Sinners in the hands of an angry God (moral, gospel)

[Popeyesays]

I find it strange to hear you say God is love and then you launch into an essay on the Wrath of God, supporting the thesis that God is destruction.

Regards,
Scott

[MaddLlama]

Originally Posted by Popeyesays

I find it strange to hear you say God is love and then you launch into an essay on the Wrath of God, supporting the thesis that God is destruction.

Regards,
Scott

God loves us so much that he's going to destroy us all to save ourselves from our own evil nature.

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Popeyesays

I find it strange to hear you say God is love and then you launch into an essay on the Wrath of God, supporting the thesis that God is destruction.

Regards,
Scott

Yeah . . . isn't that curious?

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

1 Cor. 13. Joe's sock puppet violates all the emphasized portions and especially the red letter text, IMHO.

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

This passage really can't be posted often enough. Maybe I should make it my sig line. Thank you dopp.

[sojourner]

Originally Posted by Hope

Eisegesis: the interpretation of a text by reading into it one's own ideas

Exegesis: an explanation or critical interpretation of a text

Oversimplifying through eisegesis???? Your very words are a contradiction and reveal your apparent lack of understanding of what eisegesis is. I have provided the above definitions from a dictionary to help.

Exegesis is a critical, objective approach. Therefore, simplification should be expected. Eisegesis is a subjective approach. Therefore complication should be expected.

Example: "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."

Proper exegesis (objective approach----not reading into, but out of) of this verse reveals that it must mean what it says. Very simple. Some go into everlasting punishment. The righteous into eternal life. There should be no debate here, via exegesis, as to what this verse says.

Eisegesis (subjective approach----not reading out of, but into), on the other hand, is what you are employing, and therefore it's not surprising that you complicate the verse. According to you, no one goes into eternal punishment. To come to this conclusion you obviously can't use exegesis. Because the verse clearly contradicts you. So, through your subjective "reading into" of the verse, i.e., eisegesis, you have to complicate/qualify/etc. the meaning of eternal punishment.

I agree with Joe---the verses he quoted are very easy to understand. Only through eisegesis do they not become easy to understand.

The difference between you and me is that I do not need a dictionary to understand the difference between eisegesis and exegesis. I've had many years of graduate seminary study and years of intensive Biblical critique. I've gotten my 4.0 without your help so far.

Only an eisegetical approach would dare say that "it simply says what it says" without seeking to understand why "it says what it says." The assumption that it "simply says what it says" is eisegetical in nature, because it relies upon what one already believes to be true about what it says. The "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" approach is eisegetical in nature. It's a simplistic approach that relies on what one already believes about the passage in question, and excludes any further understanding of what the author might have intended by his writing. It only considers your understanding. It results in the heinous act we call proof-texting, which seeks to bolster a theological stance through the use of stringing together various (usually) disparate bits of cripture. It doesn't work.

An exegetical approach pulls us out of our own limited assumptions and points us toward the scholarship that helps us answer very basic questions which dig away the assumptions and leave us with (hopefully) pure analysis: 1) what the original Greek or Hebrew meaning is, 2) who the writer is, 3) who his audience is, 4) what cultural or anthropological circumstances affected his writing, 5) What cultural or anthropological circumstances affect our understanding, 6) date and placement of authorship, 7) writing style, etc. You get the point. The exegetical, critical approach can be extremely complicated. Take a look at the differences:

Eisegesis = Joe's post, above. Exegesis = what The Anchor Bible Commentary would take (very probably) pages to explain about any one of the passages Joe cited above.

This sort of proof-texting -- that is, pulling out various and sundry bits of passages to prove one's point is eisegesis writ large, and that's precisely what Joe did here.

Exegesis is so much more complicated than simply "reading what's written on the page" and making simple assumptions about the passage. had you ever actually exegeted a passage of scripture, you would know that.

Over-simplification never solved anything except our ability to question.

[sojourner]

Originally Posted by joeboonda

What about these is so difficult to understand? Some will go into eternal life, some into eternal punishment. We may not like it but it says what it says.

What's difficult about it is coming to a critical understanding of why the writer says these things -- not simply that he says them. In coming to a conclusion of why he said them we may come to the realization that what he wrote is not really what we thought we read, at all!

[joeboonda]

Originally Posted by sojourner

What's difficult about it is coming to a critical understanding of why the writer says these things -- not simply that he says them. In coming to a conclusion of why he said them we may come to the realization that what he wrote is not really what we thought we read, at all!

Yeah, he said it but didn't mean it but was telling us something else that he did mean only he didn't want to come right out and say it so he said something that wasn't true so we could guess at what he really meant by it...or something. Mmhmm.

[sojourner]

Originally Posted by joeboonda

Yeah, he said it but didn't mean it but was telling us something else that he did mean only he didn't want to come right out and say it so he said something that wasn't true so we could guess at what he really meant by it...or something. Mmhmm.

We read the Bible out of its original context of time, place, culture, etc. In order to exegete a particular passage, it's necessary to "get out of our own head" and "into the head" of the author. What is written might not even be authentic.

Therefore, what some ancient, Middle Eastern author "says" on paper, is likely to be taken by modern, American readers completely differently.

One can only communicate within one's own understanding. That's why it's important that we come to understand the writer's theological take, the limitations and quirks of the language, the problem of translation, and then seek to understand how that communication applies in our own world.

I'm sure that the writer meant what he wrote, and wrote it in such manner that would openly communicate his meaning to his intended audience. We are not the "intended audience." Therefore, it's not the writer's pen that's to blame. It's our eyes that are to blame. Wearing proper spectacles is called exegesis.

What's going on here is squinting and mistaking mailboxes for possums.

[MysticSang'ha]

I still think a big squishy hug is the anwer.




Peace,
Mystic