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Ask your Bible questions and I (or, more realistically for most of them, Didymus) will answer them.

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Two questions:

1. God said to Adam & Eve "Don't eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil or you will surely die". They ate from the tree. Why didn't they die?

2. If Jesus's prime reason for coming to Earth in the first place was to die on the cross and therefore die for the sins of the human race, then why does everybody hate Judas? In a way, didn't he help Jesus if that was the case?

They've both really been bugging me.

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"They've taken Mr Rimmer! Sir, they've taken Mr Rimmer!"
"Quick, let's get outta here before they bring him back!"

They did. The sentence to death may not have been carried out immediately, but they most certainly lost one of the characteristics with which God created them: immortality. Further, and more importantly, they suffered in a very real sense what some theologians like to call "spiritual death," that is, alienation and separation from God. I also imagine that losing their home in Eden probably felt quite a lot like death, too. But mainly it had to do with the loss of their immortality.


Not so much what he did, but his motives for doing it. He was a greedy slob. But hate is a bit of a strong word, too. Frankly, I feel sorry for Judas. He got himself wrapped up in events that were beyond his control when he acted on his greed, then found himself helpless to do anything to change the fate he had created for Jesus and for himself. It is fairly clear in the accounts that he wanted to save Jesus afterward, but was powerless to do so.

But I will say this: it is not right to hate anyone responsible for Jesus' death. Otherwise, one must also hate God, for this was God's plan all along. It was necessary for Jesus to die, and he knew that full well. On the cross, Jesus prayed, "Father forgive them. They do not know what they are doing." That was Jesus' prayer, even in the depths of his anguish. When he himself does not hate--then is there any room for us to hate?

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I never understood the "I hate Jews because Jews killed Jesus" rhetoric that some people spout. I mean, seriously, had Jesus not died, that whole dying for our sins might have been kinda hard. Some people are just weird, I guess.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

The Catholic Church actually taught that up until Pope John Paul II. But the truth about that was that the Jews didn't kill Jesus, they got the Romans to do it for them.

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That was the other thing that bothered me about that "I hate Jews because they killed Jesus" train of thought.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Plus, if it weren't for the Jews, we wouldn't have a Bible. I think we owe a lot of gratitude to the Jews for going through all the effort to write and maintain the records so that we can have them today.

Plus, the early disciples were all Jews. And one of the greatest apostles of the church was originally one of its fiercest opponents (Saul of Tarsus, aka St. Paul). And St. Paul does tell us to pray for the Jewish people.

One annoyance though, is that it seems that anytime someone does somthing to proclaim the message of Christ, particularly if it's someone famous like Mel Gibson or Johnny Hart, various Jewish organizations will accuse them of trying to spread anti-semitism and hatred. But nevertheless, it is up to us to remember that they are speaking out of ignorance. It's "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing," all over again.

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Does God know the future?

If so, I have several follow-up questions.

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Yes He does. He is omnipotent.

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I think you mean 'omniscient'. Omnipotent means capable of anything. Omniscient means all-knowing.

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"You get the Most Annoying Transsexual I've Ever Spoken To award." -The Zephyr Song

Well, he is capable of anything, but you're right. Omniscient was the word I was looking for. Thanks dude.

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I have a question. Why is it in the Catholic teaching they rejected the Gospel of Thomas, along with a few other ones? Was it because it contradicted something?

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wow, thanks for being so incredibly condescending. the Jews are not now and were not then "ignorant." are you actually implying that the illiterate pagans who accepted Jesus as the messiah (messiah being a totally Jewish concept, and utterly unknown to the pagans who only became Christians after the 300 or so original Jewish-Christians totally failed to convince any more Jews that Jesus had been the messiah) knew better than the millions of Jews who had been studying the messianic prophecies for centuries and who simply observed that Jesus did not fulfill the requirements for being the messiah?

if that's what you're trying to say, i think you need a new definition of ignorance.

Now, I'm religion-less, and I know this must sound stupid, but I've always wondered:

Christians and Catholics and Lutherans and such believe that God created everything, but if that's true, then what created God?

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Cobalt, I was specifically criticizing those organizations and individuals that seem to enjoy accusing Christians of all types as anti-semitic. You might want to consider that a little more carefully yourself.

And, no, as a person trained in reading the Tanak, I am not convinced that your views on messianic prophecy are the absolute correct ones.

Here's a good definition of ignorance as I was using it above: making false accusations about someone's motives just because you don't agree with their ideas.

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God is God. He was always there & always will be.

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HSW:

There is an inherent problem in the very question itself. If God is in fact God, then he is the first efficient cause, and therefore does not need to be created.

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OK, thanks for clearing that up.

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"They've taken Mr Rimmer! Sir, they've taken Mr Rimmer!"
"Quick, let's get outta here before they bring him back!"

As far as I'm aware that's not the case - it's just that the Catholic Church has a different way of interpreting the Gospels than the Protestant Churches. There's no Gospel of Thomas, either - did you mean Timothy or Titus?

The Magistrum (the Vatican head office who decides the doctines to which Catholics should subscribe) do believe in the absolute "authority" of the Bible. "Authority" means the correctness of the Old and New Testaments as guides to morality and how Christians should behave. So the gospels are seen as having authority.

