  I have turned over every stone and checked out every corner.  I want all the facts and I want to know that I know the mind of God.  Personally I won’t let a matter go that is important to me until I have worked it through.  When I am confident in my understanding I will work to help others understand too, yet always keeping in mind that I am not infallible.  I can learn from others.  In fact I have learned from many here on this blog including yourself.  You have been an “iron sharpens iron” person for me personally.

One of my temptations is to try to get everyone to agree with me-me-me since I am right-right-right and I end up being unloving.

Personally I see you coming across as even keel, loving and kind.

I too value a loving approach.  While I passionately contend for my view, I realize that my goal is not to make everyone like me but to put a “stone” in their shoe that will cause a person to be uncomfortable with the contradictions with their view.  Getting someone to think for themselves outside of their box is about the best I can do with many people.

Yes, Jonah did not want Ninevah to repent, so he went minimalist with his prophecy.

You hit the nail on the head.  While Jonah was quick to run away from his assignment at Ninevah and he quickly headed off in the opposite direction, he did not run away from Ninevah after he gave his prophetic warning from God.  He wanted to see what would happen and it appears that Jonah was actually hoping that Ninevah would not repent so that they could be destroyed.  But God had a plan to teach Jonah a lesson about compassion and he provide an industrious worm to reveal Jonah’s own hardened heart.

On Mark, it is important to see truncation as a possibility in Hebrew thinking as Mark and Luke have no exception clause for divorce, while Matthew does.

I can see your point here.  I also bless God for Matthew.  I really relate to Matthew.  He is all over the map telling one story and then finishing with another story that happened years later so his “timeline” is mixed up and all over the map.  Yet Matthew is also a detail person and he relates details about events that others did not pay attention to.  The book of Matthew has been extremely helpful for me in unraveling some of the doctrine of the cults.  I really love Matthew.