Some questions about Christian religion

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I noticed some people here are knowledgeable about Christian religion and I have some questions that came to my mind when I was talking with a friend recently, here it goes:

The bible says something like: in the beginning there was chaos then God came and modeled the chaos, separated water and earth, etc. What is known about this chaos? What was it? Who created it?...

Is God a creator or an architect who built the universe from existing materials (ie the chaos)?

Where does the concept of soul appear in the bible? I heard about Adam being modeled from mud (sp?) then God put life in him, does that include a soul as well? Do animals have a soul?

The story about how Lucifer was the angel-in-chief then turned against God, the battle ensuing and the banishing to hell episode, is that biblical, evangelic (sp?) or just Christian mythology?

What's your personal view on the "God is all good and all powerful yet evil exists" issue and predestination?

When was hell created, by who (ie who made it what it is) and for who?

 

posted June 01, 2003 00:35
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I noticed some people here are knowledgeable about Christian religion and I have some questions that came to my mind when I was talking with a friend recently, here it goes:

The bible says something like: in the beginning there was chaos then God came and modeled the chaos, separated water and earth, etc. What is known about this chaos? What was it? Who created it?...

Not chaos, nothingness


Is God a creator or an architect who built the universe from existing materials (ie the chaos)?

The Creator


Where does the concept of soul appear in the bible? I heard about Adam being modeled from mud (sp?) then God put life in him, does that include a soul as well? Do animals have a soul?

Spirit is a better word than soul, the spirit is the God breathed eternal part in a human's makeup. The soul is the intellect, personality, etc.


The story about how Lucifer was the angel-in-chief then turned against God, the battle ensuing and the banishing to hell episode, is that biblical, evangelic (sp?) or just Christian mythology?

It is Biblical, although the battle has not yet taken place and Satan has not yet been banished to hell. Even after his banishment he will not rule there. Hell is a place of punishment, it will have no ruler.

What's your personal view on the "God is all good and all powerful yet evil exists" issue and predestination?

God gives all people the ability to make choices, the wrong choices are what lead to evil.

When was hell created, by who (ie who made it what it is) and for who?
There are two separate places known as "hell". The first is Hades, it is where the the unsaved dead go to await final punishment. At the final judgement, all unsaved people, Satan and his fallen angels will be cast into the Lake of Fire/Outer Darkness, a place of eternal punishment and separation from God.

 

Never attempt to figure out religions, you'll end up scratching your head in confusion.

Christianity, Islam and Judaism are all decendents of Zoeasterism - the first monotheistic religion of note. All three have the same basic concepts, but were modified by each of their respective prophets.

 

Actually, the existance of Lucifer is totally symbolic,

God created the bringer of light (knowledge) aka. Lucifer.
God created mankind (Adam, Adam is the Sumerian translation for mankind)
God placed mankind in Eden (ignorance, what we don´t know, can´t harm us)
Lucifer gave us knowledge (the opposite of ignorance) since that´s what he was created for

Lucifer promised us we would be gods if we ate from the tree of knowlegde of good and evil.

Many people see this as a lie, because they expect that, when we become gods, we have an halo of 3 meters, can lift rocks while we just made them so heavy we cant lift them and sit in clouds with butnekid angels flying around us.
(Actually we can already do that, just take a pill )

Some people say that Lucifer seperated us from God, we were no longer lambs of ignorance but had the freedom to follow our own minds, becoming gods!
God lost it followers, withered and died.

We already are in "hell", and I like it

What about the people who have never heard of God?? Are they doomed to be thrown into hell?

And "faith" alone is not enough.

"I don't understand have God expects everyone to choose the one true religion on faith alone, it seems to me to be a pretty sloppy way to run the universe."
-Jubal Harshaw Stranger In a Strange Land


P.S. I do not mean to troll, or otherwise hurt you, I place this warning because people have misunderstood my post for bashing trolls.

 

BTW, what is your religion?

I myself am between faiths.

 

Especially that Judaism is older than Zoroastrism and both Christianity and Islam draw from the source of Judaism.

It's impossible to tell which monotheistic religion was first, but definitely there had been monotheistic concepts before Jews, let us quote Ekhnaton's cult of Aton as an example. Also in every polytheistic religion there was a branch of priests who believed that all gods are just incarnations or aspects of the most powerful and more important one of them like the clergy of Enlil (Sumerian) / Marduk (Babylonian).

