re: For Episcopalians, God is Officially Gender Fluid (or whatever)

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Well, I don't know if "gender fluid" is accurate, but I don't think God has a penis either. What purpose would it serve? I think the concept of God having a gender is just a limitation of the human psyche.

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IMHO, your view is a very healthy way for us to interpret this issue.

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IMHO, your view is a very healthy way for us to interpret this issue.

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I appreciate that - I doubt it's terribly popular though :)

My own interpretations of the Bible, and the words within - unless being spoken by Jesus Himself, are not the measures of the faith. That's where the "divinely inspired" becomes problematic for me. It's one concept of faith to accept Jesus and His words, it's an entirely different leap to presume that the words of Paul should hold specific relevance, and then accept that only certain words of Paul (as not all of his letters ended up in the New Testament anyway).

I don't think the Bible is being "dishonest" when it comes to how it states the human race and the planet came into being - I just think that if God had tried to explain evolution, quantum mechanics, and such to early man we would have all descended into chaos and He would have probably just chosen to start over.

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Either the entire Bible is inspired or none of it is. The Bible claims to be the inspired word of God and all of it was written down by men, even the apparent words of Jesus.

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That limitation is why there is rarely a soft debate on Biblical scripture. Once you try and question any part of it, people get defensive because of the supposed "all or nothing" context. State that you don't think the entire human race began with a man and woman being hoodwinked by a snake, and you're trying to tell people Jesus never existed.

For example, several books attributed to Paul are considered by most scholars as pseudepigraphic.

Ephesians
First Timothy
Second Timothy
Titus

It is people believing that the Bible is "all or nothing" that would mean this makes the entire Bible invalid - others would simply presume that people millennia ago lacked the resources to validate certain books and letters.

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If the Bible is the word of God, then all of it is important for study and understanding, not just the letters that some publishers put in red.

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The entire Bible doesn't have to be the Word of God to be important.

I think that the Jewish faith does acknowledge the existence of the Holy Spirit -- as an attribute of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- Adonai and Elohim are "names" that are used in the Old Testament, as you know.

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That limitation is why there is rarely a soft debate on Biblical scripture. Once you try and question any part of it, people get defensive because of the supposed "all or nothing" context.

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If the Bible (all of it) is not inspired, then it is nothing more than one collection of writings among many with no more intrinsic value than any other text written by men. There's a reason why there is rarely "soft debate" on the inspiration of Scripture, because the entire Christian faith is dependent on this topic.

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State that you don't think the entire human race began with a man and woman being hoodwinked by a snake, and you're trying to tell people Jesus never existed.

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There is merit to that line of thinking. Paul wrote that because of the sin of Adam, all have sinned and require a savior. If Jesus is the "new Adam", that requires an "old Adam". If Adam was nothing more than allegory, then original sin and federal headship have no basis in reality and thus Jesus didn't have to come to take away sin and there is no basis for Him being a Christian's "federal head" (representative). Important Christian theology hinges on the reality of Adam.

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For example, several books attributed to Paul are considered by most scholars as pseudepigraphic.

Ephesians
First Timothy
Second Timothy
Titus

It is people believing that the Bible is "all or nothing" that would mean this makes the entire Bible invalid - others would simply presume that people millennia ago lacked the resources to validate certain books and letters.

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I suppose it's a good thing that modern scholars weren't responsible for canonization of the scriptures, then.

Some scholars dispute whether those books were written by Paul but scholarly disputation is not enough to conclude the truth of it. There are scholars who argue the opposite.

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The entire Bible doesn't have to be the Word of God to be important.

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Importance is based on it being the word of God. If anything written is not the word of God, those things should be discarded entirely.

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I think this is the crux of the breakdown, because it applies a "sins of the father" concept that doesn't apply anywhere else.

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The guilt of Adam being applied to all humanity is the basis by which God can apply the righteousness of Christ towards those who haven't earned it, themselves. It's the entire point of the Gospel.

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If Adam's sin applies to me, why not Cain's? Why not Eve's? My own sins are okay, but Adam's are the ones that are problematic?

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Adam was created by God to be the perfect man and to live in perfect communion with God. This was only possible if Adam remained sinless. Once he sinned, God judged all of humanity with him who was the best possible representative we could have (he was not hampered with a sinful nature as we are, which is why we couldn't do any better than he did). Eve was created to be Adam's helper and Cain was Adam's son who came after "the fall". We inherit Adam's guilt because he alone represented humanity.

If Adam wasn't real and we didn't inherit his guilt, then Jesus' incarnation, perfect obedience, death, resurrection, and ascension were completely unnecessary. Yes, we sin by ourselves without the need of Adam's guilt, but if it's "unfair" for us to take on Adam's guilt, it's certainly "unfair" for us to take on Christ's righteousness which we inherit through faith in Him. Therefore, we would all be left alone to try to obey God perfectly (it's impossible for us) and thus we would all perish in our sins. In order to be saved from the penalty our own sins deserve, we have to have a representative that speaks on our behalf before God, and that representative is Jesus Christ.

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People are quite capable of sinning without Adam having ever existed. Needing forgiveness for something does not mean that someone else had to do it first before you.

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We didn't just inherit Adam's guilt, but a sinful nature, too. The creation was perfect and without blemish or stain, and certainly without sin. When Adam sinned, he caused the fall of the entire world. Death, disease, pain, and suffering are all the result of Adam's sin. When he sinned, all of his children received a nature bent towards sin, and since we all come from Adam, we all inherit that sinful nature. Because of that sinful nature, we will not obey God and we will not seek after God as He is. It's why Jesus had to become incarnate and fulfill the law's demands on our behalf.

So yes, without Adam, a lot of Christian theology goes out the window, including the concept of Jesus' federal headship and representation of sinners before God. If it's wrong and unfair for Adam to represent all of humanity with his sin, it's wrong and unfair for Jesus to represent the faithful with His righteousness.

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I don't think God altered human genetics, plate tectonics, and radioactive dating methods to make people believe in either Genesis or science. The idea that God was either intentionally lying in the creation of the Bible, or intentionally misleading people by altering the world before discoveries could be made, does not sit well with me.

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Who says it has to be either lying or deception through alteration? We put a lot of faith in men who are wrong a lot. We put a lot of faith in tools and methodologies developed by men who are wrong a lot. Over time there have been discoveries that have laid waste to all previous thought on those subjects and I believe in time the same will happen with our understanding of history (from a scientific perspective). I could summarize by saying that If the Bible is true, there are fundamental assumptions used in science that would skew the results towards an untruthful conclusion, even if said conclusion is entirely consistent with the assumptions that go into the study.

The major issue is Jesus and the resurrection. Christianity hinges on that.

Believe in the resurrection and then other items follow after that to various degrees.

Too many non believers get caught up in the origin of the universe questions and old testament stuff and get talked out of Christianity.

What is the most common non believer description of Jesus?
Liar or Lunatic or non existent?
How do they account for the apostles actions following the resurrection?

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The major issue is Jesus and the resurrection. Christianity hinges on that.

Believe in the resurrection and then other items follow after that to various degrees.

Too many non believers get caught up in the origin of the universe questions and old testament stuff and get talked out of Christianity.

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I don't think the blame can be tossed entirely on "non-believers". If a person comes to church saying, "I want to believe" and the guy next to them says, "If you don't believe there was a global flood, get out" then we run into a problem.

That's why I tell people, "focus on what Jesus tells you".

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Why should anyone believe what is said about Jesus if we can't trust the rest of scripture? Why is it that the red letters are considered infallible when the rest of the text written by the same people isn't?

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I Corinthians isn't written by the same people who wrote the Gospels.