Raf

I don't see where Mark's position of what the Bible teaches about SIT and the definition of "glossa" differs from mine, so I've been reading these latest posts with great interest. I'm not sure there's any disagreement at the heart of what we're discussing here. If I'm mistaken, I trust Mark will correct me. I see him saying "glossa is a language. Believers at a meeting probably won't understand the language for practical reasons, and the incidents in Acts serve to show that understanding is possible." That's what I THINK Mark is saying. Whether someone present understanding is the norm or the exception doesn't impress me one way or another, Biblically. I agree that the definition of "phenomenon" as used has no apparent Biblical basis, but I don't see what bearing it has on the definition of glossa. I guess what I'm saying is, as you're challenging Mark on his posts, can we ascertain whether you guys are actually disagreeing about anything substantive?

Entirely possible that you're right and I'm wrong on this one, MRAP. I'll sleep on it. If I don't change my mind, I will at least ask for a second opinion. Thank you for the constructive criticism.

My modhat is going to be half on/half off for this one. DWBH, please avoid making it personal. This thread is about the REV, not MRAP's loyalties. Whether he has discussed the questions he's raising with Lynn, Schoenheit, Graeser, Geer, Cummins, Finnegan, Wilkinson, Caballero, Townsend or Dorothea Kipp is between him and them. His questions are fair game for this forum. He is entitled to ask them. He is not entitled to a response; that's up to other posters who are interested in the material. If no one is interested MRAP: It is not reasonable to try to separate the REV from the people who produced it, and (modhat off, opinion follows) it is not possible to divorce their presuppositions from Wierwille. So to ask people to not talk about Wierwille's "junk" is reasonable if we're talking about his personal failings, but it is not reasonable if you're talking about his doctrine and/or how he developed it. Those doctrines are entirely relevant to the REV because they informed the people who produced it.

I have to stay consistent. I've always taken the verses Mark cited to mean that under normal circumstances, in a church setting (or believer's meeting, if you prefer), the people present will not be expected to recognize the language produced in SIT. It is clear from other verses that understanding the language is possible, because these are languages. But typically, everyone in the church speaks and understands the same language (or two or at most three). Their SIT will invariably produce a fourth language (otherwise it's not SIT but the much less astonishing feat known as "talking"). That fourth language will, again TYPICALLY, be spoken by none of the people present. Thus, they will not understand. But God will. This does not change the fact that it is a glossa, an actual language.

That was fantastic! Flash, I mean

Wouldn't permanent death qualify as everlasting punishment?

Could you at least cut and paste the portion of the article containing information directly relevant to this thread's topic?

MRAP, this discussion was re-ignited to bring you and TLC up to speed on it. A few of us just decided to pick up where we left off. So yes, your accusation of selectivity and bias is off-base. There was never any RULE against reviving the discussion. What you encountered was a resistance to revisiting the topic. Note how the About the Way thread also revived the topic and promptly died.

I don't know what my belief or unbelief has to do with the topic, but ok. Do you (or anyone else) think that people who believe in a literal hell are not sincere in their belief that a literal hell is what the Bible teaches? Or do you think that a literal hell is a deliberate attempt by church powers to deceive Christians to make them easier to control? (I'm not talking about spiritual powers because if we're talking about spiritual powers, the attempt to deceive is not deliberate on the part of the people. They're just deceived and wrong. I'm talking about people who KNOW there is no literal hell but teach it anyway). I suppose a separate question about whether some of the writers of the New Testament deliberately invented a literal hell would be better placed in the Questioning Faith forum, but I don't see that as the issue being raised in this thread, so let's not entertain that question, since this thread has nothing to do with my atheism or anyone else's. Who invented a literal hell? God, through the inspiration of the Bible? Demonic forces sowing confusion in the church about what the Bible really teaches? Or church leaders inventing a method to control people? Like I said above (post 2), it's hard to get around the fact that the Bible does teach hell as a place of eternal punishment. But was it supposed to be taken literally? Mark's article would suggest not, but honest Christians disagree (I'm not saying Mark's not honest. I'm saying that there are honest people on both sides of this question).

Emphasis mine. I don't see a Biblical basis for the statement that Paul's use of glossa can be interpreted to mean an unidentifiable language. Perhaps that is semantics. All actual languages are hypothetically identifiable. So if you're saying that our inability to identify a language through lack of competence does not disqualify the utterance as a glossa by Paul's use, I would have to agree with you. And I never said otherwise. But if you're saying that the utterance can fail to match any actual language and still be a glossa, I see no Biblical evidence to support that position. A glossa is a language. It's not a word that was used to relay an "inherent ambiguity." There's nothing ambiguous about the Biblical use of the word glossa. Mark's post, which goes over the same scriptures I posted previously, makes that pretty clear. In fact, in Acts 2, just to drive the point home, it says that when the apostles spoke in glossa, they produced dialectos, which is almost a synonymous term (we use the words "language" and "dialects" in English nearly-but-not-precisely as synonyms to this day. What you don't see, in English or Greek, is the use of "language" or "glossa" to mean something that is flatly not a language. Looking at your post from a strictly technical standpoint, the first point you made (which I placed in bold) is not supported by Scripture. The point that followed is supported by scripture. Steve, I think you're getting tripped up on my position, which is why I find myself restating it so often. This discussion was never about disproving someone's SIT, neither yours nor anyone else's. It has always been about proving it. If the language you produce cannot be documented, as long as it is possible that the failure to identify the language might maybe be a result of the incompetence of the person trying to identify it, no conclusion can be drawn from such failure. But (correct me if I'm wrong) you seem to be intent on showing that a glossolalic utterance can fail to actually be a language and still fit the definition of glossa. It can't. Not Biblically. I can fail to indentify it and thereby prove nothing, but it can't actually NOT BE a language and still fit the Biblical definition of SIT. The word glossa does not carry that "inherent ambiguity." I'm really starting to wonder whether this part of the discussion has been a disagreement about semantics rather than an actual disagreement.