As for the questions asked in the opening post:

Chaos is not material, it's like emptiness and disorder. So technically it's still *something*, but it's interpreted as God creating everything from scratch.

Soul is not really about the gift of life, but rather God's image. Spirit has a bit different meaning.

There are several references to Lucifer's fall, but not the whole story gathered together in one piece. Some ideas aren't biblical.

As for God almighty and evil, God grants free will and doesn't revoke his gifts. Of course he does intervene from time to time as a part of His plan - at least that's what the Bible says. If you're thinking of the Flood, Sodoma and Gomora etc - punishment is not evil when it's due and administered by proper authority. What's more we can't see the full scope of reasons existing and of goals to achieve as well as dangers imminent or potential.

Predestination doesn't accord with free will. God is omniscent so for He knows everything that happens beforehand. However, a person always has to make the choice. God doesn't predestinate a person to be saved or not before his birth - we're rather all called to sanctity and salvation, but not all of us succeed.

Hell is the result of sovereign decisions made by a person. Flames and devils running all around is a mediaeval picture. Nowadays it's rather believed to be a state of mind.

I hope this helps you a little bit

 

Alright, I don't believe in this stuff, but it is interesting.
Can someone tell me how the hell the Nefilim ended up getting into the Bible. You would think the the Church would have cut out that bit by now, as it does relate to a Sumarian (I think) faith.

 

Most books of Old Testament were written down in Babylonia where Jews were deported after they kingdoms fell (712 BC for Israel, 586 for Judah IIRC). Therefore they were somehow influenced by Babylonian conventions that were derived from ancient Sumerian beliefs from before 2000 BC when the last Sumerian kingdom fell to Semitic Amorites from whom Babylonians were descended.

Also Abraham, whose original name was Abram, lived in Babylonian Erech prior to moving for Canaan. Thus he probably was Babylonian and his original language was that of Amorites and at that time not so much different from Accadian - the official 'high speech' of Babylon. Erech was previously known as Uruk and was a major political and religious centre where many important events originated.

According to the Bible God indicated His presence before the times of Abraham and there were people aware of it. Which means that before the times of Abraham there might have existed some origins of the cult of God as He's seen by Judaism. Then we would have different relations of the same events, different traditions etc although all drawing from the same source of ancient Semite culture enriched by Sumerian influence.

 

It's all just a matter of how far you are willing to go with your beliefs.

Personally, i don't buy any of that crap.

 

Well, there's another interpretation, if the church had done this it would mean that...

Better find a reason, that it belongs to the bible.

 

I want to reply but, i shouldn't.

Where's Mathetais when you need him?

 

Emptiness can be defined as the absence of matter, yet it is used to create something. God is then a creator who uses emptiness to create matter, like an architect using unusual construction materials. Physicists claim emptiness is perturbable and the like. God would then not create but convert emptiness (that is *something* we just can't properly define) into matter. (sounds like startrek )

There is *something* before God came and started creating/shaping stuff, how does time affect God, did he create time (from what?) to live trough it or to make his creations live through it. If he knows everything, then he knows what we call the future, that suggests he doesn't abide by the time rules he created for us. He decided to create the world at a particular time then let it evolve (tough he kept interfering) from there, was "time" created by God or is time a part of God to begin with?

Also on the first page of my bible (genesia?) it is written that God created earth and heaven. Period. It seems creation is limited to earth and that the universe is an other issue.

About predestination, God knows everything, then when a human is born on earth he must know if he will be heaven or hell material before the baby is even born. As God does give life then take it back (revoke the life license), I wonder if he couldn't prevent the birth of what is to be an evil individual, or is evil needed on earth in order to make the good ones sweat for their share of paradise? Is the whole point of living on earth is to be tested by other God's creations, but why since God already knows what will happen to you, isn't that "evil" of him? He knows you will go to heaven but first you must endure life on earth with his evil creations, pass trials he knows you will succeed in, you do have to break a sweat to be on God's right side?

@Blackhawk
If it's me you're talking to, I'm atheist, septic(sp?) and curious.

 

Well time comes from observation of moving objects, lets say that everything in this universe stopped moving, that everywhere in the universe the temperature dropped to 0 Kelvin.
Would time exist then? Can you prove its existance? No...

So since "God" started moving (or since the Big Bang occured), you could observe time (If you were there that is)

 

Again, I personally would never use the bible as my guideance through life, I prefer practical advice from the living.

