youngalexander

Wow, as a mod at BC&H you must be satiated regularly!

EarlDoherty

I am utterly flabbergasted by the inability of certain people on this board to think logically. This is not intended as something insulting. It is a neutral description based on the discussion we have been involved in, and I will demonstrate it in regard to Ben and Gamera. Nor is this a “digression” because I will relate it to the Romans passage it is being meant to apply to, which is the important element. I declared yesterday that I had said my last word on cheeks and apples, but I simply cannot let this slide, if only because it demonstrates what someone like myself is up against in trying to get across the mythicist case. If we cannot even rely on those we are debating to evaluate our arguments in a logical fashion, even if they don't accept them, then we are all truly wasting our time.

Incidentally, I spent a lot of time since yesterday preparing a response to Ben’s other posting about “literal spiritual relationships” and that will have to come later today. But for now, this return to our bad dream is unfortunately necessary.

You are failing to make the distinction between (1) using a word which represents a real thing, and (2) in fact having that real thing.

In the first case, yes, we have a word that, in describing itself, refers to real apples.

In the second case, we do not, in the situation being described, have real apples. We have real cheeks which only look like real apples. We do not have real apples! If I am standing in front of my girlfriend and say “Your cheeks are like apples,” are there any apples around? If I touch her cheek, do I have a real apple in my hand? So the word “apples” in that sentence is being used “symbolically,” linguistically speaking, in a simile. The apples are not symbols of themselves—who would ever make such a claim? I certainly didn’t. It is the “cheeks” that are symbolically apples. I am using a word which itself represents a real thing (but that real thing is not present) and applying it to “cheeks” in a simile because it conveys something, some characteristic of “apples,” about her cheeks.

You are understanding me in a way that makes no logical sense, and I’m dismayed that you think I could be that illogical. How can the word “apple” taken by itself, not be literal? And yet that is what you seem to be accusing me of stating. How could I possibly have such an idea? What would it even mean? I have tried to make it clear through several postings now that it is the application of the word “apple” to the word “cheeks” that is ‘symbolic’. How could anyone not accept that this is what the simile means, not that the word “apple” itself doesn’t mean an “apple”? Give me a break.

Therefore, as I said in Ben’s quote of my quote, above:

I was clearly not denying it, because I certainly never said that the word “apples” in itself did not refer to literal apples. Are you telling me that this is what you understood I was saying? What sense would that make? Do you think that I would really believe you didn’t understand that I was talking about the application of the word “apples” to “cheeks”? I was certainly giving you more credit for being able to think sensibly than you have given me.

Now, in the relevant aspect of all this, let’s look at Romans 9:8b again.

“The children of the promise are regarded as (Abraham’s) seed.”

The word “seed” is used to represent a real thing. But in the person of the "children of the promise" there is no seed actually present, just as there are no apples present in my girlfriend’s cheeks. So the word “seed”, while in itself representing a real thing, is used symbolically in describing “the children of the promise.” In this case, the children don’t look like seed, and I’m not tempted to nibble on them, but they are being given a characteristic which belongs to actual “seed of Abraham”, namely that they receive the benefits of God’s promise to Abraham, they are treated as though they were the actual seed of Abraham. But they are not, in the literal sense.

And here is my point about Ben trying to apply this ‘simile’ debate to some larger significance. If he disagrees and argues against my interpretation/use of the simile, which is identical in its parsing with Romans 8b, then he is automatically arguing against my presentation/understanding of the latter, which can then only mean that he regards Romans 8b as stating that the “children of the promise” are actually the physical, biological, literal-sperm-derived-through-all-the-intervening-generations, descendants of Abraham. Is that what you are claiming, Ben? If you are not, then your whole brouhaha over cheeks and apples makes absolutely no sense in the context of any application to Romans 9:8, because the simile would then be identical to the verse and it would support my reading of the verse.

Again, of course the word “brother” has to have a literal meaning. All words have a literal meaning. Every single word in the English dictionary has a literal meaning. Even the word “simile” has a literal meaning. Even the word “metaphor” has a literal meaning. The question is, is such a word applied literally? “You are the apple of my eye” is literally a metaphor. But is the word “apple” in that metaphor applied literally? Is your eye literally an apple? That is the only relevant consideration.

