Some Thoughts for Those who Wish they Could
Our best modern science tells us that:
- The universe is almost fourteen billion years old.
- Our solar system formed gradually about four and a half billion years ago.
- Life first appeared on earth nearly four billion years ago.
- Humans evolved from lower animals about two and a half million years ago.
But the Bible says that:
- The universe is about six thousand years old.
- The sun, moon, stars, and earth were created instantaneously.
- All life on earth, including humans, was created in less than six days.
So how can we believe the Bible?
If we read the Bible as a textbook of science and history, we must choose whether to believe the Bible or science. But if we read the Bible as a book about God and spiritual life, we can believe both science and the Bible. A rational person can believe the Bible, not as a schoolroom textbook, but as a guidebook to spiritual life.
That’s because the Bible’s literal meaning contains a spiritual meaning, like a locked chest that contains precious jewels. The key to unlocking the chest is understanding “correspondences”: the living relationship between heaven and earth.
How can we possibly believe the Bible?
Let’s face it: the Bible is just plain old. Even the most recent parts of it were written almost two thousand years ago. Back then they didn’t have all the scientific knowledge we have today—and you can certainly tell! The world created in six days? All the people on earth descended from Adam and Eve? A flood that covered the whole earth? How can a rational, scientific person possibly believe the Bible when it contains so many things that can’t possibly be true?
Is God a good author?
Christianity can be its own worst enemy. In the past few hundred years, many Christian ministers have preached the notion that every word in the Bible must be literally true.
Do we apply the same standard to human literature?
If we’re reading a textbook of chemistry or biology, then of course we hope that what’s in it is literally true. Those textbooks are supposed to be informing us about the physical world around us. If the information is outdated or inaccurate, that textbook must be replaced!
But what about the great literature of humankind? What about A Tale of Two Cities and The Lord of the Rings? What about “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost? What about Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet? What about Star Wars and Titanic? These are some of the most widely circulated stories of all time, yet most of what is in them never happened! And if any of it actually did happen, it makes very little difference to the story.
Is God capable of writing only textbooks? We humans can produce great literature, plays, poetry, and movies that tell powerful truths about the human spirit through characters that are products of the human imagination. We limit God if we think that God can write only in a literal historical and scientific style. God is a far greater author than the greatest of human authors. God’s book, the Bible, has all the features of the greatest human literature . . . and so much more!
The Bible is a book inspired by God, yet written by the hand of many human authors. It draws on time-bound human history and events, arranging and narrating them in such a way that the narrative conveys a timeless spiritual message from God to humankind.
What is the Bible about, anyway?
When authors sit down to write a book, they pick a style that will best convey the message they want to deliver. Those writing about science, mathematics, or history will pick a direct, literal, informative style. Those wanting to convey something about the human spirit will more likely pick a narrative, fictional style. One kind of author will produce a textbook; the other, a novel.
If God were to write a book for humans, what would it be about? And what style would God pick to convey that subject to us?
Some Christians assume that the Bible is a textbook of science and history. But does God really need to tell us about these things? God has given us physical senses and thinking minds so that we are capable of investigating and figuring these things out for ourselves. No, God produced a book for humans about things we couldn’t figure out for ourselves.
Jesus asked the question, “What good would it be for you to gain the whole world but lose your own soul?” (Matthew 16:26). The Bible is not a textbook of science or history telling us how to gain the whole world. It is a divine story telling us how to gain our own soul.
Where is the Bible’s meaning?
In “The Road Not Taken,” poet Robert Frost paints a picture of two roads diverging in the woods, with many vivid details about the fresh leaves and grass, and how the paths turn in the surrounding undergrowth. It ends in these famous lines:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
For many years I have used this poem as an example to introduce the Bible’s deeper meaning to both teenagers and adults. After reading it to them I ask, “What is this poem about?” Not once has anyone answered, “It’s about walking in the woods.” There have been a variety of answers relating to decisions, regrets, pathways taken in life, and standing out from the crowd. Everyone reading this poem recognizes that its meaning transcends strolling in a forest and turning left instead of right at a fork.
Isn’t that a little surprising? The entire poem is describing a physical setting and a physical activity in great detail! But neither the author nor the reader is focusing on physical things. The meaning of the poem is conveyed by the physical details, but the meaning itself is not physical. It is psychological and spiritual.
This is precisely where the primary meaning of the Bible lies as well. The meaning is conveyed by the physical objects, people, and events described in the Bible. And yes, some parts of it are intended to be followed literally. But the entire Bible is a great divine parable containing deeper meanings that relate not only to the human spirit, but also to who God is and how we humans can have a relationship with God.
Think of the literal meaning of the Bible as a chest that opens up to reveal great spiritual and divine treasures. Or think of it as a beautiful, clear crystal that flashes as the sun shines through it. The beauty and meaning of the Bible is not the chest itself, but the treasure it contains. It is not the crystal itself, but the light of divine truth shining through the crystal.
Focusing only on the literal story of the Bible is like studying the ornamentation on the outside of the chest without ever opening it up to see what’s inside. It is like describing the scientific properties of the crystal in meticulous detail, but never holding it up to the sunlight.
Wouldn’t you rather have the gold and silver, rubies and diamonds that are contained in the chest? Wouldn’t you rather have beautiful rainbows shining all through your house?
Will we ever find the key to the chest?
For many centuries Christians knew that the Bible contained deeper meanings. In the Gospels Jesus is continually speaking to the crowds in parables, and sometimes he explains to his disciples what they mean (see Matthew 13:34–35; Mark 4:33–34). Psalm 78 opens with these lines: “Give ear, my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old” (Psalm 78:1–2). The “parable” that follows is a poetic narrative of the history of ancient Israel.
These and many other passages and prophecies in the Bible have suggested to Christians throughout the centuries that the Bible is a divine parable containing deeper messages. And many Christians did find precious insights hidden in the Bible. Yet no one was able to offer a clear and consistent method of seeing the deeper meanings shining through the literal stories, poetry, and prophecies.
Perhaps it was out of frustration at never finding the key to unlock the chest of the Bible and lay open its spiritual meaning that for the past five hundred years, many Christian leaders have focused entirely on the literal meaning.
However, interest in the spiritual meanings in the Bible and in nature has made a comeback in recent centuries, thanks largely to the work of scientist, philosopher, and spiritual pioneer Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). In volume after volume of his spiritual writings, Swedenborg detailed a method of interpreting the deeper meanings of the Bible based on a mechanism he called “correspondences.”
You can think of correspondences as the way spiritual things express themselves on the physical level. The idea is that every person, place, object, animal, and action in nature and in the Bible is an expression of something spiritual. And of course, everything is also an expression of something about God, who created it all. Just as a painting, sculpture, novel, or movie expresses something of the mind of the artist who created it, so God’s creations, both in nature and in the Bible, express the mind of God.
What the heck are “correspondences”?
The fact is, we talk in correspondences all the time. We say “I see” when we mean “I understand.” We talk about our friends and family “warming our hearts” when we mean they fill us with love. We talk about people being “hard-headed” when we mean they are stubborn. We talk about people being “spineless” when we mean they lack courage. We instinctively realize that every physical thing has a deeper psychological and spiritual meaning. It’s built right into the universe, and right into the human mind.
The same principle applies to the deeper meanings of the Bible. To give you an idea of how correspondences work in the Bible, here’s a quick sketch of the spiritual meaning contained in the famous (or infamous) story of the world being created in six days. That story is not really about the creation of the physical universe. It is the story of our own spiritual creation and rebirth.
- Day One: God’s creation of light and darkness, day and night corresponds to our first realization that there is a higher truth and meaning (represented by light) to our often dark and meaningless life here on earth.
- Day Two: God’s creation of the sky, and the waters above and below corresponds to learning more clearly the difference between spiritual and material-level truth (which is also represented by water).
- Day Three: God’s creation of the land and seas, the plants and trees corresponds to a more “grounded” spiritual life and the gradual development of our understanding of spiritual reality, represented by the growing plants.
- Day Four: God’s creation of the sun, moon, and stars corresponds to when we start putting God (represented by the sun) at the center of our life, and start being guided by our faith (the moon as reflected light from the sun, or God) and by various spiritual insights (the stars).
- Day Five: God’s creation of fish and birds corresponds to a new and more living faith that comes from our new focus on following God’s will in our lives.
- Day Six: God’s creation of land animals and humans corresponds to our growing into a warm-blooded love and faith that is expressed in a joyful life of service to God and to our fellow human beings.
When we have gone through all these stages of spiritual development, we reach the seventh day when God rests from all the work of creating us as angels of love and light. We can then enjoy the fullness of human life as it was originally intended for us by God.
So can a rational person really believe the Bible?
Obviously, we can only scratch the surface here. But this may give you a sense of the great treasures that lie hidden in God’s Word. It can also provide assurance that it is perfectly possible for a rational, scientific person to believe in the Bible. Good science and true spiritual knowledge do not conflict with each other. Both material and spiritual reality operate according to universal laws that come from God.
The key is understanding that the Bible is not intended to teach us about science and history. It is intended to teach us about our spiritual life and our relationship with God.
This article is © 2012 by Lee Woofenden
For further reading:
- The Bible: Literal Inerrancy vs. Divine Depths of Meaning
- How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads
- Which Tree is in the Middle of Your Garden?
- Is the World Coming to an End? What about the Second Coming?
- Secrets of Heaven, by Emanuel Swedenborg
- The Eternal Word
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
You’re right, but who is going to believe you except a few old souls like myself.
We can definitely believe the Bible. There is no denying that careful interpretation and context are important, but there is no reason to ever assume that the Bible and science contradict. Take a look at the Hebrew word that we translate as “day” in Genesis 1. Biblical Hebrew did not have a huge amount of words and therefore many words were versatile. The Hebrew word “yom” or yowm” can be translated as day or something more like “age” depending on the context. In other words, the creation days were probably very long. Once people step away from the 24-hour day assumption for Genesis 1 it is amazing how much they can calm down. This does not mean that English Bibles are wrong, as we often use phrases like “back in my day” that are not taken to mean a literal 24-hour day. It also does not necessarily mean that evolution is what God used if He took His time creating the earth and its creatures, but I have no problem with the thought of God using the “big bang” to kick-start the universe. Scientific discovery does not put biblical inerrancy in any kind of troublesome spot.
You make many good points in this post, Lee, but your implication that Genesis 1 is merely allegory has me somewhat troubled.
-Ben
Hi Ben,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment. Since you raise some big issues, I have replied in a post of its own:
“The Bible: Literal Inerrancy vs. Divine Depths of Meaning“
Cool. Thanks, Lee.
-Ben
According to theistic evolution, the first 11 chapters are not meant to be taken literally.
The Hebrew word for “day,” “Yom” always means literal consecutive days when modified by a plural number. Sources: http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ42.html and https://www.gotquestions.org/Genesis-days.html. I want Lee Woofenden to address the answers of the first one like “The Garden of Eden was a literal place” and others, like the answer to “allegory, poetry, or myth.”
Whereas the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish read more like myth, by comparison, the book of Genesis reads more like history. Right Lee?
Hi World Questioner,
The problem is, many theistic evolutionists actually do take the first eleven chapters of Genesis literally. They try to reinterpret them to accord with present-day science by reading words such as “day” differently, as meaning long periods of time rather than ordinary 24-hour days. As the second article points out, this is unlikely. A natural reading of Genesis 1 suggests that when it uses the word “day,” it means ordinary 24-hour days.
The problem is not with the meaning of the words. None of the words in Genesis 1 are hard to read and understand. They are all simple, basic words that are most naturally read in their simple, basic meaning.
No, the problem is in thinking that the original writers were thinking about the physical creation of the world when they wrote this story.
They were not.
Rather, they were thinking about the spiritual creation of humans in God’s image, and using ordinary physical imagery to convey that spiritual message.
This is why the entire argument about whether and how the first eleven chapters of Genesis can be reconciled with today’s science, especially evolution, is completely misguided and an utter waste of time. It is like arguing whether “Little Red Riding Hood” can be reconciled with known scientific facts given that when a wolf eats a human being, it doesn’t swallow the human being whole, but chews the human up into tiny bits before swallowing, such that it would not be possible to rescue the human intact and alive from the wolf’s stomach.
Literary scholars never engage in such silly arguments, because it is blindingly obvious that “Little Red Riding Hood” is a metaphorical story that functions as a cautionary tale, not an attempt to recount a historical event in which a little girl named “Red Riding Hood” goes into the forest, gets eaten by a wolf, and then rescued by a woodcutter, who cuts open the wolf and extracts her, and her grandmother, alive from the wolf’s belly. No one would be so silly as to think that this is what the story is about.
From a spiritual point of view, and based on reading the Bible as a spiritual book, not as a scientific and historical book, it is just as silly to think that the Creation stories of Genesis, and the remaining stories through the end of Genesis 11, were meant to be read as a literal account of the creation of the physical earth.
But for materialistic thinkers such as Christian fundamentalists, this is beyond their ken, so they keep engaging in these silly arguments. I wish they would have their arguments about “Little Red Riding Hood” instead, and keep their grubby, materialistic hands off the Bible!
Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3txmpHQJ520 and answer it. I’m even thinking of commenting on the video a link to one of your blog posts, https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/40569603/posts/1735.
But I know where this is going – “You won’t convince him.”
Hi World Questioner,
No, you won’t convince him. Especially since he’s an academic. Once an academic such as him establishes his academic credentials based on certain ideas and beliefs, he will rarely let go of them because his reputation and his income depend upon maintaining them. Only a flood of biblical proportions in the life an academic would cause him (or her) to budge from the ideas he has established as the basis of his position in the world.
Beyond that, nothing he says here establishes what he seeks to establish: that this all took place literally. He simply goes through the narrative and talks about what he says. So do people who interpret those early stories figuratively rather than literally.
It is fascinating that the video uses several of William Blake’s illustrations. Blake was an avid reader of Swedenborg. Though he did not become a full-blown Swedenborgian, he interpreted these stories figuratively, not literally. Blake would laugh if he heard that his illustrations were being used to support a literal interpretation of Genesis.
There are also at least two outright errors in what the Professor says.
First, the second creation story is not just a more detailed version of the creation of Man. It is an entirely distinct creation story of its own, in which many of the same things that God created in the first creation story are also created, but in a different order than in the first creation story. If we try to read these two stories literally, they contradict one another.
Another error is that the genealogy of Jesus given in Luke is traced through Mary’s line. But the genealogy itself contradicts this:
The genealogy itself traces the lineage through Joseph, not through Mary. The problem is, the genealogy given in Matthew does not match the genealogy given in Luke, and it also traces Jesus’ lineage through Joseph. The two diverge from one another in two or three places. Literalist scholars have therefore come up with the notion, totally unbiblical, that one of the genealogies is Mary’s, and the other is Joseph’s. But the Bible itself identifies each genealogy as the genealogy of Joseph, and neither as the genealogy of Mary.
These literalists insist that we take everything in the Bible literally . . . unless it contradicts their literal interpretation of the Bible. Then we must apply fancy theories to say that the Bible doesn’t really mean what it says. It doesn’t really mean to say that Joseph was the son of Heli. Really it means that Mary is the daughter of Heli—and these are all the fancy, academic reasons why: blah, blah, blah. You can’t just take the Bible at face value, you know!
It’s either funny or sad, depending upon your disposition.
These are just two of the many problems and contradictions literalists get themselves into when they try to interpret everything in the Bible literally.
But no, you won’t convince him. Both his faith and his salary depend upon his maintaining his existing literal interpretation of the Bible.
Could their be gaps in each genealogy of Jesus?
Hi World Questioner,
I’m sure neither genealogy is a literally accurate genealogy of Jesus’ adoptive father Joseph. The one in Matthew is just too perfectly symmetrical. It’s obviously meant to have a symbolic meaning rather than intended to be as accurate genealogy. They also follow different lineages of David, which diverge and coalesce. Attempting to take either one of these genealogies as a literal accounting of Joseph’s ancestry leading back to David, or even back to Adam, is a fool’s errand.
If Heli is the adoptive father of Joseph and Jacob is the biological father…
Hi World Questioner,
Luke doesn’t say “Joseph, adoptive son of Heli.” It says, “Joseph son of Heli.” In general, I think it’s best to base our understanding of the Bible on what the Bible does say, not on what it doesn’t say.
I propose that in the Four Gospels, only Jesus’ words are inerrant. The rest of the words are authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They are like records or accounts written by the Four Disciples.They should be treated by Christians the way Hadiths are treated in Islam.
Is it correct that God did not write the Bible, but rather, he inspired human authors?
I have to go.
Hi World Questioner,
If Jesus’ words are inerrant, does that mean that the rich man and Lazarus actually are in Hades and in Abraham’s bosom, literally, and that everything Jesus said in that parable—which some ridiculously say is not a parable because Lazarus is named—actually happened exactly as described? If so, that puts the nail in the coffin of the idea that we are all judged in some future Last Judgment, which Jesus also says in the parable of the sheep and the goats. So which is it? Are the rich man and Lazarus in hell and paradise now, or do they have to wait for some future Last Judgment to be sent to eternal punishment or eternal life?
No. This idea simply doesn’t work. Jesus’ words are not “inerrant.” The whole idea of inerrancy is a ridiculous mistake. It is a complete misunderstanding of the Bible, how it is written, and what its message is.
God did inspire human authors. But God also wrote the Bible. Both are true. The Bible has a divine side and a human side. The human side is drawn from the human minds and cultures of the human authors of the Bible. The divine side is the spiritual meaning and the divine message that is delivered through those words. Both together are the Word of God.
The Word of God is a relationship between God and humans. For that relationship to be real, it must have both a divine side and a human side. God has arranged the human side so that it perfectly expresses the message God wants to deliver to humankind, though much of it is delivered in symbolic and metaphorical form rather than in literal form.
The above article, and the articles linked at the end of it, go into these things in more detail.
When Jesus tells a parable or says something metaphorical or figurative, it is obvious. Conservative Christians and Evangelicals agree that the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son, and others are parables and not true stories.
Hi World Questioner,
Well then, how do you decide which of Jesus’ words are inerrant and which aren’t, since now you’re saying that Jesus’ parables—which are a fairly large percentage of his words—are figurative, not inerrant.
Oops! I meant to post the comment here.
I didn’t meant literal inerrancy. I meant that only Jesus’ words are without error, not the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, especially not the comments that are shown in parentheses in English translations. Jesus always tells the truth, often in a literal way but sometimes in a figurative way.
Hi World Questioner,
Of course Jesus always tells the truth. But if he’s speaking figuratively, and people read his words literally, then they will hear falsity instead of truth. Ditto for the rest of the Gospels that are the words of the narrator rather than the words of Jesus.
Anyway, it sounds to me that you’re suggesting that only the words of Jesus are the Word of God, whereas the rest is not.
But if Jesus is not descended from David, then one of the qualifications for the Messiah is not met. Isn’t being from the lineage of David one of the qualifications of the Messiah?
Hi World Questioner,
One of the main reasons the main body of Jews did not accept Jesus as the Messiah is that he didn’t do what the Messiah was supposed to do: throw off Roman rule and establish Israel as an independent kingdom again—a kingdom that would rule over all the surrounding nations. Even Jesus’ own followers thought he was going to re-establish the kingdom of Israel.
In other words, Jesus did not meet the requirements to be a literal Messiah, and he didn’t do what a literal Messiah was supposed to do.
People who accept Jesus as the Messiah accept him as a spiritual Messiah, not as a literal Messiah who literally fulfilled the biblical prophecies of the Messiah—which Jesus did not do. Jesus fulfilled the prophecies spiritually, not literally. And for that, he did not have to be a literal descendant of King David.
Doesn’t Genesis 3 teach that the seed of a woman would save? Maybe that’s something else not meant to be taken literally.
Also, where does the Old Testament prophesy that Jesus would throw off Roman rule and establish Israel as an independent kingdom again, ruling over all the surrounding nations?
Hi World Questioner,
You can read all about Jewish beliefs about the Messiah here: Wikipedia -> Messiah in Judaism
Just give a verse in the Old Testament that prophesies that Jesus would throw off Roman rule and re-establish Israel as a kingdom?
Hi World Questioner,
The prophecies of the Messiah are actually rather slim in the Old Testament. But it was built into a major belief among the Jews. So much so that even after Jesus’ resurrection, his Apostles were still expecting him to restore the kingdom of Israel:
The two unnamed followers of Jesus who spoke to him on the road to Emmaus without realizing who he was had the same idea:
Another way to translate this, as noted in a footnote in the NRSV, is “We had hoped that he was the one to set Israel free.”
James and John probably had a literally restored kingdom of Israel in mind when they asked Jesus to “Appoint us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (Mark 10:37)
The crowds of people who followed Jesus had the same idea:
This was a pervasive idea among Jews at the time of Jesus.
What are some examples of Messianic prophecies that Jesus did not literally fulfill?
Hi World Questioner,
When Matthew says he came from Nazareth to fulfill the prophecy that said “he shall be a Nazarene,” the actual prophecy was about Samson: that he would be a Nazirite. Jesus was not a Nazirite, despite Matthew’s rather amusing use of that prophecy.
Verse reference for “he shall be a Nazarene”?
Hi World Questioner,
In the New Testament, the verse is:
There is no such prophecy in the Old Testament. Most likely, Matthew is referring to this statement about Samson before his birth:
A nazirite was someone who took a particular religious vow, described in Numbers 6:1–21. It has nothing to do with being from the town of Nazareth.
The book of Judges, from which this “prophecy” comes, was part of the “Former Prophets” in the Hebrew Bible. What we call the Prophets were the “Latter Prophets.” That is why Matthew spoke of it as being something that “the prophets” spoke.
Check out https://www.gotquestions.org/Matthew-2-23-Jesus-Nazarene.html. The key Hebrew word is Netser. Hebrew only writes consonants, so Netser would have been written as NZR, and look like “Nazarene.” Are these Hebrew words cognates? Nazarite, Nazarene, and Netser? It could mean branch. Also refer to John 1.
Hi World Questioner,
Their theory sounds quite speculative to me. Also, the three letters of the Hebrew word for branch do not transliterate as NZR, but as N-TZ-R. There is no direct Greek or English equivalent of the Hebrew letter צ (Tzadi).
The Hebrew equivalent to the Greek letter Ζ (Zeta) used in “Nazarene,” or “Nazorean,” is ז (Zayin). This just happens to be the letter used in the Hebrew word “Nazirite.” So if you want to go by Hebrew letters, there is a closer connection of “Nazareth” to “Nazirite” (Nazarite in the KJV) than there is to the Hebrew word for “branch” that this article speculates is the connection.
Someone gave me this just now: https://shepherds.edu/the-genealogies-of-jesus/
Hi World Questioner,
The article makes some interesting points, but it’s still a materialistic understanding of Jesus as Messiah. Jesus never became an earthly king. In fact, he actively avoided becoming an earthly king (see John 6:15), and he told Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world (see John 18:36). David was an earthy king. Jesus never sat on David’s throne, meaning that physically, in the material world, Jesus was not a king in the lineage of David. This renders the whole line of argumentation in the article moot.
Beyond that, the author of the article completely misses the point. Jesus is clearly a spiritual Messiah, not an earthly one. To bend over backwards and stretch various Bible verses out of their natural shape in an attempt to make Jesus an earthly Messiah in the line of David is to focus on the letter that kills instead of on the spirit that gives life.
As an example of this stretching of verses well outside of their plain meaning, the article gives two verses in an attempt to make the Bible suggest that Mary was a descendant of David:
Here are those verses, with a little bit of context added around them:
Nowhere does this say that David is Jesus’ ancestor through Mary. This verse does not in any way “intimate Mary’s descent from David.” And:
Mary went to Nazareth, not because she was a descendant of David, but because her fiance Joseph was a descendant of David. This is very clear from verse 4. In citing only verse 5, the article leaves out the key information required to understand what that verse is “intimating.”
It is much more likely that Mary was a descendant of Aaron, of the tribe of Levi, since Elizabeth, who is identified as Mary’s “cousin,” or relative, is explicitly identified as being in the lineage of Aaron (see Luke 1:5, 36). But the truth is, the Bible simply doesn’t tell us what tribe or lineage Mary came from. Only that Joseph came from David’s lineage.
This article is based on going to the Bible to try to find verses that support an already existing idea, and if they’re not there, making them support that idea. But the Bible just doesn’t support that idea. In Matthew 22:41–46 Jesus himself denies that the Messiah is the son of David. This author seems to think that human interpretations of the Bible take precedence over the words of Jesus Christ himself.
I found this: https://evidenceforchristianity.org/was-mary-the-mother-of-jesus-from-the-lineage-of-levir/
Hi World Questioner,
We don’t know for sure what Mary’s tribe and lineage is, because the New Testament doesn’t tell us. But based on what the Gospels do say, I think she was most likely from the tribe of Levi, not the tribe of David.
And there is simply no biblical evidence that either genealogy was intended to be the genealogy of anyone other than Joseph, Jesus’ adoptive father. The idea that one of them is Mary’s genealogy is a later attempt to deal with the fact that the two genealogies don’t agree with each other.
Wasn’t Jesus a priest in the order of Melchizedek, not Levi?
Hi World Questioner,
That’s figurative, not literal.
The verse says “the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.” Ancestor through whom? It would have to be through Mary, who else would it be through? Not Joseph, because Joseph is not Jesus’ biological father. Would you say Joseph is Jesus’ adoptive father or his stepfather?
Hi World Questioner,
If you take all the prophecies of the Bible literally, then this is a problem. David was not Jesus’ ancestor in the usual sense, as he himself said in Mark 12:35–37:
However, if you recognize that Jesus is not a literal Messiah (an earthly king of Israel in the biological lineage of David), but a spiritual and divine Messiah, it is not a problem. David then becomes a human representative of God as King, whereas Jesus is God himself come as spiritual king. It is in this spiritual sense that the Lord God gave to Jesus the throne of his ancestor David.
A friend of mine gave me these on Facebook Messenger:
The prophecies are literal. Not once do the Scriptures ever act like they’re spiritual instead of literal. It’s just the opposite: the prophecies are so often held to be perfectly literal that if they were not fulfilled literally, they were not fulfilled at all.
And: Let’s ground this in a concrete example: the birthplace of Messiah. Herod asks where it is, and the scribes respond Bethlehem. Entirely literal. Not once do they ever say the scriptures mean it to be spiritual, that it just means being a son of David, or anything like that. They take Micah’s words entirely literally that Messiah must be born in Bethlehem.
I did forward to him your comments that were in my inbox. I let him respond to them.
Hi World Questioner,
If this person thinks that any prophecy that is not fulfilled literally is not fulfilled at all, then he must ignore most of the prophecies of the Old Testament, because not many of them were ever fulfilled literally. Some were. But most remain literally unfulfilled to this day.
Let’s take the example he gives, and see if it was fulfilled literally. Here it is, in a very literal translation from Green’s Interlinear Bible (but you can consult any translation you wish):
Your friend mentions the Messiah being born in Bethlehem. The prophecy doesn’t actually say he would be born there. Just that he would “come forth” out of Bethlehem. The next verse does mention a woman laboring and bringing forth, but it doesn’t say that the one who would be born from her is the Messiah. In fact, the Messiah isn’t even mentioned in this prophecy. Only one who would be ruler in Israel. It was much later that the Jews interpreted this verse as being a prophecy about the Messiah.
In short, none of the things your friend thinks were literally fulfilled by Jesus being born in Bethlehem were literally prophesied in Micah 5:2. We can interpret it that way, but the verse doesn’t actually say any of these things.
What does it say?
It says that the one who would come forth from Bethlehem would be “ruler in Israel.”
If we take this literally, it means he would be the literal king of Israel, sitting on the literal throne in the literal lineage of David.
Did Jesus do that?
No, he didn’t. In fact, he actively avoided becoming the literal king of Israel:
And when Pilate asked Jesus whether he was the king of the Jews, Jesus made it very clear that he was not a literal king of the sort Pilate meant:
Earlier, Jesus had taken active measures to avoid having the people make him the literal king of Israel. Now, just before the end of his earthly life, he told Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world. In other words, he told Pilate that he is not an earthly king. If he were, he said to Pilate, his followers would fight to prevent his arrest. When Pilate pressed him further, Jesus said that he was a king because the purpose of his birth was “to testify to the truth.”
The reason Pilate found “no basis for a charge against him” was precisely that Jesus did not claim to be the literal King of the Jews. At no time did Jesus ever make any effort to become a literal ruler in Israel. In fact, he actively avoided it.
So did Jesus literally fulfill the prophecy that your friend is talking about, as your friend claims?
No, he didn’t.
Not only were the things your friend takes as a literal prophecy not actually stated in Micah 5:2, but the one thing Micah 5:2 did say this person would be, which is a ruler in Israel, Jesus actively avoided becoming in any literal sense.
Your friend is just plain factually wrong. Jesus did not literally fulfill the prophecy in Micah 5:2. Your friend should read his Bible more carefully before he makes such flimsy and unfounded claims.
Here’s a longer response from him:
“
I’m not judging Lee solely by this article, but by all the other ones, you’ve linked me to, as well.
He has a consistent pattern, which is dangerous and deadly: if he doesn’t see how to interpret something in a way that makes sense to him in a literal way, he subs a “spiritual“ understanding, which means he can inject anything he wants. It means he can disregard anything he doesn’t like and sub for something he does.
I’ve seen this pattern repeated so many times in so many people.
You can dress it up in as pretty-sounding words as you like.
But ultimately it means that people end up believing whatever they wanted to believe originally. Scripture loses any ability to challenge them or correct them or inform them. If they encounter anything they don’t like or understand, they sub in an understand they do like.
They end up molding scripture to look like their prior beliefs.
But the ultimate judge is Jesus. That’s not how He used scripture.
He had no use for a super spiritual form of reading that transcended the literal.
Jesus read it literally and applied it literally. Every time.
“
Sounds like he’s referring to II Timothy 3:16.
Hi World Questioner,
Most of this is just ignorant fluff that’s not worth responding to. The only statement that has any substance is right at the end:
This is a fine example of how human tradition and doctrine has taken precedence over the Word of God in the minds of so-called Christians today. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we must take the Bible literally. This is a human doctrine. It didn’t become part of the doctrine of any church until a couple hundred years ago. For 1,800 years, no Christian church had as part of its doctrine that the Bible must be taken literally. That’s because this is not a biblical teaching. It is a human doctrine.
It is especially ironic that he appeals to Jesus to support his human dogma of biblical literalism. The Gospels themselves say of Jesus:
In fact, Matthew even quotes the Old Testament itself to explain Jesus’ use of parables:
The idea that Jesus was stuck in literalism is ludicrous. Most of Jesus’ teaching to the people was in the form of parables, which are specifically non-literal teachings.
Even this fellow’s statement that Jesus read and applied the Bible literally every time is false. If Jesus uses scripture metaphorically rather than literally even once, the statement is false. And Jesus uses scripture metaphorically several times, if not many times. To give one clear example, consider this dialog of Jesus with the crowd and with his disciples:
Here Jesus refers to the manna, which was literal food from the literal sky given to the Israelites to sustain them in the desert. He then says that he is the true bread that comes from heaven. Clearly he does not mean from the sky, which is where the manna came from, but from heaven, as in the spiritual world.
Further, he says that his flesh is this bread, and that if people don’t eat his flesh and drink his blood, they have no life in them. This repulsed many people who took his words literally, and they stopped following him. Even his own disciples didn’t understand what he was saying. That’s when he said to them:
In other words, he was not speaking literally, but spiritually.
And in fact, at the Last Supper he did not give his disciples his literal flesh and blood to eat and drink. He gave them bread and wine, saying that they were his flesh and blood—which, literally, they obviously weren’t.
This is a key passage in the Gospels in which Jesus uses an Old Testament story figuratively, not literally. For a fuller discussion of this, please see:
Eat My Flesh, Drink My Blood
In short, your friend is just plain factually wrong in claiming that Jesus read and applied Scripture literally every time. This is human tradition, not the teaching of the Word of God. Your friend clearly has not read his Bible very carefully, or he would know this.
One more example for now of Jesus using Scripture figuratively rather than literally:
If we try to take all of this literally, there are many problems.
First, Jesus was not literally “in the heart of the earth.” He was in a tomb located in a cave. Plus, if he were taking the Jonah story literally, he should have been in the belly of a fish, not in a tomb. “The heart of the earth” is obviously metaphorical language. Jesus knew that he was going to be laid in a tomb. If he had wanted to speak literally, he would have said “in a tomb,” not “in the heart of the earth.”
Second, he wasn’t in the tomb for three days and three nights.
Many Christian commentators have tried to reconcile this by referring to ancient Jewish notions of days and times. But Jesus is very specific here that he would be in “the heart of the earth,” not “three days,” but “three days and three nights.” Even if we count Friday, Saturday, and Sunday as three days, as the Christian apologists do, Jesus still wasn’t in the grave three nights, but two nights, even by ancient Jewish notions of nights. This causes the apologists’ argument to fall to the ground. He was not literally in the tomb three days and three nights.
Clearly Jesus is not taking everything in the Jonah story literally. He is using that story as a metaphor for what is about to happen to him in his upcoming crucifixion. But explaining all the symbolism would take too much time here.
And are we really meant to think that at the future Last Judgment the men of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba will stand up and condemn the generation that was alive during Jesus’ time? The whole idea is silly. Clearly Jesus is using these figures as metaphors to show the perversity of the lack of repentance on the part of the scribes and Pharisees, who he pictures as being worse than the hated Ninevites and the gentile Queen of Sheba.
Jesus not only presented much of his teaching in the form of parables, which is a non-literal form of teaching, but he also used scripture figuratively, not literally, on multiple occasions. Once again, your friend is just plain factually wrong because he is following human tradition instead of the Word of God.
Once again, I would advise your friend to read his Bible more carefully before making such obviously false statements about it. Invoking Jesus, who was a master of metaphorical language, to support the human dogma of biblical literalism is especially egregious.
Are you calling God a liar? God told David that one of his descendents (or offspring) would be the Messiah, didn’t he? The seed of David. That the Messiah would be the Son of David, that’s in the Old Testament. What you’re saying seem to make it like God lied to those that lived centuries before Jesus. Please don’t call God a liar.
Hi World Questioner,
There are very few clear prophecies of a Messiah in the Old Testament. Most of the passages that are taken as prophecies of the Messiah have been interpreted that way rather than plainly stating that they are about the Messiah.
Further, “Messiah” simply means “anointed one.” Kings were anointed with oil when they became king, as a ritual signifying their kingship. Every king of Israel was a “Messiah” in this sense, because every king was anointed.
However, if we take the prophecies of David’s line literally, then many of them are simply false. For example:
Here the Lord says that only if day and night cease to come at their appointed time would David not have a son to reign on his throne, and the Levites cease to have a man to offer sacrifices.
And yet, historically, as recorded in the Bible itself, the Davidic dynasty did end when Babylon conquered the southern kingdom of Judah and deported all its nobility, ending both the Davidic line and the Levites’ service of offering sacrifices at the Temple. The Temple was later rebuilt, but the Davidic kingship was never restored. Even the rebuilt Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, ending once again the Levitical priesthood’s service of offering sacrifices at the Temple.
In the nearly 2,000 years since then, the genealogical lineage of both David and the Levites has been lost. Today, it would not be possible to revive David’s dynasty, nor would it be possible to revive the Levitical priesthood, because there is no one on earth who could claim a clear lineage back to David or to Aaron.
Some other prophecies in the Bible say that if Israel breaks God’s covenant with it, David’s line will end, and the priests will cease to offer sacrifices at the Temple. But this one says David’s line, and the Levitical priesthood’s service, will never end as long as day and night continue.
It is therefore as plain as day that this prophecy was not literally fulfilled. Day and night continued in their appointed time, but David ceased to have a son to reign on his throne, and the Levites no longer have a man to offer sacrifices at the Temple.
This means that if God is not a liar, then this prophecy must be about spiritual events, not about physical events. If this prophecy is about literal, physical events, then God is a liar. It is actually the biblical literalists who are calling God a liar.
Are you talking about the curse of Jeconiah? Is that related to the prophecy in Jeremiah?
Hi World Questioner,
I wasn’t talking about that specifically. Only that the Davidic dynasty did come to an end, even though the Lord says that it won’t in Jeremiah 33:17–21. Jeconiah just happens to be where it ended.
Apparently the Israelites weren’t prepared for the Old Testament prophecies to not be fulfilled literally. God should have prepared them in advance.
The Israelites didn’t know what to expect.
Hi World Questioner,
God reached out to the Israelites in every way possible. The problem wasn’t on God’s side. It was on the Israelites’ side. They simply weren’t listening or paying attention to anything spiritual.
