Roymond

That was a section we had to memorize for Greek class somewhere in third year. And our Hebrew professor turned verse 14 into Hebrew; sadly I no longer have that in memory. I received Christ in my Baptism at age 18, which I celebrate (instead of my birthday) every October.

Luke 1:35 is in the Creed: "who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary". That doesn't contradict "begotten of His Father before all worlds" because it's talking about how He came to be human,not how He came to be. And Mary's genealogy given in Luke shows descent from David, so Jesus was of "the seed of David" through His mother plus legally through Joseph.

Not at all. I could say one side is argued by those who grasp the enormity of sin, and the other by those who don't take it seriously. But that's not the topic here.

I haven't seen the question before. Technically I'm evangelical orthodox catholic (but nothing to do with the denomination with that name). Think partway between Catholic, Lutheran, and Orthodox.

Issues regarding the Trinity are a great reason to read the church Fathers; they faced every way the concept could be twisted and figured out how to correct them. What you experienced is -- guessing without looking -- a repay of the old rivalry between Alexandrian theologians and Antiochene ones, one side emphasizing threeness and the other emphasizing oneness. But be careful with the word "Oneness", especially if you capitalize it, because it is the label for an ancient heresy that has sprouted again in modern times. It's but a very short step from there to Modalism or Docetism! Banned for championing "entire sanctification" isn't surprising since that position is contrary to plain statements of scripture, though I'm not going to go into that here, though I'll throw in an old Latin term for the matter: non posse non peccare, "[It is] not possible to not sin". It's a question that has been argued in every century since the church first had philosophical theologians.

In my experience many who are quick are that way because they've been burned badly trying to work things out with others. I made a rule for myself to count up to forty before reporting anyone or anything, while pondering the advice of Martin Luther concerning the commandment against false witness: put the best construction on everything! Basically never hit "report" unless you can't see any way to view it as good. BTW, that makes me wonder: is "report" used here when a member has a problem with another, i.e. as a "Help!" button? I recall a discussion board where when you clicked on "report" there was a menu of reasons for reporting, ranging from "Help me deal with a jerk" to "This post is so vile we need an exorcist" (yeah, the folks who ran it had a sense of humor).

Yeah, and the board I got booted from so recently had that problem in a weird way: there were different forums for Anglicans, Baptists, Calvinists, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and a lot more, and what I observed was that in a given forum it was perfectly acceptable to insult, deride, and even lie about anyone at all from outside the forum -- so Catholics could lie about Lutherans and Calvinists all they wanted within the Catholic Forum, and Lutherans could lie all they wanted about Baptists or Methodists within the Lutheran forum, and if you dared to try correcting someone you got punished and not the actual offender. It's a terrible way to run a site that claims to be Christian,though I can see that if the actual point was to make money then it was a smart method because you'd attract a lot of people who enjoy insulting others.

That kind of thing is sadly common, but as a former mod elsewhere I have to say that it's less common than it is claimed. It's also the sort of thing that needs to be reported promptly at the start because moderating that situation can involve reading scores of posts, which is a lot like grading papers: definitely worth doing but a big pain in the anatomy anyway. Also the longer it continues the more work resolving it can take. On top of that, it's much better for a board if such things can be nipped in the bud early, especially when it's a slightly rogue moderator causing the problem. More to the substance, the difference between giving offense and taking offense is important! It's only giving offense if the perpetrator knows something will offend someone but they do it anyway, whether by premeditation or spur of the moment. If there was no intention to offend, then the one who feels offended is taking offense that has not been given, and that's its own malady that needs dealt/worked with. So while not even providing an opportunity for someone to take offense can be important, we're not Jesus so unless the Holy Spirit decides to step in we aren't aware of what's in someone else's heart and mind -- which is why on the flip side we all have to stop and examine ourselves when we feel offended, to be sure the problem isn't one we are creating.

I like that -- people get to be observers before getting any "modpowers". I'm going to recommend that to another board I haunt.

I was a mod on a board where membership had grown quickly and we decided more mods were needed. The system we used was threefold: any admin could nominate a new mod, any three mods could nominate a new mod, and any member could get up a petition and if twenty others agreed they could nominate a new mod. All nominees were then reviewed by all the mods, and only those with a three-out-of-four approval moved on; that was repeated with the admins. It was cumbersome, but it resulted in a batch of really good moderators! It also had the benefit that nominees who didn't quite make it would be watched, and if a mod who had voted against a nominee changed his/her mind the approval process could be started up again. I only remember one bad result, and it came about because a mod's personal life had taken a bad turn and he couldn't handle it, and this showed in his decisions when he suddenly started being harsh.

