Raf

Once again, this thread has two possible interpretations. 1. What does the Bible say about body, soul and spirit? 2. Is there evidence that there is any such thing as soul and spirit? Question 1 belongs in doctrinal. Question 2 belongs in questioning faith. I'll leave it here in doctrinal for now, and will move it depending on any answers received. Please feel free to answer the way you want to (as if question 1 OR 2). Whether and where to move the thread will be a later decision. Thanks. Raf (too lazy to switch to my mod login).

It's showtime...

That's two mentions. One more and he shows up. Like Beetlejuice. Kidding aside, since we are in doctrinal, and there is a separate subforum for discussing issues from a perspective of doubt, it's assumed that we are talking about whether the Bible teaches a Trinity, and that's the only relevant question. Arguing against the existence of God or the lordship of Jesus Christ would be off-topic.

Let me be clear, pal. You are only here because I made it available for new people to register after GSC's registration process became overrun with spambots. You ASKED to join us. I did not quiz you on your views. I did not quiz you on your loyalty to Wierwille or your antagonism toward him. I did not quiz you on which offshoot you felt an affinity toward. I asked you one question and one question only: what's your interest in our forum? And just like that, you were in. I think the problem is, you thought you were doing us a favor. You were rude. You were condescending. And, shockingly, when one of our favorite posters got tired of you and behaved rudely toward you, we stood up to him on your behalf. And for THAT you gave us grief. You can whine and complain all you want about ticking off the regulars, but we stood up to the regulars on your behalf because we expect members of GSC to play nice. Oh yeah, but we play favorites here. You are welcome to stay. You are welcome to post. We deeply apologize for not offering you whatever it is you never asked us for. On behalf of the entire GSC, I aplogize for not presuming to know what you wanted or needed from us. You asked us what we thought of the REV. Some of us gave our opinions. But you want an unbiased analysis. Why? An unbiased analysis of a Bible translation conceived in bias? We are not trained seals, MRAP. If you don't get the answer you want on a subject, move onto another subject. Or don't. We're not going to lose sleep either way. But I do ask one favor: if you're going to make a gigantic holier-than-though spectacle of how you're just too open-minded snd spiritual for this place, or how we just don't deserve to have you around, kindly follow up on it my actually leaving. No one's throwing you out, mind you. That's your call entirely. It's just... well... I'm not going to miss you. And I really do bid you peace, but if you don't believe me, I can't honestly say I give a rat's foot. You're not the first "spiritual" "Christian" who was "too good" for the GSC, but if you're the last, I have to say it would be quite gratifying. The decision to stay and be a part of this online community remains yours, as does the decision whether to be a twit about it.

I don't care what you believe MRAP. Toodloo!!!

The only reason you insist that glossa can mean something other than language is: Because you need it to. The only reason you need it to is: You cannot identify the language you are producing. To accuse us of waybrain for showing a consistent Biblical usage of a term, which we have done, is not just poor debating, it's raging hypocrisy. You simply would not tolerate it if the tables were turned. But you go ahead and accuse me of being waybrained again. The absolute NERVE of me letting the Biblical usage of the word speak for itself! Don't I know people have experiences to protect!?! If your doctine and practice don't line up with what the Bible teaches, you have two choices. You can either change your doctrine and practice, or you can change what the Bible teaches. You have chosen the latter. It's transparent. You have access to actual Bible scholars. Why aren't you asking them what glossa means? Not that it matters. The Bible is already clear on what it means. But let's go speculating. Could Paul have meant something else? Yes. Paul could have been talking about the meaningless prattle produced by free vocalization. That's why it needs an interpretation... Why on EARTH would something that's not a language need an interpretation? Oh, I'm being too Wierwillian. You do realize those accusations don't refute anything, don't you? You asked me why I'm wasting my time. I'll tell you. I'm wasting my time because I am not dealing with somebody who is approaching the material with humility, which is ironic as hell coming from me. You're supposed to conform your doctrine and practice to the Word, not the other way around! If this were any other claim by any other religion, you would see it clearly. But it's your claim for how you practice your religion. Well, sorry it stings, but the Bible does not say what you wildly speculate it does. It says language. It says nothing more complicated or enigmatic than that. There's no mysterious hidden meaning to glossa that you need to lift the veil fo the text to detect. But you have to, not because the text demands it, but because you have a doctrine and practice to protect. That's not honest scholarship. You KNOW honest scholars. Ask them what glossa means. I'd be interested in hearing what they have to say.