Take a look at the opening lines of Psalm 78, and then read the rest of it. In that psalm God could hardly have made it clearer that the history of Israel is a parable, meaning a story that has deeper meaning. But were the Israelites paying attention to that great big huge hint?
Doesn’t the Old Testament say that the savior will be the offspring or “seed” David? What about Paul’s letters? Isn’t the Hebrew or Greek word for “seed” always used to refer to biological offspring?
Hi World Questioner,
Does the seed in the parable of the sower refer to physical seed being planted in physical soil?
I wasn’t talking about plant seeds. Oh! Is it the same Hebrew or Greek word used to refer to human offspring? Because the Greek word is sperma, I don’t know what the Hebrew word is.
What about the Davidic Covenant that one of David’s descendants would rule the kingdom forever? Does the Hebrew word presume a biological descendant?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, in both Hebrew and Greek the same word is used both for plant seed and for human “seed.” In Hebrew the word is זֶרַע (zeraʿ). In Greek the word is σπέρμα (sperma).
I wouldn’t say that the Hebrew word presumes a biological descendant. But those who read the Bible literally do presume that it is referring to a biological descendant. However, given that the Davidic lineage has been lost over the thousands of years since David’s dynasty ended, there is really no way to restore it, or even to know if this or that man is actually a descendant of David.
Acts 13:22-23 – does the Greek word for seed (sperma) presume a biological descendant?
Isn’t “seed” always used to refer to biological descendant, whenever it is used to refer to human offspring?
Also refer to Isaiah 11:1-2.
Hi World Questioner,
“Seed” can speak of plant seed or human descent via offspring. But it can also be used metaphorically, as it obviously is in the Parable of the Sower.
Isaiah 11:1–2 is usually read literally, but it can also be read metaphorically, as something in the spirit of Jesse, the father of David. Like most of the prophecy in the Old Testament, the passage itself is poetic, not narrative. Why else would it speak of Jesse instead of David? It’s being poetic, not literal.
Spirit, as in ruach or pneumatikos?
Hi World Questioner,
“Spirit” as in embodying someone in character rather than being a literal biological descendant.
Several of the letters attributed to Paul are considered to be pseudo-Paul, meaning Paul wasn’t their actual author. But they’re still considered Pauline epistles because even if some of them weren’t written by Paul, they were written in the spirit of Paul’s letters, meaning they were probably inspired by Paul and were meant to deliver or expand upon the same message that Paul delivered.
Isn’t there a Psalm that says “His seed”? Isn’t the prophecy of a seed of a man always fulfilled as a biological descendant whenever it is fulfilled?
Hi World Questioner,
In that context, “his seed” is a common semi-poetic biblical expression for “descendants.” However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be taken literally. Of course, literalists will take it literally. But consider an artist who initiates a new distinct style or genre of art. Other artists who take up that type of art form a “school,” and are metaphorically the “seed,” or “children,” of the original ground-breaking artist.
As a biblical example, in the Gospels John the Baptist said “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8). The original Greek does not use the word “seed” here, but the concept is clearly one of non-literal descendants of Abraham. Even if we take it literally, “these stones” are not literal descendants of Abraham if they’re magically transformed into people. “Descendants of Abraham” in this sense are people who live in the spirit of Abraham, which has nothing to do with biological lineage.
This is just a quick answer, but I think you’ll get the point.
Does the Old Testament ever attach the definite article to “Messiah”?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, the Old Testament does use the definite article with the Hebrew word for “anointed one” or “Messiah” in places where we would expect a definite article, meaning when it is referring to a specific individual (whether named or not) who would be “the anointed one” rather than to a general role of an anointed one. This isn’t necessarily a reference to “the Messiah” as we think of it, though. More often it is a reference to a particular king or priest, or a prophecy of one. There are very few places where the Old Testament uses that term in a way that suggests the future “Messiah” as we think of it.
Also, when Genesis 3 says “seed of a woman,” is it not referring to Mary?
Hi World Questioner,
Christians take the seed (meaning offspring) of the woman in Genesis 3:15 as the first prophecy of Jesus.
What about Isaiah 7:10-16? Refer to verse 14 in particular, which mentions the virgin. Wouldn’t the Israelites know that if Immanuel, the Messiah, was to be a literal descendant of David, that the virgin would have to be descended from David? Then again, the Israelites should have known that genealogies are always traced through the paternal line, so that Immanuel couldn’t be a literal seed of David.
Hi World Questioner,
In its own time and context, this was a prophecy about things that would happen very soon, not centuries later. It was not about a Messiah, nor was it even about a virgin. Read starting at the beginning of the chapter (Isaiah 7:1–16), and you will see. This was later, in the New Testament, referenced as a prophecy of the Messiah, but it would note have been read that way in its own time. The passage itself doesn’t even say that the child to be born as a sign will be from the house of David.
I stumbled upon https://500questions.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/does-the-suffering-servant-in-isiah-53-really-predict-jesus/. Was Isaiah 53 about Israel or Jacob? Or was it metaphorical and not referring to the individual patriarch, but to the nation?
Hi World Questioner,
It would take a long time to read that article. But the short answer is that in its original context the suffering servant is a personification of Israel. But from a Christian perspective, the entire Old Testament, including Isaiah 53, is also a prophecy of Jesus on a deeper level. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Doesn’t the Bible say “seed of David”? It never says “spiritual descendant.” The Greek word for “seed” is sperma, right? I don’t know the Hebrew word for “offspring” or “seed.”
Hi World Questioner,
It all depends on whether you take “seed” literally or spiritually. In the Parable of the Sower, the seed is not literal. Jesus himself says that the seed is “the word of the kingdom.” In the context of Jesus as being of “the seed of David,” it is about the spiritual meaning of “seed” which is the word of God, or divine truth.
Well, the “virgin” mentioned in Isaiah 7:14 would have to be Mary, who else would it be? There’s no other virgin in the entirety of human history, is there?
Is Immanuel actually the name of the Messiah that the Jews are waiting for? Did the Jews really expect the Messiah to be named “Immanuel,” and not “Jesus”? Would Jews say “Come, Immanuel, come!”
Maitreya is the foretold Messiah of Buddhism. Is Immanuel the counterpart Jews are waiting for?
Maybe Immanuel is just a codename for Jesus. Just like Microsoft Longhorn was a codename for Vista, the same goes for Immanuel and Jesus respectively. Immanuel is not the final name.
Hi World Questioner,
The Old Testament prophecy isn’t necessarily about a literal virgin. More likely it was originally meant to be about a young newly married woman who is having her first child. However, the birth stories in Matthew and Luke make it clear that Mary was a literal virgin. This is part of a common pattern of Old Testament prophecies being fulfilled in unexpected, and not always literally accurate, ways in the New Testament.
“Immanuel” is a Greek, and now English, transliteration of a Hebrew expression that means “God with us.” It can be read as a literal name, or it can be read as a description of the one who is to be born.
What do you think of https://www.quora.com/How-can-Isaiah-7-14-be-a-prophecy-of-Jesus-if-the-virgins-son-was-to-be-named-Immanuel-not-Jesus/answer/Curtis-W-Scissons?
Hi World Questioner,
When Matthew says he will be called “God with us,” that’s the same thing as the Hebrew “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” It doesn’t matter that his name was literally Jesus. He was “God with us,” which is what the prophecy is about in relation to Jesus, as compared to the immediate historical meaning of the prophecy.
Did you read the Quora answer?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, but it’s a bit silly and self-important, so I didn’t bother with it.
But it didn’t happen “very soon,” did it? No record of a boy being named Immanuel, and no record of a virgin giving birth in that timeframe.
Hi World Questioner,
“Immanuel” is similar to other names that have “el,” “God,” in them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the baby is divine. Just that God’s name is being invoked in naming the child. This is very common in the Bible.
There is no agreement among non-Christian (Jewish and secular) Bible scholars about what particular woman or baby this might refer to. The focus is more on the time frame given by the child’s birth, and the prophesied events taking place before the child could eat solid food, or think moral thoughts. Historically, this is seen as being fulfilled when Assyria conquered Aram and then Israel within a few years of the time the prophecy is dated.
This doesn’t necessarily mean Matthew is wrong in reading it as a prophecy of the Messiah. But that’s not how people at the time would have read it.
Here’s a video that might be relevant to that: “Jesus isn’t coming back – A look at what the Bible says” By Off the Left Eye (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDcqEgmyK-4).
The Messiah was supposed to be named Immanuel, not Jesus? Is the name “Immanuel” or “Emmanuel” mentioned in any of the Four Gospels? Does Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John describe Jesus as Immanuel or Emmanuel?
Hi World Questioner,
Off The Left Eye is Swedenborgian channel.
“Emmanuel” is mentioned in Matthew 1:23:
Does the Bible make any distinction between spiritual and material/physical in this context? Doesn’t the Bible promise explicit physical prophecies? What is the Biblical basis for the distinction between physical and spiritual prophecies?
Hi World Questioner,
The Bible mostly speaks about spiritual things using physical imagery, similar to the parables of Jesus. When he spoke the parables to the people, he didn’t explain them. He just spoke of a sower that goes out to sow, and so on. Later he explained some (but not all) of them to his disciples. But not to the crowds of people.
Similarly, the Bible doesn’t say “Look, this is a metaphor for spiritual things!” It just tells the stories, and allows people to interpret them literally if they’re physical-minded, or spiritually if they’re spiritual-minded.
Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XspdYlpifkc (“The real reason Jews reject Jesus as the Messiah” by the Beat by Allen Parr). I know, he’s materialistic.
But Jews confused the prophecies of Jesus’ first coming with the prophecies of Jesus’ second coming, did they not?
Hi World Questioner,
He makes some valid points in the video. However, he is wrong that Jesus is going to set up a literal earthly kingdom in the Second Coming. In that way, this YouTuber is no different in his thinking than Jesus’ disciples, who kept asking him, even after his resurrection, when the kingdom of Israel would be restored. It should be clear enough from Jesus’ responses that the answer is, “Never.” There will be no literal, earthly restoration of the kingdom of Israel as prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. These prophecies will be, and have been, fulfilled spiritually, not literally.
Today’s nation of Israel does not qualify. A restored literal kingdom of Israel based on biblical prophecy would be a monarchy having a king in the lineage of David on its throne. It would also have a rebuilt Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, and levitical priests offering the prescribed sacrifices at the Temple.
Jesus fulfilled all of the Old Testament prophecies, and indeed, the entirety of the Scriptures, at his first coming. But he did so spiritually, not literally. The descriptions in the Gospels of him fulfilling some of them literally are meant to make it possible for worldly-minded people, including this YouTuber, to believe that he is the Messiah so that they would put their faith in him and live by his commandments, thus bringing about their salvation and leading them to eternal life in heaven.
But the destruction of Israel was a physical event, not just a spiritual event. Right? So shouldn’t the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel be physical as well as spiritual? What fell only spiritually should come back only spiritually, and what fell physically should come back physically, right?
Hi World Questioner,
That’s not how it works. To use Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 15:44, it is sown a physical body, and raised a spiritual body. The physical points to the spiritual, and leads to it.
The Israelites were disappointed when they were informed that Jesus will never literally restore the kingdom of Israel. The Israelites were so looking forward to the restoration of the kingdom of Israel. Couldn’t God write the prophecy a different way? Couldn’t he prepare the Israelites by letting them know that the prophecy won’t be fulfilled literally? Maybe the problem with saying that the prophecy will be filled spiritually is that the Israelites don’t understand. But at least they could be informed, because that’s a pretty simple word. If they can’t think spiritually, why should they be given the prophecy that only has a spiritual meaning? If they think materialistically, they should have been given a literal prophecy.
Bottom line: The Israelites didn’t know what to expect. They were set up for false expectations. It’s like Isaiah and other prophets gave an empty promise.
Hi World Questioner,
It helps to understand what happens to God’s wisdom and truth as it descends down into human realms and into humans at various levels, high or low, of spiritual development.
On each of the two lower levels, God’s infinite divine wisdom is represented by what Swedenborg calls “correspondence” on the respective lower level. It’s not false, but it is a lower level truth, adapted to the level of the particular human beings and their culture.
In the case of the Bible in general, and the prophets in particular, the divine truth behind it has been put into some recorded spiritual wisdom, but mostly into earthly preaching and prophecy aimed at improving the behavior of the people receiving the prophecy. This is because, as I’ve said many times before, the people and cultures of these times were largely unspiritual and fleshly-minded. They could not understand the deeper meanings of the messages they were receiving from God. So they read them mostly in an external and rather earthly and literal fashion, and it prompted them to a better life and behavior than they otherwise would have lived.
The same is true of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians today. The Bible they hold in their hand is mostly spiritual in its message. But that message is couched in earthly stories and metaphors, which these fleshly-minded Christian focus on and take as their lessons for life. The basic moral laws are there, along with promises of glory and threats of punishment for good and bad behavior, respectively. And so, it has the effect of causing faithful Christians, even those who cannot think spiritually, to repent from their sins and do the work of living a life of love, faith, and service to God and the neighbor.
That is the whole purpose of the Bible. Questions of literal accuracy are secondary. As long as it has the desired effect of moving people to repent and live a good and faithful life—a life that leads to heaven—it has done its job.
If the Bible said, as you seem to wish it would have, “These prophecies are not meant to be taken literally,” it would have lost the entire vast segment of human beings who can think only literally, and who think of earthly blessings as the only blessings.
If the ancient Jews did not believe that their literal, earthly Kingdom of Israel would at some future time be restored by God sending the Messiah to restore Israel to its rightful place in the world, how many of them would have ignored God and the prophets altogether, and become pagan idol-worshipers? It was precisely their earthly understanding of the prophecies, and their belief in future earthly glory for Israel, that kept them walking the path of righteousness, even if it was only behavioral righteousness.
If present-day fundamentalist and evangelical Christians did not believe that there would be a future Apocalypse in which the evil would be destroyed, and the faithful would live on a renewed and recreated earth in their physical bodies, enjoying all the good sensations and healthy pleasures of earthly life, how many of them would cease to be Christians altogether, and just allow themselves to enjoy the sinful pleasures that they so much want to engage in, but don’t because of the threats of eternal torment in hell if they do?
In short, the Bible couldn’t explicitly inform its readers that these prophecies were not meant to be taken literally, because that would have caused not just temporal, but eternal ruin for millions, if not billions, of people who can think only materialistically, and not spiritually.
However, the hints of deeper meanings are scattered throughout the Bible for those whose eyes are open to see them. And those who can think spiritually do see these telltale signs that we are not meant to take everything in the Bible literally, but are meant to look deeper, and see its significance for our spiritual life and our process of spiritual rebirth.
Why couldn’t God write multiple books, or multiple versions of a book, adapted and tailored to materialistic and spiritual-minded people?
Hi World Questioner,
God did: Swedenborg’s writings are adapted and tailored to spiritual-minded people. 😉 And the Qur’an is adapted and tailored to material-minded people. There are plenty of other spiritual books as well, tailored to all sorts of different people. But the Bible is the one book that covers it all.
How do we know that Swedenborg’s writings are a divine revelation and not something manmade? The Bible never prophesies about the coming of anyone like him, does it? There are several verses claimed to prophesy the coming of Muhammad, as said in https://www.gotquestions.org/Muhammad-Bible.html, but let’s not talk about Muhammad but about Swedenborg. He doesn’t seem to fit the description of any of those verses, does he?
Hi World Questioner,
While I have no problem accepting that Jesus was the Prophet to be sent, the Bible passages that the linked GotQuestions page refers to don’t actually say that Jesus was that Prophet. This is typical of fundamentalist and evangelical materials, which point to Bible passages that don’t actually say what they claim they do.
But to your question: The primary way to know whether Swedenborg’s writings are a divine revelation and not something man-made is to test them against the Bible, reason, and experience as Swedenborg himself did. Swedenborg’s key teachings are in accordance with the Bible’s plain statements, whereas the key traditional Nicene Christian teachings are not. See:
Back to the linked article, of course those verses of the Bible don’t prophesy the coming of Mohammad. The Bible is about Judaism and Christianity, not about Islam. Islam has its own holy book, the Qur’an, which is where the people of that religion look to for their teachings and authority.
Swedenborg doesn’t identify himself as the subject of any passages in the Bible, though some of his followers have connected him to John in the book of Revelation. What Swedenborg does do is identify some of his theological writings as the meaning of the male child born to the woman clothed with the sun in Revelation 12:5. See Apocalypse Revealed #543. He says that the male child symbolizes the doctrine of the new church that he (Swedenborg) has written in some of his published writings. However, it’s really the teachings themselves, not the books, that are the meaning of the male child. Still, this is a definite tie-in with the Bible that Swedenborg makes, not about himself, but about his theological writings.
Of course, this is purely symbolic (correspondential), not literal, so literalists will obviously not see any hint of Swedenborg’s writings in that Bible verse.
Perhaps’s divine revelation could have been received much earlier, in antiquity. Parallel to the Bible.
As for the Qur’an being tailored to the materialistic-minded, I have problems with that. For one thing, the Qur’an has many contradictions with the Bible, such as the Qur’an denying the divinity of Christ and rejecting the crucifixion of Jesus.
Hi World Questioner,
The Bible was written the way it was because of the mindset of the people during the time period in which it was written. If something like Swedenborg’s revelation had been given back then, it would have gone right over everyone’s head, and would have been rejected. Even today, the bulk of Christianity is materialistic, and therefore cannot accept the spiritual teachings found in Swedenborg’s writings.
How does contradicting the Bible make the Qur’an not tailored to the materialistic-minded?
Because the Qur’an “Yet they killed him not, nor crucified him” would not give a materialistic meaning of the Bible.
Or I don’t know how to explain it.
Hi World Questioner.
Saying that he wasn’t crucified is just as much on the material level as saying that he was crucified.
But teaching the materialists that Jesus wasn’t crucified? Wouldn’t materialists understand the crucifixion of Jesus.
But what we might say is that materialists wouldn’t understand the divine nature of Jesus taught in the Bible. And the Qur’an denies the divinity of Christ. Materialists understand Jesus as human.
I don’t think the “killed him not” could be understood differently in a spiritual meaning. I don’t think negatives would be understood as something different in a spiritual sense. Positives, sure, but negatives. Negatives are more clear-cut, or however you say it.
Hi World Questioner,
That’s an artificial distinction. A negative can be literal. A negative can also be metaphorical.
If I’m in a verbal battle with you, and I say, “I’m not attacking you,” obviously I’m not referring to literally, materially attacking you, but to verbally, mentally attacking you. The negative is not meant to be taken literally.
Certainly “they killed him not” could be understood spiritually. Physically, they did kill him. But spiritually they didn’t. His body died, but his spirit didn’t. It remained intact, and rose again, now with a new, divine body in place of the physical one that died. The same could be said of “nor crucified him.” If read spiritually, this is saying that even though they crucified his body, they didn’t crucify his soul, which never died. I’m not saying this is what the Qur’an means. I’m saying that it could be read that way—i.e., as having a spiritual meaning.
As for the rest, I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. Yes, the Qur’an denies Christ’s divinity. It is not a Christian text.
What I’m saying is that none of these statements is non-materialistic any more than statements that they did crucify him and kill him are non-materialistic. We can interpret these things spiritually if we want. And Swedenborgians do interpret them spiritually, in addition to their literal meaning. But the statements themselves are about events on the material level.
But the Qur’an made it even more clear with “nor crucified him.”
Hi World Questioner,
Right. As I said, the Qur’an is not a Christian text.
Then why are you saying that the Qur’an was tailored to materialistic-minded people and Swedenborg’s texts to spiritual-minded people? Something that’s like the Bible but tailored to materialistic-minded people shouldn’t say “killed him not, not crucified him.”
Hi World Questioner,
I guess I’m not getting what your point is about the Qur’an saying they didn’t crucify him. What does that have to do with whether or not the Qur’an is tailored to materialistically minded people?
And as far as the Qur’an vs. Swedenborg’s writings, the Qur’an is a book based on rules and laws that the faithful are to obey. That’s a materialistic religion. Not a bad religion. But a low-level one focused on outward behavior in the material world. Swedenborg’s writings, on the other hand, are all about the spiritual world, the spiritual meaning of the Bible, and the rebirth and growth of our spirit, which is our inner self, consisting of our thoughts, motives, loves, ideas, and so on.
But WHY didn’t God literally restore the kingdom of Isreal? WHY won’t God bring a future apocalypse in which evil would be destroyed? What is a good reason for God not to do those? I don’t want just any reason, but a GOOD reason. I challenge God. Is that an example of putting the Lord to the test?
Hi World Questioner,
Shaking your fist at God is a classical thing to do. There’s lots of it in the Prophets and the Psalms. But once you’ve had your fit of pique, it’s time to settle down and readjust your thinking, because it’s very likely that God is right and you’re wrong. 😉
As for your questions, the main reason is that God created us humans to live forever in the spiritual world, not in the material world. Everything in this world is temporary, whereas everything in the spiritual world is eternal. Promising an earthly kingdom that will eventually come to an end pales in comparison to promising a heavenly kingdom that will last forever. In comparison with eternal things, temporary things are not real, because once they come to an end, they no longer exist.
Another reason is that an earthly apocalypse in which evil is destroyed and all the good people in history live together on earth in peace and harmony would mean that this earth can no longer produce new people. According to the biblical literalists’ beliefs, reproduction will come to an end at that time. Essentially, Earth will become sterile, meaning that it will have produced new humans for only a few thousand years (by the literalists’ timeline).
In comparison, if the apocalypse happens in the spiritual world, not in the material world, then this earth can continue producing new human beings, and new angels for heaven, for potentially hundreds of millions of years before its star (the sun) burns through its stock of hydrogen fuel, expands, and renders Earth uninhabitable.
For God, who is infinite, and has infinite capacity for love, which is better:
The physical world would be a much better place if God literally restored the Kingdom of Israel, don’t you think?
You’re making it sound like the physical world is disposable, like trash. To say that there will be no physical literal, restoration of the Kingdom of Israel, that’s saying that the physical Kingdom of Israel is trash that God is disposing of. Couldn’t you say the same for the rest of the kingdom of Israel?
Our physical bodies are trash, aren’t they? Why don’t you say the same be said of the physical world?
I don’t remember if I told you, but I never, EVER ask God rhetorical questions. Every single question I ask God, no matter how rhetorical it sounds, always, ALWAYS expects answers.
Hi World Questioner,
No, this world isn’t trash. It’s the womb. It is where our initial spiritual formation takes place. But once we are born, we don’t go back to the womb. We gestate (really, regenerate) in the material world. Then we are born into the spiritual world, where we live our full, eternal life.
Couldn’t God just create new physical worlds with new races?
Hi World Questioner,
Who’s to say God didn’t do that? We don’t know what’s out there. But as for this world, God already created it, and God didn’t make a mistake. Why would God need a do-over?
You said “it would have lost the entire vast segment of human beings who can think only literally.” But couldn’t God promise that “It will be good. You will be happy”? One answer you might give is that since they don’t know what is really promised, they don’t know if they will agree. any other answers?
Hi World Questioner,
Right. Material-minded people need specific, concrete things to look forward to, not fuzzy, generalized promises. Heck, even spiritual-minded people do better when they have something definite to look forward to.
Why did God say that the kingdom of Israel would be restored? Shouldn’t God have just said that there will be a new kingdom? But this new kingdom won’t be a literal Israel. Because if there is no literal, physical restoration of Israel, then the Kingdom of Israel is never restored, because the fall of Israel was a physical event. Only a new kingdom was formed, that is not Israel.
Hi World Questioner,
This assumes that the primary meaning of the Bible is material. It’s not. The primary meaning of the Bible is spiritual.
But being materialistic-minded (fleshy) is a bad thing. Isn’t it? That’s what you make it sound like. On the other hand, spiritual-minded is good.
Hi World Questioner,
Not necessarily bad. But definitely lower level than being spiritual-minded.
There plenty of ordinary blue-collar types who don’t particularly think spiritually, but are good people who devote their lives to serving others in practical ways from a good heart. They’re just ordinary “salt of the earth” types, and there are billions of ’em on this earth. Not bad. Just not particularly spiritual.
OTOH, there are people who devote their lives to acquiring and amassing material wealth and pleasures, or material-world power, and don’t care who they step on to get it, or even enjoy stepping on other people in their climb to the top. These are the bad sort of materialistic-minded people.
What is a good reason for there to not be a literal return of Jesus? Also, what is a good reason for Jesus to only choose to appear to some people and not to all? And why did Jesus have to ascend to his father? Why couldn’t he stay down on Earth to rule it and bring peace? Couldn’t Jesus appear at multiple places at once, unlike angels, since he’s the almighty God and therefore his glorified body could be on Earth and in Heaven at the same time?
Hi World Questioner,
To even understand the answers to these questions, you must first understand why Jesus was born in the first place. It wasn’t to satisfy the Father or pay for our sins or any of those things. It was to defeat the power of evil (personified in the Bible as the Devil and Satan), which was grinding us down to spiritual death, and to put on a human side so that we can have a direct, personal relationship with God, and God with us, in the person of Jesus, who is simply God’s human side, not some separate God the Son (a term never used in the Bible) supposedly “born from eternity.”
In simple form, God came to earth as Jesus to:
God’s human side, which we know as Jesus, is also the way God keeps evil (i.e., the Devil or hell) under control forever.
Once you understand all of this (and there’s a lot more to it than just this skeletal summary), the answers to the rest of your questions become clear.
What is a good reason for there to not be a literal return of Jesus?
Because God already did everything required in a literal physical body the first time around. God glorified that human side, Jesus, including Jesus’ physical body, so that it is now a divine humanity, meaning a divine body and presence. There is no need to do it all over again.
Also, what is a good reason for Jesus to only choose to appear to some people and not to all?
First, many people have turned their backs on God. God is not going to appear to them as Jesus because that would force belief, which is contrary to God’s gift to us of freedom and rationality, and which, in the end, would ironically only increase the atheism of atheists and skeptics. Jesus (i.e., God), appears to people when this will have a good eternal effect upon them. For most people, that’s just not the case. Even though they may swear up and down that if Jesus appeared to them, they would believe, or would become a better Christian, for most people that is not the reality. Afterwards, they would quickly fall back into the same life they were living before, because they were not prepared to make the changes in themselves that would be required by a real conversion experience.
And why did Jesus have to ascend to his father?
The Ascension was simply the final step in the Lord’s (Jesus’) humanity becoming fully divine and one with God, so that Jesus Christ is God (not some “third Person” of God). If Jesus did not ascend to the Father, the process would not be complete, and God could not be with us personally as Jesus Christ.
Why couldn’t he stay down on Earth to rule it and bring peace?
Because peace comes, not from following some ruler, but from each of us making a choice for peace. And that is something we must do in our own mind and heart. Consider that God already is the ruler of everything. Why, then, is there not already peace on our earth? Because we have rejected peace and chosen greed and lust for power instead. If Jesus were the literal ruler of the earth, it would not be any different. That’s why he steadfastly refused to be set up as an earthly king. Pay attention to what he says about this. He had good reasons for being unwilling to be an earthly king. If he had wanted that, he could have had it the first time around. But he didn’t want it, because no earthly ruler can change people’s hearts.
Couldn’t Jesus appear at multiple places at once, unlike angels, since he’s the almighty God and therefore his glorified body could be on Earth and in Heaven at the same time?
Jesus does appear in multiple places at once. Except it happens spiritually, to people’s spiritual eyes, not literally in a physical location. People all over the world can have a vision of Christ, or an encounter with Jesus. Millions of people can have that experience all at once, precisely because Jesus is God, and God is present everywhere, in all times and places, without being temporal and spatial himself. Jesus is God. And God is present everywhere. We simply have to open our eyes and our heart to see Jesus’ presence with us.
But why did they try to make Jesus an earthly king? Was that based on Old Testament prophecies? Did the Old Testament really promise that the kingdom of Israel would be restored? Then God seems to have made an empty promise, at least in the Jews’ eyes.
Rather than figurative in saying that it would restore the Kingdom of Israel, I think a better idea is that the Law and the Prophets should have promised a “new kingdom,” not necessarily a kingdom that will be Israel. Then the Israelites wouldn’t be set up for false expectations. They wouldn’t expect an Earthly king, and wouldn’t try to make Jesus king of the Earth.
A “new kingdom” is more ambiguous than “restore the kingdom of Israel,” but still understandable and appealing enough.
Hi World Questioner,
Well, maybe you should have been the one in charge of writing the Bible, not God. 😛
Realistically, if the Bible had used weasel words like that, people would most likely have just rejected and ignored it. Materialistic people want material results. If they’re not promised material results, they’ll walk.
Even in the Gospels, many of Jesus’ followers clearly expected that as the promised Messiah, he would restore the literal kingdom of Israel, and rule it as a literal king. This belief continued even after his crucifixion. Even though Jesus had steadfastly avoided becoming an earthly king during his lifetime, many people who had followed him and lived alongside him and heard his teaching still didn’t get it.
Why?
Precisely because material-minded people think materially, and they expect material results. Even if the Bible had promised “a new kingdom,” they would interpret it in exactly the same way: as a literal, earthly kingdom ruled by a literal, earthly king.
That’s not what God’s kingdom is. But if a certain segment of the population doesn’t think that’s what God’s kingdom is, they’ll reject the Bible and Jesus Christ altogether, and attach themselves to some other religion that promises them an earthly kingdom. Witness all the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who to this day, despite Jesus explicit statement that his kingdom is not of this world, still think Jesus is going to return and establish an earthly kingdom. How much clearer could Jesus have been? But such people simply can’t hear and understand those words. Anything God says, they’ll turn into something earthly and materialistic. In this case, they’ll say Jesus meant his kingdom is not of the world of that time, but of the world of a later time. Which is not what he said, but that’s how they commonly read it.
Instead of attempting to disabuse them of their materialism, which would be a quixotic effort, God harnesses their materialism to get them to at least follow the Ten Commandments and live a decent life, which is a life that leads to heaven. Once they die and move on to the spiritual world, angels can teach them the real meaning of God’s kingdom. And since heaven is God’s kingdom (as well as the worldwide community of people on earth who follow God’s ways), they actually will be living in the promised kingdom of God. It will simply be in the spiritual world rather than being in the material world.
In other words, the Bible isn’t lying to us. It’s just that it’s talking about spiritual things, not about material things.
Why didn’t the Old Testament prophecy that the kingdom would not be of this world?
Hi World Questioner,
Because if it did, the people of that time would have rejected it, and we wouldn’t even have the Bible today.
Why did they still ask Jesus if he would restore the kingdom of Israel, even after the resurrection? Couldn’t they have considered that it was a prophecy of Jesus’ second coming and not his first? Why didn’t they consider the possibility that Jesus would restore the Kingdom of Israel in his second coming?
Hi World Questioner,
Even after Jesus’ resurrection, his disciples still didn’t get it. It was only with Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them that they fully realized that it was a spiritual kingdom, not a literal kingdom, that Jesus came to establish.
Then why doesn’t the Bible attach “ruach” or “pneumatikos” to the Hebrew or Greek word for “kingdom”? Whatever the Hebrew and Greek words are? The Old and New Testaments?
Hi World Questioner,
Probably because the Bible speaks mostly in concrete terms to reach people who are mostly worldly-minded, and leaves it to people who are spiritual-minded to recognize that it’s really talking about spiritual things.
Also, couldn’t Jesus’ divine body emit physical light if it wanted to? Couldn’t he choose to appear to a camera or on live stream if he wanted to?
Don’t spiritual locations seem to correspond to physical locations? Why did God make it appear to the disciples that Jesus is in one physical location after his resurrection and before his ascent? I mean not physically, but spiritually in that location, or in other words in a spiritual location that maps/corresponds to that physical location. You know what I mean? Why not have them see another world when they see Jesus with their spiritual eyes? A world that looks different than the Earth? Or I don’t know. Spiritual world seems to be parallel to the physical world, with things in the spiritual world corresponding to the physical world. The Earth seems to have a spiritual and a physical component.
Also, why can’t cameras have a spiritual and physical component? Why can’t cameras have spiritual lenses so that spiritual objects can be photographed? Spiritual as well as physical lenses? Not eyes, but lenses?
Hi World Questioner,
On your last question: Because our cameras are made of physical materials, not spiritual ones. And physical materials cannot detect spiritual things; only physical ones.
On your first question, I think Jesus’ divine body probably could emit physical light if he wanted it to. And maybe it did. Maybe his followers saw him with their physical eyes after his resurrection. The Bible doesn’t inform us about this. But it does say that he appeared and disappeared, which isn’t the sort of thing physical bodies do. And it mentions his followers seeing him, but it never mentions others seeing him, which is why I tend to believe that they saw him with their spiritual eyes, even if it was superimposed on their usual material world. But I could be wrong about this. It’s not a critical point. Just an interesting side issue.
As for the rest, yes, physical locations correspond to spiritual locations, and vice versa. Even if the encounters with Jesus after his resurrection happened entirely in the spiritual world, the people he appeared to might not have noticed a difference, because the spiritual world can look exactly like the physical world. That’s not how I think it happened, but it could have happened that way.
As for seeing another world, I believe this is precisely what happened to John in the visions he received while he was exiled to the island of Patmos, as recorded in the book of Revelation. There is a refrain that he was “in the spirit” and that “the heavens opened up to him” repeated throughout the book. From a spiritual and Swedenborgian perspective, what this means is that he saw all those things happening in the spiritual world, not in the physical world. And there in the spiritual world, as recorded in the first chapter of Revelation, he saw Christ in glorified form.
In this case one of them did see another world when he saw Christ. It’s just that literalist/materialist Christians’ spiritual eyes are closed, so they don’t notice the obvious reality that this entire vision took place in the spiritual world.
Why did the New Testament even promise that Jesus would return? Couldn’t the authors clarify, so that future Christians including fundamentalists are not set up for false expectations?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, there are promises of Jesus’ return, though some of them probably referred to the Day of Pentecost as recorded in Acts 2. However, the book of Revelation, and the “little apocalypses” in the late chapters of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, seem to be talking about a future return, not an imminent one.
And once again, if fundamentalists didn’t believe in a literal return of Christ, they would fall away from their faith altogether, and that would not be a good thing.
Why doesn’t everyone see Jesus in his full divine body today? I’m not saying a physical body. What is a good reason why many people don’t see Jesus in his full divine body today?
“Every eye will see him” wouldn’t that mean every eye of the living? Every eye of all those on Earth? Every eye of those in the physical world, not necessarily every physical eye?
Some might interpret “every eye” including both physical and spiritual. But perhaps it’s talking about spiritual eyes. Then why doesn’t it use the Greek word pneumatikos? Does the Bible ever use the Greek phrase for “spiritual eyes”? Pneumatikos is Greek for “spiritual.” What’s the Greek word? I don’t think it’s optic, because I think that’s Latin. Can you look up the Greek word?
Hi World Questioner,
Most people don’t see Jesus because they’re not looking to see Jesus. And even if they are, most people are either looking for the wrong reasons, or they’re looking with their physical eyes, from a materialistic mindset, which is not a mindset that can see Jesus.
As for “every eye will see him,” that’s what this article is all about:
How Can Every Eye See Jesus When He Returns? Is the Earth Flat?
Why doesn’t God just force their spiritual eyes open? Or whatever. If they see Jesus with their spiritual eyes, even if they weren’t seeking to but were seeking with their physical eyes…
Hi World Questioner,
Primarily, because God is love, and love doesn’t force anyone to do anything. Rather, it invites and urges people.
But also, because anything forced on us does not become a permanent part of us. It comes from outside, not from inside, so it is extraneous to us, and never becomes a part of our character. That’s the point of the old saying, “He who’s convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”
Oh! Optos is Greek. Why doesn’t the New Testament use “optos pneumatikos”?
Hi World Questioner,
You’re losing me. Why would the New Testament talk about the broiled spirit?
What do you mean broiled spirit? Isn’t optos the Greek word for “eye”? So wouldn’t “optos pneumatikos” mean “spiritual eyes”?
Hi World Questioner,
No, as seen at the link in my previous reply, optos in Greek means “broiled.” The word for “eye” is ὀφθαλμός (ophthalmos).
Beyond that, it’s best not to try to carry present-day English expressions into biblical Greek. It’s not only a different language, but is connected to a different time and culture. People then didn’t think or express themselves the same way we do today. Better to pay attention to what the Bible actually does say than to try to figure out what it should say.
Thanks for the correction. Why doesn’t the New Testament ever contain the phrase Ophthalmos pneumatikos
Hi World Questioner,
Who knows? It just doesn’t. Maybe because the Bible is more focused on getting us to heaven than on what heaven is like. Maybe because there was no well-developed concept of the spiritual body at the time. Paul is the only New Testament writer that mentions it, and he’s clearly not all that clear even on what it is, let alone getting into details such as its eyes and eyesight.