I've been a mod on a couple of different boards and the big issue was bans: who gets to ban someone and for how long? On one board that was set in stone but we worked around it to an extent anyway (they can't penalize you for consulting other mods if you do it on an entirely different board's chat room and use different names). On the other we worked out a system like this: one- to three-day ban: one moderator can do it alone four days to a week: a second moderator has to be shown the decision and approve or modify a week to a month: another moderator has to be consulted and a third informed as above more than a month: three moderators have to agree on the decision more than six months: three moderators and an admin had to agree more than a year: three mods and an admin but their decision had to be ratified by moderators handling that or related topics, and any admin who wanted to could comment/advise We decided there would be no permanent bans unless a member made a credible threat against another member. That almost happened once but we gave a warning, and I drew the short straw for 'counseling' the erring member in private chat [I think it was rigged because the admins knew I'd had counseling training]. One thing that made it work was that the moderator to active member ratio was about one to eighteen (i.e. one mod online for every member online, not total mods to total members).

I don't know if this counts as public or not, but when I was first in college there was a group of us who went to a nearby Lutheran church on Sunday nights. One weekend one of the girls in the group got sick, and her temperature kept getting higher and higher. But she insisted she was going to church with the rest of us. When it was time for Communion, she managed to force herself to make it to the altar rail and kneel. After receiving the bread and wine, she stood up and turned, her movements completely normal and strong, her balance perfect, no sweat streaming down her face: she was completely healthy, all in a moment, totally unasked for but given through holy Communion. We told the pastor, and he told us to look up Isaiah 65:24 and 53:5.

So you don't ask other Christians to pray for you? That's all that asking Mary to do so is, the difference being shes in Heaven. My issue is slightly different: as a mere human, does Mary even have the capacity to take millions of prayer requests every day? Of course that depends on how time works on "the other side", and I could argue that either way. Though I prefer the phrasing I heard in one church (I think it was Lutheran, but it might have been Catholic); it was "Abraham and Mary, and all saints of old and new, pray for us". Abraham is the father of faith from the Old Testament, and Mary the exemplar of faith in the New Testament as the first person to accept Jesus, so they stand for all the unnamed saints who have gone before, and that request forwards our need to all the saints in Heaven. Now if there were only a way I could forward my prayer requests to all the saints on earth....

I'll have to try to find an article I read a couple of months ago. It mentioned one possible source for the gate idea: apparently one of the Crusader castles at or near Jerusalem had a secret exit barely large enough for a knight in armor to squeeze through and it was jokingly called "the Eye of the Needle" because someone carrying treasure wouldn't have been able to squeeze through. That may be just another myth, but if true would definitely account for the rather late appearance of the gate idea as supposedly explaining Jesus' statement. I kind of like it, myself; the mental image of some knight trying to sneak in after scoring some treasure off some Muslims and not being able to enter with it strikes me as amusing -- and definitely something knights might have turned into a joke. edit: I didn't find that article, but I perused the Wikipedia article and found it does a credibly good job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle

I had to dig to find it out. On tech matters, I always hunt for reports from actual scientific establishments because they're far more likely to grasp the real substance of something. As one of my university physics professors put it once, science reporters know just enough science to royally mess things up. It was just last month that I read an article about ITER, the multinational fusions research group, that mentioned that in computer modeling fusion reactions a big issue was the behavior of ions in the plasma (which in sustained fusion means every atom that's present). They've got to be thrilled at the data from this achievement! Another big problem won't be so easy to solve. You can probably guess what it is if I say that one researcher wished they could construct their reactor in high earth orbit.

I appreciate the post, but the physics makes me wince! Neil DeGrasse Tyson would point out that at the center of a black hole M is definitely not zero, in fact it's usually huge, like at least hundreds of times what out sun weighs. If anything, at the center it's C that equals zero because at the center light cannot move! Also, generally speaking light can't escape a black hole, and when it does it's photons, not matter, and the nature of those photons is related to (determined by) the temperature of the black hole (don't ask me how to get the temperature of a black hole!). And weirdly enough, any matter that fell into a black hole will eventually come out as photons! The infinity comes in when you try to apply relativity to the center of your black hole. That's one of those things I could follow when our physics professor walked us through the equations, but the moment class was over I couldn't have explained it to save my life! Singularity is actually a math term; when a physicist comes across one it almost always means something's going on that we don't understand -- that's also from Tyson, I think (it may have been Brian Greene; I'm not sure). . note: I binge-watched about forty hours of Tyson and other cosmologists a couple of weeks ago; it was a nice review for my senior-level physics in college. Then I watched several hours of videos from a gal who is one of the world's experts on black holes (she's written several books on them). BTW, did Tyson actually say only God can divide by zero? I don't remember that from all those videos, but he's made a lot more than I watched so it would have been easy to not catch it.