However, the Magistrum believe they're the only boys who could interpret it. But then the Reformation came, and "sola scriptura" came with it (which says the Scriptures don't need the Church to intrepret them). In other words.......



Err.... I hope I haven't left something out...... but I think that's right.

Assuming you meant omniscient, here's my next 2 questions.

If God is omniscient and knows the future, wouldn't this imply that there is only one future? As such, aren't we all directly tied to a fate and the often spouted idea of "free-will" is truly a farse?

If God is omniscient and knows the future, why did God place the tree in the Garden of Eden if he knew that Eve would consume the fruit? Did God intend for all human kind to possess original sin? Why did God create turn a perfect world into an imperfect one?

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Yes, sorry. That's what I meant. In my 4 years at a Catholic High School, they never really went over that.

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I wouldn't say that just because God knows that something will happen, means that he made it happen. When I sit down on my couch at my house with a hand full of crackers to eat, or a cup of water, I know that if my son (he is 15 months old) sees me he will run over to me and demand some. I know this, but it was still his choice. If I had infinite knowledge, I would be able to discern at what age he would stop doing that. Again, I never made him do anything, I just perfectly understood him.

On to question two, original sin isn't really a universally held belief. Catholics believe and teach it, and some protestant churches do the same, but many reject it. The only way, imho, to justify the Garden of Eden experience is that it was a part of Gods plan, and it was necessary for Adam and Eve to experience mortality and spiritual death.

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To answer that question, I would suggest you read Perelandra.

I believe it was always God's intention to have his creation be a perfect one. Yet, in order for mankind to be perfected as a sentient being, it was necessary that he endure this test of faith: whether he would trust God and not eat the fruit. This, btw, is why I believe it was also necessary for Jesus, the perfect Son of God, to be tested in the Wilderness (Matthew 4). It was necessary for even him to be tested by ordeal and to grow from it. It is also why God doesn't just snap his fingers and make all the bad in the world simply vanish (at least not at this point in time, but if I understand the doctrine of the parousia correctly, that time will come).

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For an example, let's say I go into the future, and see you order a ham sandwich at a restaurant. Now, the fact that I know you are going to order a ham sandwich at that point in the future doesn't imply that I am making you order a ham sandwich. You pick it of your own free will.

There are a couple of ways in which this is theorized to work. 1) He knows all of us perfectly and thus he can predict our choices and actions perfectly. 2) God exists out of time. The past, present, and future are one present to Him. This way he can see things that are happening in the future to us, though he is seeing us choose them in that future present. A little more difficult to wrap the ol' head around, but it does have some relationship to the scriptures that teach that God is Light, and some implications of Einstein's theories of relativity about what happens when an object reaches the speed of light.

Of course, God already knew that man would fail the test before he even created him.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

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God did know that Adam and Eve would consume the fruit. He also knew the full consquences of such an action, and planned for its occurence. The fall was necessary, and within God's plan. This could make you wonder, why did God need this to happen this way? Why didn't he just make us fallen to begin with?

I don't know the full answer, but I think that it might be because it is important that mankind choose to fall. Mankind could only be kept out of His presence if he were to choose to disobey His law.

I guess the important thing to realize is that the fall is a Good Thing. It is what makes it possible for us to truly choose. If there were no options, free will wouldn't matter a whole lot, would it? If everything was perfect, and your only choice was Be Good, did you really choose? Also, some evidence that God planned for this was that he had already picked Jesus to be our redeemer, long before the fall had even occured.

This has been a bit scatterbrained, sorry.



And his foreknowledge that man would fail was precisely the reason why he chose a Savior.

I have a question. Did unicorns exist in Bible times? Several verses in the King James Version mention unicorns (Numbers 23:22, Numbers 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, Job 39:9-10, Psalms 22:21, Psalms 29:6, Psalms 92:10, and Isaiah 34:7) but other translations say "wild ox." I guess I was just wondering if Didymus (or anyone else) knew what the original texts meant/said.

Brown Driver Briggs translates it as "wild ox," and BDB is considered an authoritative lexical resource. Especially in the context of Psalm 22. Notice in this psalm the repetition of dogs, lions, and bulls. Wild ox would be essentially (if not precisely) synonymous with the bulls (both being essentially bovine beasts known for their great strength).

The Septuagint translates r'em as monokerwntos (which would be rendered in Latin as unicorn), but I'm not sure that this term is to be understood as the mythical unicorn. It may be a term applied to a particular species of animal. It does not appear to be in any of the Greek lexicons I have available to me right now. Maybe Danker can shed some light, but that's over in Greenville, and I'm in Cleveland right now. I'll check later.

The Online Bible Encyclopedia offers this information.

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New question. Again, it's about Genesis.

On the second day, God makes a "firmament" to separate the upper waters from the lower waters, and calls the firmament "Heaven". What this seems to imply is that the sky - Heaven - is solid and there's water on top of it. This plainly isn't true. What's the deal?

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"They've taken Mr Rimmer! Sir, they've taken Mr Rimmer!"
"Quick, let's get outta here before they bring him back!"