If Jesus stayed on Earth to rule it, I’m sure there’d be the same kind of peace that’s described in Revelation about the Millennium.
Hi World Questioner,
Would Jesus staying on Earth to rule it magically turn all the selfish, greedy, evil people on earth into angels of light?
How would it be any different from the Millennium described in Revelation?
Hi World Questioner,
I asked you first.
I don’t know how to answer. I want you to answer it. Maybe not magically, but there’d be a rule to bring order. How would it be different from the Millennium described in Revelation? Revelation says there will be a thousand years of peace, right? If Jesus stayed on Earth rather than leave it for thousands of years, how would it be any different?
We don’t need a President of the United States, we need a king, specifically Jesus. Ruling the whole planet as one kingdom.
Another question, why can’t all Bible prophecies be fulfilled literally? What is a good reason?
Hi World Questioner,
What I’m saying is that even if Jesus came, evil people would continue to be evil. Having a good king doesn’t make all the people good.
And I suppose Bible prophecies could be fulfilled literally, but why? The Bible is about our spiritual life, not about our earthly life.
Jesus restored the kingdom of Israel and is the king of Israel from a certain point of view. Not Earthly, but Heavenly. The problem? Why doesn’t Jesus communicate verbally with his people the way David and Solomon did? I’m sure if Jesus stayed on Earth to rule Israel, he would have returned it to the state it was in the time of Solomon. He wouldn’t turn away from God like Solomon, neither would he sin like David. Wouldn’t Jesus bring Israel to peace the way David and Solomon did? Israel would be strong, and no nation would dare attack it.
World Questioner,
And who would populate this kingdom? Where would he get all those uncorrupted people who would follow him perfectly and not corrupt things through the pursuit of money and power the way every nation on earth today is doing?
Perhaps Israel could become a global kingdom. Wouldn’t Jesus bring the world to peace the way David and Solomon brought Israel to peace?
Hi World Questioner,
If Jesus could just snap his fingers and bring world peace, he would have already done so.
You said “Because God already did everything required in a literal physical body the first time around. God glorified that human side, Jesus, including Jesus’ physical body, so that it is now a divine humanity, meaning a divine body and presence. There is no need to do it all over again.” – then why did Jesus say he would return, even though his “work is finished” on Earth? Apparently that’s not the reason.
Hi World Questioner,
The work Jesus came to do in a physical, human body on earth was finished. But his work for saving people was not finished. That continues to this day. And since that is spiritual work, it makes sense that the Lord’s second coming would not be a physical one, but a spiritual one.
Then shouldn’t we see Jesus’ full divine body with our spiritual eyes? While we are on Earth? Jesus is on the Earth spiritually, not physically, shouldn’t that mean the spiritual plane? Or however you explain it.
As long as our spiritual eyes are open?
Did the 12 disciples really think they were seeing Jesus with their physical eyes? Did they not know they were seeing Jesus with their spiritual eyes?
“The same way you saw him go into Heaven.” Which was with his full divine body.
Hi World Questioner,
Are your spiritual eyes open? Can you see things in the spiritual world? For most of us, the answer to these questions is “No.” We should not expect to see Jesus walking around when only our physical eyes are open, and we see only the things in the physical world.
However, many people do have their spiritual eyes opened briefly, and see Jesus. I know people who have seen Jesus. This does happen. But it’s a unusual event because most people these days focused entirely on material things and the physical world, which means only their physical eyes are open, not their spiritual eyes.
Just to be clear, it is somewhat speculative on my part that Jesus’ followers saw him with their spiritual eyes when he appeared to them after the Resurrection. It’s possible that they saw him with their physical eyes. This just seems less likely to me, in part because a careful reading of the post-Resurrection accounts in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament suggests that he was seen only by followers, and not by the general public. This makes it sound like they saw him with their spiritual eyes, because if he were visible to people’s physical eyes, other people should have been able to see him, too. But still, this is just my thought and speculation, not something that’s part of some teaching somewhere.
As far as what eyes the disciples and his other followers thought they were seeing him with, it’s highly likely that they had no clear idea of the distinction between the physical and the spiritual realms, especially in these early days right after Jesus’ resurrection. Keep in mind that they had only been on this new path of discipleship for about three years. That’s not long enough to thoroughly make the transition to a whole new way of thinking.
In other words, the question of whether they saw the post-Resurrection Jesus with their physical eyes or their spiritual eyes is probably not something that would have occurred to them to ask, or even think about.
It’s possible that you’re right. That we need to think spiritually. It was worth my materialistic ideas of reconciling evolution with the Bible, though. But I learn. I make moves to open my spiritual eyes. I do ask God to help me to think spiritually.
Hi World Questioner,
It’s good to think hard about various possibilities and claimants to the truth. That’s the only way to ultimately satisfy yourself as to what actually is the truth. Give the various positions their best possible interpretation and application, and see if they correspond to reality. If they do, then they’re worth believing. If they don’t, then they must be discarded. This is a characteristic of scientific method, but it can also be applied as a supporting method of analysis for spiritual claims and ideas.
My contention is that materialistic ideas ultimately do not correspond to reality, nor do materialistic interpretations of the Bible. If you seriously and deeply explore and investigate these things, I think you will come to the same conclusion, especially if you do ask God to help you think spiritually—which is a good thing.
Read the beginning of John chapter 1. The disciples recognized Jesus as the king of Israel. Why didn’t Jesus correct them?
Hi World Questioner,
I presume you are referring to this verse:
First of all, that is not “the disciples,” but one man who was about to become a disciple: Nathanael. Most of the others probably thought similarly. But it’s best not to jump to conclusions. It seems unlikely to me that John, in particular, thought of Jesus’ kingdom as an earthly one. His Gospel focuses much more on the spiritual and philosophical elements of Jesus’ words and teaching.
Second, take a look at what Jesus says next:
Does that sound to you as if Jesus is talking about an earthly kingdom?
Oops! I meant the last half of John chapter 1. Also, read John 12:12-15.
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, it’s likely that most if not all of the people waving palm branches thought Jesus would become a literal king on the throne of David. That’s why the people were so easily turned against him. When he didn’t seize political power and throw off the shackles of the Roman empire as the Messiah was “supposed” to do, they rejected him, and even called for his death as an impostor.
After the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples asked Jesus when he would restore the Kingdom of Israel? Why didn’t Jesus say “never”? Is it because the 12 Disciples would lose faith? Couldn’t Jesus tell them to think more spiritually, and consider the deeper meaning of Old Testables prophecies?
Hi World Questioner,
In general, God doesn’t tell us what to think, but guides us to think more sensibly, rationally, and spiritually. As Jews, the disciples’ belief in a literal restoration of the Kingdom of Israel was so strong that even after the Crucifixion and Resurrection, they were still talking about it. That’s not the sort of ingrained belief that can just be rooted out by saying, “You’re wrong about that.” Something stronger and greater has to take hold in the minds of people who hold to such beliefs.
That’s the stronger and greater thing that began at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down and rested on the apostles. They only gradually realized that the Lord’s kingdom is a spiritual kingdom. But as they realized this, they spent the rest of their lives preaching the Gospel and building the foundations for that spiritual kingdom. After those initial statements right after Jesus’ resurrection, there is no more about re-establishing a literal kingdom of Israel. It’s all about building God’s kingdom, which is a spiritual kingdom.
Here’s an expressive mapping:
Materialistic-minded people can’t think spiritually. For analogy, in computer architecture and organization, the processor doesn’t know high-level languages like Python, it only knows machine code. As such, materialistic minded not being able to perceive the spiritual is like processor not knowing Python, or Java, or any high-level language. An interpreter or just-in-time compiler needs to be involved.
Hi World Questioner,
Right. The computer doesn’t know what it’s doing. It just blindly does what the program instructs it to do. Materialistic people are programmed by their (fallen) spiritual nature, but they don’t realize it. They just act on their desires and ideas, not knowing where they come from or where they lead to, or even why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Luke’s genealogy is more strategic than chronological. Matthew’s genealogy seems more concrete.
Hi World Questioner,
Really? If anything, I’d say it’s the opposite. Matthew’s is clearly “strategic,” to use your term, given his closing summation:
It’s just too neat and tidy that there would be exactly fourteen generations in each of three segments. And in fact, he had to leave out a few in order to get to such an even number. As such, it’s clear that his interest was not in historical or scriptural accuracy.
Did you see https://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-genealogy.html?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, I’ve seen it. They might as well just say, “Heck if we know why the two genealogies are different!” I find it fascinating that GotQuestions doesn’t even claim to know what the answer is to this problem.
But it won’t budge them from their literalistic and materialistic interpretation of Scripture. “We don’t know the answer, but the genealogies are definitely meant to be taken literally!”
What about https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/why-are-jesus-genealogies-in-matthew-and-luke-different? That’s pretty similar to the GotQuestions article. Levirate marriage?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
At least it doesn’t go for the idea that Luke’s genealogy is traced through Mary, not Joseph, even though it clearly says otherwise.
It also dismisses the second hypothesis about one being a dynastic succession and the other a biological genealogy, which doesn’t make much sense either.
Finally, it neither confirms nor denies the levirate marriage idea, which is pure speculation.
Bottom line: There still isn’t a solid and satisfying explanation for people who take the genealogies literally.
What about the “As was supposed” in Luke 3:23? Was that in the original Greek?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, it’s in the original Greek. The idea is that Jesus was considered to be the son of Joseph, but he wasn’t actually the son of Joseph.
Another search query: https://www.desiringgod.org/search/results?utf8=✓&q=Luke+3%3A23+contradiction#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Luke%203%3A23%20Matthew%20contradiction
I don’t see any deeper meaning of the genealogies from Adam to Noah or Noah to Abraham. These genealogies seem and feel more informative than the rest of the book of Genesis.
Hi World Questioner,
Swedenborg explains the spiritual meaning of all the genealogies in Genesis. It’s all in Secrets of Heaven, his massive commentary on the books of Genesis and Exodus. You can read it for yourself any time you wish.
Incidentally, Jesus himself confounds the present-day literalists by rejecting the idea that the Messiah is the son of David, in the very Gospel that John Piper thinks has a genealogy intended to show that Jesus is the rightful heir to David’s throne:
Both Matthew’s genealogy and Luke’s genealogy trace Jesus’ ancestry through Joseph. But as both of these Gospels make clear, Jesus was not the son of Joseph, but the son of God. And Jesus himself says that he, the Messiah, is not the son of David.
Clearly, when Jesus is called “the son of David,” this is not meant to be taken literally, because Jesus himself denies that he is the son of David.
But the literalists ignore all this, including ignoring Jesus’ own words, in their zeal to interpret everything in the Bible according to the flesh that kills instead of according to the spirit that gives life. They are trying desperately to make Jesus literally the son of David and heir to David’s literal throne when Jesus himself says that this is not true. He even told Pilate, who had asked him whether he is a king, that “my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
But the literalists just keep on ignoring Jesus’ own words in their zeal to establish their own human traditions in place of the word of God.
The Hebrew and Greek words for “son” can also mean “male descendant.” When Jesus denied being the “son of david” in the verses you quoted, was that the same Greek word?
The Hebrew and Greek words for “father” can also mean “male ancestor.”
Hi World Questioner,
Obviously the Messiah would not be a first-generation son of David. All of David’s sons are listed in the genealogies of the Bible, and Jesus is not one of them. The Messiah would be separated from David by many generations. Clearly the Messiah would be “the son of David” in the sense of “a male descendant of David.” That’s exactly what Jesus was saying he wasn’t.
And yes, the word used in Matthew 22:41–45 is υἱός (huios), which is the common Greek word for “son.”
In the sense that Jesus is God and the Son of God?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes. “The Son of God” in New Testament Greek is “θεοῦ υἱὸς.” God is θεός (theos), here in the genitive (possessive) case. The word order is reversed compared to English, but it means the same thing.
Is Jesus denying being the biological descendant of David? Or does it just mean that God is the father of his true self and that his true self is not the Son of David? His human form is not his true self.
Which does the Greek mean?
Hi World Questioner,
The Greek in that passage doesn’t get into all these technical and theological niceties. Really, Jesus’ words are rather cryptic. But his meaning is clear enough.
The Gospels do deny that Jesus is the biological descendant of David via Joseph—which is how both Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’ genealogy back to David. The Gospel writers could not have been so unaware of what they were writing as not to recognize that these genealogies did not make Jesus a biological descendant of David. Both Matthew and Luke say very clearly that Jesus was the son of God, not the son of Joseph. Jesus’ own words here are just another way of saying the same thing: that he, the Messiah or Christ, is not a biological descendant of David.
The Gospels don’t say what Mary’s lineage is. Biblical literalists have tried to shoehorn her into the lineage of David, since that would get them out of their self-imposed requirement that Jesus must be a biological descendant of David. Never mind that kingly genealogies in ancient Israel were traced through the male line, not the female line.
Given that Mary’s relative Elizabeth was a descendant of Aaron, of the tribe of Levi, (see Luke 1:5, 36) it is more likely that Mary was also from the tribe of Levi. However, we just don’t know for sure what tribe Mary came from, or whether she was a descendant of David through any of her lineages. The Gospels don’t tell us.
In short, there is no sound biblical basis for Jesus being a biological descendant of David. If the Gospel writers intended to present Jesus as a biological descendant of David, they did a very poor job of it. Clearly, they had no intention of presenting Jesus as a biological descendant of David.
Any historical, extra-Biblical evidence that Jesus was from the lineage of David?
Hi World Questioner,
That is beyond my area of expertise. The main point here is that the Bible itself does not present Jesus as a biological descendant of David. Compared to that, what any historical, extra-biblical evidence might say is relatively unimportant.
If Jesus was not a literal, biological descendent, why wouldn’t the opponents have hurled at his face? They were seeking any possible way to discredit him, weren’t they? So why would they not bring up the fact that Jesus was not a literal, biological descendent of David, either through Mary or Joseph, if it was true?
All of Jesus’ trials and all of the confrontations with religious leaders, why did no one ever question Jesus’ credentials? Did the early church ever doubt it?
You’re assuming that the Bible story is complete and accurate. Doesn’t the Bible say to seek the truth and the truth will set you free. Well, if the Bible was the truth, the whole truth, why would have to seek the truth. You would just rely on the Bible as you have done.
Hi chicagoja,
Most of the truth in the Bible is clothed in figurative language. It is necessary to seek it because it is hidden within the stories and parables of the Bible.
However, there is enough truth provided plainly in the Bible to teach us what we must do to believe and live in a way that leads to eternal life.
Hi World Questioner,
Since they rejected him as Messiah, and sentenced him to death, it’s pretty clear that the Jewish leadership did deny that he was a legitimate successor to David.
I’m talking about Jesus’ genealogical credentials. I forgot to put the word “genealogical.” You’d think that some people would specifically question Jesus’ genealogical credentials.
Hi World Questioner,
Those who rejected him as the Messiah didn’t bother with genealogies. They attacked him on other grounds, as a false teacher, and as a blasphemer who claimed to be God. In Hebrew belief, the Messiah is not God come to earth, but is a human being in the line of David.
But they didn’t specifically question his genealogical credentials, like whether he was a biological descendant of David. Did they?
Hi World Questioner,
There is nothing to that effect recorded in the Gospels or in the rest of the New Testament.
Hi World Questioner,
Having said that, I really doubt there is any such evidence. The New Testament itself represents the most well-preserved manuscripts we have documenting the lives of Jesus and his followers. Anything else would be less reliable anyway.
Was Luke unaware of what Matthew wrote in chapter 1 verse 6-16? Was Matthew unaware of what Luke wrote in chapter 3 verses 23-31?
Luke 3:23 doesn’t say “son of Heli.” It just says “of Heli,” and so on, depending on what Bible version you read. The word “son” is not in the Greek, is it? I think the only part of the genealogy that contains the Greek word for son is “son (as was supposed) of Joseph.”
Hi World Questioner,
My understand (which is far from comprehensive or expert) is that Matthew and Luke drew on a common source related to the Gospel of Mark, but wrote their Gospels independently of each other. Given that Mark doesn’t have a genealogy, presumably Matthew and Luke drew on different sources to construct at least some parts of their respective genealogies.
At any rate, if one of them did know about the other’s Gospel, it didn’t seem critical to make sure that the genealogies matched.
I wouldn’t make too much of the lack of “son of” in Luke’s genealogy. This is just standard literary shorthand. The intent is clear. Genealogies are all about one entry being son of the next entry up on the tree. Nobody would have been confused by Luke’s way of indicating this.
John doesn’t have a genealogy either, does it?
Hi World Questioner.
No. Only Matthew and Luke.
But in the Codex Sinaiticus, the column for Luke’s genealogy of Jesus has a lot of whitespace, whereas most of the rest columns fill up the space. There’s plenty of room for the writers to write the Greek word for son (I think Huios) if they wanted to.
Hi World Questioner,
Though I haven’t looked at it, presumably the Codex Sinaiticus formats the genealogy in chart form. I doubt that’s how the original manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke were written. Early Greek manuscripts are generally written as a continuous stream of letters, without even any spaces between the words.
Regardless, it’s not about formatting. It’s about style. Leaving out “son” in the rest of the genealogy makes for a more compact and less tedious genealogy. It focuses on the important thing, which is the names, without continually repeating the obvious word “son,” which is implied in a genealogy anyway.
My friend gave me this: https://religionspiritualphilosophy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_0950-1-1.jpg
He happens to use the Brave browser, which is good, but that’s an entirely different topic for an entirely different post or comment to it.
Hi World Questioner,
If what you’re driving at is that maybe this was one of those complicated things where it was a levirate marriage or some such thing, such an idea strains credulity. If that had been Luke’s intent, he would have stated it explicitly, since this would have been unusual and out of the norm for a genealogy. Since he simply proceeded without making any special notation about something unusual in this genealogy, we can be quite confident that he meant exactly what any casual reader would assume he meant, which was that Joseph was the natural and biological son of Heli.
Was one or both of the genealogies like a myth or folklore?
Hi World Questioner,
They were both intended to establish Jesus’ status as having a claim to being the Messiah because he has a connection with the Israelites’ great King David. There’s more to it than that, of course, but that’s the basic idea.
That reminds me of Matthew 19:17. That’s a verse that I’m sure is commonly quoted by Muslims as denying the divinity of Christ. Matthew 19:17 is commonly misinterpreted as meaning that Jesus is not perfect/good. But in actuality, Jesus means more like “Why do you call me good, if I’m not God?” Or “If you don’t think I’m God?” because the person who said “good teacher” didn’t know they were talking to God Incarnate. Couldn’t Matthew 22:41-46 be interpreted in the same way as Matthew 19:17 should be interpreted? Don’t read too much into the questions.
Hi World Questioner,
Matthew 19:17 is a Rorschach blot test. People who deny Jesus’ divinity see, “Obviously Jesus isn’t God because he says only God is good.” People who accept Jesus’ divinity see, “Obviously Jesus is God because he says only God is good.”
Your suggestion of how to read it is how I’ve long read it.
As for Matthew 22:41–46, it is quite clear that Jesus is saying that he, the Messiah, is not the son of David. Only figuratively is he the son of David, not literally.
If the first 11 chapters of Genesis were meant to be a parable or allegory, then I don’t feel that the genealogies would be necessary. The genealogies would only be necessary if they are to be informative.
Hi World Questioner,
The genealogies are informative even if they are metaphorical rather than literal. They metaphorically describe a whole series of spiritual and cultural changes that early human society went through.
As a present-day analog, think of boomers, millennials, Gen X, Gen Y, and so on. These are names for whole generations of people, each with its own distinct character and culture, but each also being a continuation of and development from the previous generations.
I still feel they wouldn’t be necessary if they were metaphorical and not historical.
Hi World Questioner,
And yet, Swedenborg provides a detailed explanation of the spiritual meaning of every genealogy in the book of Genesis.
I’m not talking about the genealogy of Jesus in particular. I’m talking about the genealogies from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Abraham.
Hi World Questioner,
The genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke also have a spiritual meaning. That’s why it doesn’t really matter if they are literally accurate, or even if they conflict with one another.
In fact, the very fact that those two genealogies conflict with one another, and that for two thousand years no one has come up with a satisfying explanation based on a literal reading of them, strongly suggests that they are not meant to be taken literally. Why else would God allow such a glaring contradiction into the Word of God?
It still seems unnecessary for God to allow contradictions in the Bible.
Can you reply to my other comments on the other posts? Are they coming in fast again?
Maybe Luke 3:23 is about Jesus’ spiritual ancestors while Matthew 1:1-17 is about Jesus’ physical ancestors.
The genealogies from Adam to Noah and Noah to Abraham in Genesis are spiritual ancestors, are they not? There’s a difference between physical lineage and spiritual lineage, right?
Oops! Not physical ancestors of Jesus, since Jesus was not the biological son of Joseph. Maybe Luke 3:23 is about Jesus’ spiritual ancestors, while Matthew 1:1-17 is about Joseph’s physical ancestors. Maybe Luke 3:23 is the spiritual lineage while Matthew 1:1-17 is physical lineage.
Hi World Questioner,
There is nothing in either genealogy that indicates it is anything other than a physical genealogy of Joseph.
Check out https://infogalactic.com/info/Genealogy_of_Jesus#Maternal_ancestry_in_Luke. Jair was the son of Manasseh’s granddaughter. Also read the rest of the article, and give some remarks.
Hi World Questioner,
The article does a good job of analyzing the two different genealogies against each other and the biblical record, and summarizing the various arguments about why Matthew and Luke give diverging genealogies for Jesus.
However, the whole exercise is a testament to the fact that all the people engaged in this argument are reading the Bible from a materialistic and literalistic perspective. They are missing the spiritual point of the Bible.
Jesus himself denied the Davidic ancestry of the Messiah, as I’ve pointed out in previous replies to you. But these literalists blithely continue trying to make Jesus into a biological, or at least adoptive, king in the Davidic dynasty.
The reality is that David’s dynasty ended with Jehoiachin. After that, records get sketchy to nonexistent. If there had been a clear lineage up to Jesus, Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies would have been the same from David to Jesus. But they trace the lineage through two different sons of David, one of them (Nathan, through whom Luke traces Jesus’ lineage) being hardly mentioned at all in the Old Testament, and very obscure. No one has ever been able to figure out Luke’s sources for his dynasty, and even Matthew’s rests on a very shaky foundation.
But neither Matthew nor Luke was concerned about whether this was an actual, correct biological lineage. Neither were the early Christians, or they would have argued about it from the get-go. They were concerned with the spiritual message of the Gospel. The lineage was more symbolic than biological. It was a message that Jesus could be accepted as the spiritual successor to David.
In short, reading the Bible in general, and the genealogies in particular, literally will only lead to endless speculation and argumentation—as it in fact has. But reading them spiritually, meaning reading the lineage as a series of steps from the spiritual state of the Jews at the time of David to their state at the time of the birth of the Messiah, yields a coherent narrative. Each genealogy tells a different variation on the same story, which is all the changes that the “church,” or the body of the faithful on earth, went through in the long journey from David to Jesus.
What about http://www.kennethgentry.com/as-it-is-written-book/?
Hi World Questioner,
What about it? Of course, creationists are going to defend their literalistic reading of Scripture.
When I posted a comment linking to your blog post, he removed the link to your blog post but kept the rest of the comment.
Hi World Questioner,
What a surprise! 😀
I am thinking of posting a comment on http://postmillennialworldview.com/2024/04/26/genesis-proves-postmillennialism/ and linking to https://leewoof.org/2013/07/02/the-bible-literal-inerrancy-vs-divine-depths-of-meaning/. But you say “You won’t convince him.” Maybe children need to be exposed to a variety of religious sources as they grow up, and exposed to them early. Then their hearts wouldn’t be so hard as academics. Expose children to a variety Seventh-Day Adventist, Evangelical, Fundamental Baptist, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Messianic Jewish, and Swedenborgian and such sources. And expose the children to the best variety early. Then they wouldn’t be stuck on false doctrines. And ask them to compare doctrines to the Bible.
Hi World Questioner,
No, you’re not going to convince him. He’s written books about this stuff. Both his faith and his reputation is founded on believing that the world was created in six literal days. It would take a massive cataclysm in his life for him to even consider changing his mind.
Hi Word Questioner,
Some people do expose their children to all different religious faiths. It can be a good thing. But it can also lead to confusion. Personally, I’m glad I was brought up with a single faith that makes sense.
Never be a prisoner to your own denomination. Swedenborgians shouldn’t all have to believe the same things, neither should Seventh-Day Adventists or fundamental Baptists or any other denomination. Never be a prisoner to the doctrines of your own denomination.
Hi World Questioner,
I don’t agree with my denomination about everything. I don’t even agree with Swedenborg about everything. But as for being a “prisoner,” if I ever found anything else that seemed better than what I now believe, I would be happy to move to something better. However, for decades now, starting all the way back in high school in the 1970s, I have looked at all sorts of different religious and spiritual beliefs. So far, I haven’t come across anything that even comes close to what I already have. Swedenborg’s teachings are orders of magnitude greater than anything else I’ve ever encountered.
What about http://gloriouschurch.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-waw-conjunctions-of?
Hi World Questioner,
Once people realize that these stories are symbolic, not literal, they won’t have to waste their time haggling about the precise meaning of a particular Hebrew letter in various contexts.
If the first 11 chapters of Genesis were not meant to be taken literally, then why was it written like history, and not like myth as the Epic of Gilgamesh and Enuma Elish were?
Hi World Questioner,
Why indeed was Moby Dick written as a story, a narrative, as if all these things actually happened? People have been writing metaphorical stories in the forms of histories and personal narratives for thousands of years. We like stories. We like histories. And so we put even metaphorical writings in the form of stories and histories.
Doesn’t Genesis use the term “fountains of the great deep” and “subterranean water”? Those sound like scientific terms, specifically of geology. Why would God use such scientific terms in a story that was meant to be about spiritual matters and not material or physical events?
Hi World Questioner,
I don’t think any contemporary scientist would be caught dead writing “fountains of the great deep.” This is obviously poetic, not scientific language. “Subterranean water” is an alternate translation of the same Hebrew words. It is less poetic, and less reflective of the Hebrew words, but sounds more contemporary and scientific. The Hebrew itself is clearly poetic. Making it sound scientific instead is a poor representation of the original.
It’s better to lose salary than to lose faith.
It’s better to lose salary than continue to accept false doctrine, right?
Hi World Questioner,
If there’s a conflict between two yes. But if people are doing honest work in an honest profession, there is no conflict between salary and faith.
I do not like academics.
I’m referring to when you say “You won’t convince him.”
Hi World Questioner,
Swedenborg didn’t have much use for academics either, even though he himself was an intellectual. He was offered a professorship in Mathematics at Uppsala University when he was in his mid-30s, but he turned it down, saying that he preferred the more practical work of his position on the Swedish Board of Mines. It should be said, though, that he also gave his stutter as a reason for turning it down. Public speaking was not his thing.
Great article which reflects what many thinking Christians regard as the reality, but are often afraid to express. I think that there is a good case for differentiating sections of the Bible: the Old testament; the Gospels; the letters; and revelations, and putting each into context. The Old Testament should not be viewed literally since there are many questions about its origins etc. The gospels should be viewed exactly as they are…accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus written within a few decades of his death. The letters – good advice from a great Christian. Revelations-did they have LSD in those days?
As I explain in my book “Aware of Aware”, all of these are the writings of men, none are technically the word of God. If you believe the Gospels are relatively accurate, and you believe the claim of Jesus, that he was God in the flesh, then the true words of God are the words he says.
It is a huge mistake of the modern church to insist that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and articles like yours help to shed light on how this incredible book should be viewed.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for your thoughts.
I do see the Bible as the Word of God, but not as “inerrant”–something the Bible never claims for itself. The idea that the Bible is literally true and inerrant throughout is a relatively modern invention of Christian theologians who missed the great depth and variety of the various books of the Bible.
As I say in the article above, God is a better author than even the best human authors. God is able to convey more depths of meaning through the words on the page than any human author ever has or ever will do. This does not require that we take everything literally. In fact, taking everything literally causes us to miss much of God’s message in the Bible. Many passages–such as the entire book of Revelation–are clearly meant to be taken symbolically, not literally. Others, such as the Creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2, may seem to be about literal events, but were never meant to be taken literally; they use physical imagery to tell about spiritual realities.
I do tend to agree with you that the Gospels are generally accurate representations of what Jesus actually said and did. However, the differences between the various accounts in the four Gospels should warn us against getting too literal even about them. They can be thought of as four variations on how Jesus’ words and actions reached and touched his followers. And they, too, contain great depths of divine meaning throughout.
Some books made it into the Protestant Bible that, while they are good books for the church, are not, I think, part of the Word of God proper. The Acts and the Epistles, for example, were written by various early apostles and followers of Jesus. However, they are about human events that took place after and in response to the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ. Unlike the Gospels and Revelation, the Lord Jesus Christ does not speak in them, except very briefly in the Acts 1:1-11–which serves as an introduction to the book, tying it in with the account of Jesus’ life found in the Gospel of Luke. As such, the Acts and Epistles are human books rather than divine ones.
Still, the Acts and the Epistles are immensely valuable for Christians. Though they do not have the same kind of continuous deeper meanings as do the books in the Word of God proper, they contain many good teachings that were and are necessary to clarify and establish Christianity.
In general, the Word of God has both a divine component and a human component. The divine component is the divine truth within, which comes from God. The human component is the outward expression, adapted to the understanding and culture of human beings here on earth. Without a human component, we could not understand it. Without a divine component, it would not be the Word of God, but mere human literature.
The human component does come from human ideas and changing cultural realities, and cannot be supported as literally true and inerrant throughout. But regardless of the literal truth of any particular statement or section of the Word of God, all of it serves as a conduit for deeper, divine truth that flows through the literal words like sunlight through the facets of a cut diamond or ruby.
“Revelations- did they have LSD in those days?” … or DMT.
Hi World Questioner,
There is no mention in the Bible of using psychoactive substances to enter a visionary state.
Ever heard of the Mushroom Jesus theory and the Mass Hallucination theory of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ? The Mass Hallucination theory does not explain the empty tomb, unless combined with the Wrong Tomb hypothesis or the stolen-body hypothesis.
Hi World Questioner,
I’ve heard all sorts of nutty theories about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This one will just have to get in line. 😀
Didn’t I give you a comment somewhere about magic mushrooms and that LSD and DMT are both tryptamines, so that if DMT-induced spiritual experience is valid, then equal validity should be given to LSD-induced spiritual experiences? I might have given it as a reply Garret Weeks’ reply to a post about near-death experiences.
Hi World Questioner,
I’m not sure what you mean by “valid.” There are all sorts of spiritual experiences. Some of them are clear and bright. Others are distorted and dark. Just because someone has a spiritual experience, that doesn’t mean they’ve gotten an accurate picture of the spiritual world. Dreams are spiritual experiences, but they consist of people, objects, and events that are metaphorical rather than literal.
This is so beautifully written, especially this bit: “Focusing only on the literal story of the Bible is like studying the ornamentation on the outside of the chest without ever opening it up to see what’s inside. It is like describing the scientific properties of the crystal in meticulous detail, but never holding it up to the sunlight.”
When you only have space for material fact and illusion, you lose the ability to believe that anything could be inside the chest because you can’t see inside it while it’s closed.
Hi Michelle,
Thank you! I do find the idea that there is a precious and beautiful “inside” of the Bible to be very helpful and satisfying.
The problem with science is, as Einstein noted, that man cannot possibly grasp the universe. In part, that’s because science can’t observe beyond space and time.
Hi chicagoja,
Thanks for your comment. FYI, I initially approved the comment you’re responding to. But when I realized that the commenter had “skipped the line” and responded to the first comment, which just happened to be yours, even though the “response” actually had nothing to do with your comment, I deleted it. Hate it when people do that!
Anyway, good to hear from you again. I hope all is well with you and yours.
And yes, science has its field of study, which is the physical universe. As good and useful as it may be for that purpose, science can’t say anything definite about the spiritual universe, still less about God. And these are the realities that ultimately matter the most.
Nice article, I really enjoyed your take on this. My question is, if the Bible was written, as you maintain here, to best speak to us on a “spiritual” level rather than a strictly historical/scientific one—especially for those living during and relatively after the NT was completed—then how might you explain why God never allowed room to or inspired us to modify the Bible to better suit humanity as it is now? Sure, the idea of an “annual update” to the Bible might be an absurd concept, but 2000 years through a rapidly-advancing age of humanity seems like an unreasonably long time to hold it unrevised, and then to expect us humans to abide by it unquestionably in the same exact way. I mean, if I’m correct in assuming that God, as an omniscient Being, knew *when and how* our civilization/sciences/social orders would eventually modernize—that is, relatively quickly, on the good baseis of evidence, reason, logic, utilitarianism, and in several starkly contradictory ways to important topics throughout the Bible (e.g., astronomy, evolution, women’s rights, homosexuality, slavery, physics)—then what good reason might God have for declaring, through His word, that the Bible should be forever unamendable? Or by “staying silent” and/or “remaining hidden” from Man’s eye since the Jesus’ time? In other words, what *else* might God have expected from humans other than a growing number of (rationally-thinking) non-believers? What do you suppose will happen to—and more importantly, what should be fairly expected from—our offspring 2000 years from now when the future of our civilization has reached a point where biology, archaeology, psychology, and society is so far removed from such a large number of outdated Biblical notions that it as a standalone document is no longer able to be credibly able to preserve the Faith? Another way to look at it is this: do you suppose that the devoted followers of Jesus during his time, would have come to believe in Christ as the son of God if they, rather than bearing witness to Jesus firsthand, were simply handed a lengthy, enigmatic book to read and interpret, passed down from thousands of years before *their* time, perhaps by earlier humans in the dawn of the Bronze Age? If not, then does it make sense that God should hold us humans today to such a faith-based belief in order to enter Heaven, when Jesus’ own disciples might not have qualified to enter Heaven had they not been convinced by Jesus’ miracles and teachings with their own eyes and ears?
Hi Adam,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your long and thoughtful comment. There are many very good questions here. I hope you don’t mind if, in the interest of time and efficiency, I refer you along the way to some other articles that go into many of your questions in more depth.
To take your last and most critical question first, it is a fundamental error of traditional Christianity in general, and of Protestant Christianity in particular, to think that entering heaven is a matter of “faith-based belief” in Jesus Christ—especially if that is seen as the only way into heaven. In plain language, getting into heaven is not about believing in Jesus if that means intellectually accepting that Jesus died for our sins, or paid the penalty for our sins, or satisfied the wrath of the Father, or any such thing. Faith, as that word is used in the Bible, is more like our English word “faithfulness.” It involves not just believing, but living according to what we believe. For more on this, please see these articles:
There is no danger of people not getting into heaven because they haven’t had the idea of Jesus as the Son of God and Savior presented to them in a contemporary and understandable way. In fact, people of all religions, and even of no religion at all, are saved if they believe in God as they have been taught about God, or if they at least believe in some principle or ideal of goodness higher than themselves and their own benefit, and if according to that belief they live a good life of love and service to their fellow human beings. For more on this, please see:
I know that’s already a lot of articles. But if you want real, substantial answers to these very big questions, you’ll need to put in some serious time getting those answers.
Now on to your questions about the Bible, which are also excellent questions.
In one sense, the Word of God could have been written in any era, through any culture on the face of the earth. There are even indications in the Bible itself that there were earlier books and writings containing the Word of God that no longer survive. And of course, various non-Christian cultures have their own sacred books that they look to as inspired revelation from God just as Christians look to the Bible. Some of those books were written many centuries after the Bible. So in one sense, the Bible has been updated for various human eras and cultures.
As to why the Bible as Christians believe in it was written when it was, I think there are two basic reasons:
On the first point, it is God’s will to reach out to humanity and provide us with the knowledge and inspiration we need to be saved and live eternally in heaven rather than in hell.
Scholars believe that written language first developed about 5,200 years ago (see History of Writing). And writing on religious subjects goes back to the very beginning of the development of writing. Once oral history gave way to writing as the primary means of keeping records, preserving human knowledge, and engaging in widespread communication, it would be unlike God not to begin inspiring texts on spiritual and religious subjects in order to convey to as many humans on earth as possible these eternally vital types of information.
So the simplest reason the Bible was written over the time period it was (and some of the stories in the earliest chapters of Genesis probably go back to pre-literate times, and were originally passed down orally) is that these were the times when written language first came onto the scene and became sufficiently developed for God to be able to communicate with humankind through this new written medium. It would have been uncharacteristic and rather stingy of God not to provide a written revelation, or Word of God, as early as possible in the history of humanity.
