CADRE Comments

In summary so far: yes, Jesus is called "the God", {ho theos} or {tou theou} or {ton theon}, in the New Testament. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. ( Part 1 introduces the topic and discusses John 1:1. Part 2 continues through other Johannine text examples.) An implied {ho theos} is the best explanation for the textual transmission oddities, and the best fit of stably transmitted oddities nearby in the text, at John 1:18; it happens as a direct (although extended) grammatic effect in 1 John 5:20; it happens directly (if not especially obviously, thanks to the evidence being spread out a bit) in the final chapter of RevJohn; it is the best fit of the grammatic implications at John 1:1 (where the direct article wouldn't be printed for obscure grammatic reasons, but would be understood to be there for those same reasons); and it happens unambiguously, by all direct grammatic evidence and by established usage of the phrase elsewhere, at Thomas' confessio...

In Part 1, I went over in detail the example of "the Word was (very emphatically) the God" from John 1:1, arguing that the grammar actually points toward Jesus (as "the Word") being called "the" God there, with a direct article intended by the writer, even though due to another grammatic rule the author had to omit the article--ironically, for the purpose of even more strongly emphasizing that the Word was the God! Is Jesus called {ho theos}, "the" God, any other times in the NT? Maybe a bit more grammatically obviously?--other than with Thomas' confession late in GosJohn? (Which I am saving for last in this entry.) Yes, there are some times (other than Thomas' confession) when this happens grammatically obviously. But there are times when it isn't so obvious either; and on the broccoli principle I'll discuss those first. A few texts with ancient attestation (although mostly variants of ancient Patristic commentaries) including a...

I have been working up a new series for a while, where I will be following sets of canonical texts through their claims about God Most High and His relation to Jesus Christ (the Son) and/or the Holy Spirit. It's a followup to the huge (800+ pages!) metaphysical argument I spent a few years posting here on the Cadre a while back. (Anyone who wants to discover what it feels like for their eyes to start bleeding, is welcome to start on that here. {g}) The new series will most likely be just as long, or maybe longer. (Sorry--lots of data to cover.) But although I'm not quite ready, I'm getting itchy to start, so I thought I would compile together a few things as a teaser article. (Although with me being 'me', the "teaser" article is seven lengthy parts, of course... {wry g}) When discussing the New Testament texts with some (although not all) types of 'unitarian' Christian, as well as with some (although not all) types of non-Christian, the claim will...

No updates this year to my Cadre Thanksgiving Sermon, so I'll just link back to last year's version . For any readers hoping for yet another massive series between now and Easter: there's one on the way, God willing! But not until Monday, probably. For which other Cadre readers may gladly give thanks. {g}

Since atheist have low self esteem they are constraint trying to reassure themselves by maintaining the myth that they are more intelligent than religious people. The stduies linking atheists to low self esteem I have posted on this blog before. They are mainly by Leslie Francis but there are others that link negative God image with negative self esteem. I have contacted a theory that atheists are so snide and rude on message boards and often reveal such vehiment hatred toward religion and religious people becuase their method of ganiing self esteem is to put down religious people. They put themselves up by putting us down. I had previous done several pages on Doxa on atheist IQ claims. I went through every study to date (in the 90s) and demonstrated how 16 t0 6, the preponderance of the evidence favored a view that either religious people are smarter or that there is no correlation. Since that time some more studies have been done by atheists and they are being used extensively for p...