You may leave whenever you'd like. I bid you nothing but peace.

Calling the REV a piece of propaganda developed by completely biased researchers with an agenda to promote a specific theology but insufficient academic credentials, who lacked to professional integrity to subject their proposed "translations" to disinterested, competent scholars in the field IS objective. All of the above is true, indisputably. But interestingly, none of it discredits the REV. To discredit the REV, you need someone who knows a thing or two about translations and can explain if/why the REV is wrong about a translation (and "it disagrees with my theology" is not a sufficient reason to call it wrong).

So that was a great article, WW, but after a while it became impossible to take him seriously because of his partisanship. I mean, imploring people to be fair with Sarah Palin is valid. Implying as he did that criticism directed at her was less than totally deserved is not valid.

Deleted. WordWolf said it better.

I don't have to prove your interpretation of your experience is wrong. YOU have to "prove" your practice, and what it produces, lines up with scripture. To date, in my opinion, you have done little more than adjust scripture to conform to what you are producing (presumably. I contend you won't get your SIT tested by a linguist for the same reason I never did, even with $1 million on the line). But despite your attempts and insistence, you have done nothing to demonstrate that glossa in the Bible is anything other than a normal language spoken by some people somewhere and somewhen on earth. That's what speaking in languages is. That's the underlying claim behind Biblical SIT. If modern SIT is Biblical SIT, then modern SIT will produce what Biblical SIT promises. A language. A real, human language, just like glossa means in every other relevant instance in the Bible, as previously demonstrated. LOL. I suspect he made up the interpretation. But it could be one of those instances where the hearer falls down and reports God is in you of a truth.

I. Am. Not. Trying. To. Prove. Your. Interpretation. Of. Your. Experience. Is. Wrong. I. Am. Waiting. For. You. To. Prove. It. Is. Genuine. And. I. Am. Frustrated. At. Your. Constant. Attempt. To. Redefine. The. Biblical. Practice. To. Conform. To. What. You. Are. Producing. Instead. Of. Conforming. Your. Doctrine. And. Practice. To. What. The. Bible. Actually. Promises. Which. Is. A. Language. Not. Meaningless. Prattle. Now, at this point, I think I have made it clear that I am not trying to disprove anything or prove that your interpretation of your experience is wrong. If you accuse me of that one more time, it becomes an active lie and I reserve the right to call it such. I am trying to demonstrate that your interpretation of the scripture, equating language (glossa) with non-language, is wrong. It's got eff-all to do with your interpretation of your experience, and I am THROUGH responding to that false accusation. Beyond patience, I am willing to write it off as a mistaken accusation until now. But enough is enough.

TLC: your position is denial of what the Bible actually says to the point that you're willing to twist it out of desperation to fit your doctrine and practice instead of humbly conforming your doctrine and practice to what the Bible actually teaches. There. Clear enough for you? Or does that need an interpretation?

And let's say the activity was levitation. And people were jumping up and down, which anyone can do, and saying "See?! Just like the I Cualquierians predicted!" Interpretation of tongue: "cualquier" is phonetic, Spanish for "whatever." If we were discussing any book other than the Bible, the failure of the activity to match the claim would have been so obvious that it wouldn't be worth discussing. Note the number of threads we have on this forum debunking Mormon claims about pre-Colombian American history. Exactly.

I think it would be best if you stopped addressing me entirely and referred only to the argument I'm making. Describing this as a debate over hermeneutics is not exactly a shocking revelation. More like condescending. Likewise, referring back to points that are not in dispute and don't actually advance the discussion strikes me as an unnecessary exercise in reading comprehension. At least Steve tried to make a Biblical case for languages as not-languages. Why is my stand on what the Bible teaches stubborn, but an interpretation that contorts the scripture to say the opposite of what it plainly says with the explicit goal of getting the scripture to match a doctrine and practice instead of the other way around is perfectly acceptable? I'm myopic for letting the Bible speak for itself. You're open-minded for twisting it to say what you wish it said instead of what it actually does say. I tell you, I am through the looking glass.

