Friday, August 20, 2010

Epistemological Paradigms


"If you want to compare unity and disunity, compare the adherences to the competing rules of faith."
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18 comments:

Anonymous said...

"If you want to compare unity and disunity, compare the adherences to the competing rules of faith."

But both are disunited. All it proves is that Scripture contradicts itself but tradition also contradicts itself.

Paul in Acts says all men are children of God. Paul in the epistles that were are children of wrath and must be reborn and adopted as sons of God. Contradiction.

Tradition says that Peter was the first pope of Rome and that he was pope of Antioch. Contradiction.

Tradition says the Bible doesn't contradict itself, and then the Bible shows that the Bible does contradict itself.

Tradition says that God is just. The Bible says in James 2:10 that if you break the most minor commandment then God holds you guilty of breaking the whole law (which is not just). So they contradict each other.

10:38 PM, August 20, 2010
John Bugay said...

Beowulf: The thing that you are missing is that God is at the head of the covenant.

And yes, if you break the most minor commandment then God does hold you guilty of being a law-breaker.

But if you were to understand God as Creator in his pure holiness and aversion to sin, you would be able to put that into perspective.

10:51 PM, August 20, 2010
Anonymous said...

"yes, if you break the most minor commandment then God does hold you guilty of being a law-breaker."

Well that's obvious, but is not what the text says. Learn how to read my friend:

James 2:10 KJV "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."

NRSV "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it."

Its not just that those who break a minor point are considered lawbreakers but that they literally are punished for the points they did not break. In other words, the little white liar is held as guilty of murder and punished accordingly. It is on this unjust basis and this unjust basis alone that Christianity is able to teach that everyone deserves eternity in hell no matter how small their sins are. Literally most people do not deserve a punishment that sever. It takes this unjust principle to fictitiously impute this sort of guilt to them.

5:50 PM, August 21, 2010
Anonymous said...

Remember also the doctrine of eternity in hell is not an OT doctrine but only an NT one. It is no wonder, therefore, that this principle of James 2:10 is not found in the OT. If it were then every woman accused of adultery would have been put to death on this specious premise that she must be held guilty of adultery since she must have committed at least one minor sin (which according to this principle would make her guilty of adultery even though she hasn't committed it); but instead the Mosaic Law puts forth the drinking of holy water (Numbers 5:17) as a test to determine if she is an adulterer or not, for the holy water once drunk will make her belly swell if she is an adulterer, and if she is not, she will be fine. Thus (shockingly) the OT is more in keeping with the principle of innocent until proven guilty than the NT is!

5:56 PM, August 21, 2010
John Bugay said...

Beowulf, what you're running into is the ratio between the infinite and the finite. God is infinitely holy, and he is teaching "His people" for the first time what that means.

In the selection you give from Numbers, God is in the process of demonstrating that the whole camp must be pure before His presence. God's holiness demands cleanness; and while this seems strict, God also shows compassion by giving the people the way to remove their uncleanness, and thereby remove the grounds for their exclusion.

In James, if you break one law, you become a lawbreaker, and you do become guilty of all of it, because "the one who said "do not commit adultery" also said, "do not murder." You offend the One who gave the law, and who demands purity. Jesus and Paul emphasize the same thing.

The point is that God makes a way.

8:48 PM, August 21, 2010
Anonymous said...

Can you read, John? I approved the passage I referred to from Numbers because it operates on the principle of innocent until proven guilty, and for a particular offense. The woman is only found guilty if she actually committed the specific crime she is accused of, and only if it can be proven (even though the proof here is just superstitious I must admit).

But in James the principle is altogether different and opposed to the principle in Numbers 5, and is clearly absolutely unjust.

You yourself summarize James as "if you break one law, you become a lawbreaker, and you do become guilty of all of it."

So then James, since I know you have broke the speed limit, I should have you sentenced to life in prison, or death by lethal injection, as a murderer or rapist. For you yourself say that if you break one part of the law then you really are guilty of the rest!

Now God in a certain passage in Malachi is made to say concerning the sacrifice of blind animals "Offer it to your governor; would he accept this from your hands?"

Let me reverse that question. Take the unjust principle of James 2:10, and apply it to secular law. Would you accept that at your governor's hands? If the United States' Legal System operated on this principle, would you take it sitting down? Surely in a secular context you would admit that it is unjust. But in a religious context you are blinded by Tradition and Superstition to the point of becoming an idiot.

The recent post on Exploring Our Matrix describes you in this regard.

"To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the botton and click 'I agree.'"

This describes you and countless others EXACTLY. Just turn your brain off and accept any unjust principle this book may teach about God, because to you this book is God.

9:10 PM, August 21, 2010
John Bugay said...

But in James the principle is altogether different and opposed to the principle in Numbers 5, and is clearly absolutely unjust.

The principle seems unjust to you because you begin by operating under a different paradigm than the one that God is establishing with a particular people in a particular situation at a particular period of time.

God was not establishing a secular democracy. He was establishing a theocracy, and in a way, introducing himself to a people that had not known him before. His ways are not our ways.

You look at God from your finite point in time and space, and you do not understand him properly. So you think you are somehow being clever in rejecting him.

Imagine for a moment, IF there were a God who could create THIS universe, do you think he would be some kind of an idiot?