As far I know, predestination theory is only in calvinism and religions thereof. So, I wouldn't put predestination in the middle of anything. And the so called "vulgarcalvinism" is evil, but I think you know that already, because your questions aim at the heart of the problem.

That's one of the parts, why bible-exegese usually requires knowledge of greek, latin, hebrew and of course Ethiopian, I was told. The problem is, that the translations interfere with eachother. (Not to mention the ones in modern languages).

The dominant founding myth from greek mythology, originated and migrated from good old Babylon, it goes something like this: In the beginning there was nothing ("chaos" in it's older connotation), then earth (~gaia) was born out of nothing (and some siblings). Then Earth gave birth to the sky.

The hebrew bible uses words in the beginning, which led to the German word "Tohuwabohu". It means today the same as chaos (modern connotation), everything upside down, mess. The hebrew meaning of the words is, irrc, something like "wasteland" or "empty land". In the beginning, there was "Tohuwabohu", then god created the earth and the sky.

Why founding myths are so similar and somehow got "mixed" is another question....

 

In the greek mythology Chaos wasn't equal to nothing... Chaos was chaos..

Give an update to Greek mythology later, but now I am in a hurry.

 

Okay, thanks ... I'm not going to get ANY work done today with threads like this to pick apart!

Oh, Greenlion ... when you posted that I was sleeping like a baby in the arms of the One who Predestined me! (hehehe, more on that later.)

First things first, Oxymore. You're question seems to respect the Bible as the/a source for information on these subjects. We need to clarify that a bit. Do you believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God? If so, we can answer the questions from that Book and you should be satisfied. If not, then I could bring a million Biblical points to bear, and you could simply shrug and dismiss it.

My point is that questions like this really can't be answered without an agreed upon source of objective truth. If you think that Truth is relative and/or you think that the bible is not true, then we will just have a long, fruitless debate.

I'm not saying this to insult or dismiss your questions. I'm just trying to point out why so many threads on the Alley never get resolved.

(cracking my knuckles and getting ready to talk).

Question One:

The Bible clearly requires us to believe that God created the universe out of nothing (sometimes the Latin phrase ed nihilo is used). The "chaos" you speak of in Hebrew is tovu bavohu and gives the impression of a wild ocean. I think Moses uses that picture to paint the scene of a vast ocean, stretching far beyond what anyone can imagine, and how God with a single phrase brings into existence a material creation. The point is to highlight God's power. We do not have a biblical portrait of God creating the world out of a giant's head (as in Norse mythology).

When God made man, the "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (Genesis 2:7). Adam is not the Sumerian translation for mankind ... it is Hebrew for "Man" just as Eve is Hebrew for "Woman" (you can also use the words 'ish and 'isha).
Humanity was created "in the image of God" which means that we are "like" God and "represent" God. The Hebrew word for "image" means that something is similar, not identical. This speaks to our intellectual powers, our will, our ability to create, our authority and many other areas of life. The more we know about God's nature and actions, the more we know about ourselves ... we will see more and more similarities. (I could go on to talk about the Fall and how these similarities are polluted, but that's a whole other discussion).

Back to your question ... the image of God is what made us unique after God formed us from the
mud. There is lots of debate about what the soul and spirit are. To be brief, the Bible uses soul and spirit interchangeably.

This whole thing isn't spelled out in the bible, so there is some Christian mythology around the topic. We tend to give too much of our imagination to the topic, and too little proof. A few places in the Bible do discuss it though.

2 Peter 2:4 "For if God did not spare angels when
they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment"

Jude 6 "And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the
great day"

From the Old Testament, Isaiah 14:12-15
How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,;
I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit.

This suggests a rebellion by an angelic creature of great power and dignity (Lucifer?). The sin of Satan is described as one of pride and attempting to be equal to God in status and authority.

The name Lucifer isn't in the Bible too often, this creature is normally called "Satan" which is Hebrew for adversary. Other names are "The Devil", "Be-elzebul", "the ruler of this world", "the prince of the power of the air", or "the evil one".

SIDE NOTE on the Nephilim. This wasn't edited out of the Bible because (as we talked about in the beginning of this long post) the Bible is True and isn't edited like a human document.
The Nephilim are mentioned in two places:

Genesis 6:4 "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown."

Numbers 13:33 "And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them."