Your statement “I consider you a literal brother (in terms of whatever the issue is at hand -- fealty or love or closeness) -- even though in fact you are not” is self-contradictory. The term “literal brother” taken by itself can only mean an “actual born-from-the-same-womb brother.” That’s the definition of literal. The word “literal” can only be taken literally! You can’t have a metaphorical literalness, without contravening the meaning of the word “literal.”

So your statement would have to be read: “I consider you a brother born from the same womb as myself, even though you have not been.” Now, you may treat me as though I was born from the same womb, and give me the same benefits as you would to a literal brother, but that does not make me your literal brother.

Important Note: By “consider” I take it as you saying “I believe you to be” a literal brother. However, if both you and Ben mean “consider you” or “regard you” as not stating that you view me as a literal, from-the-same-womb, brother, then what has been the purpose of all this argument? If that is the way you understand it, then if we apply the same parsing and principle to Romans 9:8, you are supporting my point about the latter verse! If you don’t agree on applying that same parsing, then that is what should have been focused on, on how the simile and the verse required a different parsing, not on the interpretation itself of what would then be an irrelevant simile with no application to the verse in question. But if you do agree that it's the same parsing, then you have actually both been on my side in agreeing that Paul is not declaring the “children of the promise” (i.e., his gentiles) actual, real seed of Abraham, but only treated as though they were. My whole purpose in putting forward the “apple” simile was to demonstrate this, just as the “cheeks” are not real apples, neither is “the seed (of Abraham)” in 9:8b the actual, real, sperm-produced seed of Abraham.

That’s been the whole issue here. So, do either you or Ben maintain that in Romans 9:8b, the “seed (of Abraham)” refers to actual, real, literal, sperm-produced, physical-lineage descendants of Abraham? Not "as if" they were.

Earl Doherty

Gamera

You're beginning to understand. Metaphor is in fact a self-contradiction out of which meaning emerges.

Thus, when we say "her eyes were an ocean," the meaning emerges because in fact her eyes are not an ocean. If they were in fact an ocean, the meaning would be quite different, I assure you.

It's amazing how language works, and it's amazing that despite all the scholarly analysis of discourse, especially tropes, you seem to be unaware of that fact.

EarlDoherty

And it is amazing that everything I said in that post just went completely over your head. You didn't absorb a word of it.

Earl Doherty

TedM

Hi Earl. I"m coming in a bit late (read the last 30 or so posts). Fascinating!

I'm interested in whether you would agree with the following:

Paul understood Abraham's "seed" to refer to his human biological descendants. Paul equates the "children of the promise" with these human biological descendants NOT IN THE LITERAL SENSE (they weren't really biologically descended) but in the metaphorical sense that they are to share in the blessings promised to Abraham's biological descendants (seed) as a result of having the same kind of faith Abraham had (faith is finally mentioned in verse 30).

If the children of promise are to be "regarded" as Abraham's seed it is only in a metaphorical sense. From this standpoint, if Jesus is the seed of David, he too COULD be regarded in a metaphorical sense--ie some other sense besides that of being a biological descendant.

It does raise the obvious question however. Why didn't Paul mention that Jesus was also to be "regarded" as the seed of Israel or Abraham, since he had just mentioned him? In fact, he implies in verse 3 that his kinsmen according to the flesh are Jews. In verse 5 he says that Jesus is "from" the Israelites "according to the flesh". One reasonably assumes he is referencing Jesus' relationship as being a member of the Jewish race, since he references his existence in the same manner (according to the flesh). He doesn't say that Jesus is to be "regarded" as an Israelite, or as the "first Son of promise", or some such term. He only says that of the "children of promise".

He again is silent in Romans 1:3 about some metaphorical meaning regarding Jesus being the seed of David.

So, we have Paul referencing Jesus the same way he references other Jews implying that he was descended according to the flesh from Abraham. And, we have Paul providing the context for understanding HOW those who aren't necessarily descended from Abraham--the children of promise--are like "seeds" of Abraham. Yet, we have no mention of Jesus as being the first such child of promise in either context.

Surely Jesus was a child of promise to Paul. Yet, he doesn't say that Jesus was descended from Abraham or David "through faith" or through any means other than being "born of a woman" and of the "Jewish race".