On the second point:
It might seem to people in our more intellectually advanced cultures of today that it would have been better for God to write the Bible when our knowledge of science, psychology, and so on were more advanced, so that there wouldn’t be so many errors and inconsistencies in the Bible about scientific and cultural things. Wouldn’t it at least have been better to write the Bible in the Age of Enlightenment rather than in the Bronze Age? (Of course, to people living 2,000 years from now our age will probably look something like the Bronze Age in terms of its intellectual development.)
But the very fact that most of the Bible was written when humanity was at a very low and materialistic ebb gives it a concreteness and immediacy that is lacking in much religious and spiritual writing of our day and age. Biblical Hebrew, in particular, is a very concrete and direct language. And much of the Old Testament deals with basic human needs: food, water, fertility, safety from enemies, and so on. It’s really not very “spiritual” at all.
However, this means that it is able to reach ordinary people even today, many of whom have the very same concerns about the basic necessities of life. If the Bible had been written today, in our more “sophisticated” age, much of it would likely have gone right over the heads of the vast bulk of humanity. The New Testament does add a more spiritual and philosophical view of things. But in the main, the Bible is a very pragmatic book, speaking of basic human issues that any ordinary person can understand quite well regardless of his or her level of education.
Along these lines, you might be interested in this article: “How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads.”
But there is also a deeper reason why, under God’s providence, the Bible was written when it was, in the largely very concrete style it was. As stated in the above article, the Bible is not primarily a book of history, science, or culture. Rather, as the Word of God, it is a book containing deeper meanings that are all about God and about the spiritual life and development of human beings, both individually and collectively. And in order to provide a good written foundation for that deeper meaning, the Bible needed to be written in largely concrete language and stories.
Food, drink, drought, famine, fertility of crops and herds, wives, children, war, kings, temples, animal sacrifices . . . all of these things provide easily remembered and very evocative symbols pointing to deeper spiritual realities and experiences, and toward the nature of God. If the Bible had been a philosophical or scientific treatise, not only would it have gone over the heads of most people even in today’s world, but it would be nowhere near as colorful and memorable, and would serve nowhere near as well as a bearer of deeper metaphorical and spiritual meaning.
That is also why it is not necessary for God to provide periodic updates to the Bible. The Bible as it now exists is a complete story, from the first Creation narrative in Genesis 1 to the final descent of the Holy City, New Jerusalem, out of heaven from God in the last two chapters of the Book of Revelation. In between it covers the whole sweep of human spiritual history in metaphorical language, and covers the whole gamut of human spiritual states from highest to lowest. (And I would add that the basics about salvation are right there in the plain, literal words of the Bible, without any need for interpretation.)
What’s needed is not a new Bible, but a new and deeper understanding of the Bible. And that’s what Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) set out to do—commissioned for that task, as he believed, by the Lord Jesus Christ—over two centuries ago. Much of the spiritual insight offered on this blog is based on the new (yet ancient) understanding of God, Christianity, salvation, the Bible, and the afterlife that is contained in Swedenborg’s theological writings. Swedenborg did not provide a new Bible. But his writings do provide a new and deeper understanding of the Bible appropriate to our post-Enlightenment world. For more on this, please see: “Do the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg take Precedence over the Bible?”
I hope these thoughts and the linked articles give you at least the start of some good, solid answers to your excellent questions. Please feel free to continue the conversation as you read, and as further thoughts and questions come to mind.
I believe those who take a literal approach to the Bible lose the perspective and purpose for which they were written. Metaphorical truth goes much deeper than literal details which may or may not be as literal as some would like to believe. The mysteries Paul talks about can only be understood from the metaphorical perspective. I think we tend to do with the Bible what the news media does with politics. We way over think it, pick and choose what suits our story, then put it out as the gospel truth! The gospel is very simple and easy to understand.
Dwight
Hi Dwight,
Well said! Thanks.
I’ve found that a main problem people have with Christianity lies in the Old Testament. They quote how it says it’s okay to beat your wife or your slave and stuff like that, and use it as ammunition to claim the faith is corrupt. What do you think?
Asking from the point of view of a pop-culture conscious teenager.
Hi Eve,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment.
Just for the record, the Bible never says that it’s okay to beat your wife. But it does talk about beating slaves, and not just in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament as well.
The problem comes from attempting to read the Bible literally, and also from not reading it within its own historical and cultural context. Slavery, and beating slaves, was just ordinary life 2,000+ years ago. The Bible talks about it because that’s how life was back then. It doesn’t mean it’s ultimately a good thing to own slaves, or to beat them.
I do understand, though, why many people in today’s culture who read the Bible are repulsed by what they read there.
It’s a huge issue, and a big topic. Here’s another article that may shed some more light on the subject for you:
How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads
i just want to say that your blog means so much to me. whenever i question my faith i come here and you give me faith to carry on with my spiritual beliefs. one thing i still question though is i get we can’t rely on literal biblical representations but what about those passages in the bible that just seem cruel. i would like to know how do you get over certain quotes like this – Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) i want to be a genuine christian and while jesus was inclusive there are parts of the bible that i cant agree with. i get that homosexuality used to be illegal but there are a lot of christians who treat gays like it still is. i’m not gay but i have friends who are and if you dismiss parts of the bible as wrong it just feels like you are picking and choosing what bits to read. to be a genuine christian i don’t think you can refuse bits of the bible but as a genuine christian i can’t read bits of it without feeling like parts are sick and cruel.
Hi Annie,
Good to hear from you again. I’m glad our website helps to keep you steady in your faith.
Your question is a good one. For people who take the Bible very literally, there isn’t a very good answer. There certainly are many very cruel passages in the Bible. For example, what do we do with this passage from the Psalms:
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. (Psalm 137:8-9)Does God really want us to take revenge on our enemies and murder their babies? I don’t think so. But if we take everything in the Bible literally, it’s hard to avoid thinking that under certain circumstances, God smiles down upon revenge and infanticide.
But if we’re willing to recognize that not everything in the Bible is meant to be taken literally, and that many things in it are written according to the particular cultures in which the stories and events took place, then we can begin to pay attention to the spirit behind what is being said literally. Here are a couple more articles about reading the Bible spiritually rather than literally:
About homosexuality in particular, I have written an extensive article on that subject, which I invite you to read:
Homosexuality, the Bible, and Christianity
For a quick summary to get the general idea, please see:
Homosexuality, the Bible, and Christianity: A Summary
The full version goes into detail about the various passages in the Bible relating to homosexual sex, including 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. I won’t attempt to repeat it all here. However I will say that “those who practice homosexuality” is a very loose and not very accurate translation. As covered in the article, it would be better translated as “men who have sex with men.” The reasons this was condemned in ancient Hebrew society, and by Paul in the New Testament (Jesus never said anything about homosexual sex), are covered in the full article.
Short version: In the ancient world, sex was universally viewed as a dominant and socially superior partner penetrating a submissive and socially inferior partner. In heterosexual sex, the man was considered dominant and socially superior, and the woman was considered submissive and socially inferior.
Because of this view of sex, two men engaging in sex with each other clashed with the ancient Hebrew view—which was also held by the early Jewish Christians who wrote the books of the New Testament—that all men are equal under the law and in the eyes of God. For one man to penetrate another was to reduce the penetrated man to the social status of a woman. That is why a man having sex with another man was pronounced “ritually unclean” in two passages in the book of Leviticus. (There is no mention of women having sex with women.) Paul had similar views, and he was especially condemning homosexual sex as practiced in the surrounding Roman and Greek societies of the time, in which an older, higher status man penetrated a younger, lower status man or teenage boy.
Today we are finally dropping the idea that women are inferior to men socially, legally, and in the eyes of God. And though some low-level parts of society still think of sexual intercourse as an act of dominance and submission, that is no longer how sex is viewed in the more civilized parts of society. Today marital and sexual relations are increasingly seen as a relationship between two equal partners. So the concern of the ancient Hebrews, and of Paul, that men having sex with other men disrespected and demeaned the penetrated partner no longer applies in today’s very different social environment.
Many laws and teachings given in the Bible must be read in the context of the culture in which they were given. They were given to accomplish a specific purpose in that society. That purpose is the spirit behind the literal law or teaching. Today, our job is to look to the spirit of those laws, and not get stuck in the literal, culturally-specific law. As Paul himself expressed it:
No Christian today practices animal sacrifice, nor do we stone wayward sons to death, nor do we consider it sinful to wear clothing made of two different kinds of fibers, nor do we condone slavery (as Paul did). Conservative Christians who insist that homosexuality is evil and sinful, but who say that many other laws and teachings given in the Bible no longer apply to Christians, are being inconsistent and hypocritical in their reading of the Bible.
For the full version on homosexuality please do read the main article linked above. You may also be interested in this article, which deals with the common conservative Christian fallacy that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because their men were homosexuals (which they were not):
What is the Sin of Sodom?
thankyou for your reply. your posts and answers to my questions really does help me and your a god send to me and i’m sure a lot of other people who have found your posts.
What do you do with Psalm 137:8-9??
How about you start by reading it correctly and not taking it out of context?
“Does God really want us to take revenge on our enemies and murder their babies? I don’t think so. But if we take everything in the Bible literally, it’s hard to avoid thinking that under certain circumstances, God smiles down upon revenge and infanticide.”
If you read verses 1-9, which is the correct way to read the Bible, it becomes clear that God isn’t commanding anyone to smash babies against rocks.
Hi godisreal2017,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comments and questions.
Reading the entirety of Psalm 137 doesn’t help much. It is a lament by captive Israelites who have been deported to Babylon after Jerusalem has been captured and destroyed. It ends with the sentiment that those who take the little children of the Babylonians and smash them against the rocks will be happy, or in other translations, blessed. This comes after an appeal to the Lord in verse 7.
Given that this Psalm is included in the Bible without any commentary or remonstrance against this expressed wish for revenge in the form of infanticide against children of Israel’s enemies, the natural conclusion would be that such sentiments were approved of by the God of Israel.
Such sentiments may be shocking to us today, but it won’t do to read today’s culture and sensibilities back into the Bible. We must read what the Bible itself says, in its own words. That is the only foundation for a proper interpretation of the Bible.
And as I said in the comment you were responding to, if we attempt to take everything in the Bible literally, there is no way to avoid the fact that there are many cruel and barbaric passages in the Bible, some of which are not only approved by God, but specifically commanded by God. For example:
The simple fact of the matter is that in the Bible, the God of Israel does command his people to kill women, children, infants, and even the livestock of especially hated enemies.
“No Christian today practices animal sacrifice, nor do we stone wayward sons to death, nor do we consider it sinful to wear clothing made of two different kinds of fibers, nor do we condone slavery (as Paul did). Conservative Christians who insist that homosexuality is evil and sinful, but who say that many other laws and teachings given in the Bible no longer apply to Christians, are being inconsistent and hypocritical in their reading of the Bible.”
We say that they don’t apply anymore because THEY DON’T APPLY.
You need to educate yourself on the different types of laws that are clearly shown in the OT.
The Bible doesn’t say that it is “sinful” to wear different kind of fabrics.
https://www.gotquestions.org/different-types-of-fabric.html
Paul did not condone Slavery!!
https://apologeticspress.org/did-paul-endorse-slavery-5496/
The Ceremonial and Mosaic laws don’t apply anymore. The moral laws do apply.
Once again, educate yourself on the different types of laws in the Bible, Lee. Please.
Hi godisreal2017,
I am familiar with the arguments presented in the articles you linked. Those arguments are not very convincing.
The first article relies on a conjecture that the ephod of the High Priest was woven of both linen and wool threads. But the Bible itself doesn’t say that. It mentions linen, but it doesn’t mention wool. To base the article’s whole argument on the conjecture that “The dyed thread would have been made of wool,” when the Bible doesn’t say that, is to build an entire argument on human interpretation rather than on the words of the Bible itself.
The article frankly admits that it doesn’t know why these commandments against mixing of various kinds were given to the Israelites. And yet, it wants us to accept its conclusions. Sorry. That doesn’t fly with me.
The second article gets into all sorts of contortionist wording to try to avoid the obvious fact that Paul commanded slaves to obey their masters. If this is not condoning slavery, I don’t know what is.
Paul did not speak out against slavery. There is no indication that he thought slavery was wrong, despite the article’s insinuation that he didn’t preach against it for pragmatic reasons.
Most likely, Paul didn’t see anything wrong with slavery, because as the article says, slavery was universally practiced in ancient societies. In fact, it was not abolished anywhere in the world until two centuries ago, when the British outlawed it in their empire, and set about to stamp out the Atlantic slave trade at great cost in British lives and treasure.
It’s all well and good to use fancy rhetoric to try to avoid the obvious fact that Paul endorsed slavery in the form of commanding slaves to obey their masters. But it is better to simply accept what Paul himself says, as representative of what he believed. Once again, it is not a good or sound practice to read present-day ethics and sensibilities back into the Bible. This leads only to contortionism of the sort engaged in by the second article you linked.
Once again, we must read what the Bible itself says, in its own words, before engaging in any kind of interpretation. And the Bible simply doesn’t say what either one of these articles is trying to make it say.
How am I supposed to respond to your comment when there is no “reply” option underneath your comments?
Nevermind. I understand now.
Hi godisreal2017,
I have limited comment nesting to four levels to avoid having the text columns get skinnier and skinnier until they’re practically unreadable. It’s a bit of a nuisance, I know, but no matter how many levels of nesting I allow, there will still be the same problem. The WordPress reader can reply to any comment anyway. Some other readers might be able to do that as well.
Just because the author of this appeals to God in the verse that you originally left out, v.7, or just because what he says is in the Bible doesn’t mean that God automatically approves of what’s being said. Even if this specific request of having done to the Babylonians what has been done to him ends up taking place, it doesn’t mean that God approves of everything that is in the Bible. Such a sweeping statement is ridiculous. Will the Babylonians eventually pay for their treatment of God’s chosen people? Yes. And the correct takeaway from that should be for man not to do things that God doesn’t approve of, but you have even a greater problem. What are you judging any of this with? First of all, can God do what He wants with His Creation? Of course!! It’s His Creation. So for you to judge such actions as a mere mortal begs the question again “what are you judging Him with”? For example, you say “cruel and barbaric”. According to what? What Objective Standard do you have to say what is “cruel and barbaric”?
Hi godisreal2017,
Avoiding the issue won’t make it go away.
As I said in my previous reply to you, in 1 Samuel 15:1–3, God specifically commands the Israelites to do what today would be called committing genocide. Specifically, God commands the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child, and infant of the Amalekites, plus their livestock.
If God absolutely commanded this, and then in 1 Samuel 15:10—23 rejected Saul because he did not fully obey that order, on what basis can you argue that God would not condone the killing of the Babylonians’ children and infants? Babylon was also an implacable enemy of the Israelites—even worse than the Amalekites.
Now, if you don’t think that killing women, children, and infants is cruel and barbaric, then . . . what can I say?
Once again, if you try to take everything in the Bible literally, you will get yourself into all sorts of problems.
A christian friend told me recently that its a christian fact that the husband has to look after the wife because the husband is head of the house. i thought that was sexist and very outdated but it is clearly stated in the bible. for me i believe in equal partnership and i find it hard to accept/believe in parts of the bible as a young woman. – Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. i was really surprised to be told by a christian pastor Women think more with emotions while men think more with logics. Man is the head of the family by nature and its god who said man rules over woman. And it also says “your desire shall be for your husband, and he will rule over you. i’ve also known people say if people are turned off of Christianity because of something that is directly from the scriptures, then the problem is not with God’s word. The problem is with that person needing to conform to the truth. trying to believe parts of the bible can be very hard but denying it makes me wonder can i still be a christian. i love god and believe in jesus and the higher power but cant accept parts that people say you have to accept
Hi Annie,
People read the statements in the Bible about men and women from the perspective of particular cultural gender roles and expectations. They therefore tend to make the Bible say things it doesn’t actually say.
For example, Paul didn’t say man should be the head of woman, but that man is the head of woman. In other words, he was referencing a social reality of his time, not making a prescription for how things ought to be. If you read his words in the context of his culture, he wasn’t saying what conservative Christians today think he was saying. For more on that, please see:
“Wives, submit to your husbands.”
At the end of this article there are links to several other articles about gender roles and the Bible. The first two articles linked there also take up the issue of God saying in Genesis 3 that man will rule over women. If you read it in context, this is not how God originally intended the relationship between man and woman to work, but a description of what happens when we humans depart radically from God’s plan.
I hope you will find these articles helpful. I stand by them, and they are also modern-career-wife-approved. 😀
Hi lee dont know if you can help me, as ive mentioned before your blog and swedenborgs writings have massively helped me with previous anxiety i had (from new age info) and made sense of things that didnt before.
As part of my spiritual quest im looking at other spiritual literature / occult books like theosophy , channeled material and so on to see how much it agrees with swedenborg. I must say its intriguing that alot of these people end up turning to Christians.
When i read these things though part of me thinks what if what these people say are true and that brings the anxiety back not as badly but enough that i know its there.
Ive prayed to god to help show me the truth but i dont know if im saying it correctly as so far not much has happened .
I know swedenborg says to keep us in equality we have two angels and two devils with us ,
could it be the devils influencing myself?
because whenever i read of peoples experience of swedenborg or swedenborg blogs the anxiety fades away
Do you have any advice on what to do ?
Hi AJ749,
If reading occult books and channeled material brings on anxiety, whereas reading Swedenborgian material causes the anxiety to fade away, here’s my rather simple suggestion: Stop reading occult books and channeled material, and read Swedenborgian material instead.
Personally, I mostly avoid reading books of traditional Christian theology because when I do read them, I get angry at the terrible twisting of the beautiful teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible into a false and morally bankrupt “Christianity” that misleads billions of people and gives God a bad name, causing millions of people to become atheists. See: “The Extreme Weakness of Faith Alone and Penal Substitution.” Why subject myself to the torture of reading all that falsity?
By now you know what the occult, theosophical, and channeled material is all about. And you know what effects it has on your mental and emotional state. Why subject yourself to more of that torture? It isn’t doing you any good. If you were an alcoholic, my advice would be to avoid alcohol, and places where it is served. Same deal with occult material. Leave it behind. Immerse yourself instead in the beliefs and ideas that bring you understanding and peace of mind. Your mind will grow clearer, and your life will get better.
Many thanks for that lee
Much apreeciated
Hi lee 2 questions.
Could it also be that when reading false stuff like occult the anxiety is brought about by evil spirits ?
Also last night i had a nightmare granted it was very short in which my family was stabbed and it freaked me out, could that of been brought about by spirits or do you think it was more my mind playing tricks ?
Hi AJ749,
According to Swedenborg, all of our thoughts and feelings, and everything that goes on in our mind, has spirits, either good or evil or both, associated with it. So yes, the anxiety is brought about by evil spirits, and yes, there were spirits involved in your nightmare. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the evil spirits are purposely placing these thoughts, feelings, dreams, and so on in your mind. They are usually just as unaware of their association with your thoughts and feelings as you are. They simply live in the spiritual world, which is the world of the mind, so they are associated with all of your thoughts and feelings, and your thoughts and feelings come from them.
The danger in seeking spirit contact, for those who are not people of faith, is that then the spirits become aware that they are with you, which isn’t normally the case, and then the evil spirits can intentionally lie to you and mislead you into thinking and believing things that aren’t true.
Hi Lee
I’ve been reading romans in the new testament and whilst there are beautiful quotes in there ” be devoted to one another in love” for example, God is presented in parts as a dictator to fear. “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden”, “who are you a human being to talk back to God”. My belief in the God of love has no room for fear that the bible here talks about ” the sternness of God but kindness to you provided that you continue in his kindness”. To be honest God is spoken about as someone threatening, who could turn on you any second. However Paul also says ” Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” which suggests that your actions don’t matter whilst kind people without belief in Jesus are doomed. I call myself a christian as I love the God I feel around and I love everything that Jesus stands for I struggle to come to piece with certain biblical quotes, which makes me wonder if I can still be a christian and deny certain aspects of the bible. Is there a way in your opinion to interpret quotes that don’t come across with the compassion I believe Jesus tried to teach?
Kind regards
Annie Howell
Hi Annie,
It’s an excellent question.
God’s problem in writing the Bible was that it had to be able to reach people in all different states and stages of spiritual development, including very low and undeveloped states of life. For some people, that means having to believe that God will be angry at them if they don’t shape up. Fear of punishment is a powerful motivator for many people at the low end of the spiritual spectrum. That’s why God is often portrayed as angry, punishing, and so on in the Bible. For more on this, please see:
What is the Wrath of God? Why was the Old Testament God so Angry, yet Jesus was so Peaceful?
About Paul’s statements that make it sound like all we have to do is believe in Jesus, it’s helpful to understand that people in those days didn’t separate beliefs from actions the way we often do in our intellectual age today. It was simply assumed that, for example, if you believed in Jesus, you would follow Jesus’ commandments, or that if you called on Jesus, you would listen to what Jesus told you to do. The idea of simply believing intellectually while not living by what you believed would be seen as not really believing, as the apostle James explains in James 2:14–26. For more on this, please see:
Faith Alone Is Not Faith
Back to the original question, while it can be annoying at times to read so many things in the Bible that speak to people in such low and backward spiritual states, that is part of the mercy of God, who does not leave anyone without direction and inspiration, but speaks even to the lowest of the low in language that they can understand. Meanwhile, as explained in the first article linked above, what is really behind the “wrath” of God, and is its spiritual meaning, is God’s love for all people.
For thinking people today, knowing about the deeper spiritual meanings in the Bible is necessary in order to see the depth, beauty, and power of the Bible underneath it’s often rather rough exterior. Here’s one more article that may help:
How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads
Thanks lee
I love reading your beliefs in your articles. So many people who reject Christianity because of passages in the bible would be so uplifted to read your articles and feel able to still call themselves Christians through a kinder interpretation.
It can be hard to know what parts to take literally and what parts to see as interpretation or a sign of the times. A lot of it does seem to contradict itself.
As a feminist I naturally want to see “the head of the woman is man and the head of every man is christ” as a sign of the times. Some of it is shocking “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church”. Made me wonder what your interpretation of that will be and if you can reject thoughts from the bible and still be a christian?
Whilst there are and have been christian women who are submissive to their husbands, I’ve always seen wearing burka’s to be a muslim belief but in 1 Corinthians it states ” For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off…..A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man”. Whilst this belief has no place in modern western society and is offensive to me, I’ve never heard of christian women ever covering up before, so was wondering if historians have ever known if they ever were and why literal interpreters don’t follow this rule but follow a lot of the others.
With sexist opinions still being debated in christian churches and individuals suggesting if Jesus wanted gender equality, he would of hired female disciples seeing as he wasn’t afraid to go against the laws of his day, Do you believe that Jesus would see me, a 21st century women who will speak up for her rights, as less than a man. I find it hard to reconcile my spiritual worship to God and Jesus with outdated teachings of the bible. Not that they should have ever had a place in the world but I do wonder if now, does God support feminism, LBGT pride, despite what is written in the bible and the sexist/homophobic views of many christians.
I am sorry If i am burdening you with my questions or if you worry about sending me tons of your articles but I really want to find out as much as I can from someone who believes in Christianity without going straight to fearful, hell bashing. If you reject parts of the bible you struggle to interpret, can you still call yourself a christian?
Kind regards
Annie – if it wasn’t for you, I know I probably would have lost my faith by now as you opened me up to a kinder christian viewpoint. I can’t say thankyou enough for your responses of information.
Hi Annie,
Thanks for your further thoughts and questions. Reaching people with a “kinder Christian viewpoint” so that they do not have to reject Jesus and Christianity altogether is one of the main reasons Annette and I run this blog. There are many people who have become atheists today precisely because of the harsh, false, and unbiblical teachings that pass as Christianity today. Swedenborg predicted over two centuries ago that this would happen. And now it’s happening.
I tend to think that it will be necessary for that entire edifice of false “Christianity” to be rejected and come to an end, and a period of atheism and secularism to clear the air, before true Christianity can once again exist on this earth in any widespread way. People’s view of Christianity has been so poisoned by the horrible travesty of “Christianity” that has existed for many centuries now that it may be necessary for a generation or two to pass before any true Christianity can exist again.
Lest you think you’re the only one feeling the way you do about Paul’s writings, Annette felt the same way as a young woman, having had a conservative Christian upbringing in the Bible Belt. As a woman in today’s society, she did not feel that she could continue to accept Christianity and the Bible. But she was able to remain a Christian because she encountered the Swedenborgian Church in her mid-twenties.
One thing that certainly helped her in this was when she learned that Swedenborg’s canon of the Bible does not include Paul’s writings, or those of the other Apostles. It’s not that Swedenborg “rejected” the Epistles, but that he thought of them more as writings by Jesus’ early followers intended to guide and build up the early Christian church. You can read all about it in this article:
Why Isn’t Paul in Swedenborg’s Canon?
Be aware, though, that the article focuses more on the false idea in Protestant Christianity that Paul taught salvation by faith alone (which he did not) than on his statements about women. On that, here is one article that I have probably referred you to already:
“Wives, submit to your husbands.”
Even Christians who believe that Paul’s writings are the Word of God commonly don’t abide by everything Paul says in his writings about women. There is an increasing recognition that they were influenced by the culture of his day. Christian women actually used to wear stylized “veils” in church, which were hats with a diaphanous fabric covering over the upper part of a woman’s face. I remember some of the old women wearing them in church when I was a teenager. Today you’d be hard-pressed to find any Christian church—even evangelical ones—in which the women wear veils. In some conservative churches women still do wear hats to church, but even that is beginning to fade now. And of course, more and more churches, including evangelical ones, are ordaining women. The old idea that everything Paul said about women must still be strictly and literally followed is breaking down fast even in traditional Christianity.
The reality is that no church follows all of the rules given in the Bible. Even the ones that claim to follow everything the Bible says, in practice actually pick and choose which rules they will follow and which they will not. For example, no Christian church today practices animal sacrifice, even though one entire book of the Bible (Leviticus) is devoted to exactly how to offer sacrifices. The idea that in order to be a “real Christian,” we must literally follow every commandment in the Bible is completely unrealistic. Churches that think they are following every commandment of the Bible are deceiving themselves.
As I began to say in my previous reply to you, the real depth and power of the Bible is in its spiritual meaning. The literal meaning is like a matrix that delivers that deeper meaning. Of course, we are indeed supposed to follow some parts of the Bible literally, such as the parts about not killing, committing adultery, stealing, and bearing false witness. Even Paul does have some good thoughts and advice about living with one another in Christian love and kindness. But for people who are aware of the deeper meanings in the Bible, it is not necessary to reject any books of the Bible, no matter which biblical canon a person may accept. Rather, it is necessary to recognize that the literal teachings and stories in the Bible were adapted to and addressed to the cultures in which they were written, and must be adjusted in order to be applicable to today’s society.
For one example of this, see my analysis of the statements in the Bible prohibiting men from having sex with men in this article:
Homosexuality, the Bible, and Christianity
In the cultures of both Old Testament and New Testament times, the homosexual sex that took place was almost always unequal and exploitative in nature. That is what the Bible was condemning, because that was what existed in those cultures. But the deeper meaning is that we are not to engage in unequal, exploitative sex. This is covered in much more detail in the above article, especially under the subheading titled, “Paul’s writings were adapted to the culture of his day.”
My own views on these issues have changed and evolved over the years. When I was in my teens and twenties, I was much more traditional in my views on gender and relationship issues. But the older I get, the more I realize that much of what the Bible says in its literal meaning is not universal truth for all time, but truth adapted to the particular culture in which it was written. So I’ve changed my views about gender issues. I now believe that God originally created man and women to live in fully equal partnership with one another. I still believe that men and women are distinctly different from one another. But I no longer believe that man is primary and woman is secondary as I did rather unreflectively when I was young. This is covered especially in this article:
Man, Woman, and the Two Creation Stories of Genesis
And for the practical version of how this relates to actual marriage relationships (with a bit of satire at the beginning), please see:
What Do Women Really Want?
And though I still don’t really understand where non-heterosexual orientations came from, Annette and I believe that God loves LGBTQ+ people as much as anyone else, and that God rejoices in non-straight relationships based on genuine mutual love just as much as God rejoices in straight relationships. This is covered toward the end of the article on homosexuality linked above.
Yes, I’m linking you to a lot of articles, some of which you’ve probably already read. But these articles are where I express my current thinking on all of these issues. And now this is getting long, so I’ll leave it at that for now. Please let me know if I’ve missed responding to anything important in your comment.
Did Swedenborg choose to enter the spiritual world whenever he wanted to? I am just wondering what process he would go through in order to travel to the other realm every time. I watched an old documentary on the Swedenborg Foundation YouTube channel. It mentioned how he would slow his breathing and eventually be in the spiritual world and remain in this one at the same time. Then he would read the Bible and…would spirits or angels tell him how to interpret every single passage?
Hi Eric,
Yes, some biographies and documentaries on Swedenborg like to push the “yogic breathing techniques” angle. But Swedenborg had been practicing a controlled breathing technique for many years before he ever entered the spiritual world, as part of his mental discipline in focusing intensely on whatever subject of scientific and philosophical study and investigation he was currently involved in. There is no reason to believe that Swedenborg practiced special breathing techniques and Presto! his spiritual eyes opened and he could travel around in the spiritual world at will. Nor does Swedenborg himself ever say any such thing.
Rather, Swedenborg says that the Lord opened his spiritual senses and showed him the spiritual world. He is not highly descriptive of exactly how that happened. However, it doesn’t seem to be something that happened at Swedenborg’s will, but something that happened regularly at the Lord’s will, and Swedenborg went along for the ride. He does say that when he was engaged in worldly activities such as taking care of financial or governmental affairs and duties, this caused him not to enter into the spiritual world. So he at least had to be in a receptive state, meaning in a state of focusing on spiritual things rather than on worldly things, in order to go into the spiritual world.
The idea that Swedenborg by his own will penetrated into the spiritual dimension is a narrative commonly put forward by people who don’t reject Swedenborg’s spiritual experiences altogether, but who want an alternative angle on them to the one Swedenborg himself gives: that his entering into the spiritual world was at the Lord’s will and the Lord’s call for the purpose of carrying out a special commission given him by the Lord. It is, in my view, unfortunate that the idea that Swedenborg got into the spiritual world by his own efforts and initiative made it into some old Swedenborg Foundation videos and materials. However, if it gets people curious about Swedenborg and his spiritual experiences, it’s not all bad.
To answer your other question, though Swedenborg had many conversations with angels and spirits, he viewed those experiences as illustrative rather than as teaching him about doctrine or the spiritual meaning of the Bible. He said that he needed to learn what the spiritual world was like in order to be able to understand the spiritual meaning of the Bible. However, he specifically denies that his doctrines and his interpretations of the Bible came from angels and spirits. For example:
Once again, people who can’t accept Swedenborg’s testimony that his teachings and Bible interpretations came from the Lord often talk about angels and spirits teaching Swedenborg the spiritual meaning of the Bible and the doctrines that he explained in his theological writings. But Swedenborg himself flatly contradicts this.
For a related article, please see:
Do the Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg take Precedence over the Bible?
Hey Lee, hope your day is going well.
I was wondering how often you think we should read the Bible. Is it required for Christians every day? Here’s a verse from the book of Joshua that seems to indicate we should: This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.
Joshua 1:8 NASB
Further, is there an order of books that you’d recommend to a new Christian to read just starting off reading the Bible for the 1st time?
Hi Eric,
There is no hard and fast rule for Christians. But I do recommend daily Bible reading. A chapter or two a day is plenty. It’s better to set up a program that you can stick with than to start out with grand plans that you then can’t keep up with.
About Joshua 1:8, though it could be read literally as commanding us to read the Bible every day, the spirit of it is that we are to keep the stories and lessons of the Bible in our mind as we go about our day-to-day life, looking to them as guides for our words and actions.
For Christians, the heart of the Bible is the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are a must-read. You’ll find John to be much more philosophical than the other three Gospels.
The Acts and the Epistles are good too, but it is necessary first to rid one’s mind of the distortions of Protestant faith-alone doctrine. Otherwise Paul’s letters, especially, will only be confusing.
The book of Revelation is full of fantastic visions and imagery. Just don’t make the traditional Christian mistake of thinking that it is all going to take place literally. See:
Is the World Coming to an End? What about the Second Coming?
In the Old Testament, start at the beginning with Genesis 1, and read your way through the narrative books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, maybe skip Leviticus the first time around since it’s a tough slog, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings. That will keep you busy for a wile! But it will give you a living sense of the Bible story that the New Testament draws upon.
The Psalms, of course, are wonderful for prayer and devotional reading.
The Prophets are a deep well, and not for the faint of heart. Yes, there are the books of Daniel and Jonah, which have great and popular stories. But the rest can be quite daunting. Still, if you’re really dedicated, they’re worth reading. They are quoted fairly heavily in the New Testament.
One way to go about it is to read one chapter from the Old Testament and one chapter from the New Testament each day.
Though it will set you back a few bucks, I recommend ordering a set of the Bible Study Notes, by Anita S. Dole. (The link is to my review of them here.) This is a wonderful six-volume set of Swedenborgian Bible commentary originally written for use by Sunday School teachers. It has lessons for all ages, from young children through adult. It doesn’t cover all of the stories in the Bible, but it covers a good representative sample. The lessons are readable, understandable, and practical for living a good and spiritual life. Many adults appreciate starting with the simple lessons aimed at young children!
If you do order a set of the “Dole Notes,” don’t slow down your regular Bible reading to read the commentary at the same time. Just keep reading in the Bible, and on your days off, as you have time, read one of the lessons in the Dole Notes. As you do, your regular daily Bible reading will take on more and more meaning.
Perfect, thanks again. Upon learning more about Swedenborg and correspondences, I was hesitant to take that passage completely literal.
I’ve read several of your posts in regards to the faith-alone doctrine, Paul, and Revelations. In short, I agree with you.
The Dole notes sound great!
Hiya, ive been reading theosophy by Madame Blavatsky which i know is channeled information,
Swedenborg talks about an ancient truths being lost in tartary or something similar to that if im right ,
Blatavsky says that swedenborg is actually talking about theosophy when he mentions this ancient knowledge and makes links between where swedenborg says this knowledge is lost and where blatavskys knowledge supposedly came from in the Himalayan mountains from supposed masters
To me this dosent make sense because theosophy is very different to Swedenborg’s works and truths and the two views are almost opposite
What are your views on this ?
Hi AJ749,
As you say, Theosophy is very different from Swedenborg’s teachings. It is highly unlikely that the ancient Word that Swedenborg says might be somewhere in Great Tartary (we’re not sure exactly where that is) would contain Theosophical teachings.
Swedenborg does say that the first chapters of Genesis—the ones that contain the early mythical stories about Creation, the Garden of Eden, and the Flood—originally came from the ancient Word. Though I doubt it was a word-for-word copy, this gives some sense of what that book might have been like. It would not have contained particular doctrinal teachings (such as reincarnation—an idea Swedenborg rejects), but would have been written in a symbolic and metaphorical style, like the ancient myths that have come down to us from many cultures of ancient times.
Hi lee so what does swedenborg say about the ancient texts?, would they have come through symbolism like what people of the ancient church went through and thus the stories although physically impossible , symbollicaly paint a wonderful spiritual picture ?
Hi AJ749,
In general, yes, Swedenborg said that the ancient style of writing was a correspondential or symbolic one. In today’s language these are the ancient myths—meaning not that they are false, but that they are stories full of metaphor. However, it does depend on just how old the text is, who wrote it, which culture, and so on. Not every old text was written to be metaphorical. Also, not every text was divinely inspired. Many contain much metaphor, but they are still human productions, and do not have the level of inspiration and connected correspondences that the early chapters of Genesis do.
Hi Lee. I really enjoyed this article. I’ve been reading the Bible daily for years and the way Swedenborg explains its meaning is better than any commentary that I’ve ever found, and you write in a way that makes both Swedenborg and the Bible easier to understand, so thank you so much for all your work. I have a question that you might have answered before but I couldn’t find it here on the website and I haven’t read all the comments here in this article, so here it goes: I understand that there are correspondences and stuff, but why was the Bible written in a way that is so hard to understand for most people? What I mean by that is that sometimes the Bible seems to mean almost the opposite of what it says. For example, if the story of the creation of the universe is not really about the creation of the universe, why doesn’t the Bible itself explain the whole thing in a simple way? Almost everyone would think that it’s a story exactly about that: the creation of the universe.It took centuries for Swedenborg to be born and explain it to us in a way that makes sense and still most people have never heard of him. Isn’t it kinda unfair that most people (including most Christians) have a wrong understanding of the Bible exactly because of the way it was written?