These are not angels. Angels are nonmaterial beings and according to Jesus they do not marry (see Matthew 22:30), so these Nephilim are not angels (fallen or otherwise) to took human wives. It is far more likely that the "sons of God" here (as in Deuteronomy 14:1) refers to people belonging to God and, like God, walking in righteousness ... descendents of Seth who "called upon the name of the Lord". The point of the passage is that the followers of God married ungodly wives (daughters of men) and humanity lost its faith...leading to the Flood.

Could you have picked any short questions!?!
Your questions seems to touch on two points. Election for believers and reprobation for unbelievers.

Election is an act of God before creation in which he chooses some people to be saved, not on account of any foreseen merit in them, but only because of his sovereign good pleasure.

This is a hot debate, even among bible-believing evangelicals. The Bible clearly talks about it though.

Romans 8:28-30 "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified."

Acts 13:48, "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed"

Ephesians 1:4-6 "even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved."

This is not fatalistic or mechanistic. The picture in the New Testament is salvation is worked out by a personal God in relationship with personal creatures. This is done in love, a personal touch performed by a God whose creation has rebelled and who is not obligated to save anyone.

You may be asking, if God is that loving and
powerful, how can evil exist. Honestly, I don't know. The Bible never comes out and says why there is evil, except to say that God will be glorified by the way it all works out. I could go on with long philosophical arguments (mostly stolen from Alvin Plantigna of Notre Dame) on how God can still be good and all-powerful in the face of evil, but don't have time. (sorry)

Someone once asked Martin Luther what God did before he created the world, and Luther said, "He was creating Hell for morons like you!" (good ol' Luther)
Seriously, Hell is the separation from God's presence. We don't get too many details, some hints of suffering, drought, gnashing of teeth, and worms not dying. We get the impression that it is eternal, painful, and unchangeable. As hell is the absence of God, then you could say that God created it. You could also say that we made it ourselves, since we are the ones who by sinning flee from God's presence, choosing hell over His grace.

Hopefully that answers your main questions. Glancing through the replies so far, a few more comments ...
*Claron ... nice to meet you! Stick around!
"We are already in "hell" and I like it" ... for Christians, this world is hell. This is the furthest separation from God we will ever experience. For those who don't embrace Christ, this is as close to heaven as you'll get. Hell will really be worse .... much worse.
"Most books of Old Testament were written down in Babylonia where Jews were deported after they kingdoms." Sorry Chevy ... I think Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and others were written through history. Please tell me you didn't' buy into that JEPD theory ... please!
vulgarcalvinism ... nice phrase. Predestination has been abused. In my old church I had Calvinists who would refuse to share the gospel because "If they're elect, God will save them without me." Just an excuse for laziness. However as above, the bible does teach election.
Okay, fire back at me!
I'm going to get some coffee!

 

At Morgoth

I am aware, that there are other founding-myths in greek mythology. That's why I carefully worded it as "the dominant" one. There other versions of this, similar but very different. The "meaning" of chaos changed over time and interpretation in later years which made the meaning similar to "tohuwabohu". But one of the translation of chaos is "void".

At Mathetais:

I see that we agree on bible-interpretation, and that the holy scripture has to be interpreted in the languages, they were actually written in.

But still, I am happy that I haven't had latin for more than a half year. It's not worth the fuss.

But I doubt that translation. Because the word "Tohuwabohu" meaning something like "wild ocean" would make no sense. It's propably of jiddisch origin, so came from actual Hebrew speakers. And it's used as meaning "chaos (modern connotation), mess, everything upside down".

[ June 02, 2003, 17:47: Message edited by: Yago ]

 

I said "gives the impression" ... from my studies Tohuwabohu (you had it right, I couldn't remeber the transliteration) is a word like "bang" "boom" (otomotopeia sp?). It paints a word-picture without a firm meaning ... poetic.

Anyway ... no comments on my other stuff? I guess that means you agree!

 

Yes.

 

Wow, that was long!!!

To answer your question Mathetais: no, I don't believe the bible is the word of God and I don't believe in any God. I did not intend to make this a debate of any kind. It's just that, the other day, I was talking with a friend, whose mother went to catholic school, about creation and evolution and how God created everything from scratch (but was is "scratch"?) and all. I grabbed a bible (French translation), read the first pages and started wondering after the first ten lines. Given that my knowledge about Christianism is thin and people around me are either atheists or Muslims, I thought I could get some insights and personal points of view on various subjects (especially about how time is related to God) from people here on SP.

Thanks for your opinions (or beliefs), keep it coming.