If these terms were meant to be metaphorical in some way, wasn't Paul being extremely unclear? In all of Paul's writings this is never explained. He can explain how Gentiles can be like seeds of Abraham, but he failed to explain HOW Jesus actually was a seed of Abraham and David. If the answer is anything other than a biological reference, isn't that quite an omission?

ted

EarlDoherty

I suggest that one read the entire post before starting to reply to it. That would then avoid making responses that prove unnecessary when one gets further into the post. To wit...

Precisely. As long as in the example you give using the term "relationship" you are not referring only to the idea of the angels having sex with the human women—which, of course, ancient world mythology is full of. My way of putting it is that Christ had a relation to David, not that he had relations with anyone, let alone David.

Yes I did, because in that usage of "kata sarka" he is, in my view, not referring to Christ’s own flesh or any non-human flesh. He is referring to how Christ in this aspect of himself is "relating to the sphere of the flesh", which includes earth and humans. It doesn't imply that he took on human flesh, or non-human flesh, to embody that relationship with David. He embodied that relationship in some unspecified way by virtue of what it said in scripture. As I have said many many times, Paul doesn't have to have understood the process, he just has to have believed that scripture revealed it. Don't expect me to lay this out in some kind of rational way so that you or anyone else (including me) could understand it in the context of a 21st century brain.

Ben, these are exactly the questions I have precisely and thoroughly answered in those two long posts, one on this thread, one on the "Flesh" thread. Please refer to them. (I would suggest that for any future piece you are preparing you first take into account my observations in both those postings.)

I'll say this here. [Actually, as it has turned out, I ended up saying a lot here.] I was a couple of years ago accused of allotting no "semantic range" to the term "flesh" (or maybe it was to the phrases "kata sarka" and "en sarki"). Now when I offer a good deal of semantic range in regard to Paul's usage of these terms, I am being challenged on the basis that "flesh" can only have a very narrow semantic range, exclusively as applied to humans in human situations. Yes, Paul does indeed mean a "divine flesh" (I prefer the term “spiritual flesh”) in some of his usages, and I listed pertinent examples.

I think some of the confusion is that, within such a context, every reference to "flesh" attached to Christ in Paul does not, in itself, have to be a reference to his spiritual flesh. Romans 1:3 is such a case. There, it is actually a reference to the physical realm, the "sphere of the flesh", and not to any necessary 'taking on' of flesh on the part of Christ in those circumstances. The reference describes a relationship between a spiritual being and a human being, and doesn't have to involve any 'taking on'. The circumstances in which Christ does take on his version of "flesh" is when he enters that sphere in order to undergo death and perform his salvific acts. Such a thing is not involved in Romans 1:3.

Now, I have no doubt that all this, when approaching it for the first time, especially from a position of orthodoxy and an historical Jesus, sounds convoluted. I'll say two things. First, when you read Paul himself from the orthodox position, he comes across as profoundly convoluted, which is why modern commentators have demolished whole forests in writing about and trying to understand what he is saying, and why people like you and others have to twist words and whole passages to get him to say what you want him to say. (1 Corinthians 15:35-50 is a prime example, one I thoroughly laid out in one my long posts, the one on the “Not all flesh is the same flesh” thread, a passage which you have declined to address.)

Second, if you are able to set aside the orthodox paradigm in your own mind, it is really not that convoluted. In fact, it all fits together quite nicely. If Christ is a spiritual being, essentially revealed by scripture, and in some spiritual sphere has performed redemptive acts involving suffering and death, this necessitates in the mind of his believers the following: He has a purely spiritual body (made of “heavenly stuff”), he is a spiritual “man,” when he is in his heavenly abode; this is the type of body humans will take on when they enter heaven and join him. But when he performed those redemptive acts, he had to leave that heavenly abode and enter a sphere where he could suffer and die (whether Paul envisioned this as below the moon in keeping with "official" Middle Platonic philosophy is not known and is irrelevant), and thus he had to take on a different kind of spiritual body, an inferior one, one more ‘fleshly’ like humans that he can suffer and die in. Ergo, there are two kinds of flesh, the ones humans have, and the one Christ has when he enters that lower sphere; both versions are inferior and corruptible, but humans’ flesh is physical, while Christ’s sacrificed flesh is spiritual, resembling (in the “likeness” of) a human body.