This is not directed at Mark. This issue popped up on another thread and applies here to me and Steve (if it applies to anyone else, police yourselves on it). Calling someone's position the result of "waybrain" falls under this rule. Questioning the motives of someone's interpretation of scripture (rather than the interpretation itself) falls under this rule. The rule is not perfect, and in this case I did not complain because questioning the reasons for my rigidity appears to be a natural outgrowth of the issues we're discussing on this thread, and as such, I am not complaining about the violation. I do believe my response also appears to be a natural outgrowth of the issues we're discussing on this thread. I cannot read Steve's mind to tell why he has not complained, but if he did, I would be compelled to revisit all the posts over the last couple of weeks to excise anything that appears to violate a rule. I have no desire to do that, to eliminate criticism of me or ciriticism from me. If it's ok with Steve, let's just agree to keep motives off the table and just discuss the actual scriptures and interpretations.

I know adding scripture is part of this. But pasting a scriptural analysis that fails to address the question being asked is out of place, whether in doctrinal or any other forum. "Hey, look! Here's an article that doesn't address the question you asked!" does not advance the discussion in this discussion forum. So thank you for the article you posted, but even more, for answering the question.

Mark, do you think the literalist concept of hell is an honest mistake or a deliberate attempt to control people through fear? Your article does not address that question, and that question (it appears to me) lies at the heart of this thread.

Mark, this is a discussion forum. While there's nothing wrong with pointing people to your content off-site, it would be really nice if, on-site, you actually added to the discussion. If I have to leave GSC to find out what you think about a subject, you're doing it wrong. I say this as a fellow poster, not as a moderator.

Very close. Movie is more recent than that and was not animated/marionettes

Although this movie is a comedy, I don't think the parody efforts at killing Saddam in Hot Shots qualifies as an actual assassination plot.

It should be noted that each sample would probably match more than one inventory unless the samples are large enough to rule out others. The principle would remain the same. Instead of matching the utterance to one phonemic inventory, it would be compared to all of them to see whether any of the languages are produced. The point is that the inventory narrows down the candidates.

For the sake of argument, let's say a linguist was presented with four samples of utterances. They would have to be lengthy enough for him to draw a conclusion. You and I know the languages are French, Chinese, Hebrew and pseudolanguage (the product of free vocalization making no pretense at being an actual language). But our hypothetical linguist does not know that. How would he go about identifying the languages? The answer is not as difficult as it sounds. Each language has a unique phonemic inventory. This is the set of sounds that are produced when the language is spoken. An easy example is, in English, we do not have the "Ch" sound present in the Hebrew word "Chanukah." That sound just isn't present in our phonemic inventory. Without knowing the languages at the outset, our hypothetical linguist can separate the utterance samples by cataloguing the sounds that are produced and keeping a chart of the four phonemic inventories. The French utterance would match the phonemic inventory of the French language. The Chinese utterance would match the phonemic inventory of Chinese. The Hebrew utterance would match the phonemic inventory of Hebrew. And the free vocalization would most likely match the phonemic inventory of the native language of whoever produced it. If the speaker in this case is familiar with more than one language, then it is conceivable that he will produce a phonemic inventory that blends several languages but in all likelihood doesn't actually match another one. Phonemic inventories are not complicated. Still assuming our linguist is not familiar with the languages in question, his next task would be to compare the samples with the actual languages for which the phonemic inventories match. It would not take long before he ascertains that the French utterance is indeed French, the Chinese is Chinese, and the Hebrew is Hebrew. But when he got to the fourth one, he'd hit a block. Is it English? The phonemic inventory would suggest it is, but the actual utterance doesn't match any English words or sentences. If it's a blend, he might not even know to compare it to English. It wouldn't match anything, or if by some chance it DID match another language's phonemic inventory (which would be a neat trick), it still wouldn't match the other language itself. The fourth language would have to be labeled inconclusive (a linguist might go so far as to say it is indeed pseudolanguage, but for the purpose of our larger discussion, we are conceding that nothing can be demonstrated to be absolutely non-language). There is a study underway by a professor at Rutger's University cataloguing the phonemic inventories of samples of glossolalia. The linguists working on that study should, hypothetically, be able to match the phonemic inventories that are produced with actual languages and compare the utterances to the languages they match. If a participant in that study is producing a known language, this is the most likely way to discover it. Again, for the purpose of our broader discussion, a failure to match an utterance to a language would not prove the utterance is a language, but a success would be pretty hard to explain!

I don't think there has been such a discussion, but I invite you to explore it here or start a new thread with a title that reflects the broader scope.

He did. That's his point.

I see your point. What's say we lock this thread and if someone wants to post about the audacity of a group wanting to come up with its own Bible, they can start their own damn thread? P.S. it's not about you getting a pass. It's about the difference between letting conversations flow freely v. letting them get out of hand.

Bless me"? Do you know what God did for me? He threw an 18-wheeled truck at me and bounced me into nowhere for five years! When I woke up, my girl was gone, my job was gone, my legs are just about useless... Blessed me? God's been a real sport to me!

It was a recent movie, and because of tge controversy it generated, it had little-to-no play in theaters.

You get certain leeway when it's your own thread.

To be consistent, he would have to argue that the personality is contained within the soul, and the spirit going back to God has nothing to do with the person's memories, personality, etc. Just like the body returning to the dirt, the spirit goes to God. But the personality dies until the resurrection (or rising. Because a resurrection is not a rising, stupid. I think that's how he put it).