9:25 PM, August 21, 2010
Anonymous said...

beo2k8

Are you not sorely mistaken when you write:

But both are disunited. All it proves is that Scripture contradicts itself but tradition also contradicts itself.

I say that you are.

The premise that you are innocent until proven guilty is a wishful theory that does not apply unless you are guilty!

There has been and are many innocent souls who will have ended their lives by being timed out by their natural consequence of old age and carried to their graves from their prison cell or by suicide or from the execution chamber. All left the jail house dead.

You need to see it in another light.

Scripture does not contradict.

We, the people, when we have not been trained to understand by the reasonings that perfect our understanding contradict the Scriptures as you do today.

Apparently you regard your reason on par with Christ's and A Holy God?

I would ask, "are you a Christian"?

Another place where the rule applies but is rarely if ever followed/practiced/applied would be at Deuteronomy 15:1-15 and the multi-layered realities there.

There simply are no contradiction between the Number's passage you cite and the James' passage.

What are the consequences for being a lawbreaker, whichever law your break, beo2k8? Is it judgment? Or is is Judgment plus?

I will go to God's gracious House because I have been given the Faith and I have Judgment plus!

6:47 PM, August 22, 2010
Anonymous said...

"The principle seems unjust to you because you begin by operating under a different paradigm than the one that God is establishing with a particular people in a particular situation at a particular period of time."

Again, John you get everything backwards. In Numbers God is supposed to be establishing a theocracy and yet in this example goes by the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

In James where God is NOT supposed to be establishing a theocracy, that is where the unjust principle is found.

The reality is that you are right about not being able to beleive such things without accepting the paradigm of the barbarian authors, since the doctrines come from them and not from God. If the doctrine were from God I would not have to accept the paradigm of some ancient society of barbarians in order to accept it.

7:23 PM, August 22, 2010
John Bugay said...

Well, then, Beowulf, the God of Numbers must be really confused, because, just prior to this "just" practice (according to you), he commanded the Israelites to put the "unclean" folks outside the limits of the camp:

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Command the people of Israel that they put out of the camp everyone who is leprous or has a discharge and everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead. You shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell." And the people of Israel did so, and put them outside the camp; as the LORD said to Moses, so the people of Israel did.

Well, then, you've solved the problem; you've proved the un-justness and inconsistencies in the Bible.

I'll write a note to James Swan and tell him we need to shut down the whole operation here.

Thanks for sharing!

7:32 PM, August 22, 2010
Anonymous said...

Please do. I seem to recall a similar comment somewhere where someone pointed out how in one book of the Torah God commanded that no son be put to death for the sin of his father, yet in Joshua Achin's children and entire family are burned for his sin in taking possession of the spoils that the Israelites were not to touch. This person said something like the god who gave this very just precept that a son be not punished for his father's sin must have FORGOT HIMSELF in dealing with Achin.

Yea, indeed he must have forgot himself again when he went back to the just principle in Ezekiel 18.

And if the Bible is the inspired word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit, my how confused must the Holy Spirit have been to say that God provoked David to number Israel in 2nd Samuel 24:1 and then to say that it was Satan that provoked David to number Israel in 1st Chronicles 21:1. I shudder to think that I used to claim this book was inspired by the Holy Spirit, since no claim could be more close to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit than that!

The belief in inerrancy is blasphemy against the Spirit, for you must assert that he Spirit inspired all manner of unjust statements and of contradictions.

7:51 PM, August 22, 2010
John Bugay said...

Neither of these instances carries the devastation you seem to think they do. In the first, the notion that one individual's act affects the whole group is key to Scripture, as it is in Adam as federal head of all humanity, and Christ as "second Adam."

In the 2 Samuel / 1 Chronicles "problem" you cite, the writer of 2 Samuel is simply more concerned to see God's hand and sovereignty as controlling all historical events. But it is well known that God works through secondary causes, and in this case, Satan was the secondary cause.

8:38 PM, August 22, 2010
Anonymous said...

John,

I am not sure if you "see" what I see when reading beo2k8?

He is angry with God!

He is angry with humanity!

Quite possibly, he has his own unnatural and untimely death in view?

Death indeed can be an enemy, especially if you have no clue where you will be by Grace alone through Faith alone in the finished work of the Cross of Christ by way of the Scriptures to the Glory of God when you die?

For the Truth, when He died, He died alone so we do not have too!

To die in Christ is gain!

To die in one's sins is not!!

And there is no other way out:

Heb 9:27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,
Heb 9:28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

or

Rev 1:7 Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.
Rev 1:8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."

8:55 PM, August 22, 2010
John Bugay said...

Natamllc, I see someone who's full of himself and probably full of a lot more than the anger you noted.

8:57 PM, August 22, 2010
Anonymous said...

John,

now that you mention that too, I seem to remember thinking along those lines before at other blogs he has commented a time or two?

9:00 PM, August 22, 2010
John Bugay said...

Matthew Schultz has noted to me that he is a troll. I've responded to him a couple of times, and he's merely backtracked and gotten more "caustic" with his assertions.

9:03 PM, August 22, 2010
Anonymous said...

I am not angry at God. I am sad that so many people have rejected God to worship a book written by barbarians as God.

9:11 PM, August 22, 2010
John Bugay said...

I'm sorry that you are sad, and I will pray for you. But your groundless assertions are not welcome here.

9:14 PM, August 22, 2010

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