P.S. there's nothing about the verse in Isaiah that even remotely hints tongues will not be a normal language as opposed to meaningless prattle. Either Paul translates it from the original or carries it over from the Septuagint, "heteroglossos." Another language. Nothing poetic about it that suddenly makes it not-language. I'd be interested in seeing a word study of the Hebrew word for tongue, but we already know what it meant to Paul. Another language. Nothing more cryptic than that.

We're going in circles here. We disagree on what the Bible teaches, period. I don't see how one can honestly read Acts and Corinthians and walk away with the impression that you can produce meaningless prattle and meet the Biblical qualification for speaking in languages. It frustrates me because we're supposed to be approaching the material honestly, and I don't think you're being honest with yourself in how you're handling the material. Quite frankly, you would never let me get away with what you're trying to pull. If you want to know why I'm heated up, go back to every single post where you've complimented me. Because the person you describe in those posts is being treated like a gullible simpleton. Translation: how dumb do you think I am? Several times I suggested it would be best for me to walk away from this thread. Each time you specifically asked me substantive questions to dissuade me from doing so. I'm going to say this one last time, because it does not appear to be sinking in. I have no bleeping interest in bleeping proving that your bleeping experience is bleeping wrong. In a billion bleeping years I could never bleeping prove that your bleeping SIT is a bleeping fake. The only possible bleeping outcome that would bleeping prove your bleeping SIT is bleeping real would be for you to bleeping produce an identifiable bleeping language. That would DISPROVE my position. I am not interested in proving my position because I bleeping can't. That applies to me "proving your interpretation of your experience is wrong." STOP BLEEPING ACCUSING ME OF A BLEEPING AGENDA I DON'T BLEEPING HAVE AND THEN BLEEPING WONDERING WHY I'M GETTING BLEEPING HEATED!!! ARE. WE. CLEAR??? Good. So now, here's the way I see it. We have two competing hypotheses. Both make predictions. My prediction: modern SIT will always produce meaningless prattle, never an identifiable language. The Biblical prediction: SIT will always produce a human language in accordance with every usage of the,word glossa in the Bible. The concession of my position is that failure to identify a language spoken in SIT does not invalidate it as a language. BUT!!! Success at identifying a language spoken in SIT would verify it as not being fake. The way I see it, the other side of this discussion is doing its dead level best to make the prediction of the second hypothesis perfectly match the prediction of the first. In other words: we should expect nothing but meaningless prattle with SIT. That's not what The Word says! It's just not. And you would not be twisting definitions into Twizzler bits if you could get someone to ID the language you claim to be producing. The test is already rigged so you can't fail. But you seem just as convinced as i am that you will never PASS it. Until you do, all you've demonstrated about your SIT is that you're sincere. Or you can keep coming up with excuses for why a language will never be identified and call that a Biblical position. You can call it that. But it's not, not in any language.

This whole business about what constitutes a sign and whether the sign is supernatural is beside the point. SIT is a supernatural claim. Reducing it to a natural one is biblically untenable. It's A MANIFESTATION OF SPIRIT. Not a token of a covenant like circumcision. Not a road message that must be obeyed like a red light. A manifestation of the spirit, SUPERNATURAL BY DEFINITION. Or am I now to believe SIT is unique among manifestations in having no supernatural element whatsoever?

Nice!