(It is best to use the two-word term “spiritual flesh” to refer to that inferior spiritual form which Christ took on, so there is no confusion with his “spiritual body” in the higher heavens. And in fact, that is what Paul himself does, as we shall see, and this is indeed illuminating. This observation is what I stumbled on yesterday and why I had to take the time to do another survey of the terms in the epistles.)

In addition to all that (the paragraph before the preceding one), there are situations where Paul and other early writers are talking about Christ in regard to the manner in which he relates to humans and the sphere of the flesh. (I talked about the various types of relationship, many of which are described by the phrase “kata sarka” and involve sometimes humans sometimes spiritual beings.) In such cases, the word "flesh" is not used in application to any spiritual flesh of Christ, but to that relationship, making the word "flesh" itself refer to humanity or the human/fleshly sphere (which includes the demon spirits in the firmament, if that’s where Paul placed them). The best example of this is Romans 1:3, in Christ’s relationship to David, who of course inhabits the sphere of flesh. Christ is "of his seed" (because scripture says so). Therefore, it is not a term describing the spiritual flesh of Christ, but the general fleshly sphere which David inhabited.

In another, related, situation, Christ is often said to be "manifested/revealed in flesh." (As in 1 Tim. 3:16, and others which don’t specifically say, but imply, the words “in flesh.”) This revelation is to humans, who occupy the sphere of corruptibility, the "sphere of the flesh." Therefore, in these cases as well, the term flesh is not being used to refer to a spiritual flesh of Christ. It is referring to the sphere of humanity, the sphere and the objects in it (humans) to which/whom Christ is revealed. Such an understanding in passages of this latter category is far more easily and more coherently derived from the language (all those ‘revelation’ verbs) than deriving any idea of an earthly life from it.

(One qualification, so that someone like Don does not interject. This "sphere of the flesh" also includes all the area below the moon, so it includes the demon spirits themselves who live and operate there. They also possess a type of "flesh" (again, spiritual, not human—a la Bauer’s Lexicon and the TDNT) and engage in their activities in that form. When Christ descended to join them in their abode in the firmament somewhere above the earth, they interacted, each in their own spiritual flesh, and we know the result: Christ's spiritual flesh got hung on a tree by the demons in their spiritual flesh. And whether they used specifically spiritual hammers and nails and hung him on specifically spiritual trees I don't think has ever been established, including in regard to Paul, who strikes me as the trusting sort who simply took scripture's word (and his own conviction of revelation) for it and offered doctrines about which no one possessed the type of 21st century mind that would lead them to ask pointed and embarrassing questions—including "Was that above or below the moon, Paul?")

How’s that for a “semantic range”? And given the basic paradigm which I’m asking everyone to bring to the texts at least tentatively, as an experiment (after all, isn’t that what free inquiry and the scientific method is all about, and should that not be the preferred method of rational people in the 21st century?), none of it is ad hoc. All the aspects of the outline I just gave are integral elements of a consistent picture (a picture created not just from early Christian texts, but from contemporary philosophy as well), “members” of a single “body” as Paul might put it.

But having laid out those “integral elements of a consistent picture,” I want to add a further, more subtle, ‘integral’ aspect. In describing the “spiritual flesh” of Christ in the ‘sphere of the flesh’ setting in which he was crucified, and the “spiritual body” Paul says he innately possesses in heaven (1 Cor. 15:44-49) and which is the prototype to the one humans will take on at resurrection, I suddenly wondered if Paul discriminated between those terms, flesh and body, in their various applications to Christ. I said recently that Paul uses “flesh” and “body” interchangeably in regard to Christ. Now I have to revise that. There still are other circumstances in which, in his general use of those words, they seem to be interchangeable. But my surprising discovery was that in regard to Christ, they are not interchangeable within the same circumstances or settings.

So I am not now talking about a passage like Romans 1:3, or Christ being “revealed” to the sphere of humanity. We will look only at those passages where the words “flesh” and “body” are used to describe Christ himself, his aspect/form/substance.

Those “settings” I spoke of are basically two, but they are quite different:

1 – When he descends to the realm of corruptibility to suffer and die and takes on an inferior spiritual substance (the “likeness” of something belonging to that realm). This is a philosophical/cosmological principle attested to in the wider record in regard to the idea of a heavenly being moving between the spheres of heaven, such as in the Ascension of Isaiah.