Which leads me to my second question: Should I feel guilty for sometimes wishing that the Bible was different? There are verses that I wish were not there, and some I wish were written in a different way. Just to give an example: When I was a child my parents divorced, and I always thought that Jesus’ words about divorced people who marry again sound too harsh and it’s so painful for me, specially coming from a Catholic background. People in church frowned upon my mom receiving Holy Communion just because she divorced. This is just an example and I know that there is a context for the words of Jesus, but for most Christians, when they read that passage they think “oh, okay, so according to Jesus people who remarry are adulterers. Period.” I don’t know, I just sometimes wish that things in the Bible were explained in a “for dummies” way.
Hi Rod,
Glad to hear the articles here are helping you so much. I have only a few minutes, so just a quick response for now, in anticipation of a fuller one later.
At the time it was written, much of the Bible was written in a “for dummies” way. It’s just that the culture has changed greatly since then. Many things in the Bible that originally made perfect sense in the cultures in which it was written no longer make such good sense, precisely because we are now living in a very different culture.
Swedenborg’s explanations are easier not just because he gives deeper meanings, but because his culture was much closer to ours than the biblical cultures. Even so, some things in Swedenborg’s writings, yes, on scientific and historical matters, but also on gender relations and marriage, are now starting to show their cultural age, and must be updated.
Meanwhile, when it comes to the basics of salvation, the Bible is very clear on what we must believe and do. Clear, that is, for anyone whose mind has not been hopelessly confused by false “Christian” doctrine that has nothing to do with the teachings of the Bible. We are not left with no guideposts at all. Anyone who reads the Gospels for himself or herself has the basics for salvation right there in plain language. Repent from our sins, stop doing evil deeds, believe in the Lord, love God above all, and our neighbor as ourselves, do good to all, even to our enemies, and so on. It’s all right there.
Okay, that was a little more than “quick” 😀 But I’ll have to leave the divorce issue for later. Meanwhile, here’s another article about the Bible that I recommend on the question of why the Bible is written the way it is:
How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads
Hi Rod,
About almost everyone reading the Bible, such as the Creation story, literally:
In fact, for the first millennium or so of Christianity it was commonly believed that the Bible had deeper meanings. Swedenborg was far from the first to explain various Bible stories, including the Creation story, metaphorically, as stories with deeper meanings about the human spiritual journey. See, for example, Wikipedia -> Allegorical interpretation of the Bible. Unfortunately, the article is rather brief and skeletal, which does not reflect the long and rich history of metaphorical interpretation of the Bible within Christianity, and of other religions’ metaphorical interpretations of their sacred texts as well.
Unfortunately, as institutional Christianity became more and more materialistic, and more and more focused on money and power, and wandered farther and farther into error in its theology, the long history of understanding the Bible as having deeper meanings was gradually lost, to the point where it almost entirely disappeared in the second millennium of Christianity, especially after the Protestant Reformation, which tended more and more toward biblical literalism the longer it went on.
Really, Swedenborg was not saying anything new in Christianity when he said that the Bible has deeper meanings. Rather, he was reviving the view of many, if not most, early Christian teachers and theologians, and raising it to a whole new level.
If Christianity had actually remained Christian, and had held onto its early wisdom, Christians far and wide would know and believe that the Bible has deeper meanings, and it would be common for people to seek out those meanings. But since Christianity became corrupt, and wandered far from the path that Jesus Christ himself set, with his method of teaching based heavily on parable and metaphor, ordinary Christians are vastly ignorant of the real nature of the Bible and the infinite deeper spiritual and divine meanings that it carries within its literal meaning.
Now we once again have access to the rich inner life within the Bible, thanks to God calling Swedenborg to deliver the knowledge of it to us here on earth.
Having said that, as I said in my previous response, all the basics that we need to live a Christian life and be saved are right there in the plain, literal meaning of the Bible. And Swedenborg himself insisted that the “doctrine,” or teachings, of Christianity must be drawn from the literal meaning of the Bible, and supported by it. No one is left out in the cold just because they don’t know about the symbolism and correspondences within the Bible’s literal meaning. Anyone who reads the plain words of the Bible can learn what we need to believe and do to gain eternal life.
Hi Rod,
About divorce:
This is a very difficult and complex subject. I’m gradually working my way mentally toward writing and posting a major article about divorce here, since it is badly needed. However, that may not happen any time soon. It will not be an easy article to write.
Meanwhile, one thing to understand about the Bible’s statements and rules on divorce is that in biblical times, marriage was not an inner union of minds and hearts as many people think of it and experience it today. It was an almost entirely external, social, legal, and biological arrangement, whose primary goal was reproduction—or in less biological terms, having children, especially sons, to carry on the family name and lineage.
Nowhere in the Bible will you find any raptures about the inner connection and spiritual nature of the love between a man and a woman.
The most focused treatment of “love” in the Bible is the Song of Solomon. And it is controversial precisely because it focuses almost entirely on the physical beauties and pleasures of sexual love. There is not a word in there about the deeper and inner beauties of a meeting of minds, which we today think of as “marriage love” or “romantic love.” Yes, it is common to think that the Song of Solomon is meant to be read metaphorically, as a book about the spiritual love of Christ for the Church. But nothing in the book itself says anything about that. It’s all about the physical beauties and enjoyment of the female body.
The other panegyric to woman in the Bible is the “ode to a capable wife” in Proverbs 31:10–31. And once again, there is not a word in it about any inner connection of a wife with her husband. It’s all about how wise and capable a good wife (who is very hard to find) is in managing a household—and also in running a business, contrary to the common fundamentalist Christian stereotypes of the biblical woman as being a mere “housewife.”
In short, what the Bible means by “love” is not the same thing as what we mean by “love” today. Marriage was an almost entirely external relationship; and “love” was really sexual love, or at best a business relationship between a man and a woman in which there was mutual appreciation and respect. It was not marriage love as we think of it today. It was not “soulmates” or an inner connection of minds and hearts.
In that atmosphere, and in an atmosphere in which women were very much secondary to and dependent upon men, divorce laws had to be much stricter than they are in liberal countries today. There was no inner cord binding married people together. It was all social, financial, and legal. And given that men, in their relationships with women, were driven largely by sexual desire and by the desire for children and heirs, they would quite easily hop from one woman to another, throwing each one aside when she was no longer attractive to them, or was no longer producing sons, and leaving their divorced wives most likely to have to resort to prostitution to survive. It was precisely because there was no real marriage as we think of it today that divorce laws had to be strict in Bible times. In the absence of internal bonds of spiritual union between men and women, legal and social bonds had to be imposed on them, and especially upon men.
Even so, polygamy was common, showing just how external people’s approach to marriage was. You can’t be soulmates with multiple people. Within a few centuries, Christianity came to forbid polygamy because Christianity was to be a spiritual religion, not a mere external religion based on external rituals such as animal sacrifice. Therefore Christians were forbidden to have more than one wife.
Today, the situation is very different, as the idea and experience of “soulmates,” or marriage based on an inner connection, becomes more and more common in the world. Today, marriages are no longer held together primarily by external legal and social strictures. Rather, they are held together by the inner bonds of connections of mind and heart between married couples. And if those connections of mind and heart are absent, almost everyone except the church and the state recognizes that no real marriage exists in that “marriage.”
That is a short (?) version of why divorce is allowed today, but was not allowed, or was very strictly limited, in Bible times. A fuller explanation will have to wait for that day when I finally sit down to write a real article about divorce.
Unfortunately, most of traditional Christianity, especially including the Catholic Church, still thinks of marriage as a mere external, largely physical, social, and legal relationship that ends at death. Therefore traditional Christianity continues to attempt to enforce the rules on marriage and divorce that were necessary in Bible times because of the external nature of marriage in those times.
For a little more on marriage in Bible times vs. marriage today, please see the series of three articles starting with this one:
Didn’t Jesus Say There’s No Marriage in Heaven?
I hope this helps.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a good answer. It is indeed very helpful. And thanks for the links, I haven’t read those articles yet. I always like to learn about the real meaning of the Bible.
Hello. What is Swedenborg’s view on the so called “Bible contradictions”? Those of us who read the Bible daily have certainly found things that seem to be slightly inconsistent. For example, in one of the Gospels Jesus curses the fig tree and it happens immediately, but in another Gospel it doesn’t wither right away, it takes some time. Or the Roman centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant: in one of the Gospels the centurion himself asks Jesus to do it, in another Gospel he sends someone to ask in his behalf. Any thoughts?
Hi Rod,
From a Swedenborgian perspective, inconsistencies in the literal sense of the Bible are not a significant problem. That’s because we believe that the real power and inspiration of the Bible is in its spiritual meaning, and that the literal meaning serves to convey that deeper meaning.
The Bible was never meant to be a textbook of science or history or even theology. Its primary purpose is to lead people to not engage in evil actions, but to instead live a good life of love and service to God and the neighbor, so that they can spend eternity in heaven rather than in hell. Compared to that, the fact that the cock doesn’t crow the same number of times in all of the Gospels is unimportant and insignificant.
But would a different literal meaning have a different inner meaning? For example, only one angel appearing at the tomb versus 2?
Hi K,
Variations in the literal meaning do reflect variations in the spiritual meaning. Some Gospels have one angel, others have two, and it has a different meaning, though the general message is the same.
I should add that the literal meaning could have been quite different, and yet had the same inner meaning. Swedenborg himself says that if the Bible had been written through a different culture, its literal meaning would have been different, but its spiritual meaning would have been the same. I.e., our current Bible is not the only possible literal form the Word of God could have taken.
Hi Lee. Well, the reports of Jesus’ ressurection (or at least their chronology) have always been a little bit confusing for me, but that doesn’t really bother me very much because I agree that those things are not the point. Traditional Christianity, of course, has whole books on apologetics explaining the “Bible contradictions” but I was curious about the Swedenborgian view. Anyway, thank you.
Hi Rod,
From a Swedenborgian point of view, there are only a few things in the Bible that it really matters whether they actually happened or not. The birth of Jesus Christ is one of them. His death and resurrection are on that list as well. Beyond that, though the Bible story probably does have some relationship with actual history, what’s most important is its moral and spiritual message. Whether the things described in it actually happened as described is not all that important.
Hi Lee,
As you know, scholarly debates in Biblical controversies are vast, intricate, and seemingly unending. Everything from authorship, dates of authorship, textual transmission and textual integrity have been hotly taken up by faithful and skeptical scholars alike. For the faithful, the coherence of their entire faith can hinge on the answers to these questions. But is this really only an issue for believers of Biblical Inerrancy, or of a similar orthodox persuasion?
The ultimate significance of these questions appears in my mind to rest with the basic attitude you take to the Bible, or perhaps religion in general. Orthodox Muslims, for instance, believe that the Qur’an is the perfectly preserved verbatim word of God as dictated to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. If you could conclusively prove that even one of those words was of human origin, well, that might serve to shake the faith of a great many Muslims. But if you believe that religions are their sacred texts are the products of the humans and their human minds as it intersects with divine guidance (though words written as correspondence are more than this?), then it seems as though thighs like inaccuracies and contradictions can be downplayed or sidestepped entirely.
Still though, doesn’t it seem almost a little *too* convenient to quickly dispatch with something that’s ordinarily seen as so significant?
The problem doesn’t go away, though, because true believers believe that the Bible was written by the hand of God. As you said, this issue disappears when everyone admits that the Bible was written by man. One of the reasons that doesn’t happen is because of moral authority. After all, who is going to believe a religion, indeed any religion, unless they say that their religion, and only their religion, is the one true Word of God?
Hi John,
But that is a false dichotomy. There are other choices besides the Bible being written 100% by God and the Bible being written 100% by human beings. The debates between these two all-or-nothing positions show a lack of understanding of how divine revelation takes place. One side claims that the Bible is divine revelation because every word in it is straight out of God’s mouth. The other side claims that the Bible is not divine revelation because it was written by human beings.
The reality is that the Bible was written by God through the minds of human beings, or by human minds under inspiration from God. Not just through human hands, like court stenographer who simply transcribe what they hear, but through human minds who speak from their own thoughts, but in a process that is guided by God so that the resulting text embodies, within its human matrix, divine and spiritual truth in perfect sequence and order.
This type of process is necessary because if God were to speak to us in God’s own language, directly from God’s own mind, we would not be able to understand it. As I said in another article, it would be like a class of kindergarteners attending a lecture on nuclear physics. God therefore clothes the divine truth in human language, ideas, culture, and customs, so that we humans on earth will be able to read it and understand it, and if we are so inclined, look beneath the surface to see the deeper divine truth within.
In other words divine revelation must necessarily have both a divine side and a human side, or it could not function as revelation. It is a revelation from God to humans. It is God speaking to humans in human language, using the minds of human beings, whose content is derived from their own learning, experience, and culture, as a medium.
So yes, skeptics and atheists can argue that the Bible is a merely human book because we know that it was originally written by human beings and has a long history of being edited and compiled into its current form. And literalist Christians can argue that the Bible has been preserved intact from when it was first written, and that every word in it was spoken by God into the ears of the human writers. Both of these arguments come from a lack of understanding of the true nature of the Bible as a relationship between God and humans. That relationship was not a one-time event, but involved many human writers and editors over the ages to get the Bible into the form that would serve God’s divine and eternal purposes.
I agree, but unlike you many Christians believe that the Bible is the unerring Word of God because that was what they were taught. For that matter, why do different religions and even different denominations within the Christian faith teach that their way is the right way to express the divine?
Hi John,
You gave the answer to that question in your previous comment. Many people seem to need to believe that their religion is the one true religion of God, because otherwise they would not be able to believe in it, and would therefore not follow it. Not so many people can see that God gives different religions to serve the needs of different people in different cultures.
Hi Rami,
We can indeed quickly quickly dispatch with many things that are ordinarily seen as significant. We can immediately dispatch with the extensive debate about whether the universe was created six thousand years ago or four billion years ago, whether God initially created two people named Adam and Eve who are the original parents of every human being in the world, whether there was a worldwide flood that covered all the mountaintops, and so on.
These things, and many others like them, have been debated by Christians among themselves, and by skeptics and atheists with Christians, for many centuries. From a Swedenborgian perspective, all of those long and heated debates are an utter waste of time, because all of these issues are instantly resolved by recognizing that those early chapters of Genesis were never meant to be taken literally in the first place.
So yes, we can quickly and easily dispatch with the debates about inconsistencies in the Bible. Such debates assume that the Bible is meant to be read as literal history. But it isn’t. And once we recognize that, it matters not at all that there are inconsistencies in the Bible.
Getting stuck on the inconsistencies in the Bible is like reading different versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” and saying, “Clearly this story is a fabrication. In this version the wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood and the Grandmother and they die. In that version the Woodsman comes in, chops open the wolf, and they come out alive—which isn’t even possible, because wolves don’t swallow their prey whole.” Everyone would see that this is a silly argument. But they don’t see it with similarly silly arguments about the Bible because they have the idea in their head that the Bible is intended to be a literally accurate recounting of historical events. It is only for people who have such ideas in their head that it matters whether the Bible is internally consistent and historically accurate.
Yes, I agree. Thanks!
Hey Lee, why do you think we aren’t just automatically BORN knowing how to understand the Bible and its correspondences and symbols?
Thanks,
Moore
Hi Moore,
It’s a good question. Perhaps if we lived in a perfect society, we would be born with access to spiritual knowledge, such as the spiritual meaning of the Bible. However, we live in a very imperfect society, which is a mix of good and evil. We therefore must learn, grow, and develop our knowledge, understanding, and wisdom in the face of falsity and evil that is all too common in our world.
This is also part of our freedom to choose between good and evil. Given that we do live in a mixed society, we experience both good and evil, and we must make a choice between them for our own life and character. It is precisely as we face these choices that, if what we want is the good, we seek out the truth, learn it, and take it to heart. Otherwise we have no strong motivation to learn the truth and grow in understanding and wisdom.
Another reason we are not born knowing what is good and spiritual, and especially not correspondences and the deeper meanings of the Bible is that this knowledge is very powerful, and can be twisted to do great harm by people whose hearts are set on evil rather than good.
Consider, for example, a priest or minister who uses his aura of spiritual knowledge and enlightenment for his own selfish purposes rather than to help and guide people spiritually. Consider the unfortunately rather common situation in which a priest or minister uses his (and sometimes her) position to gain the trust of parishioners, and entice them into sexual liaisons. Or who uses his (and sometimes her) position to sexually victimize minor children. It would be better for such a person not to have that spiritual knowledge and aura at all, because it is being used to do great harm instead of great good.
God therefore does not generally allow us access to spiritual knowledge unless God sees that we are able to use it for good for the rest of our lives. Of course, even if some individuals are capable of doing so, some ultimately choose not to, and the result is all of the terrible evil that has been done by some corrupt Christian clergy and laypeople in positions of leadership in the church.
Because the bulk of people on this earth still do not put real effort into developing their spiritual life and building a strong spiritual character, they cannot be allowed to have deeper spiritual knowledge, or they would misuse it, and their spiritual state would be far worse than if they never gained that knowledge in the first place. This is the meaning of Jesus’ “Parable of the Return of the Unclean Spirit” in Matthew 12:43–45:
This is a picture of a person who has “cleaned up his act,” but then reverts back to his (or her) old ways. Any spiritual knowledge and understanding will then become corrupted and used for evil instead of good, resulting in far greater damnation for the person than if she or he had never repented and begun on a spiritual path in the first place.
See some posts on my blog: https://worldconcernsblog.wordpress.com/2020/08/07/arguments-against-evolution-and-explanations-for-evolutionary-evidence/ and https://worldconcernsblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/12/theistic-evolution-theories/ that try to reconcile the Bible with science.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
I don’t agree with most of the points made in these articles, nor do I think they are based on good science. But I’m really not interested in haggling over the minutiae of scientific theory vs. fundamentalist Christian theory. The Christian fundamentalists have badly missed the point of the Bible, which is spiritual, not scientific. All of their arguments attempting to show that evolution is wrong, that the world really was created in six literal days, and so on, are an utter waste of time. They are a massive distraction from the true message of the Bible, which is God’s salvation of the spirits of people who believe in God and follow God’s commandments.
Hi Lee. I have a question that’s been deeply troubling me for some time now. A common charge leveled against the authenticity of the Bible and by extension Christianity, not just by atheists but also by some muslim theologians and apologists, is the presence of contradictions. Not just matters of theological debate, but clear instances of “one passage presents things very differently than another”. Some examples include Jesus’ conflicting genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3:23-28, or the different stated ages of Ahaziah in 2 Kings 8:26 and 2 Chronicles 22:2. For fundamentalists and literalists, I can understand why these would be a thorny problem, since they insinuate that the infallible (in their view) Word of God contains at best print or copy errors, and at worst seemingly irreconcilable contradictions.
The reason the presence of these contradictions concern me so much, even as a Swedenborgian, is that muslims point to these contradictions as evidence of the Bible being corrupted, altered, or otherwise unreliable as a holy book compared to the Quran. That then makes me wonder: what if muslims are right? It doesn’t necessarily bother me at all if muslims turn out to be right on matters of theology and belief, I promised God some time ago that I would follow whatever path He willed for my life and guided me on, but I still want to know how an educated theologian and pastor would address this matter. As a lay believer, the central argument made by some Muslims: “the Bible contains blatant contradictions, thus it is corrupted and cannot be the true Word of God” does give me pause. How would you respond to these theological charges? For me, the matter is not “do I believe in the Abrahamic God?” (without question, I do personally), but rather, “which Abrahamic religion is the right one for me to follow?”
God Bless,
Chad
Hi Chad,
The funny thing is, if you talk to fundamentalist Christians, they will say the very same thing about the Qur’an in relation to the Bible.
The fact of the matter is that read literally, both the Bible and the Qur’an contain many contradictions and inconsistencies. Fundamentalist Christians have developed arguments to reconcile the ones in the Bible, just as fundamentalist Muslims have developed arguments to reconcile the ones in the Qur’an. Google “contradictions in the Quran,” and you’ll see that the Qur’an has the same “problem” as the Bible.
But really, it is a problem only for people who think materialistically and read the various scriptures of humanity literally. This is true whether those people are religious or atheistic. Most atheists are materialists, and read the Bible and the Qur’an in the same literalistic way that fundamentalist Christians and Muslims read them. Strange but true.
Meanwhile, both Christianity and Islam have adherents who do not take their scriptures so literally. In Islam, Sufism is the best-known mystical movement. There are many Christian mystics and mystical movements as well. For the mystical segments of each religion, literal contradictions and inconsistencies in their scriptures are unimportant, because they see the message of their Scriptures as primarily spiritual. In their view, the scientific and historical accuracy or lack thereof in their scriptures is irrelevant to their spiritual message. Ditto inconsistencies and contradictions in the literal text of the scriptures.
Muslims who argue that the Bible is imperfect because it has contradictions, while the Qur’an is perfect because it is perfectly consistent are just as wrong as Christians who argue the opposite. Both turn a blind eye to the problems in the literal sense of their own scriptures, while pointing a finger at the problems in the literal sense of the other religion’s scriptures. Both are stuck in a low-level materialistic and literalistic form of their religion.
I would suggest that for you, the real question is whether you want to dwell in that low-level materialistic and literalistic form of religion, which gets all hung up in literal accuracy and consistency in the scriptures, or whether you want to rise to a higher level that focuses on spiritual issues and spiritual life, and looks to the scriptures for help and inspiration in becoming a good and loving spiritually reborn person.
For some related articles here, please see:
Thank you for your response, Lee. Though I’m usually confident in my spiritual beliefs, some arguments made by apologists of other religions make me stop and think “oh God, what if I’m wrong?”, and when your eternal life is the matter at stake, it’s hard for it to not weigh on you. I really appreciate your thoughtful analysis and explanation of these matters.
Hi Chad,
Challenges to our beliefs are good. They cause us to think more deeply about what we believe, and why. This can lead to a stronger and more well-founded faith.
https://google.com/search?q=%22Contradictions+in+the+Quran%22 shows results that refute contradictions claims. I recommend Bing and Yahoo! over Google though, so try those search engines and see what results come up with “contradictions in the Qur’an.” Also do it on other search engines like StartPage. I know, that’s another story. I will mention more search engines another time.
Why don’t atheists make claims of contradictions in the Qur’an like they make claims of contradictions in the Bible?
Another thing, if Adam and Eve symbolize not individuals, but a race… Then what about the flood?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Most of the well-known atheists come from Christian areas of the world. Therefore they tend to focus on the problems they see in Christianity and the Bible. But they have a similarly jaundiced view of Islam. It’s all based on a materialistic view of Christianity and the Bible, and other religions and their texts as well.
The flood is also a metaphorical story, not a literal one. See:
Noah’s Ark: A Sea Change in the Human Mind
If There Was No Literal Flood, What does the Ark Mean?
What about Exodus 20:11? The Hebrew word for day, Yom, always means a literal, consecutive day when modified by a plural number. And Exodus 20:11 means “And all that is in them.” Can you respond before I give my thought?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Who sez yom always means a literal, consecutive day when modified by a plural number?
Walt Brown said that in his book “In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood” chapter “Is evolution compatible with the Bible?”. There was a table there comparing “theistic evolution” and “Biblical account.”
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Oh, so a guy who believes the Bible should always be taken literally thinks that the Hebrew word for “day” should always be taken literally? What a surprise!
My thoughts are, If “all that is in them” means every star and animal species on Earth, it would also mean every human being, but it doesn’t. If new human beings are born, and that doesn’t contradict Exodus 20:11 “all that is in them,” then new species evolving and new stars forming wouldn’t conflict with that verse. If “all that is in them” doesn’t mean all people living today, then it doesn’t mean all the stars that exist today or all the species living today.
What if God said things in the six days, and what he said happened later over millions of years?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
The need to tie your brain in these sorts of Gordian knots disappears as soon as you realize that the first few chapters of Genesis were never meant to be taken literally, even by their original authors. For the first 1,000 years of Christianity, Christian theologians commonly believed that the Bible had a spiritual meaning. Many of them wrote commentaries attempting to explain it. It’s only been in the last 1,000 years, and especially in the last 500, since the Protestant Reformation, that the Church has become so physical-minded that it attempts to read everything in the Bible literally if there is any way at all to do so.
I counsel you to free your mind of that literalism and fleshly thinking. Instead of focusing on the letter that kills, lift your mind up to the spirit that gives life. Then you won’t have to get your mind all tangled up in these fruitless and useless ratiocinations.
So, did Martin Luther get anything right? Should the Bible should be the sole authority of the church, not the pope? What are some things that Martin Luther did right in his reform? Reject the authority of the pope? Anything else?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
It’s hard to be 100% wrong. Luther did accurately see the corruption and decay in the Catholic Church. After all, he was a Catholic monk himself. He knew how the Catholic Church worked from the inside. And he did jettison much of that corruption when he founded Protestantism.
However, doctrinally he made things worse by inventing the unbiblical doctrine of justification by faith alone, and setting it up as the cornerstone of Protestant theology. This was a further devolution of the already false and unbiblical Catholic doctrine of atonement by satisfaction.
As a result of this further corruption of Christian faith, Luther set the stage for the final destruction of the existing Christian Church. What followed was many years of bloody battles between Catholics and Protestants, demonstrating the complete moral devastation of the church.
This ultimate end to the spiritual life of the Christian Church is what is foretold symbolically in Matthew 24, Luke 21, and most of the book of Revelation.
So no, Luther wasn’t completely wrong. He was right about how corrupt the Catholic Church was. But by inventing and setting up his doctrine of justification by faith alone, he set the stage for the end of Christianity as we know it. What’s left is mostly an empty shell of clerical hierarchies, old-fashioned buildings, and empty rituals, which more and more people are abandoning, just as they are advised to do in Revelation 18:4–5.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Yes, Luther was right to reject the authority of the Pope. The Pope is no more infallible than you or I. Many popes have articulated many completely false ideas, which they then required every Catholic to believe on pain of excommunication from the church.
As for the Bible being the sole authority in the church, that’s not really workable. And in practice, Protestants ignore and reject the plainest and most commonly repeated teachings of the Bible, and substitute Luther’s doctrine for them. So although they speak of sola scriptura, they are far from following it.
I think the Bible should take precedence over everything else. Should it not?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
What do you mean by that? Should the Bible take precedence over God?
No, God should take precedence over the Bible, then the Bible over the everything else.
Seems like Genesis 1 is more about the spiritual creation and Genesis 2 is more about the physical creation. The first chapter is more of a framework or the “big picture”, while the second chapter is more intricate and detailed. Is it not?
Hi World Questioner,
There have been many attempts to harmonize the two Creations stories in Genesis while assuming that one or both of them is a literal account of creation. None of these attempts have been successful, except in the minds of the people who have advanced them. But these people must come up with these arguments or they will lose their faith, because their faith is materialistic.
Both Creation stories are purely symbolic and spiritual. Specifically, the seven days of Creation are about the initial development of the human spiritual mind or intellect, whereas the second Creation story, especially up to Genesis 2:17, is about the initial development of the human spiritual heart or ability to love unselfishly.
Also, the Islamic notion that the Torah and Injeel are lost and the Bible is corrupt contradicts Matthew 24:35, which says “My words will never pass away.” “My words” – that means the Torah Injeel will never pass away.
Right?
Hi World Questioner,
This is part of the Qur’an asserting itself as the highest and last revelation. Of course, being a Christian, I don’t agree with that. And as for the Bible being corrupt, I don’t agree with that either.
Certainly the Bible, especially the Old Testament, did go through a compiling and editing process over the centuries in which it was composed and gathered together. But all evidence suggests that the text of the Bible that we have now has been mostly unchanged for nearly two thousand years now. We have more early manuscripts of the Bible than we have of any other extant ancient text. Though we have discovered a few small changes and corruptions that crept in along the way, such as the Comma Johanneum, most of the biblical text has been very well preserved over the centuries, and certainly since long before the Qur’an was written.
At this point, the Bible is so widely published and distributed that it would be impossible to make any substantive changes to it at any time in the future. Even if a nuclear holocaust precipitated us into a post-apocalyptic dystopia in which all digital records were lost (which is highly unlikely), there would still be so many physical copies of the Bible in its original languages all over the world that no one could just change the text of the Bible into something else.
Of course, if current cosmological theory is correct, eventually our universe will end in a heat death in which no living beings will survive, and even if there were still a copy of the Bible somewhere, there would be no one to read it. But even then, according to Swedenborg, the Bible is preserved in the spiritual world, where it will be available forever.
Have you ever heard of abrogation? That is supposed to address the inconsistencies in the Qur’an. Later verses in the Quran supersede any earlier verses that contradict them.
But abrogation seems implausible, doesn’t it? Abrogating revelations from God doesn’t make sense at all, does it?
Hi World Questioner,
There is a similar phenomenon in the Bible, such as the Old Testament stating the law of retaliation, and the New Testament abrogating it. Seen from an external and simplistic perspective, it looks like the Bible is contradicting itself. But looked at from a deeper perspective, the Bible is addressing itself, first to a lower, more earthly level of spiritual development, and later to a higher, more spiritual level of spiritual development.
What is the point of starting the bible with parables and not literal facts?
I know that Jesus told parables. But Genesis seems different.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
What would be the point of starting the Bible with literal facts? How would that help us with our salvation?
How much of the Bible literally happened?
I’m guessing stuff about the Garden of Eden and any instance of the “wrath” of God never literally happened (so no literal flood or plagues of Egypt) in any case.
Hi K,
Good question—and not an easy one to answer with any cut-and-dried formula.
For starters, the first eleven chapters of Genesis are purely symbolic, and never literally happened. Toward the end of chapter 11, it starts to shade into telling the story of individuals who probably actually existed. In particular, Abraham’s father Terah and his family were likely actual historical individuals.
However, even after that, there is much of the story that is more mythological than historical. The Hebrew Bible is first and foremost the cultural and spiritual history of the Jewish people, not literal history as we know it today. Much of the storyline is in the nature of an origin story that gives a cultural and spiritual basis for the religion, culture, and practices of the Jewish people. Whether or not it all happened literally as told is secondary.
About the specific examples you raise: There was never a literal Garden of Eden. There was never a literal flood that covered the entire earth. The plagues of Egypt could have happened, but most likely the story of the Exodus is a cultural origin story, not literal history. And about the wrath of God:
What is the Wrath of God? Why was the Old Testament God so Angry, yet Jesus was so Peaceful?
Once we get to the New Testament, the story is probably closer to what actually happened. However, even here, the Gospels don’t entirely agree with one another, and in some cases they tell a very different story from one another. For example, the two birth stories given in Matthew and Luke are quite different, and not entirely compatible with one another. And the Gospel of John tells a very different story of Jesus’ ministry than the three “synoptic Gospels” of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
This should ward us away from getting too literalistic even about the New Testament. The point of the Gospels is not to give an accurate biography of Jesus’ life. It is to share the good news of the new covenant offered to all people by Jesus Christ. “Christians” who insist that everything in the Bible, and even everything in the Gospels, must be taken literally are missing the point of the Bible.
The Bible ends as it begins, with a narrative that is entirely symbolic, and was never meant to be taken literally. I’m speaking of the book of Revelation. This is a prophetic book, “prophetic” here meaning that it is written in symbolic language that speaks of spiritual events, not material-world events. (Most of the prophetic books of the Old Testament are more symbolic than literal also.) See:
Is the World Coming to an End? What about the Second Coming?
Here’s a functional rule about what parts of the Bible to take literally: If it helps you to act rightly from good motives, take it literally. Everything else can be interpreted spiritually. And even the commandments that we are to take literally also have deeper spiritual meanings. See, for example:
The Ten Commandments: Our Spiritual Inventory List
Why doesn’t the Bible tell us that Genesis wasn’t to be taken literally? Why doesn’t the Bible just give the literal truth about the past that people evolved from other creatures and such?
Why doesn’t the Bible tell us that the six days, the Garden of Eden, and the Flood were not to be taken literally?
Why doesn’t the Bible say that death was always intended to be part of God’s creation?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Why should the Bible tell us these things? How would knowing them contribute to our eternal salvation?
The Bible has one purpose: to move us toward salvation and eternal life. It doesn’t waste time telling us about relatively trivial earthly things such as exactly how and when the universe was created, and exactly how our physical bodies came into being. Knowing these material-world facts is fascinating! But it doesn’t contribute to the purpose of the Bible, which is spiritual, not material. That’s why the Bible doesn’t waste its time telling us these things.
Why should the Bible tell us those things? Then we wouldn’t have so many people taking things literally that were not meant to be taken literally.
Too many people take Genesis literally.
Did the early Church take Genesis literally? Did the ancient Jews/Hebrews take Genesis literally? Didn’t Moses do such?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Many people need to take things literally because they are not deep thinkers. If the Bible came right out and said, “Don’t take all of this literally,” it would leave such people out in the cold.
Plus, there are some things in the Bible that we are meant to take literally, such as the commandments against killing, committing adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, and so on, and the two Great Commandments. If the Bible said, “Don’t take the Bible literally,” people would think they can ignore these commandments as well.
The ancient Jews/Hebrews were largely materialistic, like the cultures around them. They took the Hebrew Bible mostly literally. But also, they didn’t have today’s science, so it wasn’t an issue for them.
The early Christians were a mix of literalists and non-literalists. Origen is famous for interpreting the Bible spiritually, and he was certainly not the only one to do so. Other Christian leaders interpreted it mostly literally. Christianity does have a long tradition of spiritual interpretation of the Bible that remained strong for the first millennium of Christianity. Then it began to fade, and after the Protestant Reformation it became a largely unknown aspect of Christian faith.
What if it told us what to take literally and what not to take literally?
Then it would be a very tedious book, and no one would read it.
https://www.gotquestions.org/why-should-I-believe-the-Bible.html
So Creation Science is invalid. Is Intelligent Design valid? Is specified complexity and irreducible complexity valid? Ever heard of Michael Behe? He was a Catholic.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
As is common in articles on GotQuestions, this one is a toxic mixture of truth and falsity. This is even worse than being entirely false. It attracts people by its true statements, and then poisons the truth in their minds with false statements. As the Lord says in Revelation 3:15–16, is better to be hot (entirely good and true) or cold (entirely evil and false) than to be lukewarm (a mixture of both), as GotQuestions is.
The last few statements in the article are true (although misunderstood by the site’s authors), because they are taken directly from the Bible. But the second paragraph of the article contains two great falsities: total depravity, which is a depraved Calvinist belief, and the belief that “humans can do nothing of themselves to remedy their natural state,” which is a general Protestant fallacy. Both of these are flatly denied in the Bible. They are terribly damaging, destructive, and evil beliefs.
GotQuestions has fallen into the worst form of Christianity, which is fundamentalist Calvinism. After Calvin completed the job of totally destroying biblical truth through his depraved doctrines of total depravity and double predestination, the Second Coming was only a matter of time. And it did happen during Swedenborg’s lifetime, but in the spiritual world, not in the physical world as physical-minded fundamentalists such as the GotQuestions authors believe.
As for the rest of your questions, “Creation Science” is indeed invalid. It is not science. It is a fundamentalist religious belief based on a physical-minded, fleshly, and unspiritual reading of the Bible. The other theories, and Michael Behe’s advocacy of them, are also religious beliefs, not scientific ones. Religion is about our relationship with God, not about our understanding of the physical universe. All of these theories are based on a complete misunderstanding of what the Bible is meant to teach us.
This is not to say that God didn’t intelligently design the universe, but the current theory of “Intelligent Design” is a specific theory that falls into the “God of the gaps” fallacy, and is therefore invalid.
God created the universe to have the intrinsic ability to develop forms that are capable of life. There is no need for God to intervene and make things happen the correct way. If that were so, it would mean that God was anything but an intelligent designer. It would be like an automaker who designed a car that the owner has to constantly tinker with to keep it working. A well-designed car simply works, day after day, week after week, year after year, with a minimum of maintenance and repair.
Life itself is spiritual, and inhabits biological organisms. But the development of those organisms happens according to physical and biological processes that work on their own level, without need for “direction” from the spiritual world. What the spiritual world does is invest them with life, and also keep them in existence from within—though it is really God doing that through the spiritual world.
These are complex issues. It is not surprising that so many people, both theist and atheist, are confused and come up with fruitless theories. Swedenborg cuts through all the confusion, and provides a sound foundation for thinking about these things. It is necessary to continue to develop the principles he laid out to keep up with current knowledge. But that is a far easier task than laying out the fundamental principles of God and Creation in the first place. For one stab at keeping current with current knowledge on these complicated issues, please see:
God: Puppetmaster or Manager of the Universe?
Why would God not create dinosaurs to coexist with people? Why can’t people see them alive for real? Doesn’t that seem meaningless? When dinosaurs around, it’s sounding like there are no humans to have dominion over them.
You’re telling me not to rely on you to refute creationist arguments against evolution, but to rely on scientific textbooks.
Some would claim that the Devil has deceived scientists into accepting evolution as a fact.
I think it is possible for a false idea to be accepted as a fact by the scientific community. I’m not specifically referring to evolution, or to the Big Bang for that matter. Do you believe in the Big Bang? Evolution doesn’t try to explain the origin of life or the origin of the universe.
Do the flood myths around the world show evidence of common descent from the Biblical flood? The Babylonian flodo myth is most similar to the Biblical flood. Are the Indian and Chinese flood myths not more similar to the biblical flood than the Native American flood myths? And what about Turkish and African and European flood myths? Are the differences not greater the further one gets from Babylon? Again, you’re asking my not to rely on you, but on scientific textbooks.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Why would God create dinosaurs to coexist with people? Personally, I would not want to live on a planet dominated by dinosaurs. Jurassic Park should be enough to explain why.
What I’m saying is that the vast weight of scientific discovery simply doesn’t support creationist arguments. All you have to do is read actual (not creationist) scientific textbooks, and you will understand. If you want to reject the vast weight of scientific evidence and discovery in favor of a theory that the Devil has deceived scientists into accepting evolution as a fact, then that’s entirely up to you. People are going to believe what they’re going to believe regardless of all facts, evidence, logic, and experience to the contrary, and even regardless of anything they read in the Bible that doesn’t support what they want to believe.
The Big Bang is not really something to “believe in.” It’s a scientific theory, and even the theory is changing and evolving. See “The Big Bang no longer means what it used to,” by astrophysicist Ethan Siegal. Rather than “believing in” the Big Bang, I watch with great fascination as scientists try to figure out the early physical origins of the universe. As for its spiritual origins, that will forever remain beyond the reach of science, because science is the study of material reality.
And the flood myths are just that: myths. They were never intended to be taken literally. Yes, they reflect real floods that people in ancient times experienced. The experience of having one’s city wiped out by a giant torrent of water does imprint itself on the human mind. Ancient storytellers used that experience as the basis for mythical tales of world-destroying floods. But they were never really talking about literal floods. They were talking about spiritual floods, which are the floods of falsity that destroy everything in their path in the human mind and spirit.
Evolution is a fact, but is the Big Bang a fact too? Is denial of the Big Bang compatible with evolution?
Are we stardust in human form? Is that a scientific fact? Evolution does not try to explain the origin of life, or the origin of the Universe.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
None of these are really “facts” in the absolute sense of that word. They are our current best understanding of how things happened. As for being stardust in human form, that’s a poetic way of saying that scientifically, the elements of which our bodies are made were formed in earlier generations of stars through processes of nuclear fusion, and also in supernovas. And yes, evolution just takes life as a given, and postulates how it develops from one form of life to another.
Don’t think that dinosaurs would eat people. Most dinosaurs ate only plants. I don’t know that T.Rex would even develop a taste for human flesh as lions and tigers do. T.Rex only ate other dinosaurs, not mammals.
Don’t think that dinosaurs would be destructive to human property, as many would imagine. Don’t think that sauropods would crush cars.
Hi World Questioner,
There were vegetarian and carnivorous dinosaurs just as there are vegetarian and carnivorous mammals. I doubt the carnivorous dinosaurs were picky about what they would eat. Carnivores will generally eat whatever animal they can get their hands on. If humans had coexisted with dinosaurs, then a T Rex would happily eat a human if it could get its jaws on a human.
But it’s all academic anyway, because humans didn’t coexist with dinosaurs. And mammals in general became dominant on earth only much later, after the dinosaurs were gone. During the time period in which dinosaurs were the dominant land animals, most mammals were small herbivorous creatures.
Actually, most mesozoic mammals were insectivores, not herbivores. And carnivorous dinosaurs didn’t terrorize early mammals. In fact, some mammals ate dinosaurs. But interaction between mammals and dinosaurs was limited.
Hi World Questioner,
Yeah, I might have been off about their diets. The main point is that they were mostly small mammals. Mammals didn’t become the dominant land animals until after the dinosaurs died off.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
The GotQuestions article you linked on “Why Should I Believe the Bible” quotes a very interesting statement from the Epistles:
Unfortunately, the author of the article misunderstands what this means, as that site does with almost everything the Bible says. It does not mean that God literally dictated every word of the Bible, and the prophets simply wrote them down like court stenographers. That’s not how revelation works. Rather, it means that God spoke to the prophets from within, and the prophets heard what God said based on their own mind and experience, and wrote it down.
Notice that 2 Peter 1:21 does not say, “God spoke through the prophets.” Its wording is very precise. It says, “prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Speaking from God is not at all the same as God speaking through the prophets. In one, the prophet is speaking, but is taking the inspiration for what he says from the Holy Spirit. In the other, the Holy Spirit is simply speaking through the prophet, using the prophet as a mouthpiece.
It is critically important to understand the difference between these two. Without an understanding of the difference, we will have a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the Bible, and how God speaks to us in the Bible.
Prophets speaking from God means that it is still the prophet speaking. The words and presentation are coming from the mind of the prophet. But the prophet is looking to God for inspiration about what to say. Another way of saying this is that God provides the message, but the prophet’s mind determines how to express the message in human words and concepts.
Prophets are not court stenographers, as the GotQuestions authors seem to think, simply recording dictation that comes from God. They are more like ambassadors, who hear God speaking to them from within, then deliver that message to the intended recipients in their own words, engaging their mind in the process.
The inspiration involved in this is far greater than the mechanical one that GotQuestions and other materialistic Christian organizations believe in. The Bible is a relationship between God and humankind. It has a divine side, which is the spiritual meaning, and a human side, which is the literal meaning. Without both of these, it could not communicate God’s message to ordinary people here on earth. See my comment here.
Why does the Bible call the things in Genesis an “account” and not a “story,” “legend,” or “myth”?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
If you’re thinking of Genesis 2:4, the original Hebrew word literally means “generations.” It comes from a word meaning “to bear, beget, bring forth.” It usually refers to a genealogy, or an “account” of a man and his descendants.
In other words, it doesn’t really say “account.” It says “genealogical record.”
I forgot another term: “tale.”
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Once again, it means “genealogy,” not “account” or “story.” It is a genealogical account.
Myths are usually written hundreds of years after they are said to have taken place, right?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
It would be more accurate to say that myths are metaphorical stories usually set in the distant past.
Don’t myths usually take hundreds of years to develop? That wasn’t the case with the four gospels, which were written only a few decades after they took place. But I’ll agree that Genesis was written many centuries after it was supposed to have taken place, but I don’t think the same is true with the rest of the Pentateuch. I don’t know about Chronicles or Kings.
Back in the Bible times, including the New Testament, people were accustomed to oral tradition, right? Much more accustomed to oral tradition than people today, correct? And the Gallic Wars are more corrupt than the New Testament.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
There are many different styles of writing in the Bible. There is the mythical and symbolic style of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. There is the narrative style that starts with Genesis 12 and runs through all the books that recount the story of of the Jews and their origins. There is the prophetic style of the Prophets. There is the poetic and lyrical style of the Psalms. The Gospels and the Acts return to a narrative style. The Epistles have a doctrinal style. The book of Revelation has a prophetic style. And there are more styles along the way, such as the legal style of Leviticus. Plus, various styles are sprinkled around even within particular books of the Bible.
All of these styles do have deeper meanings within them. But you can’t just lump them all together and treat them as if they’re all the same. If you try to read Genesis 1 the same way you read Genesis 12 or Exodus 1, or read Luke 1 the same way you read the 24th Psalm, you’re going to make all sorts of mistakes in reading and understanding the Bible. Although the Bible is a single seamless book, it is also a collection of books, which have many different authors and styles.
So yes, myths often (but not always) take hundreds or even thousands of year to develop. But not all of the Bible is mythical in style. The Gospels are narrative in style, even though they contain many parables when they are recounting Jesus’ teachings. We shouldn’t expect the Gospels to be written the same way the first eleven chapters of Genesis were written.
As far as Genesis being written many centuries after it was supposed to have taken place, traditionally Moses is considered the author of the first five books of the Bible, which is why Jesus refers to them as either “Moses” or “the Law.” This is in contrast to “the Prophets,” which, in Jewish reckoning, includes many of the books that we consider historical, such as Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. These books are traditionally called “the Former Prophets,” whereas the books that Christians call “the Prophets” were called “the Latter Prophets.”
The rest of the books of the Old Testament were part of the Jewish “Writings.” These books were not fully canonized by the first century AD when Jesus lived and taught. That’s why Jesus speaks of the Law and the Prophets, not the Law and the Prophets and the Writings—though he does include Daniel in the Prophets, which the Jews don’t, and he refers to Psalms as Scripture as well.
At any rate, if traditionally Moses was considered the author of the first five books of the Bible, this would indeed mean that the stories of Genesis were written many centuries after the events narrated in them would have taken place. Before that, they were most likely passed down orally from generation to generation, changing and adapting to the culture as they were passed down. Only at the time of the Exodus, many centuries later, would they have been written down in a settled form. However, present-day Bible scholars think they were written many centuries later than that.
Regardless, through all that development of the stories, God ensured that they were coming into a form that would perfectly express both metaphorically and in direct teachings the spiritual and practical message that God wanted to deliver to the world. Just because many of the stories went through many changes before they were finally written down, that doesn’t mean they’re not inspired. God is not limited to working with the particular authors that wrote the books down. God is active all through human history and culture, guiding and shaping the narrative to tell the story God wants told.
https://creation.com/genesis-waw-consecutive-narrative. Sorry, if I add more, my comment will be cut off.;
Hi World Questioner,
There seems to be a problem with this website. I got an error message when clicking on the link, and also when attempting to go to the creation.com website.
Search on Google https://www.google.com/search?q=Genesis+waw+consecutive and https://www.google.com/search?q=Genesis+vav+consecutive. Does that mean Genesis is a historical narrative?
Hi World Questioner,
If these literalists are reduced to arguing that Genesis must be a historical narrative because it uses the vav consecutive, then they really are desperate. The vav consecutive is a common, standard Hebrew way of writing and speaking. It doesn’t say anything particular about the style of the writing, whether it is literal or metaphorical.
Genesis does use a historical style of writing. But so do millions of novels that are not meant to be read as literal history. Does anyone really think that Moby Dick or The Grapes of Wrath are intended by their authors to be read as literal history? And yet, they read as if the author is telling a story about events that really happened.
In short: This is a silly argument on the part of the Creationists.
So I gather there’s still stuff after the first 11 chapters of Genesis and before Revelation that didn’t literally happen.
Which is good, because otherwise there’d be a lot of scientific issues and supposed cruelty from God, like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Hi K,
Yes. Scientists and scholars have studied the “historical” aspects of the Bible intensively. Though some of the general outlines of the story do have some support from archeological digs and old tablets and royal records, most of it can’t be verified. Considerable parts of it seem very unlikely to have ever happened.
Even when the Bible was originally being written, its intent was not so much to write a history of the Jews as it was to provide a cultural origin story for the Israelite people. Strict present-day standards of historical accuracy were the exception rather than the rule back then. Most stories were meant to tell some sort of moral or spiritual lesson, not to accurately portray external historical events.
So yes, it’s unlikely that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone raining down from heaven. Much more likely this was composed as a mythical tale to convey a moral and cultural lesson. The same is true of many other stories in the Old Testament. Yes, the Hebrews and Israelites and Jews did come from somewhere. There is some thread of history behind their culture and religion. But it probably happened quite differently than the narrative that became our Bible.
If we take seriously the idea that the Bible is a revelation from God about spiritual things, not a human textbook of history and science, then none of this is problematic or disturbing—as much as it may be for fundamentalist and literalist Christians. The Word of God is the Word of God because of its spiritual message, and not for any other reason.
Thanks for the reply.
Something I also have heard is: why didn’t God use the Bible to teach people about the physical as well as the spiritual, or seek to abolish practices like slavery or animal sacrifice?
Hi K,
Why would God be interested in teaching us about science and history? These are things we can figure out for ourselves. And they concern primarily our physical life in this world, which is temporary. What we can’t figure out for ourselves is the nature of God and spirit, and the pathway to spiritual life, which is eternal. That’s what God is interested in teaching us about in the Bible and in other sacred books.
On your second question, a poetic answer is in the prophecy, applied to Jesus in the New Testament, that:
God does not break the currently existing “bruised reed” of humanity, nor “quench” the fires that are already burning in humanity. To do so would be to break our freedom and our humanity. God leads us, not through coercion, but in freedom. God therefore bends, but does not break, aspects of our character and society that are so deeply rooted that if God were to eradicate them, God would be eradicating us by eradicating our freedom, and our existence as human beings along with it.
What we see in the Bible narrative is not God forcing people to live ideal lives according to God’s original plan for humanity, but God leading and bending people and society toward a better way of life as those people and those societies are willing and able to make those changes in themselves. We therefore see a gradual progression in the Bible from worse to better rather than instant, wholesale change in deeply rooted attitudes and practices.
Sometimes gradual changes in attitudes do result in sudden earthquakes of change. But there has always been preparation ahead of time, symbolized by the need to send John the Baptist to prepare the way for Jesus “lest he strike the earth with a curse” (see Malachi 4:5–6, which is alluded to by Jesus in Matthew 11:13–14).
Also I take it much of the laws in the Bible like rapists having to marry the victims or “no mixing fabrics”, or judicial corporal punishment were not from God, but made up by the Israelites. But they were allowed to be in the Old Testament because “A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.”, and spiritual good could come out of them?
Also would Mosaic laws still be practiced in any part of Heaven?
Hi K,
It’s not quite that those laws were “not from God.” They were from God, but they were filtered through the particular minds and culture into which they came. The laws in the Bible that to us today are outdated or seem cruel and arbitrary were enacted for a reason at the time, in order to accomplish necessary and worthwhile goals within that culture. Since then, however, the cultural conditions have changed, meaning that the same divine purposes require different laws to accomplish them. This is why human laws are always changing as the culture changes.
For example, the much-maligned law “requiring rapists to marry their victims,” in its own cultural context, was enacted as a protection for women and their families. In those days, an unmarried woman who was not a virgin would be rejected by any potential husband, and often by her family as well. And in that culture, a woman who was not under the tutelage of a man such as her father or a husband had few options to survive other than prostitution. Under these cultural conditions, if a woman were raped, the most likely result for her would be that she would be forced into prostitution, whereas the man could just go on his merry way.
To prevent this obviously unjust situation, any man who raped a woman was required to marry her and thereby give her a home and social standing in society. Today, of course, in most countries the role and status of women has greatly improved, and such a law is no longer necessary, nor would it be just. Our concept and ideal of marriage has also changed greatly, such that a woman being married to a man who had raped her would be intolerable for her. But in its own time and cultural context, this law was both necessary and just.
The divine law behind such a human law was that a man could not rape a woman and face no consequences for his actions. Today, in countries that have reasonably just laws, we accomplish justice against rapists by incarcerating them. Meanwhile, in today’s society a woman can support herself and have status and respect within society without having to be attached to a man. The divine law is the same, but the way it filters through human minds and cultures differs based on those minds and cultures.
This is why, when we read and interpret the Bible, we go seriously off-course if we read the Bible as if it were written in today’s times and cultures rather than in its own times and cultures. Though there are some universals, such as the laws in the second table of the Ten Commandments, when reading most passages in the Bible and seeking to interpret them, we must take into account the culture and mindset in which that passage was written. There has been and continues to be much bad Bible interpretation by so-called “Christians” and many attacks on the Bible by skeptics and atheists precisely because this principle has not been understood and followed.
All of the Bible is divinely inspired. But all of it also had to be filtered and written through human minds and hands. The Bible is a relationship between God and humans. It has a divine element, which is the spiritual meaning, and a human element, which is the literal meaning. Sometimes the two are in full accord, such as in the commandments not to kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, and covet. Other times the literal meaning is a localized and culturally appropriate way of representing the spiritual meaning, which is the divine truth behind it. Here is an article that goes into some of this in more detail:
How God Speaks in the Bible to Us Boneheads
On your closing question, I presume that observant Jews will continue to practice the Mosaic Law in heaven, especially if they lived during the era in which those laws could be fully obeyed. Today, not even the strictest Jews follow every commandment in the Mosaic Law because they are prevented from observing many of them due to the loss of the Temple in Jerusalem that occurred in the year 70 AD. Would today’s Jews go back to engaging in animal sacrifice in heaven? Perhaps a few ultra-conservative and fundamentalist Jews would. But I suspect that most Jews of today would find engaging in animal sacrifice to be quite distasteful. I suspect that even though they could once again have a Jerusalem Temple in heaven, they will continue to practice Rabbinic Judaism in heaven just as they have been accustomed to do for many centuries now.
I have a new post: https://religionspiritualphilosophy.wordpress.com/2023/04/08/how-to-reconcile-the-bible-with-modern-science/. It’s actually my first post on that blog.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Or, maybe the Creation stories in Genesis were never meant to be taken literally.
Maybe you should write an article titled “Didn’t Jesus acknowledge the first few chapters of Genesis as literal history?” Or something.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Yes, that would be an interesting article.
Can you give some responses to https://www.gotquestions.org/Adam-and-Eve-story.html
If we can’t trust Adam and Eve as literal individuals, doesn’t that mean we can’t trust anything of Luke’s gospel? Romans 5:12 refers to one man. That means an individual. It doesn’t specifically say what that one man is, but it persumably refers to Adam. If Adam and Eve and Noah weren’t historical, literal characters, wouldn’t Jesus be lying? He would not be God then would he?
Just an honest question: can you please give an answer as to how to reconcile the Bible with modern science, despite those verses? It’s not rhetorical.
Read the whole of the linked GotQuestions answer and give responses to what they say.
You wrote responses to Randy Alcorn and John Piper and to Jack Wellman and Tom Wenig, but only relating to marriage and sexuality in Heaven, but couldn’t you respond to some writers related to atheistic evolution, old-Earth creationism, and young-Earth creationism? I wonder why no one wrote a spiritual conundrum like that. Maybe I should. Like “Theistic evolution, A Response to Ken Ham,” “Theistic evolution: A Response to Walt Brown” and others. Or maybe more specific like “History or metaphor of Genesis: A response to Ken Ham.” Maybe addressing verses from the Four Gospels and Paul’s Letters.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
The article you link is a fine example of people whose minds get all tied up in knots because contrary to the teachings of Paul, they focus on the letter that kills rather than on the spirit that gives life (2 Corinthians 3:5–6). I am linking to the KJV, because later translations seem to want to capitalize “spirit,” as if it is referring to the Holy Spirit. There is no warrant in the original Greek for that. Capitalizing “spirit” in that verse is a way for present-day biblical literalists to avoid what Paul is saying here. Paul rejects their literalism, but they reject Paul’s teaching on this just as they reject his teachings, and Jesus’ teachings, on everything else.
As for Jesus lying, sinning, and so on, does this mean that if there was no literal man who found a literal pearl of great price in a literal field, Jesus was lying, and was therefore a sinner?
The whole idea is preposterous.
Like Paul, Jesus told us to focus on the spirit, not on the flesh, when people were abandoning him because they were taking his words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood literally:
It is those who insist that everything Jesus said must be taken literally that are calling him a liar and are abandoning his teachings. The article even misquotes Jesus to try to justify its fleshly, materialistic interpretation of the Bible. The article says:
But Jesus does not say that in Mark 10:6 or anywhere else. He says, in the translation the linked article refers to:
The article is just flat wrong in saying “Jesus taught that God created one man and one woman.” Jesus never said any such thing. But this is an example of how Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals unconsciously misquote the Bible because their beliefs are unbiblical and false.
The nature of parable and metaphor is that it uses imagery taken from nature and from the human world to illustrate deeper spiritual and divine truths. The Creation stories in Genesis (there are two of them) use the Hebrew word adam to refer to humankind. But they also tell a metaphorical story in which humankind is represented as one man, named “Adam.” The very fact that the Hebrew word/name “adam/Adam” means “human/humankind” should give pause to the literalists.
When Americans talk about “Uncle Sam,” are they lying because “Uncle Sam” is not a literal individual?
Is the fable “Little Red Riding Hood” lying because Little Red Riding Hood is not a literal individual girl, but a representative of a whole class of naive, over-trusting people who get themselves into trouble?
Was Herman Melville lying because there was no literal Ahab and no literal Great White Wale, but instead these stood for human traits and pursuits of hubris and folly?
And yet, we calmly talk about Uncle Sam, Little Red Riding Hood, and Ahab as if they were individual human beings, when all the while we know that they are representative figures.
The same is true where the New Testament refers to Adam as “one man,” or more generally talks about Adam as the one through whom sin came into the world. Whether or not he was a literal individual human being is irrelevant to the deeper spiritual point that is being made in the original stories in Genesis, and in the references to them in the New Testament.
In short, the idea that if there was no literal, individual man named Adam Jesus is lying—for supposedly saying something he didn’t even say—and that Paul is lying because he referred to Adam as “one man,” is utterly preposterous. It is the worst kind of small-minded, materialistic, fleshly thinking.
This is exactly the sort of fleshly-minded thinking that caused so many people to abandon Jesus when they heard him saying that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood or they would have no life in them. See:
Eat My Flesh, Drink My Blood
The material-minded writers of the article you link think that they are the only real Christians because they take everything in the Bible they can possibly take literally as literally, literally, literally as possible. (How many times can they repeat the word “literally” when the Bible never even uses that word, except to reject it? As usual, they are adding words to Scripture, which is strictly forbidden by Scripture itself.) In fact, they are the ones who have rejected the spirit and life in the Bible’s teachings in favor of the flesh and the letter that Jesus and Paul reject.
And their material-minded error is not without serious consequences. Their biblical literalism is driving millions of thinking, caring people away from the Bible and away from Jesus Christ. Their view is a stupid, brainless human invention that goes contrary to everything we are taught in the New Testament about the spirit vs. the letter. When thinking people hear it, they recognize that it makes no sense, and they throw the baby Jesus out with the bathwater of these faux Christians.
When the writers of these articles stand before the (metaphorical) judgment seat of Christ, they will be asked why they drove so many people away from Christ with their small-minded literalism, contrary to the direct teaching of Paul and of Jesus Christ himself.
You could still write articles like “A response to Ken Ham” related to evolution and spirit vs. letter, just as you did “A response to Randy Alcorn and John Piper” related to marriage and sexuality in Heaven.
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Yes, I could. But these days I don’t have much time to write new articles. However, later this year I may finally be able to get back to writing new material for the blog.
Can we really believe the bible? This is an interesting title for an article that explains “tongues”.
With the understanding that scripture is a collection of writings of thoughts and visions God was placing in the minds of the prophet authors, the next logical step is to ponder what these events and characters mean to the author.
The bible, in its simple form, gives the information that humans are predictable. God is preparing to show Himself in the 2050’s against the United States. If humanity does not turn to God after this happening, God will show Himself again in the year 2096 against religions that teach inaccurately about scripture. Let’s call these two entities “Jerusalem” and “Judah” respectively. Let’s say for the sake of argument that “Jerusalem” is the “superpower” of the natural world, and “Judah” is the “superpower” of the spiritual world. Isaiah 3:3 points directly at the United States and its governing entities. As for “Judah”, catholicism exists for this timeline. In the year 2096, the sitting pope will be number 275. This is when the “Israelites” will be released from their “enslavement”. Now is the time for the “ark” to be built, for the “rain” is coming.
I was brought up attending a catholic church. I was never smitten with the teachings. I claim no affiliation with organized religions.
I have visions. I have had them since 2009. I have an understanding of the process. When given the opportunity for long range understanding, I accepted.
As for “can we really believe the bible?” The answer is yes.
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for your thoughts.
I do think it is important to understand what the books of Scripture meant to their original authors. Without this knowledge, churches and preachers commonly draw all sorts of false conclusions from the Bible based on a misunderstanding of even its literal meaning, let alone its deeper meaning.
However, I would suggest that the primary significance of the Bible and its prophecies, and perhaps of the prophecies you have received as well, is spiritual, not earthly. There have been many similar predictions of earthly kingdoms rising and falling based upon visitation by God, made over many centuries. None of them have turned out to be accurate once the predicted time of the events prophesied came and went.
Today, the United States is the great earthly superpower. It is therefore tempting to think that it is the subject of many prophecies and visions. But earthly empires come and go. It is our spiritual life that is most important, because its events have eternal consequences. It is the kingdoms of the spiritual realms, and of our individual spirits, that are the real subject of all these prophecies. That is the meaning of these verses:
Hello Lee, thanks for the response.
I understand the hesitancy, although I believe what God allows me to understand is worth investigating. Dare I use the word “implore” to catch your interest?
Let’s start with God showing Himself in 2096. Reasonably simple calculation.
2 Peter 3:8 (NAB) states: “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.”
John 11:9 gives the information: “Are there not 12 hours in a day?”
Acts 27:37 gives the information: “In all, there were two hundred seventy-six of us on the ship.”
Revelation 17:12 gives the information: “The ten horns that you saw represent ten kings who have not yet been crowned; they will receive royal authority along with the beast for one hour.”
If you consider that the “ship” that Paul boarded is the groundwork for christianity that Peter developed, a timeline emerges from the information listed above.
I believe we entered into the “end times” on December 21, 2012. Let’s use this as a starting point for the calculation.
If one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day, and there are but 12 hours in a day, let’s divide 1000 years by 12. This gives a figure of 83.333…years to equal “one hour”. Let’s add this figure to 12-21-2012 and it gives us an approximate date of April/May of the year 2096. A variable of timing between 12-21-2012 and the seating of pope Frances may exist.
On December 21, 2012, the sitting pope was pope Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict XVI was the 265th pope. If you add the ten kings who have not yet been crowned, and Paul, the number of men on the “ship” is fulfilled.
The sitting pope, pope Frances, is the first of these ten kings yet to be crowned.
As for the United States, the calculation may contain variables that should be investigated. On December 21, 2012, Barack Obama was already president, however, did not receive “power” of his re-election until after 12-21-2012. The first election after 12-21-2012 would be the election of 2016 in which Donald Trump became president. Let’s use this election for the timeline.
One difference in the calculation of this event is that we observe a 24 hour day, so let’s divide 1000 years by 24. This gives us a figure of 41.666…years for “one hour”. Add 41.666…years to the date Donald Trump took office, January 20, 2017, and you get an approximate date of September/October of the year 2058. A variable between elections and sitting president re-election may exist. Timing of this event may start from 12-21-2012, which would give an approximate date of August/September of the year 2054.
Donald Trump was the first of the “ten kings not yet crowned”. Joe Biden is the second.
If a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day, and witness to Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Rev. 19:10), can it be possible that as of the year 2000, we entered into the “third day” after the death of the man known as “Jesus”, thus making the timing correct for the “resurrection of Jesus”, or the return of spirit of prophecy, in our time?
I claim a revelation from the “I AM” of scripture. This happened April 26, 2009. I claim a prophetic position before God, placed upon me by God. You should speak with me.
Hi Matthew,
These sorts of calculations and predictions have been made ever since Christianity first began. You can see a list of some of them here:
Wikipedia -> List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events
Not one of the predictions of cataclysmic events happening at this or that time has come true yet. The predicted year has come and gone, and the world has kept right on turning. This suggests that the whole enterprise of using the Bible to predict material-world events is mistaken and wrong. The Bible is a book about God and spirit, not a book about earthly things.
But you and I don’t have to argue and debate these things. You believe your predictions are right. I believe they are wrong. Time will tell which one of us is right.
Really, I was much more interested in your symbolic understanding of the Bible, such as a woman meaning wisdom, than in these material-world predictions, which come and go with every passing century and every passing decade. See:
Hello Lee,
I won’t go on about the predictions…they are what they are. Chances are likely I will no longer be alive when things may happen. I believe it’s worthy of investigating further for the right people.
As for a woman in scripture being wisdom, read the Nag Hammadi scriptures. At this point, they are the only other “scriptures” I have found relevant. I couldn’t force myself to read the book of Mormon. Couldn’t find “prophetic value” in the writings. I got a copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but not very far into reading it said ” Do not eat of the passover sacrifice.” I don’t believe I read any further. As we all know, the man known as “Jesus”, the “Lamb of God”, was the passover sacrifice. The “blood on the doorpost” is one living their life as Jesus did and following his teachings.
Well, anyway, back to the Nag Hammadi Scriptures.
Back in 2011, I was watching a show about the book Revelation of John on The Discovery Channel. They had a segment on the book Revelation of Peter. I searched the book, read it online, and ordered a copy of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures to read. Not to spoil the read for you, but Peter writes about the demise of what Jesus had him create. He describes the current state of christianity. Interesting reading. I found the collection relative to the books contained in the bible. Several books from authors contained in the bible, as well as other books that helped me in my journey. Some of the books become quite choppy, some outright unreadable, but for someone that is searching for more about the entity commonly known as “God”, I believe these books are a step in the right direction.
If the word (scripture) is the water, and the stories of character and circumstance are considered as “containers of water”, how many of these containers of water can you “turn to wine”? “Adam”, which means “eye of light”? Moses, which means “drawn from the water”? Are you Gideon? Can you use the “jawbone of an ass”? David had five stones to choose from to bring down Goliath. Can you choose the correct stone and cast it? Let’s talk “tongues”, friend. I believe we are working for the same goal.
Have a good evening, and may God bless
Hi Matthew,
Sounds like you have found some good sources to move you forward on your spiritual journey.
Yes, all of these people in the Bible stand for deeper spiritual realities. Swedenborg spent many years exploring their meaning under enlightenment from the Lord, and writing down the results for us. See, especially:
Secrets of Heaven, by Emanuel Swedenborg
That is a very deep well, and not for the faint of heart!
Hello Lee,
No sense posting links to another article if it sends me to a site to buy it. This has made me consider the possibility that you may be a “merchant in the temple area” whose “table” is to be overturned. I hope this is untrue.
I believe God wants you to work for Him. In my 14+ years as an anointed servant of God, He has led me to you, Not Emanuel Swedenborg. I am the “Levite” allowed behind the curtain.
In this article you pose the question: “Will we ever find the keys to the chest?” I am dangling the keys in front of you. Will you take possession of the keys, open the chest and investigate what is inside, or will you rest in that what you have is as good as it gets? Job, Gods most favored servant, had to do one thing before things were returned to him, and that was to admit he was wrong. Enlightenment (day 1 of creation) works in a similar manner.
God calls upon the simple to perform His works. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. People beaten down by life. Mental illness. How many ways do you examine “poor in spirit”? God doesn’t call upon the prominent, or those that believe they are righteous to deliver His message. One cannot see the light without standing in darkness.
Jesus taught that where 2 gather in his name, he is there. I claim the spirit of prophecy. From what I have read of yours on this site, you’re on to something. I’m offering you the “next step”.
Are you an Israelite, Lee? Where does your soul find itself in scripture before Jacob was designated “Israel”? If the “book of life” is the books contained in the “ark of the covenant”, have you found your name therein?
There is much more hidden in scripture that I am not allowed to understand. I am to give warning of things to come. To help clarify the purpose of scripture, and to show that there is another way to examine the writings. The first man through the wall always gets bloody.
If you desire to take part in biblical happenings, I am the person to speak with. I can’t tell you what scripture should mean to you, that would be “enslavement”. The “Israelites” need to be freed from this enslavement. Do you have faith the size of a mustard seed?
Once again, thanks for the conversation.
May God bless
Matt
Hi Matthew,
There are links on that page to where you can download the first few volumes of Secrets of Heaven as free PDFs. (Not all the volumes are in print yet in that edition.) Unfortunately, the Swedenborg Foundation website seems to be down at the moment.
However, if purchasing a book doesn’t work for you, it is all available free online. It’s just more tedious to read it that way. But here is a link to a place where you can read Secrets of Heaven on the web:
https://newchristianbiblestudy.org/exposition/translation/secrets-of-heaven-nce/intro/0
You have to click the arrows to get to the next section. As I say, it’s more tedious to read it that way.
The books are worth the money, I think. They are not that expensive, especially compared to the thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars that went into producing them. The Swedenborg Foundation is a non-profit organization. It subsidizes all the books it sells.
There is also a Swedenborg Reader app that you can install on a mobile device, here:
https://newchristianbiblestudy.org/mobile-app
You can then download all of Swedenborg’s theological works in various translations, all free of charge.
I do receive a small amount of commissions and royalties from book sales through this website. But it barely even pays the costs of maintaining this website, let alone paying me for my time. Everything I do here is on a volunteer basis. I do not get paid for it.
Hi Matt,
If your purpose here is to try to convince me that I am wrong, and that I should become a disciple of yours, then you are wasting your time.
You speak of 14+ years. But I have been learning what I teach here all my life, and teaching it for a over forty years now. It has been my full-time work, both paid and unpaid, for over thirty years. My foundation in my faith is very strong. I am here to teach. If you are not here to learn, then I bid you farewell, and Godspeed on your journey.
Hi Lee,
I will try to describe my situation, can be a little confuse, but sometimes I feel guilty for believing in God for my own personal reasons.
When I think deeply about why I believe in all those spiritual things like the afterlife and Swedenborg’s revelations, I came to the conclusion that this is my only way for everything I desire and live for.
When I see atheists trying to dismiss God, I became very bothered, just like when people try to persuade me that there isn’t such a thing as life after death, I want to discuss with them to change their opinion, but I know the maximum I can say to them is that I believe in those things because they make sense for me and make me a better person as a whole. I can say with certainty that I’m much better now than I was before I started to deep dive about spiritual life and reality, but that feels like a more side effect or consequence than the main reason I adopted my beliefs.
The things I’m talking about, are at the core of my faith, like the desire to one day reunite with my family and friends when they part, to finally find my soulmate in this life or the next, at the end, to be eternally with them all in Heaven.
Sometimes when my faith starts to lose its power, when I start to doubt God, the Bible, anything beyond the material world, those hopes and dreams start to fall apart together too, and I become in despair. I feel like I already made the decision a long time ago, but it’s God or nothing. Without him, there are literally no guarantees that staying virgin for someone is a rational choice or that I don’t need to be afraid of my loved ones death every day because I will meet them again, younger and happier than ever.
My mom always said to me that without God, life doesn’t make sense, and I now understand why. I agree with her.
My question is, is it wrong to believe in God because of those personal desires? Like a romantic partner? Or the reunion?
Because I feel like, if there was somewhere in the Bible, a passage where Jesus says “You will never meet your parents or any of your friends again” or “Those who haven’t met their wife or husband in the Earth will not be able to meet one in the Heavens” I would certainly already become an atheist and probably living taking medicines because I’m just a bunch of random particles without any significance.
Can you help me with that?
Hi Caio,
Not to worry. It is very common, if not universal, for people to start out on a spiritual path for reasons that, if they are examined honestly, are all about benefits to themselves. This is part of God’s providence and God’s plan.
If God didn’t harness our desire to benefit ourselves, very few people would start out on a spiritual path at all. After all, the whole reason we need to be reborn is that we come out of the womb focused mostly on ourselves, and we spend our childhood and youth largely following our desire for pleasure, money, and personal power. That’s where most people are when they enter adult life.
If the wagon is our spiritual growth, there has to be a horse to hitch it to so that it will start rolling down the road. Since we don’t start out in life motivated by love for the Lord and love for the neighbor, the only horses available are love of self and love of the world, to use the traditional Swedenborgian terms. So God hitches our wagon to those horses, and gets us moving.
Later, when we’ve traveled farther down the path, we can switch horses. Later, as we are reborn, we will begin to be motivated more and more by love for other people rather than just by our own benefit. And eventually, if we keep going, God truly will be the greatest motivator in our life.
But that’s not where we start.
Bottom line: Your current motives for being on a spiritual path are nothing to worry about. If anything, they’re a little higher than what gets many people going. You’re not out for wealth or personal power. As crazy as it sounds, many people do start “getting spiritual” based on these desires. They go to “Prosperity Gospel” churches thinking they’ll worship Jesus and get rich. Or they go for New Age stuff that says they can be the most powerful being in the universe if they just visualize it and believe in it and project that aura all around themselves. And so on.
Compared to that, wanting to have love, an eternal marriage, and to be reunited with your family in the afterlife are really not bad at all. They all have to do with your relationships with other people. Yes, they’re a bit focused on your own enjoyment of those relationships. But those are also the relationships that will help you to move beyond just thinking about your own happiness in life, and start thinking about the other people in these relationships.
If anything, then, I’d say you’re a little ahead of the curve of where many people start out on their spiritual path.
Here are a couple related articles that you may also find helpful:
Hi Lee,
Thank you! I’m feeling so much better now 🙂
Hi Caio,
Glad to hear it!
Check out https://www.gotquestions.org/creation-theology-beliefs.html, and read the WHOLE article. Just ignore the fact that they are reading the Bible materialistically and literally.
Just incase you refuse to listen, just incase, I will quote the most important parts, “First and foremost, it’s the natural view one gets from simply reading the text,” “The first eleven chapters of Genesis set the stage for the rest of the biblical story. You can’t understand the unfolding narrative of Scripture without Genesis 1–11,” and “The truth of the matter is that, compared to the creation stories of other cultures, the Genesis account—even in its most literal interpretation—reads more like history than myth.“
I’m basically giving you a challenge.
Hi World Questioner,
The article says:
Why does it not mention the view that it is meant to be taken as metaphorical, not literal? It even alludes to this possible interpretation later in the article:
But the article largely ignores this view, even though this view has also been present since the early days of Christianity. Perhaps the authors of the GotQuestions site are not aware that for the first thousand years of Christianity, metaphorical readings of the Bible were very common—so much so that a whole schema developed about four levels of meaning in Scripture: literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical. You can read about them at Wikipedia -> Four senses of Scripture.
Swedenborg has a similar schema of four senses of Scripture that map loosely to the four senses held to in Christian history. Swedenborg calls them (in the corresponding order) literal, heavenly (traditionally “celestial”), spiritual, and internal historical.
Why would GotQuestions ignore such a major, long-term mode of interpreting the Scriptures within Christianity? Either its authors are ignorant of this mode of interpreting the scriptures, or they do not think it is important. Either way, it is just one more demonstration that their view of scripture is materialistic, not spiritual. If they wanted to read the Bible spiritually rather than literally, there is plenty of material in historical Christian writings for them to turn to. They wouldn’t even have to turn to Swedenborg. But because their minds are earthly and materialistic, a spiritual understanding of scripture fades away into nothingness for them.
About the early chapters of Genesis seeming historical, here is what Swedenborg says:
(You can read about the other three modes at the linked section number.)
The “narrative thread” Swedenborg speaks of here is the historical-sounding style of the early chapters of Genesis.
It is very common for writers of all eras to use a narrative or historical style in composing stories that are meant to have a deeper meaning. Even beyond such obvious examples as The Odyssey and Moby Dick, vast amounts of human literature is written in the form of stories that sound very much like real history, or narrations of real events, when everything in them is fictional.
But “fictional” doesn’t mean false. It means not literally true. All of these books have meanings written into them that the authors wanted to convey to their readers. But the authors conveyed that meaning, not in the form of discursive explanations of abstract concepts, but in the form of human stories that draw on the common experiences of humankind.
Jesus did the very same thing in his parables.
Why would GotQuestions ignore all of this? Because its authors think in an earthly, materialistic way, not in a spiritual way. They see only what’s on the surface, and certain behavioral and moral lessons. They don’t see the vast depths of spiritual and divine meaning that show through those stories for people who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Finally (for now), it is silly to think that just because Adam is not a literal character, he cannot be referred to by people later in the Bible. Do these literalists really think that Jesus and Paul were so literalistic that they did not understand the concept of metaphorical meanings?
The whole idea is utterly absurd. Jesus did most of his teaching in parables. Could he really not think that Adam may have metaphorical meaning as well? Paul also spoke metaphorically in various parts of his writings, such as when he says:
Do these rank literalists really think that Paul wants us to put on a literal breastplate of faith on our chest, and a literal helmet of hope on our head? Do they really think that Paul could not possibly be thinking metaphorically, not literally, when he speaks of the first Adam and the last Adam?
Really, this whole line of thinking is an absurdly materialistic view of Scripture.
‘Nuff said.
But read the WHOLE article to get the full idea, not just what I’ve quoted.
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, sir! 😀
Hi Lee,
In the Bible some things you can interpret pretty simply and can get what Jesus means right away but in other passages it’s very symbolic and you have to think spiritually about it. I know the Bible has an “outer self” and “inner self” but how do you know when to take what they are saying more face value and when to think more deeply upon it spiritually? Hopefully this makes sense!
Thank you Lee
Hi Sam,
That’s an excellent question, and not an easy one to answer. There’s no hard-and-fast line between what’s meant to be taken literally and what’s meant to be taken only spiritually. (Even the parts that are meant to be taken literally also have a spiritual meaning.) I think this is intentional on God’s part, so that different people can read the Bible different ways, based on their own character and culture.
As an example, the ancient Israelites were meant to take all of the laws given in the Books of Moses (the first five books of the Bible) literally, and obey them literally. But for Christians, most of them no longer apply literally. We don’t have to sacrifice animals, engage in the various rituals of cleansing, and abide by the dietary rules. Which ones we do and don’t have to obey is also a very tricky question. But all or nearly all Christians at least agree that we no longer have to literally follow the law of sacrifice, which the ancient Jews certainly did have to follow literally!
Perhaps the simplest, seat-of-the-pants way to decide is the “common sense test.” If we read that we are not to kill, commit adultery, steal, and bear false witness, common sense tells us that these are commandments we are meant to take literally, and not do these things. But if we read that if our hand offends us, we should cut it off, and if our eye offends us, we should pluck it out, common sense tells us that Jesus did not mean for us to take these commands literally.
I realize this isn’t very satisfying for people who want definite rules, and no ifs, ands, or buts about them. But God did give us thinking minds, and God does want us to think clearly and rationally about God, spirit, and the life that leads to heaven. Perhaps the Bible leaves these things unsettled because we are meant to use the thinking minds that God gave us, and do our best to learn and understand the truth so that we can tell, and know, when something is meant to be taken literally and when it is meant to be taken as a metaphor.
Hi Lee,
Thank you for the clarification, I was always curious about that and how you explained it makes a lot of sense as usual! And also this got me thinking how God created the Bible to make us think and to use our spirit which also applies to other topics and well. So even the way the Bible is written is a learning lesson in itself which reveals how infinite God’s thoughts and nuances are.
Thank you again Lee
Hi Sam,
Well said! 🙂
Search on Google https://www.google.com/search?q=Genesis+waw+consecutive and https://www.google.com/search?q=Genesis+vav+consecutive and https://www.google.com/search?q=Genesis+historical+narrative.
Compared with other creation myths like the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish, Genesis reads more like history than myth.
If Genesis was written like allegory, poetry, or myth and not as a historical narrative, I’m sure creationists that live today would not have taken Genesis literally.
If it wasn’t for the waw consecutive, then there wouldn’t be all of that Genesis literalism.
One of the comments to https://precepts.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/old-earth-creationism/ says that human fossils are found in supposed-oldest strata… According to a book by a Hindu? How do scientists currently explain this?
Have you ever heard of the “precambrian rabbit” argument? It says that if a rabbit (or any other mammal fossil) was found in precambrian rock, it would falsify evolution.
Do scientists have an explanation for the Cambrian explosion? I want to hear the explanation.
Does God actually guide evolution? Does God influence the way living things evolve, or does God just let the natural order take place?
Hi World Questioner,
As I’ve said before, Creationists citing the vav consecutive as proof that the early chapters of Genesis are literal history is really grasping at straws. The vav consecutive is just standard Hebrew style. It is used in any narrative style, whether that style is intended to be read literally or figuratively.
Fundamentalists do not take Genesis literally because it is written in a historical style. They take it literally because they think materialistically, and are therefore incapable of reading it any other way.
As for the article you linked, it’s long, and I’m not going to spend the time to read it. These articles are written by non-scientists who have an axe to grind, and who do not understand the little scraps of science they read here and there. It’s all ridiculously uninformed. It’s really not worth the time spent to read it. Scientists have worked all these angles extensively. Evolution has not been falsified. It has, however, been modified in various ways from its original version as proposed by Darwin.
As for whether God guided evolution, that is a complex question. I do not think God continually tinkers with evolution, prodding and poking it to get it to do what God wants it to do. That would be evidence of poor design on God’s part, like building a car that you have to constantly be tinkering with in order to keep it working. I think God created the universe so that it has laws embedded in it that enable it to function as God wanted it to function without God having to constantly intervene.
What I do believe, though, is that when it comes to life, that is a spiritual phenomenon, not a physical phenomenon. That physical things are intrinsically dead, and come to life only when there is spirit in them. So I believe that all plants and animals have spirits, although only human spirits are eternal because only human spirits have the higher spiritual and heavenly levels that make it possible for us to have consciousness in the spiritual world.
I also believe that because the universe was created by God, who is human, everything in creation does have a tendency to move toward the human form as it is able to do so. Meaning, I don’t believe evolution is blind and random, and I don’t think it is a coincidence that it has so far culminated in our human form. This is something that, I believe, is inherent in life itself, because life is spiritual and spiritual things especially tend to move toward the human form, which is the form that most completely expresses the human nature of God.
Is the waw consecutive found anywhere in Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or Song of Songs? Job seems more like a narrative than the other wisdom literature.
Hi World Questioner,
That would require more lookup than I am interested in doing right now, especially since I think this whole argument about the waw consecutive is a lot of hooey.
What about Matthew 5:17-19? Isn’t that in the context of historical narratives? The Law and the Prophets?
Hi World Questioner,
Matthew 5:17–19 speaks of keeping or breaking the law. That’s not about narratives. It’s about how we behave.
“What I do believe, though, is that when it comes to life, that is a spiritual phenomenon, not a physical phenomenon. That physical things are intrinsically dead, and come to life only when there is spirit in them.” Just like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRHUXyUOk48
Hi World Questioner,
Perhaps. But that is a very materialistic video. All of its interpretations of the Bible are highly literal. He doesn’t even seem to know the difference between physical death and spiritual death.
But “what really happens when you die may shock you” says that the spirit is not something that thinks, but gives life to the body. The spirit and soul are not the same. The Hebrew and Greek words for “spirit” are the same as for breath. Maybe the Hebrew and Greek words used for “spirit” as in “the spirit gives life” don’t refer to a ghostly soul, but rather the “breath of life.” There is breath in both the physical and spiritual senses.
Hi World Questioner,
Again, that is a very materialistic and literalistic video. Does he really think that when it says that God breathed into the man the spirit of life, it’s literally talking about God giving Adam mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? The whole idea is just plain silly. The story is obviously metaphorical. Attempting to make it literal drains it of all deeper meaning. The Bible is about spiritual things, not about physical things except as they reflect spiritual things.
The breath of life is not literal breath. Breath is a metaphor for spiritual life. When Jesus breathed on his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22), do you really think he was saying that his physical breath was the Holy Spirit? Again, the whole idea is just plain silly. He was using his breath as a physical symbol of the Holy Spirit. Obviously the Holy Spirit is not a physical breath.
I didn’t mean to say that Jesus did mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with Adam. There was no mouth involved.
What I meant was, ruach and pneuma do not mean some ghostly soul. They mean more like energy. Where does the Bible ever say that ruach or pneuma is something that thinks? Ruach is not the same as Nepesh.
Hi World Questioner,
The ancient Hebrews had only the most rudimentary notion of a human soul. They did not realize that it is actually in a fully formed human body made of spiritual substance, that can and does live a full and rich life in the spiritual world that is just as solid and real as our physical life here on earth—and even more so.
Also, as always, these stories are meant to be read spiritually, not literally. They are not about our physical creation. They are about our new creation in Christ as spiritually awake and living people. Breath corresponds to spiritual life. God did not literally breathe on Adam. Rather, he brought Adam, meaning the earliest generation of spiritually aware humans, to life spiritually.
In response to another comment of yours that I deleted because it was nothing but links, Genesis chapters 1–11 are more than myth. They are parables, or correspondential stories. They are in narrative form, but it is a narrative meant to be read symbolically, not literally.
And yes, they are different than the creation myths of the surrounding nations in various ways, including in their monotheism, and in the direct creation of everything as a “very good” expression of God. In the myths of the surrounding cultures, there is usually some mixture of evil or trickery from various other gods or demigods. None of that is present in the Creation stories of Genesis.
Even in their literal sense they present a different picture of God, Creation, and their relationship to one another than other ancient creation myths do. But beyond that, they have multiple layers of deeper meaning that are the real treasure within the chest of the stories of Genesis 1–11.
I’m referring to Waw Consecutive Imperfect (WCI). Have you heard of WCI Count or VCI Count? It’s high in the book of Genesis. Compare to the poetic Genesis 49:1b–27, which has a lower WCI count. Is the waw-consecutive-imperfect found in poetry such as the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or Song of Songs?
Hi World Questioner,
Once again, these early chapters, though they have poetic elements to them, are written in a narrative style. But narratives can be symbolic just as poetry, prophecy, and parable can be. The entire genre of literary fiction is written in narrative style, but is not meant to be taken literally as referring to actual historical people and events.
Even if Genesis 1–11 has every single element of Hebrew narrative prose, that still doesn’t mean it must be read as literal history.
Once again, this is a silly, silly argument.
Did Swedenborg read the entire Bible, cover to cover? I think I would be surprised if not.
Hi K,
He not only read it cover to cover in the original languages multiple times, but he created extensive indexes of it that he used while composing his theological works. Hence the many lists of Bible references and quotations throughout his works. It takes a whole book of its own just to index Swedenborg’s Bible references.
There’s at least one part of the Bible where God supposedly tells people to off children (in this case, soldiers against Canaanite children). Hopefully any of that never happened literally.
And hopefully the same goes for any other cruelty that God supposedly told people to inflict.
Hi K,
On this question, please see:
What about Violent Religions? Is God Really Bloodthirsty and Vengeful?
They are accounts or records (or whatever you call them) written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are they not? Are they not the narrators of their respective gospels? I’m not sure I would use the term “reports.”
Hi World Questioner,
There were human authors of all the books of the Bible. Does that mean that none of the books of the Bible are divinely inspired, meaning that none of them are the Word of God?
If the Bible is the Word of God, then this has to take into account the reality that God made use of human authors to write the books of the Bible.
I didn’t mean just the four gospels.
I wish I could explain it better.
God’s words (such as “I am the Lord your God”) are always true in the Pentateuch, but what about the narrator’s words?
Same goes for the narratives like Joshua and the Kings and Chronicles.
Hi World Questioner,
What I’m driving at is that I don’t think this is a useful idea. Why would God give us a book in which only the words that God himself speaks in it are true? Would this mean we must distrust everything the Apostles say? Would this mean we must distrust everything Moses says?
And since Jesus, specifically, commonly speaks in figurative language rather than literal language, why should we insist that inerrancy is a thing in the Bible? Inerrancy is about being literally true. Such as, if it says that God created the world in six days, well then, by golly, God created the world in six days. Figurative interpretations need not apply.
The very idea of biblical inerrancy leads to all sorts of confusion and falsity. Now you’re trying to climb out of that confusion and falsity by limiting it to Jesus’ words. But it won’t work.
Much better to ditch the unbiblical idea of biblical inerrancy, and start over again based on a better foundation.
Consider the genre of each book. Poetry, historical narrative, etc. Correct?
Hi World Questioner,
Correct about what?
Am I right about considering the genres of the books of the Bible? From poetry to historical narratives?
Hi World Questioner,
Well, yes, it’s good to recognize that there are different genres in the Bible. If we read the Psalms, and don’t recognize that they are poetry, then we’re going to draw a lot of faulty conclusions based on reading poetry as if it were prose. Good poetry is heavily metaphorical as part of its literary form. Reading it as if it were prose descriptions of something is a basic error in understanding and interpretation.
Ditto, reading prophecy, such as in the Prophets and in the book of Revelation, as if they were literal descriptions of future events is a basic error in understanding and interpretation.
The entire book of Genesis is prose, is it not? And yet you say it’s not meant to be taken literally.
The style of Genesis feels like a historical narrative, especially the genealogies. The historical style is more clear in its original Hebrew, is it not?
Hi World Questioner,
The entire book of Moby Dick is also prose. Does that mean we should take the whole thing literally?
Absolutely not. Silly me.
Moby Dick is not a historical narrative though, is it?
Hi World Questioner,
No, Moby Dick is not historical narrative. But your implied argument was that since the book of Genesis is prose, this implies that it is meant to be taken literally.
Also, were the 66 books (not counting the non-canon Epistle to Barnabas (not to be confused with the Gospel of Barnabas) and Shepherd of Hermas) meant to be compiled into one grand book? Was that God’s will or intention? The word “Bible” is never used in any of the 66 books, is it? Is any equivalent word ever used in the Bible? Don’t refer to “My words” or “every word of God.”
Hi World Questioner,
Only Protestants believe in a 66 book Bible. No other Christians do. There is nothing special about 66 books.
But as for whether the Word of God was meant to be gathered together into a single, unified book, the Swedenborgian answer is “Yes.” We see the Word of God as a single, seamless whole from beginning to end, that tells a spiritual and divine story from beginning to end. It’s just that our canon is different from any of the other Christian canons. See:
Why Isn’t Paul in Swedenborg’s Canon?
The oldest complete Bible known to survive has two books that were removed from canon – the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle to Barnabas. Both are placed after Revelation.
Does the oldest complete Bible known have all 66 books?
Hi World Questioner,
I’m not an expert on biblical manuscripts, canons, and editions. But the present day biblical canons of the various branches of Christianity have been in development ever since the early days of Christianity. To my knowledge, none of the branches of Christianity actually made a definitive statement about which books are and aren’t part of the canon until after the Protestant Reformation. There was just a general agreement about which books were and weren’t part of it. But not all of the branches agreed with each other.
2 Samuel 7:12-13, 16 teaches that Jesus would be the “offspring” of David. “Offspring” seems more literal, material, biological, or physical, whereas “Son” could mean adopted, spiritual, or figurative.
Hi World Questioner,
Either one can be interpreted either literally or figuratively.
Was Swedenborg aware of the numerous contradictions in the literal sense of the Bible, when he was writing about meaning beyond the literal sense?
Examples of the numerous contradictions can be seen at the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible site BTW.
Hi K,
Swedenborg was well aware of contradictions in the Bible, not to mention things that could not happen literally. He brings these up from time to time as evidence for his teaching that the Bible is holy, and the Word of God, because it has a spiritual meaning throughout.
How can the Bible have a coherent inner meaning when the text was changed and distorted by copying errors and deliberate changes?
PS: And that is not even getting into all the books that have have been rejected from Bible.
PPS: Even early Christianity was split into many different sects of contradictory belief.
Hi K,
The idea that the text of the Bible was “changed and distorted,” and that this means it can’t be the word of God, is an atheist talking point, drawing on faulty fundamentalist views of the Bible.
Is the infinite and omnipotent God capable of working only at one point in time, when the original texts were written down? Isn’t God perfectly capable of working over time to shape a text into a form that will convey what God wants to convey to us through it?
The idea that one and only one version of the text can carry God’s meaning to us is also faulty. In Arcana Coelestia #10453, Swedenborg says that if the Bible had been written through a different culture, its literal meaning would have been different, but its spiritual meaning would be the same. If the entire literal sense of the Bible could have been different, and still have the same inner meaning, then changes to the text here and there are not going to destroy its inner meaning either. And it is the Bible’s spiritual meaning, not its literal meaning, that makes it the Word of God.
Besides, compared to other ancient texts from that era, the text of the Bible is remarkably well-preserved. There are clickbait titles saying that the Dead Sea Scrolls overturned our entire view of the Bible, etc., etc., but the fact is that the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other ancient manuscripts, have shown that for the most part, the text of the Bible has come down to us almost entirely intact over many centuries. Yes, there have been a few copying errors here and there, but very few, and most of them are insignificant. There have been no changes at all in the dominant text of the Old Testament since at least the seventh century, when the Masoretes began counting the words and letters of the books of the Hebrew Bible to ensure that there would be no copying errors. And even for the New Testament, we have more early manuscripts than we have of any other work from that long ago. So it’s just not true that the Bible has been “changed and distorted.” In particular, if you’ve heard that the Council of Nicaea changed the Bible, etc., etc., that is just plain ignorance of what actually happened at that council.
Of course, the texts of some of the books—especially the earlier books of the Old Testament—went through changes before they took their final form. The earliest chapters of Genesis were probably passed down orally for many centuries before they were ever written down. But in my view, this only gave God more time to shape the text into something that would do an excellent job of conveying the teachings and the spiritual meanings that God wanted to give to us in the Bible.
About books being “rejected from the Bible,” that’s not how it worked. The question was what books would be accepted into the Bible. The ones that made it in were the ones that were considered most reliable and most in line with the narrative and message of the Bible.
Of course, different churches have different canons, as covered in the article, “Why Isn’t Paul in Swedenborg’s Canon?” But from a Swedenborgian point of view, the main thing is that all the books that are part of the inspired Word of God were included, even if many books that aren’t part of the inspired Word of God were also included. According to Swedenborg, these non-canonical books, especially the Epistles, serve as a protection for the books of the actual Word of God. Christian churches over the centuries have based their doctrines mostly on Paul, not on the Gospels, which means that they have distorted the meaning of Paul’s letters, while mostly leaving the Gospels themselves intact.
For example, if you look at fundamentalist articles and tracts, almost all the references and quotes are from Paul’s letters. Very few are from the Gospels. Since much of Jesus’ teaching is in figurative language, it is harder to twist it into fallacious and false meanings than it is to twist Paul’s more directly didactic style of writing. Christianity has completely falsified Paul’s letters, to the point where Protestant think that Paul teaches justification by faith alone, when he never even used the term “faith alone.” Not once. But this means that Protestants have mostly shredded and falsified books that are not part of the Word of God, which is much less damaging that destroying the books of the actual Word of God. Yes, they have falsified the Gospels too, along with the entire Bible, but not in such a thorough and sweeping fashion as they have falsified the Epistles.
About the various Christian sects in early times, yes, they had conflicting beliefs, but mostly on peripheral matters, often about ritual practices. On the central issues of the divinity of Jesus, the necessity of believing in him and living by his commandments, and so on, they were all on the same page. Only later did Christianity become so corrupt that it rejected the basic teachings of Jesus, and substituted its own distorted and falsified teachings. But that’s not how it was in the early days.
There will always be all different groups and sects because there are all different types of human beings, each type needing a community of faith that fits its own character. As long as the fundamentals are sound, these are just variations on a theme, and part of the variety that makes for a stronger human unity. Only when the fundamentals have been cracked, broken, and replaced with human teachings does the existence of different churches and sects, all disagreeing with one another, become a problem.
That, sadly, is the situation today, because the original Christian Church has now been entirely destroyed doctrinally. That’s why a new church was required. And that was the purpose of the new revelation given in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Not to provide an extension to the Word of God, but to restore a true understanding of the Word of God to people on earth, and to lift the Word of God up to an entirely new level that people of earlier times were not ready for.
There’s no need to worry about the Bible being “corrupted.” If it is the Word of God, as Christians believe, then wouldn’t it make sense that God would shape and preserve it over the centuries and millennia so that it would continue to deliver to humankind the spiritual and divine message God wants to give us?
Thanks for the reply.
Another objection that has been raised is that if the Bible has an inner meaning, then why has no one brought it up until the literal sense of the Bible was challenged by science during the Enlightenment?
Hi K,
Interpreting the Bible metaphorically rather than only literally has a long history going back many centuries before the Enlightenment, to the early centuries of Christianity. It’s just that after the advent of Protestantism, the focus in Christianity moved more and more toward literal interpretation, and the older spiritual modes of interpretation are no longer taught in the seminaries, except perhaps as a historical footnote.
As a result, very few people today are aware that Swedenborg was far from groundbreaking in stating that the Bible has deeper meanings. His innovation was mostly in his specific method of arriving at the deeper meanings via correspondences, and his specific schema of the different levels of meaning, which are different from the traditional Christian literal, typological/allegorical, tropological, and anagogical schema of internal senses. However, Swedenborg’s schema did have the same number of internal meanings as the traditional three, and there have been some attempts to draw parallels between his schema and the traditional schema of internal meanings in the Bible.
Probably due to the general lack of knowledge on or interest in this subject, even Wikipedia has only a brief overview of what is actually a very long and rich history of spiritual interpretation of the Bible. Still, you can get a taste of it by reading the Wikipedia article on Allegorical interpretation of the Bible.
Have you ever heard of the Documentary Hypothesis? That Genesis 1 was based on an Elohist source and Genesis 2 on a Yahwist source?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, that’s a pretty widely known theory in Christian circles.
Do you agree or disagree with it? Why? Any other remarks?
Hi World Questioner,
Clearly these are two different Creation stories that have been placed together, one after another. One is not a recapitulation or detail of the other, as is obvious because the order in which thing are created is different in the two stories. If we attempt to read them as literal stories of how the world was created, they conflict with each other, and are incompatible.
People who don’t know about the spiritual meaning of the Bible will, of course, look for reasons why these two incompatible stories ended out being put right next to each other at the beginning of the Bible. I suppose the Yahwist vs. Elohist theory is as good as any. But in my view, it doesn’t matter very much how they got put together. We have the text that we have, and these stories were never meant to be read literally, even by their original authors.
I suggest that before the Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago, even before the Big Bang, there was an Eden-like paradise. But mankind transgressed, and that world fell. Evolution in this world is not the initial way life were formed, or how humans initially formed, but life on its way back to the good-old state. Humans on the path from their lower forms back to the godly forms of Eden. On the path back to God. I’m not saying the path to being God, because they never were God, but the path to be WITH God.
Seems parallel to Gnosticism, Platonism, Manichaeism, and Hinduism.
Hi World Questioner,
That might be an interesting plot for a science fiction novel or movie. But it’s a non-starter from a biblical perspective, whether you read the Bible literally or metaphorically. And scientifically, if it was before the Big Bang, where was this Eden-like paradise, when there wasn’t even a physical universe for it to exist in?
Isn’t there a spiritual analogue of physical locations, called “spiritual locations”?
Hi World Questioner,
Are you suggesting that the Garden of Eden was a spiritual place, not a physical one?
Is there really a reason for God to create two distinct worlds that don’t consort with each other? Or what’s a better term than consort? Mingle? We die to get to Heaven? Babies don’t die to leave their mother’s womb, so why should we in the path from the physical to the spiritual world? The birth of babies is nothing like death. Babies don’t seem to sacrifice anything. Please don’t refer to the placenta.
Hi World Questioner,
It is only our physical body that dies. We ourselves do not die, because we are spirits, and our spirit continues to live in the spiritual world after our physical body dies. Here is how Swedenborg explains it:
We don’t have to die to go to heaven. We just have to leave behind our physical body, and this physical world. To material eyes this looks like death. But it is only the death of something that was not truly us in the first place. We have merely left behind the tool that we used to live our lifetime in this material world.
Why has God created two distinct worlds? (Which do, by the way, “consort” with each other very closely.)
For the same reason God arranged it so that we would spend nine months in the womb before being born into our life in the outside world. In the womb we start from something that is little more than a seed, which cannot survive on its own, and we develop into a physically fully formed, albeit still infant, human being, complete with all our parts and organs. Only when our initial physical development is complete are we born so that we can begin our semi-independent life, and in time become full and self-responsible adults.
Similarly, when we begin our life on this earth, outside our mother’s womb, we are in a situation very much like the description in Genesis 1:1: “The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep.” We have the outward semblance of a human being, but our spirit, which is our true self, is unformed, empty, and dark. Our lifetime on this earth is our opportunity to go through all the six stages of spiritual creation, which forms us into infant angels ready to be born into the spiritual world, and into our true home in heaven, which is the seventh day of rest.
That is where we come into our own as the truly human beings that God created us to become.
Just as we develop our physical self in the womb before we are born into this world, so we develop our spiritual self in this world before we are born into heaven.
Our physical body dies. That’s what I meant. But does anything analogous happen to a baby when it’s born?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, our physical body dies. But our physical body is not us. We ourselves do not die. We simply leave our physical body behind, and move on to our permanent home in the spiritual world. In this way it is very similar to a baby being born.
You asked me not to refer to the placenta. But when a fetus is born, its connection to the placenta is severed, and it then lives independently from the placenta, which had been its connection to its mother, and its supplier of the nutrition and oxygen required for its initial development into a human being physically.
Our physical body serves a similar function in providing us with the materials and experiences needed in this world to develop into a human being spiritually. Once our initial spiritual development is complete, which happens during our lifetime on earth outside the womb, our connection to our physical body is similarly severed because we no longer need it. We can now live semi-independently in the spiritual world, in the spiritual self that we developed during our lifetime on earth.
So the analogy and parallelism is apt.
Check out https://creation.com/genesis-as-ancient-historical-narrative. Isn’t Genesis etiology? Etiology must be a historical narrative, must it not?
Why doesn’t the Bible record a scenario where materialists alleged a historical or scientific error in scripture (e.g. the Law and the Prophets), and the prophet responded “Scripture is about spiritual things. It is not meant to answer your science questions.” Or what would be a better response from the messenger?
Hi World Questioner,
Dressing up fallacious ideas in fancy terms (“etiology,” etc.) doesn’t make those ideas any less fallacious. There’s so much error and even silliness in the linked article that it would take a whole book to cover it all adequately.
For example, it’s just plain silly to say that because Jesus and the Apostles referred to the stories of Genesis 1—11 in their teaching, this means those stories must be historical. Jesus was a master of metaphorical teaching. In one place it even says that he said nothing to the crowds without a parable. But this author is asking us to believe that when Jesus quotes Scripture, suddenly he becomes a flat literalist? The whole idea is beyond ridiculous.
What is Jesus teaching us about, anyway? Is he teaching us about history and science? Or is he teaching us about God and the human soul? Of course Jesus takes these stories as parables because the entire Bible is a parable telling the story of our spiritual rebirth, and of Jesus’ own process of “glorification,” meaning his becoming fully divine and one with the Father.
If Genesis 1—11 are meant to be taken literally as telling the origins of the entire earth, why do its genealogies cover only the peoples of the region of the world known to the Hebrew people? Sure, literalists have attempted to extend the various nations in the genealogies out to the entire planet, but the fact is that all the identified peoples listed in it are in a single region of the world about 1,400 miles by 1,000 miles, centered on the Middle East. Clearly, if it is an origin story, it is an origin story of the world of the Hebrews, not of the entire planet.
There is problem after problem with attempting to take the stories of Genesis 1–11 literally. But literalists will simply figure out ingenious solutions to those problems, one after another, because their faith depends on taking the Bible literally.
This is the answer to your question about why the Bible doesn’t plainly say that it’s not about science and history. There are vast crowds of people on this earth whose minds cannot reach beyond physical and material things, and who think that anything non-physical is wispy, ghostly, and unreal. These people need to take the Bible literally and interpret everything in it materialistically, or they will lose faith altogether.
The Bible is written so that spiritual infants who can think only materialistically can read it and feel that their faith is supported there, but people who are more spiritually mature, and who can think spiritually, can see much greater depth in its pages.
If the Bible explicitly stated that it is not meant to be taken as inerrant and literally true throughout, it would be unable to serve the spiritual needs of physical-minded people. Instead of reading and revering the Bible, they would reject it disdainfully as myth and fantasy.
As for the narrative style of Genesis 1–11, Swedenborg speaks about this in a number of places. Here is the first place he takes it up:
Here is another place Swedenborg talks about this, in the course of his explanations of the spiritual meaning of the story of Noah:
In short, even though these stories are purely symbolic, they were written in the form of a historical narrative using ordinary objects, animals, and human characters that would be familiar to their listeners in order to tell a story with a deeper meaning.
This is exactly what Jesus does in his parables. There is nothing about the Parable of the Sower that would suggest that it is anything else but a story about a farmer scattering seed, and what happens to the seed when it lands on different kinds of ground. But obviously that’s not what Jesus is talking about at all, as he himself explains to his disciples later.
This, again, is why it’s so silly to say that because Jesus quoted from stories in Genesis 1—11, it means that those stories must be historical. Haven’t these people paid any attention at all to Jesus’ metaphorical method of teaching in his parables?
But it’s useless to argue with them, because they cannot think spiritually. They can think only materially, and their faith requires a materialistic reading of the Bible.
I see your points. If everyone were forced to view the Bible spiritually, materialists would lose faith.
But how do genealogies fit with what Swedenborg says? Much of Genesis chapters 1-11 can be read as stories, but the genealogies from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Abraham seem more informative. The genealogies don’t feel like stories.
Even fundamentalists and other materialists agree that the parables that Jesus told, such as the sower, the lost sheep, the prodigal son, etc. are parables, and not meant to be taken literally.
When the New Testament says “without parables he said nothing” doesn’t mean he always told parables when he said things, it just means… How do I explain this? But maybe it’s on the lines of “without him nothing was made?”
Hi World Questioner,
From a Swedenborgian perspective, the genealogies are summaries of whole generations of early people, and their particular religious beliefs and practices. Each name and each age represents something specific about the character of one generation and culture of people after another in the early spiritual history of humankind. These weren’t a single literal generation, but what you could call a distinct “age” or “era.” In Arcana Coelestia Swedenborg does go through and provide a spiritual meaning for each generation. But since the genealogies themselves are very sparing of any detail, there is not as much to go on in unfolding their spiritual meaning as there is in the more story-like narratives.
About “without parables he said nothing,” it’s best, as usual, not to make this into some sort of absolute statement. The idea is, “This was his regular method of teaching the people.” It doesn’t literally mean that he never said anything to anyone but his disciples that wasn’t a parable. If he asked whether anyone has any fish, he wasn’t speaking in parables. He was asking for a fish. (Of course, he then made it into something that could serve as a parable.)
On the other hand, “without him nothing was made” is entirely and even literally true. “The Word” that was with God and was God is the divine wisdom, which is the means that the divine love used to create everything that has been created, without exception. It is “with God” in the sense that divine wisdom accompanies divine love as its inseparable companion. It “is God” because divine wisdom, like divine love, is a part of God, and not something separate from God.
Back to the parables, it is remarkable to me that biblical fundamentalists and literalists recognize that the parables are not meant to be taken literally, but they continue to insist that everything in the Bible that we can possibly take literally, we should take literally. There is no warrant for this in the Bible itself. It is their own materialism and literalism that pushes them to take this stance. The Bible itself just asks to be read spiritually and metaphorically in so many places. The Letter to the Hebrews makes it clear that even the entire body of law about the Temple and sacrifices is meant to be taken as symbolic of Christ.
So how can these fundamentalists be so intent on taking everything literally if they can possibly get away with it and find some rationale for it? It has nothing to do with the Bible itself. It has everything to do with the physical-minded nature of the fundamentalists’ own minds.
CARM said this:
How do you recognize when an ancient author was writing historical narrative? (e.g., a narrative that was intended to convey literal history)
For example, would you say that the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts were intending to convey literal history about Jesus and his disciples? What about Tacitus, Josephus, etc? If so, how do you recognize that genre? What about Genesis 12-50?
By whatever principles you use, those same principles will indicate that Genesis 1-11 are also historical narrative.
The only way you could write off Genesis 1-11 as purely metaphorical is if you come to the text with outside a-priori beliefs (e.g. abiogenesis and evolution over billions of years) and try to squeeze Genesis 1-11 into them. You would never get that metaphorical idea from the text itself. Even the few ancient theologians who tried to do that (like Augustine) were similarly coming with outside ideas (like neoplatonism) and trying to squeeze the text into them. It does not come from the text itself. If you have questions on this, creation.com has many articles on this topic.
>> There is nothing about the Parable of the Sower that would suggest that it is anything else but a story about a farmer scattering seed
On the contrary. Parables have a standard form… they occur with no specific location or time markers, and generally no historically-localizable personal names (the one exception that comes to mind is Lazarus in Luke 16, for an obvious reason, but even that one is not necessarily a particular Lazarus in a particular time and place). And the most important aspect is that the text itself generally explains that it is a parable, that Jesus often spoke in parables, and it conveys often the interpretation of the parables, etc. So it is quite clear when the text is relating a parable versus a historical narrative.
Hi World Questioner,
About the parable of the Sower:
What I mean is that if you presented the wording of the Parable of the Sower to someone without any context, and without their having any prior knowledge of where it comes from or what it is about, they would have no reason to suspect that it is anything other than a simple story about a farmer scattering seed, and the fate of the seed that fell on various kinds of ground. The story itself does not suggest that it is meant to be read metaphorically rather than literally.
Of course in its wider context it is clear that it is a parable meant to be read as symbolizing something other than its literal meaning. But we know that from its context, not from the story itself.
The same can be said for the Bible as a whole. Someone who reads it without any concept of God or spirit, or of spiritual meaning, would see it as just a cultural text of the Jewish/Hebrew people. And that is precisely how secular scholars read it. They don’t believe that there is a God, or angels, or anything supernatural at all. They simply see it as a story constructed by a particular people and culture to give their culture a greater meaning and history than it really has. So they consider much of it to be just “made up stuff.” They certainly don’t see it as pointing to higher realities such as a Creator God and an afterlife realm.
Fundamentalists are in a similar boat when it comes to reading the text of the Bible. They view it as intending to convey the literal message that it carries on the surface, unless there is something obvious to tell them otherwise, such as Jesus explaining that the seed in the Parable of the Sower represents the Word of God, and so on. If it is literally and explicitly stated that something is metaphorical, they will accept that it is. Otherwise, they will read it literally.
However, the Bible itself never says, “This is intended to be taken literally.” There is not a single passage in the Bible that says, “The world was literally created in six calendar days of twenty-four hours. That story is not meant to be read metaphorically, but literally.” Fundamentalists who believe this are, in fact, reading their own literalistic interpretation into the text in a way that the text itself does not require us to do.
When people write children’s stories, such as Little Red Riding Hood, they don’t add little prefaces saying, “This story is not meant to be taken literally. It’s talking about themes of good and evil, naivete and danger, and the need to beware of strangers.” They just tell the stories and let their meaning come through as it will for people whose minds are open to see it. The stories themselves also carry meaning. The idea that it’s best not to trust strangers is conveyed clearly enough by Little Red Riding Hood even if it’s not made explicit, and even if the hearers don’t put it into explicit terms in their own minds.
This is how the Bible is written as well. There’s no preface saying, “These Creation stories are not about the literal creation of the world, but about our spiritual creation as new Creations in Christ. So read them metaphorically, not literally.” The original authors would have thought it silly to do so. To them, it was obvious that these stories are composed and told to convey a deeper spiritual and divine message.
Unfortunately, as Swedenborg said, over time the knowledge of that deeper meaning was lost as people became more and more materialistic and physical-minded. Today, there are whole armies of Christians who are so physical-minded that they reject and deny the very idea that the Bible has a spiritual meaning.
There is no talking to these people. Their minds are limited to this earthly level. They cannot hear or understand spiritual things. And of course, they’re going to come up with reams and reams of arguments as to why everything in the Bible that can possibly be taken literally must be taken literally.
Let them live in their materialistic and literalistic bubble. If they ever mature in their Christian faith and life, they may come to the point where they can see the deeper levels of the Bible. But if they never do, at least they can read the Bible in a way that speaks to their own physical-mindedness, so that they can accept its moral and ethical teachings and live a moral and ethical life themselves because they believe God requires them to do so.
Beyond that, I’m not inclined to go into all the specific arguments. None of them hold any water. But you yourself are either going to be physical-minded or spiritual-minded. If you choose to remain physical-minded, CARM’s material will sound definitive to you. But if you choose to take a higher spiritual path of thinking, their arguments will melt away without your having to come up with counter-arguments for each one of them, because you will see everything from a higher perspective.
I almost regret giving your comment to CARM, or giving CARM’s response to you. Like you said, “you won’t convince him.” People’s hearts are just hard. They should have been exposed to your and Swedenborg’s viewpoints as a child. You should have been exposed to fundamentalist and Seventh-Day Adventist, etc. viewpoints as a child as well.
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, I could have told you that, and in fact did tell you that. Now you’ve found it out for yourself. No harm, no foul.
I did hear about fundamentalist beliefs as a child, but I had a hard time believing that anyone would seriously believe those things. those beliefs made no sense to me, and I couldn’t believe anyone would actually think they were true. I figured, “Maybe people believed these things in Swedenborg’s day, but people are a lot smarter and more educated today.” It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I began to realize that yes, millions of people really do believe this crazy stuff even today.
You came from a Swedenborgian background. I would rather rely on a Swedenborgian that came from a non-Swedenborgian background, because how do I explain it? They’ve had more experience as a fundamentalist, or Seventh-Day Adventist, or otherwise. I don’t know how to explain it. When a Swedenborgian comes from a non-Swedenborgian background, they can be relied better upon to support Swedenborgian teachings.
Hi World Questioner,
Rely on a non-Swedenborgian for what? If you mean to say what it’s like being a non-Swedenborgian, then yes, they’re probably a better source. But if you mean for explanations of what Swedenborg taught, and Swedenborgians believe, people born Swedenborgian generally have an edge because they’ve been steeped in the material since childhood. Still, there are some excellent Swedenborgian theologians who were born outside the church.
I just don’t want a scenario of a “You won’t convince him” Swedenborgian. You know what I mean? Messages from fundamentalists and Seventh-Day Adventists and other materialists won’t convince Swedenborgians, just like the Swedenborgian messages I give won’t convince materialists.
Or maybe that’s not it. A fundamentalist or Seventh-Day Adventist or something else becoming Swedenborgian would be more convincing.
Hi World Questioner,
There are fundamentalists who have become Swedenborgians. But not many. Usually they’re fundamentalist precisely because they can’t think spiritually, whereas being a Swedenborgian requires a person to think spiritually.
But of course, you’re free to listen to whoever you want to listen to, and not listen to whoever you don’t want to listen to.
One of the virtues of listening to me is that I’m here, and they’re not. 😀
Maybe there’s a reason they can’t think spiritually.
Hi World Questioner,
It’s a consequence of humanity falling away from our original Eden state, in which we were spiritually aware and walked with God, to a very earthly state in which we focus mostly on living in and enjoying this world. It wasn’t just the ancient Israelites. That’s also what all the surrounding nations were like.
I think the reason they can’t think spiritually is because the Bible doesn’t encourage them enough to. The Bible instead reinforces their materialistic mindset. The Bible seems to have reinforced the Jew’s materialistic mindset. The bible reinforces the Jews’ idea that the Earth is flat by teaching for example the sun standing still over Gibeon, and by teaching “every eye will see him.” That seems unnecessary. I think there are other ways to convey messages that don’t reinforce materialistic mindsets. And it’s not just the sun standing still reinforcing the idea that the Earth is flat. The Bible is also reinforcing the idea that God’s dwelling place is the literal sky. The genealogies don’t seem necessary, they feel too informative. There are other ways to convey the spiritual message needed… Aren’t there?
Or how do I explain this?
Hi World Questioner,
And yet, when I read the Bible, these things don’t reinforce materialistic thinking at all.
It’s not that the Bible reinforces materialistic thinking. It’s that people who think materialistically read the Bible materialistically. There is plenty in the Bible to reinforce spiritual thinking. But material-minded people don’t see it, because it doesn’t fit in with their way of thinking.
CARM gave me this too: My name is Dave, thank you for the question.
I see that it is a follow-up from your previous discourse with Tim. Since I got this email, I’ll try and help you out with.
There are those in the Christian community who would hold to the viewpoint that the flood of Noah was a “local” event. I know these people, and I have sat
under their tutelage. Because of their scholarship, they have influenced many people, and I, at one time, considered their viewpoint on this subject.
However, I don’t think it can be sustained both theologically or that it matches with either hydrology, geology or world history. There are Christian organizations
who have dedicated the bulk of their ministry to dealing with this topic, and I do not want to get into the specifics about the scientific aspect of it at this time.
I believe that the Scriptures are pretty clear on this subject. Jesus believed that Noah was a literal person, and that the events as described in the book of Genesis
were real historical events that came upon the world. Jesus likened Noah’s time to the way things would be at the end, before Jesus would return to commence
judgment upon an unbelieving world. I think that is important that we hold to the same view of Scripture that Jesus did:
“For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them
all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matt. 24:37-39). Luke 17:26-27 reiterates this.
Consider this: If Noah’s flood was local, AND there were people outside of Noah’s community (both geographic and population wise), then the flood and its effects
were only done locally. If this is the case, then when Jesus returns for the purpose of judgment, THEN IT TOO, should only be a local judgment, only affecting
certain people. Do we as Christians really believe that this comports with Scripture?
In addition, we have the words of the Apostle Peter, who, when giving us a wonderful theological discourse about the work of Christ and His resurrection, discussed
this topic: “in which He also went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison, who once were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah,
during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water” (1 Pet. 3:20), and,
“and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;(2 Pet. 2:5).
The writer of Hebrews also mentions this:
“By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in godly fear built an ark to save his family. By faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness
that comes by faith” (Heb. 11:7).
Genesis chapters 6 through 8 gives us a lot of details about what happened, and the way it happened. It is important that we understand that:
“And the water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered.
The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. So all creatures that moved on the earth perished: birds,
livestock, animals, and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose
nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. So He wiped out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from mankind to animals,
to crawling things, and the birds of the sky, and they were wiped out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with
him in the ark. The water prevailed upon the earth for 150 days” (Gen. 7:19-24, emphasis mine).
In Hebrew, the word for “all” means—”All, every, whole, entire, total.” And the word for “only” (in reference to Noah) means “surely, only, nevertheless, but, indeed.”
So we see the contrast here between “every living thing that had the breath of life that was on the face of the land” being wiped out, “but” Noah, together with his family
of 8 (total people), being delivered through the ark.
Besides this, you cannot scientifically cover “all” the high mountains, with water, everywhere, up to 15 cubits (estimated to be 45-52 feet deep), and maintain that depth
for a period of 150 days, unless it is a global occurrence.
To your question regarding the Table of Nations: Read Genesis chapter 10. It gives the genealogy of how this began to work out, and in verse 5 it begins to show the distribution
of mankind, with people being separated into their lands by language. This matches what it will say later about the Tower of Babel, that people only went so far,
and then God had to confuse their language, which then caused mankind to spread out over the globe.
One of the reasons that the names and places seem to be concentrated in the region of the Hebrews is because God chose that land area, to which he would then call
a man named Abram, use him to beget a people, through which he would form a nation called Israel, and then through that nation bring in the promised Messiah.
It is an “origin” story of the entire human race, since everybody came from the descendants of Noah. But it is not exhaustive, in that people who migrated to China and
Australia for example, did not live in an area that God would use to bring in a nation and a Messiah.
There is a difference of opinion in scholarship as to whether the genealogies are 100% complete. In my opinion, if they are not “absolutely complete,” they are very close.
Hi World Questioner,
Materialists gonna be materialist.
Why doesn’t God create things so that objects can move from the Physical World to the Spritual World, and from the Spiritual World to the Physical World?
Why aren’t spiritual bodies more than capable of emitting physical light and producing physical sound? Why doesn’t God make it that way?
The spirit, the supernatural, miracles, and magic seem too absent from this world we live in.
Jesus, with his divine body, can directly interact on both physical matter and spiritual matter, right? As was the case with the fish he ate, or what was it? An apple? Wasn’t the fish or apple physical? Isn’t the spiritual right in between the physical and the Divine? The Divine is all-powerful, right? It wouldn’t be if it couldn’t interact directly with both spiritual and physical matter.
Hi World Questioner,
Because . . . that’s not the way God designed it. God designed the universe with distinct levels that interact with one another but don’t mix with one another. As a simple physical example, the heart and lungs interact very closely with one another, but they don’t blend into each other. There is a distinct boundary line, and various fascia and sheathing, that separate them from one another so that they cannot get mixed up with each other—which would be fatal.
On your other questions, the time between the Resurrection and the Ascension seems to be unique in that Jesus had a divine body but was still interacting with the physical world in that body. I don’t believe that happens after the Ascension. But it does suggest that God can interact with the physical world with a divine body.
I don’t think the heart and lungs is a fair comparison.
One possibility is that if spiritual objects emit physical light and produce physical sound, it might reinforce materialistic mindsets that people already have.
Hi World Questioner,
It’s just a physical example to illustrate the idea of distinct boundaries maintaining the integrity of the things on either side of the boundary. If spiritual and physical things intermixed, it would tear them both down because they are made of completely different types of substance and operate by completely different sets of laws. It would be like mixing ice and water. Sooner or later either the ice will melt or the water will freeze, depending on the ambient temperature. An ice-water mix is not stable long-term.
On your other point, probably, yes. Materialistic people would continue to reject the reality and solidity of spiritual things, and would just assume that it is a material phenomenon.
But why do we need physical matter? A baby is not made of a different substance from a child or an adult. I don’t think a placenta compares.
Hi World Questioner,
Physical matter is where everything comes to rest on a firm foundation. Physical matter is relatively fixed and dead, whereas spiritual substance is alive and highly changeable.
To use an analogy I’ve used before, physical matter is like the wine glass, and spiritual substance is like the wine in the glass. The glass holds the wine so that it doesn’t spill all over the place.
To use a body analogy, physical matter is like the skin and the skeleton. Spiritual substance is like the internal organs. Without the structure of the skeleton and the container of the skin, the internal organs would spill out and flop around, unable to do their work and fulfill their function in the body.
But once again, you can’t mix the skin and skeleton with the organs. If you did, neither one could do its job properly. Each must be distinct from the other. Each has its role to play in the functioning of the whole.
Why have two separate substances, rather than one unified substance?
Hi World Questioner,
Why does a house need a foundation, a superstructure, and a roof? Why does a cell need a nucleus, cytoplasm, and a cell membrane? Why does a car need an engine, a chassis, and a passenger compartment? Why does a tree need roots, trunk, and branches?
Everywhere we look, everything comes in parts, some of them outward and some of them inward, or some of them higher and some of them lower, or some of them hard and some of them soft. There is differentiation in everything that exists, and each part or element is an essential part of the whole.
You can’t have a living tree that has only roots and a trunk, on only a trunk and branches, or only roots and branches. It needs all three. The roots provide a foundation and also water and nutrition from the soil. The trunk provides vertical and horizontal stability and gets the branches up above the surrounding plants. The branches provide energy from sunlight via the leaves. Each one is distinctly different, and each one is required for the tree to function, and be a tree.
The same is true of the universe as a whole. Without God, a spiritual realm, and a material realm, the universe wouldn’t work. Merging the physical and the spiritual into one would be like trying to merge the roots and trunk of a tree into one, or like trying to merge the engine of a car with its chassis. It just wouldn’t work.
When our bodies die, we don’t have the physical body as the foundation anymore. The spiritual body exists on its own.
I feel regret for what I’ve said. I see your points. I feel pain now.
One reason I asked those questions is, why do I have to be born into a life of suffering?
Another problem is that people are naturally materialistic-minded. They are born materialistic-minded. Why the separation between the physical realm and spiritual realm? Or how do I say it? Why does seeing the spiritual truth have to be so hard?
Or how do I say it?
Also, why doesn’t the Bible say “they were materialistic-minded” or “they couldn’t think spiritually”? I am aware of the word “flesh” in the Bible. Does the Bible ever say “fleshy-minded” or anything like that? Is fleshy the same as materialistic?
Hi World Questioner,
Again, no problem. These are all good and valid questions. The problem of evil and suffering in this world is one that we humans have been wrestling with for thousands of years.
About this:
Funny you should bring this up! I was just having a conversation with another Swedenborg scholar about a rather strange thing Swedenborg says in True Christian Religion #103:
Apparently we do keep a slight physical element even after death. It can’t exist in the spiritual world, so it must be in the material world. It seems to serve as an intermediary between the spiritual and physical worlds. I don’t think anyone really knows exactly what it is or how it works. Swedenborg does mention it a few other times, but doesn’t provide any more detail.
Even without this “border” (Latin: limbus), the spiritual world still has the material world as a foundation, because the two are in close contact and communication with one another.
Swedenborg even says that angels and spirits could not continue in existence without this connection with the material world. What will happen to the spiritual world if and when the material universe either subsides into heat death or compresses back into a singularity in a Big Crunch is another thorny issue—but one that we don’t have to worry about any time soon. I figure that God is smarter than we are, and has a plan.
On your other questions, these all have to do with the fact that we are materialistic. Since we focus much more on this world than on the spiritual world, we’re not listening very much to what God wants to tell us about God and spirit. Also because of our materialism and focus on our own pleasure and pain, we create all sorts of unnecessary suffering for ourselves and for one another. That suffering is the only thing that gets us to reconsider our materialism and selfishness, and consider turning our life in a better and higher direction.
That’s the basic reason why there is so much pain and suffering in the world. It is necessary to break us out of our materialistic path toward death, and put us onto a spiritual path toward life. Otherwise we would all just keep right on living in a selfish and greedy way, and we would all end up in hell. See:
If God is Love, Why all the Pain and Suffering?
As far as the Bible’s language, the Bible is not a philosophical or theological treatise. It uses ordinary language that ordinary people without advanced university degrees can understand. That’s why it doesn’t use the sorts of technical terminology that educated people use to talk about these things.
It’s not just a matter of suffering. I also don’t like to be caught off-guard by The Bible being interpreted wrong or not translated correctly. Like “get behind me Satan” vs. “get behind me you adversary,” or a verse is interpreted as angels or demons being cast out of Heaven (spiritual) down to Earth (physical) when it says that angels or demons up in the sky (spiritual) are being cast down to the ground (spiritual). And whatever else. Also, translations and interpretations are uncertain.
Also, we don’t always seem to die at God’s time. Our death doesn’t just come when our work or development is finished, as a baby is out of the womb when it’s time in the uterus is completed. Our death just happens, whether our work is finished or not, and either before or even long after our development is complete. So not a good comparison.
Hi World Questioner,
The Bible is written in such a way that people at all levels of spiritual development and enlightenment, or lack thereof, can read it and benefit from it for their eternal good. As you progress forward on your spiritual path, if you rise up to a higher level, you will read the Bible differently than you did when you were at an earlier, more fleshly-minded phase. That’s a feature of the Bible, not a bug.
But also, some readings of the Bible are just plain inaccurate. It’s not what the Bible says. That’s why it’s important to pay attention to what the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek of the Bible actually say. There’s still room for interpretation and variation, such as “heaven” vs. “sky.” But some readings of the Bible are just wrong, such as saying that Paul taught faith alone, when he never said anything of the sort, or that the Bible teaches a Trinity of Persons, when it never says any such thing.
On your other issue, God does not deterministically decide when we’re going to die. There are many factors involved in the timing of our death, divine, spiritual, earthly, and personal. If someone decides to commit suicide, is that something God did? Absolutely not. It was a choice made by that person, under the influence of evil spirits, and not prevented by God. Similarly, genetic and environmental factors influence the time of our death, not to mention the actions of other people, such as a drunk driver T-boning your car. That, too, is not something God decided and made happen.
In theological terms, divine providence includes both laws of providence (what God actively provides for) and laws of permission or tolerance (what God allows to happen because the alternative would be even worse). The laws of providence relate to the good and truth that comes into our life from God and heaven. The laws of tolerance relate to the evil and falsity that comes into our lives from hell.
God is, of course, aware of our lifespan and the time of our death from the position outside of time and space where God dwells. And God provides for or permits everything in our life with an awareness of our lifespan and time of death, and especially, with an eye to our eternal state afterwards.
Why do humans have to be born into a world of suffering? I’m not just talking about death from predators or about diseases. But natural disasters as well. But also unhappy times. Why can’t humans just be created to live in a paradise, in peace, joy, and bliss? I’m talking about before sin. And I’m not specifically talking about the Garden of Eden.
Hi World Questioner,
The vast bulk of our pain and suffering is self-inflicted. Not necessarily individually, but as a culture and a race. Our greed and lust for power cause all the wars and most of the poverty, suffering, and disease in the world. And God will not prevent them because doing so would take away our freedom, and our humanity along with it; and also because experiencing the negative consequences of our evil desires and actions is the only way we can see their true nature, and make a decision (if we are willing) to repent from them and focus our life on love for God and the neighbor instead.
About “before sin,” please read this article:
How can we have Faith when So Many Bad Things happen to So Many Good People? Part 2
Once you’ve read it, we can discuss this issue further in the comments section there if you wish.
Isn’t there a verse that says “the whole world groans and suffers because of Adam’s sin”? Or is it “because of man’s sin”? Is it the Greek anthropos, or is it the Hebrew name Adam in Greek letters?
Hi World Questioner,
I presume you are referring to these verses:
Though sin is mentioned earlier in the chapter, this passage isn’t about Adam’s sin, or really, about sin at all, but about longing for redemption and new life. The groaning is not under the weight of sin. It is the groaning of a woman in labor, who is about to give birth to a child—which is a joyful event.
Walt Brown was adding to the verse in https://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ317.html. He was adding to what the verse didn’t say.
Hi World Questioner,
Yes, it’s an entirely fanciful mix of fact and fiction, both scientific and biblical. Even if a worldwide flood did happen, it would not generate any forces sufficient to send anything on an escape trajectory from Earth’s gravity well. This can happen, but not with the sort of forces created by flood waters. It takes a massive meteorite, several kilometers in diameter at minimum, striking earth to create enough force to fling material out of Earth’s gravity and into space so that it could arrive at the Moon or another planet, and crash there.
Also, methane does not require bacteria to form. It can be formed by abiotic chemical processes similar to the chemical processes that produce other carbon-based compounds in the solar system, which are quite plentiful. These are the processes that produced Titan’s methane, not bacteria.
I was talking about what he added to Romans 8:22 that it doesn’t say.
Hi World Questioner,
Spell it out for me, because I don’t know what you’re getting at.
Walt Brown says that Romans 8:22 says “The whole creation groans and suffers because of Adam’s sin.” The verse doesn’t even mention Adam, and it doesn’t even say that it’s because of man’s sin. So he’s adding to the verse what it doesn’t say. Right?
Hi World Questioner,
Yes. Sin is in the background, but it’s not the main point of the passage, and Adam isn’t even mentioned. This is reading human doctrine into the Bible rather than reading what the Bible says.
You said: “On your other questions, these all have to do with the fact that we are materialistic. Since we focus much more on this world than on the spiritual world, we’re not listening very much to what God wants to tell us about God and spirit. Also because of our materialism and focus on our own pleasure and pain, we create all sorts of unnecessary suffering for ourselves and for one another. That suffering is the only thing that gets us to reconsider our materialism and selfishness, and consider turning our life in a better and higher direction.”
My response is, let’s suppose that we were not materialistic. If we were not born materialistic. Then we wouldn’t suffer, would we? Of the spiritual message got to us as soon as we read it. If we were born spiritually-minded. Let’s also suppose we were not selfish, but that we either were born selfless or became selfless at a very young age. Then suffering wouldn’t be needed for us to consider selfishness and materialism because we wouldn’t be selfish or materialistic.
Hi World Questioner,
Unfortunately, there was this little thing called “The Fall” in which humans decided to trust themselves instead of trusting God. We’ve been in that boat ever since.
And practically speaking, when we’re first conceived and born, we can’t even think about spiritual things at all. We’re completely focused on our own physical comfort, hunger, pleasure and pain, and so on. It takes a long time to grow out of that state of mind. Our parents, if they are good parents, do their best to teach and train us to think about other people and their well-being as well as our own. But ultimately, we have to make that choice as adults, or it’s not really ours.
Theoretically, if the Fall had never happened, we could be born good and spiritual. But it did happen, and we keep adding even more of our own selfishness, greed, and stupidity to what gets passed down from one generation to the next. So we have to do the work of overcoming it. And in the course of doing that work, we become good and strong people who can be angels of heaven.
Gnostics and Manichaeans say that physical matter is evil, and spiritual matter is good. What else do you know about gnostics and manichaeans? Have you ever heard of the Demiurge?
Hi World Questioner,
I’m not an expert on Gnostics and Manicheans. I’ve heard of the Demiurge, but it’s not something I know much about.
However, Swedenborgians disagree that matter is evil. It is good as long as it is in its proper place, which is at the bottom of our priorities. It is like the foundation of a house. It is a good and necessary part of a house, but it’s not the part you live in, assuming you’re not a basement-dweller.
Then the expressive mapping would be the physical as hardware, and the spiritual and divine are software.
There’s a problem with this though. God can exist apart from anything else. Therefore, the Divine can exist apart from the Spiritual and Physical, so couldn’t the Spiritual exist apart from the Physical?
Hi World Questioner,
About your first statement, I replied to that in response to another one of your comments, here. As long as you don’t take the analogy too far, yes, the physical is the hardware, and the spiritual the software. But God (the divine) is not the software. God is the programmer and computer builder.
The second part is sort of a trick question. Yes, abstractly, God can exist apart from the spiritual and physical. But in reality, God doesn’t exist apart from the spiritual and physical. And from the stand point of God’s essential nature, which is love and wisdom, God can’t in reality exist apart from the spiritual and the natural. That’s because God is love, and love must have someone to love. Without the spiritual and the physical, God has no one to love. So there is no possibility that God would exist without the spiritual and the physical, which together provide God with beings to love.
Programmer? Why didn’t I think of that?
But when we die, don’t our spiritual bodies continue to exist exist apart from the physical?
Hi World Questioner,
Not entirely. We still do have a connection to the physical world. But it’s complicated.
But I would have thought that the physical world is a virtual world inside the spiritual world, not the other way around.
A mother’s womb doesn’t lay the foundation for the rest of the physical world that children and adults live in. So why should the physical world, if it’s the womb (as you say), lay the foundations for the spiritual and divine?
Hi World Questioner,
Neither world is a virtual world. They’re both real worlds. And our time in our mother’s womb does lay the foundation for the rest of our life, in that that’s where we grow into a physically human being who can survive in the outside world, and grow up to become an adult.
OK virtual maybe isn’t quite the right term. Simulation just gives an idea.
But the mother’s womb lays the foundation for the baby’s rest of the lift… But the physical world doesn’t lay on the mother womb’s shoulders.
I’m surprised to find out that the spiritual world rests on the shoulders of the physical world. I was given the impression that the spiritual world is higher than the physical world.
Hi World Questioner,
Think of the physical world as the foundation, and the spiritual world as the house.
Or instead of theGarden of Eden being a spiritual place, it was a physical place that existed before the formation of the Earth, even before the Big Bang. But after the curse, the Garden of Eden was gone and the Big Bang occurred. This world we live in that’s existed since the Big Bang is a curse.
Have you seen https://religionspiritualphilosophy.wordpress.com/2025/05/11/the-real-way-to-reconcile-the-bible-with-modern-science/
Hi World Questioner,
Nice theory, but it’s completely divorced from anything biblical. If you’re trying to save the literalism of the early chapters of Genesis, this is a big fail. We can count the generations and years from Adam to Abraham in the literal meaning of the Bible. This leaves no room for it having taken place billions of years ago instead of 6,000 years ago.
Better just to recognize that it’s meant to be read symbolically, not literally.
One idea is that, for there to be gaps in the genealogies, one of the patriarchs, perhaps Eber, was transported into the distant future. Thousands of years in the future, he’d therefore be the same age.
Hi World Questioner,
What I’m saying is that this has nothing to do with what’s written in the Bible.
As you love to point out, the story is full of waw-consecutives. One thing happens, then the next thing happens, then the next thing happens, in one continuous, connected story. There is not one syllable about anyone being transported into the future.
The genealogies are more of information than a story.
Hi World Questioner,
That’s grasping at straws. They’re presented in the context of an ongoing story. It starts with a story, then there is genealogy, then more story, then more genealogy, then more story, and so on. Do you really want to put brackets around the genealogies, and say, “that’s not part of the story”? The whole idea is completely alien to the narrative.
Oops! Tog was a typo. Why do they have to write Genesis in the style of a historical narrative?
Why does God have to write Genesis in the style of a historical narrative? Why not just write it in a mythical style like the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish?
Hi World Questioner,
Why did Jesus tell stories that were parables? Why didn’t he just state his point plainly, in objective, rational terms?
Why didn’t God just write the first 11 chapters of Genesis in a mythical style, like the Epic of Gilgamesh and Enuma Elish were? Why does Tog have to write Genesis in the style of a historical narrative? Why does it need the waw Consecutive or the wayiqqtol conjunction?
Hi World Questioner,
Why was “Little Red Riding Hood” written as a narrative when it’s obviously not meant to be taken literally?
Genesis is an origin story, Little Red Riding Hood is not.
Hi World Questioner,
Yes. But it’s the same principle. The story has a deeper meaning beyond the literal story.
The question is, why don’t we just say “Beware of strangers”? Why do we tell a story about it?
Why tell a story? To give an example. To illustrate. But Genesis is not an example or simply an illustration. An origin story is not an illustration.
Hi World Questioner,
No, it’s not just to give an example or an illustration. If it were just that, then it would have been like one of my blog posts: Explain the principles, and along the way, give some real-life examples and illustrations. It’s a common way of writing and speaking to convey a message and make a point.
The Bible, on the other hand, has very little explaining of principles. There’s some. But the vast bulk of it is story, plus some significant chunks of prophecy and poetry. Almost none of it is discursive and explanatory.
Why?
Why did God choose to write the Bible primarily in the form of story? Why didn’t God give us a theological treatise instead?
What is a good reason for God to write the Bible primarily in the form of a story, and not give us a theological treatise? The latter sounds better. I’m sure materialistic-minded people wouldn’t lose as much faith
Hi World Questioner,
If God wrote the Bible as a theological treatise, how many people do you think would actually read it or have much of any idea of what’s in it? How many theological treatises have you read lately?
What do you think of https://bible.joshway.com/2015/06/23/three-things-we-never-noticed-about-adam-and-eve/?
Hi World Questioner,
I think the author (Josh Way) has some interesting thoughts about Adam and Eve, some of which I agree with, such as that God didn’t actually curse Adam and Eve, but simply explained to them the consequences of their actions. See:
Curses or Consequences: Did God Really Curse Adam and Eve?
As far as Adam and Eve being Israel, his first point, I think this is interesting, but only one application of the text, and not the greatest one. This story comes from long before Israel existed. It may have been edited and molded to be in a form amenable to Israelite and Jewish thought, but its message is far older and broader than Israel. I would say, rather, that Israel had a “fall” similar to that of Adam and Eve, but that this was just one example of a more universal human pattern: that humans and groups of humans have their rise, and they have their fall, and this repeats itself over and over again in a pattern set by Genesis 2–3.
Drawing on that, I agree generally with his second point, that “Adam and Eve Are Exemplars of the Human Condition.” “Adam” simply means “human” or “humanity.” It seems clear to me that “Adam” was never meant to be read as denoting an individual human being, but as being a personification of humanity.
I do have some quibbles about this statement later in that section:
This seems to me to be a rather artificial imposition on the story. Yes, God breathed the breath of life into Adam in Genesis 2:7, but after that, “breath” never appears in the rest of the story told in Genesis 2–3.
And though it says that God placed Adam in a garden to tend to it, this isn’t really agriculture as we think of it today. That didn’t begin until after Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, at which time, God said, Adam would eat bread in the sweat of his brow, and so on, indicating that he would have to work hard tilling the soil and growing food to eat, in contrast to their time in the Garden of Eden, when they simply ate what the trees produced.
And as far as sex, this just isn’t an element in Genesis 2–3. It wasn’t until after they were expelled from the Garden that Adam “knew” Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain (Genesis 4:1). There have been all sorts of efforts to make the Fall have something to do with sex, but it really has nothing at all to do with sex, nor is sex any element of the story in Genesis 2–3.
So on these three points, I think the author is imposing ideas on the text rather than reading what the text says.
On his third point, that ” God Is a Friend and Protector, Not a Cosmic Judge,” I agree with the general sentiment that God does not condemn us, but loves us and protects us. This is very Swedenborgian. But God is also presented as a judge in the Bible, and this is a function of divine truth revealing the true nature of our actions and our spirit. So I would say that God is a friend, protector, and judge. But still, God doesn’t condemn us to hell. In this I agree with what I think this author is saying. But God does shine the light of truth on us to reveal our true character. And those who have chosen evil banish themselves to hell, because that’s where they prefer to live.
Or the world was transformed… Or history (or rather, the world’s physical past) rewritten.
Hi World Questioner,
It’s up to us to transform the world, and rewrite history. No one else is going to do it for us.
If Genesis was written in a mythical style, I’m sure that fundamentalists and conservative Jews and Christians would not take it literally. If Genesis was not written in the style of a historical narrative. If the frequency of the waw consecutive perfect or the wayiqqtol conjugation, for example, didn’t match historical narratives but matched allegory, poetry, and myth.
I’m sure Creation Ministries International and Answers In Genesis wouldn’t have the same views as they actually do.
Also, is Jesus didn’t affirm the events in Genesis as history but clearly treated them as allegory, poetry, or myth.
Also, if fundamentalists and other conservative Christians didn’t believe Genesis happened literally, I’m sure they would not lose their faith. As long as they believed the New Testament literally without believing in Genesis literally. It’s not like if they didn’t believe in a literal return of Jesus, or if the Jews didn’t believe that the kingdom of Israel would literally be restored, is it?
Hi World Questioner,
Literalists will read the Bible literally no matter how obvious it is that it wasn’t meant to be taken literally.
Even literalists, including fundamentalists, don’t take Jesus’ parables literally, because it’s obvious that they are not meant to be taken as literal, historical events.
Hi World Questioner,
The problem is the attitude that everything must be taken literally as the default, and it should be read spiritually only if it can’t possibly, or reasonably, be read literally.
The Bible never says this.
The correct attitude is that everything is meant to be read spiritually, but some things that relate to our basic beliefs and our behavior are meant to be read literally as well.
https://bhebrew.biblicalhumanities.org/viewtopic.php?t=726 returns a 503 Service Unavailable.
I’m talking about the wayyiqtol conjugation (“narrative” conjugation).
I also found https://hebrew.billmounce.com/bbh_wayyiqtol1.pdf
Hi World Questioner,
As I showed in two or three quotations from Swedenborg’s writings, the ancient people who composed these stories put them into narrative form, even though the real meaning was symbolic and spiritual. So of course they use waw-consecutives and all the other elements of Hebrew narrative style. The story of “Little Red Riding Hood” is also told in common narrative form as if it actually, literally happened. That doesn’t mean it’s meant to be taken literally as an actual historical event.
This whole argument based on the waw-consecutive is just plain silly.
The frequency of the Waw Consecutive Imperfect or Wayyiqtol conjunction reveals that Genesis, including the first 11 chapters, is clearly not poetry. Right?
Hi World Questioner,
The early chapters of Genesis are written in a narrative form, not a poetic form. But there are poetic elements to it, in the use of repeated phrases, paired words, and of course, metaphor.
Regardless of whether it is prose or poetry, these chapters are intended to be read metaphorically, not literally.
You should check out http://apolojedi.com/2025/03/06/incompatible/. Didn’t Jesus die a physical death on the Cross? If only spiritual death was a product of the Fall of Sin, then why did Jesus need die a physical death? If we only needed to be saved from physical death, then why did Jesus need to become a man? Do you have any article that discusses that?
Hi World Questioner,
The article looks like another piece of long-winded “Christian” materialism entirely divorced from reality. I skimmed the first part, and that was enough.
It was exactly Jesus’ physical part that died on the cross. In fact, it was only his remaining physical self from Mary that died on the cross. Nothing divine can die. None of Jesus’ divine part died on the cross.
It was necessary for Jesus to die for numerous reasons. But there were two primary ones:
Here are some articles that discuss these things from various angles, starting with my main article on the nature of God, which has sections on the Incarnation and Redemption:
There are more linked from the ends of these ones, but these are the most relevant to your questions.
Oops! I meant if we only needed to be saved from spiritual death, then why did Jesus need to die a physical death?
Hi World Questioner,
Traditional Christianity, especially Western Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism), focuses heavily on Christ’s death as the thing that saved us. That’s because they believe in the false and unbiblical satisfaction theory of atonement, in which God’s justice or wrath had to be satisfied by the death of his son.
This is completely and blasphemously false. God does not require anyone to die to be “satisfied.” Rather, God requires that we repent from our evil desires and behaviors, and live a good life instead. God wants us to live, not die.
Jesus’ death was not what saved us. His battle against and victory over the power of evil, otherwise known as “the Devil,” was what saved us. His death was just one necessary step—the final step—in achieving that victory. When he rose from death, this signified that he had gained a complete victory over the Devil, hell, and the power of evil that was dragging us down to hell, which is spiritual death.
Besides, practically speaking, every physical body dies. The physical body that Jesus originally got from his mother Mary was no exception. If that body had not died, Jesus could not have become fully divine, and one with God.
I could say plenty more about this, but that’s enough for now.
If the Gospels all contradict eachother in various places, then how did the story of Jesus go then? And there is evidence that Jesus was never a physical person (like a lack of verified contemporary records such as court documents and the like, lack of eyewitness accounts for the miracles, and the earliest Christian writings seemingly did not describe a physical being, etc).
Hi K,
Even most secular scholars agree that a man named Jesus actually existed. They just don’t think the Gospels paint an accurate picture of him and his life. And of course they reject the miracles and the Resurrection as fictions invented by his followers.
If by “the earliest Christian writings” you mean the Essene and Gnostic writings, these were rejected by the main body of Jesus’ followers precisely because they questioned or rejected Jesus’ physicality and reality as a human being. All the books that made it into the Christian Canon accept this as a settled fact. And the earliest of them were written within a few decades Jesus’ lifetime, when many people who knew him were still alive.
As far as the Gospels contradicting each other, most of the contradictions are in minor details, such as how many times the cock crowed or whether there were one or two angels at the tomb. The Gospel writers were not concerned with minor issues such as these. They were delivering a spiritual message of love, truth, and hope. The exact details of how that message was originally delivered by Jesus is unimportant compared to the message itself.
What do you think of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPJOgvOEzbo (The Bible is a fractal)?
Hi World Questioner,
I would say a few things a little differently, but overall, the approach of this video is compatible with the Swedenborgian understanding of the Bible. Whether that would go for other videos or ideas by the same person/channel, I can’t say, because there’s no identification of the particular perspective being presented.