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I'm not so certain I really favor that "translation"... I think it could be understood a couple other ways... According to "Elliot's Commentaary" it reads: Thus, the emphasis, and the point is not as to marking what is "theopneustos", but that whatever is "theopneustos" has a purpose.. The question of what is "theopneustos" is still left open. Another view from Greek, is that there are 2 things noted.. Both are types of "writings" - (graphe), as in "Every God inspired and profitable writings are for doctrine, for reproof, ....." Again, nothing is being labelled as "theopneustos", but whatever is, along with "other" profitable" writings are once again for a reason...

I think actually the Way's use of the word "gift" kind of ruins the way we use the word in normal conversation in society. Like for example, seeing a girl twirl high above the earth wrapped only in a long silk scarf one would normally exclaim "that girl has a gift". Typically we would mean that in the sense that the girl has developed herself into great kinesthetic understanding and display. We would encourage the girl to "develop her gift". Or in another sense, a friend of mine has a troubled son. He is spoken of as having a "gift for getting in trouble". He also gets in fights. So my friend instead of having his son develop his gifts in the direction of being a prison gang leader, he is exerting a more positive influence and enrolling him in mixed martial arts classes so he can instead have a career in the UFC. But Wayspeak we would be correcting that midstream. Oh, no, the only Biblically accurate usages of the word "gift" are either holy spirit non-capitalized, or gift ministries, which are these magical things that work just like the manifestations, except with extra power. So when a "gift ministry" person would operate manifestations, whooo laa laa, we were to expect fireworks. Like, you know, listening to the Veepster speak in tongues. Oh wait. That just sounded like preschool nonsense Italian all the time LOL. And I'll tell you, the higher up the chain you would climb interacting with people in the Way, the less you would see of the miraculous, and the more you would see of the pettiness of Machiavellian rule.

If the canon had been decided by a dozen good old boys in a basement with a case of 'shine and a stack of scrolls, deciding what should be "promoted" to canon and what shouldn't, then the question of the authority would ride on Paul's having written them and saying so, and a bunch of drunks. FF Bruce ("The Scrolls and the Parchments") and Neil Lightfoot ("How We Got the Bible") among others, argue an entirely different scenario took place. According to them, what was canon of the New Testament, FOR THE MOST PART, was considered self-evident. They were written within the 1st century AD, and all carried the feel of Scripture and the quality of same. (I'm paraphrasing heavily for brevity's sake.) What didn't make it, FOR THE MOST PART, was agreed to have been clearly of a different caliber. There were books written several centuries later, and most pushed some esoteric or Gnostic POV that felt like it didn't match the others. As for books like "the Infancy Gospel of Thomas", that was written as a fanfic and was accepted as such at the time- considered good for entertainment but hardly Scripture. When just grabbing all old documents together that didn't make it and calling them some sort of "Lost books" or "forgotten books", that's a lot like grabbing the contents of my Bible case (with any songs, poems, short stories, etc) and claiming they're of equal authority as the Bible that's in the case because it's in the same case. That was possible then because they didn't have leatherbound Bibles as a single book- they would have had a bunch of scrolls stored together. So, someone just grabbing all the scrolls indiscriminately could easily think they were all meant to be read the same, with equal authority and equal utility. Obviously, not everyone would agree with either or both writers. I find that it's a sensible position to hold even if one thinks it isn't what happened.

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Hi Grace, most of my time with TWI was positive but of I did have some not so pleasant too. Just the name of this site tells an unpleasant part of TWI. We all lived that part. Thanks for the heads up.

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