I heard this from a Catholic priest (a Dominican, IIRC), who told it as a cautionary tale: A man has been fired to climb up in the rafters of a very old Catholic church. As he's patiently and carefully wiping up dust and making sure none of it falls, a lady comes in, crosses herself, and kneels down near the front of the church. Deciding to have a little fun, the worker calls out in a whisper, "This is Jesus! Listen to me!" To his annoyance, she doesn't respond. He waits a bit and tries again: "Daughter, this is Jesus! Listen to me!" The lady shakes her head slightly but ignores the voice, so after a few minutes he tries it again, a bit louder. This time the lady looks up towards the roof, and says, "Stop bugging me -- I'm talking to your mother!" His point was that Mary is our greatest example since she was the first to receive Jesus, and deserves honor for being the one from whom Jesus got His human nature that He shares with us, and even that asking her to pray for us is fine -- but don't ever put her between you and her Son. That was at a conference with all kinds of people. It was a bit startling to hear it from a Catholic priest.

And I pray to the Spirit every time I sing, "Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me!"

That's a common assertion, but Catholics are following what Paul said when he wrote, "I preach Christ, and Him crucified". A crucifix is just a visual statement of what Paul wrote. Though I liken it to being at a championship game where your best friend is playing, and the time is dropping towards zero with no score on the board, when suddenly your friend busts loose and makes the winning score of the game, and the buzzer goes off. To remember your friend's achievement, which would you prefer: a picture of the empty field and goal, or a picture of him scoring? I'd rather have the picture of my friend scoring, and that's exactly what a crucifix is! -=- A Lutheran missionary to Africa describe it a different way, from an encounter he had with the shaman of a tribe. The shaman started to curse the missionary, and the missionary held up a plain cross. From the shaman's mouth came a voice that said, "Puny cross! Thousands have died that way and are mine!" But his wife was right there, and she took out the crucifix from her purse and held it up and said "Gaze on this, then, foul one". And the voice screamed "The Crucified One!", and the shaman collapsed on the ground. He had made almost no progress before that, but the shaman collapsing and the crucifix changed the situation: they wanted to know this Savior who had been nailed up like that and whose representation all by itself drove away their shaman's spirits. Demons can ignore a plain cross. But one with Jesus on it, His blood coming down, the title above His head -- that's a different matter because they know quite well just WHO that is!

What he said isn't "another gospel", it's just that Roman Catholics have developed their own language over the centuries. What he said is orthodox; the way he said it baffles most anyone who isn't Catholic, and probably isn't understood by most Roman Catholics, either!

I was with him up until he didn't stop after "... to reach us". Oh, I know what he's saying, and its actually fine; when he writes "She is... the road that we must travel in order to reach him" it's pointing to Mary's humble acceptance of God's will and reception of her Lord. And by calling her "the bridge joining us to God" he's referring to the fact that it was entirely through Mary that Jesus got the human nature He shares with us. It's just that Rome has been in its own narrow world for so long they don't talk like the rest of us.

As far as the article, most of the news sources are getting what's important wrong: people have achieved fusion by smashing pellets with lasers before; what was important here is that the fusion the lasers achieved set off further fusion, allowing scientists to learn if their guesses about how a fusions plasma will behave are anywhere close to right. As it is, they learned that ions don't behave the way they were expected to -- don't ask what's different, I just grasp that it was. That's the big breakthrough because knowing from observation how a fusion plasma behaves is substantially different than running computer models. The data gotten from this brief flash cover things no one has ever observed before, only modeled based on limited evidence; now designs for the next generation of experiments will get changed, perhaps drastically. To state the above a slightly different way, they achieved what is known as "ignition": the laser-driven fusion reaction drove enough more fusion that they got more energy out of the reaction than it took to trigger it. That's an important step, but I suspect that what they learned about the plasma will be the really valuable part.

Consider also this: at the current rate at which humans are capable of making antimatter, it would take roughly a billion years to make one gram -- and would use up thirty times the amount of energy the antimatter would yield. The upper atmosphere is better at making antimatter than we are!

We miss immense numbers of things in the Gospels because we don't bother digging into Jewish culture of the time. Some of the most interesting insights I've gained along the way came from rabbis rolling their eyes at Christian "explanations" that were like dragging a book through the eye of a needle. One was that when Jesus said of Himself "One greater than the Temple is here" He was plainly claiming to be God, because the only entity greater than a temple is the deity whose house it is. I'd read that in English, Greek, Latin, German, and Spanish and never caught that, but to a rabbi it was as obvious as a millstone for a doorstop. (And I'm probably misusing the idioms)