2 – The heavenly form/substance that Christ regularly possesses when he is not in the realm of No. 1. This is the spiritual form/substance Paul, for example, assigns to Christ in 1 Cor. 15:44-49, the prototype for human resurrection. It also includes the form/substance of Christ in those mystical Pauline descriptions of him being the “church,” or the entity to which the human believers of that church also belong, Christ being combined with them into a single mystical unit.

In category 1, the term Paul (including the pseudo-Pauls) always uses is “flesh”.
In category 2, the term Paul (including the pseudo-Pauls) always uses is “body”.

(There is one minor exception to No. 2, occurring twice, and I’ll detail that later.)

Generally speaking, when Paul talks about humans and the physical realm of earth, he uses the term “flesh” and it is usually negative or derogatory in tone. The odd time it is expressed in a seemingly neutral fashion, as when he describes his physical lineage from the Jews, but still, in Paul’s attitude, “flesh” in any context is nothing to be boasted about. I suggest, then, that it is in keeping with this general usage that he applies the term “flesh” to Christ’s spiritual substance when he enters the lower realm to undergo his very negative experiences. (Christ “taking on flesh” is always styled as reducing himself—or God doing so—to a state of inferiority.) If Paul regards that realm as virtually irredeemable when it “walks” according to itself (kata sarka), it makes sense that he would tend to linguistically fashion Christ’s spiritual form, when he enters that realm, in terms of the word “flesh”: sarx. He would also style any scripture-derived relationship with a physical being or race, qua physical, by using sarx. All this he does consistently.

On the other hand, when he is referring to Christ in a context that does not entail entering that realm and undergoing those experiences, he uses the term “body”: soma. This he does consistently, never using the word “flesh” instead. (This, by the way, may be one explanation for why, as Ben has asked, Paul does not speak of Christ’s “spiritual flesh” in that passage: because he is not addressing any context in which Christ enters the realm of flesh; instead he uses the term “spiritual body.”)

We need to look at a few examples so as to make my distinction clear:

Romans 8:3 – in the likeness of sinful flesh (homoiwmati sarkos hamartias)

Here Christ is entering that lower inferior realm and taking on a form/substance relating to it. That “flesh” is still spiritual flesh, but belonging to that lower order.

Romans 9:5 – from them (the patriarchs) the Christ kata sarka

A relationship between deity and humanity, qua humanity, involves the inferior ‘flesh’ on one side of the equation, so this is a description of Christ ‘according to the flesh’, even if he didn’t suffer in this connection. The same remarks apply to Romans 1:3, which we all know by heart.

Colossians 1:22 – he has reconciled you [to God] in the body of his flesh (en tw somati tns sarkos autou)

[Yes, I know I’m inconsistent in the letters employed for transliteration. My rule is to make it the most readable and recognizable at any given point for those unfamiliar with Greek. “Swma” or “swmati” is ugly and confusing, “tns” less so.)]

Here use of the word “body” is superfluous. In fact, he is defining the type of body: the “flesh” type, which implies that Christ has another type, the non-flesh, usually referred to as the “spiritual body.” A little later in Colossians 2:11, Paul says that his readers are “putting off the body of the flesh,” the same phrase, only it is applied to humans where it has a derogatory connotation. That ‘inferior’ tone is probably to be found in the 1:22 usage, thus the use of “sarx.”

Ephesians 2:14 – abolishing in his flesh (sarki) the law

In Paul’s mystical outlook, the law was abolished on the cross. Compare Colossians 2:14 in which Christ took the Law away and nailed it to the cross. The context in both is the cross itself, therefore “sarx” in Eph. 2:14.

Now let’s turn that last coin over and go on to category 2, here two verses later:

Ephesians 2:16 – His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two (Jew and gentile), and in this one body (somati) to reconcile both of them to God…

The “body” was new, the post-crucifixion resulting effect (which is why he adds “through the cross”): the law being destroyed on the cross (using "sarx"), the new body being formed and existing after the cross (using "soma").

Philippians 3:20 – our bodies of humiliation will be like his body of glory

A clear use of the word “body” to refer to the spiritual state of Christ in heaven.

