asaris

Coppertop: appreciate the humor, but it was little long. I trust you understand the disanalogies between worshipping God and kissing Hank's ass.

Well, I'm not going to take the time to debunk all of those 'contradictions', but let me say a few things. First of all, I'm suspicious about his responses to responses to these contradictions. Since I'll probably be using some of these, I'll respond to some of them at length.

Obviously, he doesn't understand metaphor. It's that simple -- the Bible is a work of literature encompassing several different genres. Just as we would for any other text, in order to understand scripture, we have to take into account what genre whatever section was written as.

There's a difference between quoting to support a point and taking something out of context. If I'm quoting Nietzsche, I'm not going to quote whole books, whole chapters, or even, generally, whole aphorisms. I'm going to pick a sentence or two that, in my opinion, best summarizes the intent of the whole. You're welcome to disagree with me; the proper method is to argue that that doesn't best represent what the text says, in other words, that I'm taking it out of context. I don't know why quoting scripture should be treated differently than quoting any other text.[/quote]

I'll also mention, as I've mentioned in many other threads that I, and many other rather conservative Christians, don't necessarily think everything in the Bible is true simpliciter. This goes with what I said about genres; if something is written in the style of myth, or parable, or analogy, it simply can't be understood literally. Even the most ardent fundamentalists don't think that Jesus is literally a vine. But I don't even think some of the things more or less represented as history are true. The question is, what is the point of scripture? The point, as far as I can tell, is to tell us about God and his plan for us. So who killed Goliath is pretty irrelevant, as long as the story is accurate about what God's relation to his people is like. And a lot of Jim's supposed contradictions are just, if you'll forgive me, dumb. If I'm not mentioning one you particularly like, feel free to bring it up.

Well, welcome to the mysteries of the Trinity. The Trinity is one of the very few things I'll just say straight out "I believe it because the Bible says so". But, of course, I've never really been sure why the fact that there are aspects of God we can't understand is evidence against him. If he could be put neatly into a nice box, I'm sure that would be used as evidence he was just made up. But in any case, this specific 'contradiction' is easy. The fact that one verse says that the Father and the Son are one doesn't entail anything about their relative importance.

Well, the Ecclesiates passage doesn't clearly contradict the other two. Now, it's pretty clear that the other two are talking about two different types of wisdom. Consider the audiences: Proverbs was written to a Jewish audience, who could be presumed to know already that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom". But Corinthians was written to Greeks, who for the most part did not yet know God. If this is confusing to you, consider the idea of Plato's "To be wise is to know that one is not wise". Is this a contradiction, or is it merely a conundrum? There's a difference, you know.

This one was just particularly amusing. Have you ever used the phrase "Eat my dust"? Did you have a package of dust you were offering, or did you mean this metaphorically? It seems pretty clear that God is here referring to the humiliation of the serpent, not anything literal.

He forgot Enoch, who was snatched up into heaven. But this misses the point of Christ's statement: he was claiming authority to talk about heaven, since he had seen it. And it's not like Enoch or Elijah were coming back to talk about their experiences.

A better translation is the following, under which the supposed contradiction vanishes: Proverbs is always tricky, but I don't really see any contradiction here. There is a bit of tension, but the main tension is between Proverbs and what Paul admits explicitly is his own advice, and not the Lord's.

The difference is between judging someone's actions, and judging what is in his heart. There's a lot more that we can say about judging, but I'll leave it at this: it is clear from scripture that we are not only entitled, but called to judge actions. To speak out against injustice, for example. But to judge someone's heart is for God alone. Both of these positions are found throughout scripture, both in the OT and NT, and it's hard to see how they contradict each other.

There's lots more there, most of which I don't really care about. Like I said earlier, if you have a favorite, feel free to mention it.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche