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Yep, looks like we're preaching to the choir, Rocky. But....when I invited David and Ruth Th0mas to my parents' home for the holidays it was a gesture of love, concern and giving. They received gifts, love, plenty of food, and a heaping serving of good ole rural America....instead of the stone-cold, empty campus buildings. And, yes.....they slept in and had plenty of privacy.

A Word About A Word Tolerance is necessary for articulation. A hinge is an articulated device. One plate attaches to the door, the other plate attaches to the doorjamb, the two plates are joined together by the hinge pin, and the two plates can move in relation to each other in order to serve their purpose. Each plate has a hole (or sequentially coaxial holes, if there are more than one) for the pin to pass through. If the inside diameter of the plate hole and the outside diameter of the pin are the same, that is, if they are absolute (free of imperfection), then, not only will the plate not move in relation to the pin, it will be impossible to drive the pin into the plate hole. In order for the parts to move in relation to each other, or in order for the parts to even go together, there has to be a difference between the inside diameter of the plate hole and the outside diameter of the hinge pin. The hinge pin HAS TO BE slightly smaller than the plate hole. This difference is called "tolerance." Tolerance is necessary for any parts, of any machinery, to move in relation to each other. Tolerances (imperfections) are designed and calculated into the specifications of parts. Actual tolerances are measured by machinists using feeler gauges... If a machinist screws up the tolerance while adjusting the machinery, the machinery will seize up, if it works at all. The same is true when it comes to articulating thought. If the definition of a word is absolute, free of imperfection, then that word can be used in ONE and ONLY ONE sense. The word has been stripped of all other possible meanings. It has been stripped of its ability to articulate with words in any way but one. The sign has become a mathematical symbol, and it makes sense only in a mathematical equation. In order for words to be articulable, their definitions have to be tolerant of imperfection, their definitions have to be poetic. (If I had the stamina to go for a doctorate, this would be the gist of my dissertation.) ----- So... how do words get their meanings, anyway? They all start out as nonsense sounds... Let's look at the word "spirit" since it figures so much in the discussion of 1 Corinthians 12-14. Our English word "spirit" comes from the Latin spiritus, literally "breath", from spirare, "to blow, breathe". Spiritus is the word Jerome used to translate the Hebrew ruach and the Greek pneuma into Latin. The basic, literal definition of both words is "air in motion." Back in antiquity, they didn't have life monitoring equipment like we have in our hospital rooms today. They didn't even know what the pulse was, or meant. The only way they could tell the difference between an unconscious person and a dead person was by whether or not air was moving in and out of that person. Because of its close association with the difference between life and death, air in motion (wind, breath, ruach, pneuma, spiritus, spirit) took on the figurative meaning of "life-force" or "that which makes alive". All other meanings of the word "spirit" derive from this one. The absolute (free of imperfection) definition of the word "spirit" is "air in motion". All other definitions are poetic (tolerant of imperfection). Today, we think of spirit as a substance, the ectoplasm Wierwille plagiarized from spiritualism. We think of spirit as the substance of "Heaven." But neither of those things were so at the time Paul was writing I Corinthians. In the first century, spirit was not a substance. The substance of spirit was the element air intermixed with the element fire. The air was the substance, the fire impelled it to motion. Spirit permeated throughout the cosmos and performed the following functions: hexis or habit which gave form and persistence to ALL things, phusis or nature which gave growth-life and the ability to reproduce to everything from plants on up, psyche or soul which gave sentience and the ability to move around to everything from animals on up, and nous or mind which gave intelligence to human beings (earth elementals), the daimon (air elementals) and the gods (fire elementals). The inward (eis) motion of spirit relayed sentience from the periphery of the cosmos to its guiding heart (hegemonikon). The outward (ek) motion of spirit transmitted all design and operational information from the guiding heart to the "all things" of the periphery. The information flowing outward was called logos. Paul says the exact same thing in 1 Corinthians 8:6, except he substitutes One God the Father in the place of the hegemonikon and One Lord Jesus Christ in an intermediary place between the center and the periphery. He does not write in 1 Corinthians 8:6 of the One Spirit of 1 Corinthians 12:13 because, even though the terminus of the spirit-motion in the center is singular, the termini of the spirit-motion in the periphery is plural. The heavens were nothing more than what you see when you look up outdoors. The heavens were the realm of fire, and they were inhabited by the fire elementals (the Sun, Moon, planets and stars). Everybody knew that the air extended only to the sphere of the orbit of the Moon because you never see clouds (air) behind the Moon. The word spirit didn't take on the widespread meaning of "the substance of Heaven" until sometime in the third century, a couple of hundred years after Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, and about a hundred years before the councils tried to make all the definitions of Christianity absolute (free of imperfection). When Paul used the word "spiritual" in 1 Corinthians 2, what did he mean? When Paul used the word "spirituals" in 1 Corinthians 12:1, what did he mean? When he used the word "spirituals" in 1 Corinthians 14:1, did he mean the same thing he meant in 1 Corinthians 12:1? If he didn't mean "the substance of Heaven" then what DID he mean? If we read through Paul we frequently see the theme that the spirit and the flesh are in contrast, in conflict with each other. We think, "My spirit is the invisible, immaterial substance in me and my flesh is the visible, material substance of me. The invisible and the visible parts of me are duking it out every day." We read I Corinthians 15:44 to mean that there is a visible, material body and an invisible, immaterial body, but that's not the case at all. There are two, and only two, ages described with enough detail in the Bible to distinguish, this age and the age to come. This is the truth that people miss when they mistakenly attribute the meaning of "a period of time" to the word oikonomia. There is a good Greek word that means "a period of time". It is the word aion. If you track the uses of the word aion through the New Testament (and olam though the Old), you will find some dramatic and remarkable things about the way God has designed the ages. These things are not obvious in the King James Version because it translates aion as "world" and eis aion ("into the age") as "forever". The Bible doesn't say that we live in a mysterious, parenthetical age where everything that happened before the Day of Pentecost and everything that will happen after "the rapture" (a non-Biblical supplanter of "the gathering together") is suspended, null and void, to and for the Church. Through the use of the word aion, the Bible says we are living in the overlap of the ages. The age to come began when God raised Jesus from the dead. What Paul calls "this present evil age" in Galatians 1:4 will not end until Jesus Christ returns. In the meantime, we find ourselves to be composite beings. Some of our parts belong to the present evil age. Some others belong to the age to come which is not yet fully here. The age to come is called the age of the Spirit, because the Old Testament characterizes it by the outpouring of Holy Spirit. When Paul writes about "spiritual" things, he is writing about things that belong with the age to come instead of things that belong with the present evil age. Those things Paul calls flesh. "Things pertaining to the age to come" is what Paul meant when he used the word "spiritual" in 1 Corinthians 2, and that set the foundation for his use of the word "spiritual" in 1 Corinthians 12-14. But can we take this as an absolute definition? As we are going to see, Paul plays a word-game with "spirituals" between 1 Corinthians 12:1 and 14:1 that blows all hopes for absolute definitions out of the water. This is all I have the strength to post for now. We will finish examining Paul's use of poetic language with regard to the word "spirituals" before we begin looking at how he used the word glossa. Love, Steve