1 Corinthians 12:27 – Now you are the body (soma) of Christ
Colossians 1:18 – And he is the head of the body (somatos), the church (cf. 1:24, Eph. 1:22)
Ephesians 4:12 – so that the body of Christ may be built up
Ephesians 5:30 – for we are members of his body

These and other passages using “body” refer to Christ as a mystical/spiritual entity that also includes the church. A fully positive connotation, spanning heaven and earth; no suffering involved, and (unlike Romans 1:3 and 9:5) it involves a linkage to humans who are no longer walking ‘in flesh’ (unlike normal Jews, and even David) but walking “kata pneuma.” They are in the spiritual world already, joined to Christ who is also in the (higher) spiritual world.

1 Corinthians 15:44-49 (Christ is referred to as having/being a) spiritual [body]…

Here, because Paul leaves out—preferring to understand—key words, both verbs and nouns, he doesn’t actually attach the term “spiritual body” directly to Christ, but the direct implication is there. Talk about “spiritual bodies” and Christ being the prototype of the spiritual body humans will take on, makes this a usage of the term “body” for Christ in his heavenly setting.

Remember that we are here analyzing how Paul (and the pseudo-Pauls, whom we can assume absorbed his teaching and his language/thinking) used this varied terminology. Neither he nor anyone else sat down and worked out a fixed program to distinguish “sarx” from “soma,” which they then religiously followed. It just developed in their own minds. There will inevitably be little inconsistencies, but even these can be understood from their context. The main one occurs in 1 Corinthian’s discussion of the Eucharistic meal:

11:27 – (whoever) will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord...
11:29 – who eats and drinks without recognizing the body and blood of the Lord...

The context is the same in both cases (they are only two verses apart). The inclusion of the word “blood” has attracted the word “body” instead of “flesh” so that both relate to the lower realm of flesh in which Christ shed his blood, an exception to the regular practice. The Eucharistic formula (which Paul may have invented here) has tied the “cup” to the blood, bringing in the word body to tie to the “bread.” Why not flesh and blood? Quite possibly because this is a sacramental context, and flesh does not belong in a divine sacrament. Earlier, in 10:16, Paul asks: “Is the bread we break not a participation in the body of Christ?” This is a mystical, very positive concept. He would hardly choose “flesh.”

What do epistles outside the Pauline corpus do?

Hebrews 5:7 – in the days of his flesh (en tais hnmerais tns sarkos autou)…

“Days” is temporary. The spiritual flesh of his visit to the lower realm was temporary, while his spiritual body is eternal. What he did there involved “cries and tears” and “offering up petitions”—both taken from scripture (Psalm 22:24 and Psalm 116:1) and both referring to ‘fleshly’ activities.

But then we get to

Hebrews 10:5 – a body you prepared for me… [a body which will do God’s will, meaning undergo sacrifice]

But this is a quote from scripture (Psalm 40:6-8), and thus its word “body” must be kept, even though it is a reference to Christ’s spiritual substance when being sacrificed. The word is carried over in 10:10 – “we shall be made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ.” Although, from another angle, since Hebrews describes the “sacrifice” entirely in terms of the offering of his (spiritual) blood in the heavenly sanctuary, perhaps “body” could be justified according to the Pauline practice. But I think we needn’t worry about holding Hebrews to Pauline standards, and in fact this epistle goes against that standard again in 10:20 – “he has opened for us a new way (into the new sanctuary) through the veil of his ‘flesh’,” which uses sarx in a heavenly setting.

Finally, the example that goes directly against Pauline usage, and illustrates what Paul never says, is

1 Peter 2:24 – (Christ) who bore our sins in his body (somati) on the tree…

although in 3:18 the writer does say that he was “put to death en sarki.”

What does all of this mean, and what can we draw from it? I would say it indicates that Paul and his circle have a well-developed concept of language which they have applied to a Christ who operates in the spiritual world (higher and lower), and who has a relationship in various ways to the human, physical world. There are basically no anomalies of terminology, the various ways they express themselves fall into a recognizable and sensible (as far as such things can be ‘sensible’ by our standards) pattern, there is no need to bring orthodox understandings to this language or to the picture it presents. As such, it is in keeping with the principle that the epistles present a self-contained, full and coherent picture of the early cultic movement of Christ belief, with no necessity to introduce an historical Jesus. When one considers that this record includes many examples of the outright exclusion of an historical Jesus, the conclusion should be inevitable.

Earl Doherty

krosero

I have not read every word here, but I’d like to offer my observations; they may be worth nothing more than to demonstrate what the debate looks like to an observer, but that should be worth something.

At this point, the debate is becoming confusing and hard to follow, each time that Ben or Earl try to clarify the situation with ever multiplying words like simile, metaphor, real, symbolic, actual, literal, biological, spiritual, mystical, etc. The more these words multiply, the greater chance there is that someone will use a word with a meaning that is unclear to the other person, or unshared by the other person. What I’m saying is that trying to get as precise as possible, while a worthwhile effort, is not working for some reason, and is potentially confusing things more. I think you may have to take a step back and try to find your common ground; then you can identify your differences.

I hear both of you (Ben and Earl) saying that “descendants” in Romans 9:8b – that is, the word taken by itself – is literal. I know, Earl, that you have not perceived Ben’s argument to be as such, but for me and Amaleq, at least, Ben has been very clear several times that the word must be literal, and that its application to the children of promise is not literal. He has said more than once that Paul is not saying, “the children of the promise are like symbolic seed”. Rather, in Ben’s reading, Paul is saying, “the children of the promise are like actual seed.”

This is a very tricky debate to have, because you have two elements here: the word “seed” in and of itself, and its application. If you’re not clear which element you’re referring to, and you’re not clear about it each time you refer to the verse, confusion will be the result (if shared terms were not established at the start, which they weren’t).

And I think, Earl, that such confusion occurred when you took Ben to be saying that Romans 9:8b was a literal application of the word “seed.” You’ve been saying to him that this verse is an example of a non-literal application of the word. But he has always agreed with that. When he has spoken of a literal “seed” there, he has meant the word, not the application.

What is strange to me is that you don’t realize what a strange position it would be for Ben, or anyone else, to read Paul as applying “seed” literally to the children of the promise. The word is literal, but the application clearly is not literal; Paul’s use of the word “regarded” makes that very clear. I do not know of anyone who would say that Paul is calling the children of the promise literal (biological) seed. Paul’s whole point is to refer to a category (children of the promise) that is not bound by biological descent.

Yet you saw Ben as arguing for a literal application of a literal word. See here, emphasis mine:

Then you saw Ben accusing you of doing something equally illogical (emphasis yours):

You’re objecting to post #77 by Ben, in which he juxtaposed these two quotes from you:

I’m not clear what Ben meant here. If he meant that you appeared to be saying that the word “apples” is symbolic in the phrase “your cheeks are like apples”, then I can see where he got that, from his quotes of you above. But if so, he was not aware of how you were using the concept of “symbolic.” If I read you correctly, you call something “symbolic” if the thing itself is literal but is being applied non-literally.

But Ben was not alone in finding your discourse on apples and cheeks to be confusing. When someone says that, in a simile, the apples are symbolic and not real, but he later says that the apples are “actual”, "literal" apples, I think anyone can be forgiven for scratching his head a little.

Ben was right to caution against the multiplication of terms such as “real” and “actual”. They can only prove confusing, because they are not such specific terms to begin with; and at any given moment one of you might use them to get across something while the other person hears something different.

I think that the word “literal”, if used to denote physical descent, remains useful. Any other kind of relationship can be referred to as “non-literal”.

And Earl, your distinction between a word standing by itself and its application, is a very good distinction. If you both adopt that distinction and agree on your terms, I think it would keep confusion at bay.

Kevin Rosero

TedM

That was a helpful post Earl. With regard to the "flesh" passages, it seems all of the references could be referring to human flesh on earth, in the absence of clues otherwise. With regard to the "body" passages, did you overlook this one?:

Romans 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

"Body" here seems to be referring to the "fleshly" body that suffered and died. Do you see otherwise?

thanks,

ted

EarlDoherty

How can something be “like symbolic”? That’s a redundancy. Using my analogy, that would be like saying that “your cheeks are like symbolic apples.” This is so ridiculous that no one would ever say it. So why would Ben be arguing against me that this is not the case? Because he thinks I am saying it? What have I ever said that would give him that impression?