Let me be clear about something, please: This is both correct and incorrect. It is absolutely correct that a person speaking in tongues MUST produce a specific, identifiable language. That is the case in I Corinthians 12-14, Acts 2 and every other usage of the word "glossa" in the Bible. Your statement is simply wrong. However, it is INCORRECT to assume that a failure to identify the language you produce disproves the authenticity of your SIT. I NEVER SAID THAT. What I said, and I was repeatedly, abundantly clear, is that unless you CAN identify the language, you cannot demonstrate your SIT is authentic. So you see the distinction, or do I need to make it clear? I CANNOT DISPROVE YOUR SIT EXPERIENCE, even if I parade you in front of every linguist in the history of the field and every single one failed to identify your language, I would still not have succeeded in discrediting your SIT. BUT YOU CAN PROVE IT! And you can do so by producing an identifiable language. When you say there's nothing in I Corinthians that says a person must produce a specific, identifiable language, you are doing two things. One, you are playing strawman with my argument. Two, you are falsely implying that Corinthians predicts something other than a language. We went through the Bible book by book. Corinthians predicts a language. That's what glossa means. You have produced not the slightest scintilla of evidence that it means anything else. The best you did was "double articulation and syntax," both of which are also elements of FAKING SIT. Took me a bit to catch up with that. I apologize for posting before I looked it up, but now that I did, it's pretty clear from the evidence. Steve, I implore you: You are changing scripture to adhere to your doctrine and practice. It should be the other way around, shouldn't it? Your doctrine and practice is your business, but our agreed upon common ground in this thread is the scripture. Does it say what it says? Steve, it does. And it does not say what YOU say.

So now I'm at the point of returning to Samarin (to demonstrate that we've been over this ground already). Samarin writes: Items B and C are irrelevant to our discussion, since B begs the question and C is self-evident (of course the speaker thinks it's a language. That's the point. But A is completely relevant if we're going to talk about "double articulation and syntax," because those features are part of phonological structure. Let's put this in plain English (a real language): When you fake speaking in tongues, you will produce something that bears a superficial resemblance to language. It will have "words." It will have "sentences." It will even have "commas" and "periods." And, yes, it will probably have "double articulation and syntax," but ony superficially so. To demonstrate actual double articulation and syntax, you'd probably have to know the language, which is the point in the first place. So glossolalia has phonemes, meaning it has double articulation. We discussed this to DEATH in the original thread. Appealing to double articulation and syntax as evidence that a "tongue" is genuine is as useless as appealing to the fact that the sound is coming from you moving your throat, your tongue, your lips. Yes, faking a language has all that in common with speaking a real language. But it's still faking a language. So not only does the Bible not speak of double articulation and syntax, even if it did, the presence of double articulation and syntax would not demonstrate anything supernatural about the practice today. Only the production of an identifiable language unknown to the speaker would demonstrate that something took place that could not have taken place without God's involvement. Injecting a modern definition of language into the Biblical usage of glossa ignores the Biblical usage of glossa, and AGAIN, the only reason you would feel the need to do such a thing is if you're not producing what a plain reading of the Bible promises! I am not trying to disprove your experience. And if you're not trying to prove it, then we're fine. But if you're trying to demonstrate that you're producing what the Bible promises, then we have to first agree on what the Bible promises. The Bible promises a language. Until you produce one, I have no reason to believe your babbling is any more authentic than mine, your sincerity and integrity notwithstanding.

I just did a quick search on Google. Not only is double articulation and syntax an element of language, it is also an element of what's called pseudo language. In other words, you can expect it to be present when a language is faked. So even if you were to demonstrate that you produce double articulation and syntax, you would still have gone no further in demonstrating that you have produced a language.

The Bible says nothing about double articulation and syntax. Can something have double articulation and syntax and still not be a language? I don't know. I haven't studied the issue that much. But I will say this. You have not demonstrated that you produce double articulation and syntax. You're merely making the claim. I don't see how sticking with the biblical usage of a term narrows its definition. I do see how going outside the Bible to expand the definition of the term gives you an unbiblical definition of the term. Your interpretation of your experiences is of no interest to me. What is of interest to me in this thread is what the Bible actually teaches. I don't see anything in the Bible about double articulation and syntax. If you want to use that as evidence that what you are producing is actually a language, be my guest. But now you have placed on yourself the burden of proving that you produce double articulation and syntax.

Anyone can go. If that anyone should be me when I get a chance, great. But don't feel obliged to wait for me.

I don't think anyone is too stubborn or set in their ways regarding PFAL, but I do think that adequately describes your loyalty to the practice of SIT. You can't be wrong, even if it means changing what the Bible teaches to conform to your practice instead of the other way around. Sorry I can't drum up a more polite way to say that.