Which is exactly what I’ve been saying. I don’t know how many times over the last few postings on this subject I have stressed this contrast between a word “in and of itself” and its “application”. So where does he (or you) get the idea that I’m oblivious to such a distinction? Or that I’ve been arguing in regard to the former and not the latter?

In any case, I have just taken a look over my copies of our exchanges on this subject. On August 17 (posting number 4711310), he was responding to my statement (he quoted it) that “It is clear from this passage [Romans 9:6-8] that Paul is applying the word 'seed' in a non-literal way.” (Bold face added.) So right there, I used the word “applying” and said clearly that it was the “application” of the word that was non-literal, not the word itself. But you say “he has always agreed with that.” If he did, then why did he respond to that quote from me? Simply to agree with me? It certainly didn’t sound like he was agreeing with me.

But I think I have detected the root cause of all this back-and-forth misunderstanding. If Ben in that August 17 response sounded like he was not agreeing with me, if he was responding to me at all, then it can only be because he misinterpreted that quoted line from me and consequently did not agree with it as he (mis)interpreted it:

“It is clear from this passage [Romans 9:6-8] that Paul is applying the word ‘seed’ in a non-literal way.”

He evidently took my word “applying” to mean “understanding”. The former word, the one I actually used, applied “seed” to “children of the promise,” making the latter not a literal seed. But if he misunderstood “applying” to mean the ‘understanding of the word itself,’ then of course he would not agree with that statement.

But why would he misunderstand me that way? That misreading would have been based on this paragraph in my earlier post:

Look at those first two sentences. How could one miss that in using the word “applying” I was linking “seed” with “children of the promise,” saying that it was a non-literal application? How could I have been understood as saying that “seed” itself was understood in a non-literal way, in regard to its own meaning? And yet from that point on, Ben argued as though I was saying that. Even in my final sentence above, I used the same kind of phraseology to make my point which Ben subsequently chose to use to make his point, and yet he was still under the impression that he was arguing contrary to me. Consequently, I in turn took his response to be disagreeing with my actual meaning, and interpreted everything he said accordingly.

That response happened to be phrased in a couple of key places in an ambiguous manner, and I of course took it in the way that would fit with him disagreeing with me. It included this sentence: “All of this supports the notion that phrases like children of the flesh or seed of Abraham mean physical descent.” Since I assumed he was disagreeing with my thought in the use of the word “applying”, I assumed that this somewhat vaguely phrased sentence meant that he was maintaining that the children of the promise were the actual seed of Abraham in the sense of physical descent. (Yes, I know that it is “children of the flesh” that he refers to in that sentence, but I still thought he was implying an application of “children of the promise” to the “seed of Abraham” in an understanding of physical descent.)

If this explanation of mine for how things went so wrong is not in fact correct, then I have no other one, and in fact no longer give a damn. I have spent so much time and energy on this business over the last couple of days, and it has distracted all of us, and I’m not going to throw any more good time after bad. I have been devoting time here to the “Kata Sarka” issue in general because it’s key to understanding my JM case, and because it helps me to focus on (and even gain new insight into) the subject, which will be of value to me as I’m writing the second edition of The Jesus Puzzle.

No more apples and cheeks for me, and I may even swear off “children” and “seed”!

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Thanks, Ted. Actually, I did have Romans 7:4 on my compiled list, but I had a question mark beside it, as it seemed somewhat uncertain to me. Paul has just discussed in chapter 6 how we are “baptized into Christ Jesus,” we died as he died, etc. One might expect him to continue the same language and say something like “you died to the Law through his death.” Since Paul so often uses “body of Christ” elsewhere in the context of the believer being joined to him in a positive fashion, it seemed too unusual that he would express that idea of linkage with the same term, and yet actually be referring to his ‘dying flesh’. I also find the whole sequence of ideas through verse 4 to be bizarre. You died through the body of Christ in order to belong to another? Another body? But it says “to another who was raised from the dead.” Another Christ? Anyway, throughout these passages, Paul is regularly using the word “body,” including “body of sin” (6:6), so that the same word might have been attracted into 7:4. All in all, I decided not to included it as secure evidence one way or the other. But you’re free to disagree.

Earl Doherty