Stephen Pal-George

I'm not qualified for any of this

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

Many of you will know that I love to play chess - but I'm not nearly as good as I'd like to be. In an attempt to motivate myself to get better, I've started a YouTube channel of my games. If you're at all interested in chess, or me, like and subscribe :)

https://t.co/W3tIeez0g4

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton I honestly don't know how you could get that from what I wrote...I'm trying to say that if you want to think substantively about what is written, rather just wrestling with basic comprehension due to an arcane vocabulary, contemporary English bibles are the way to go 👍

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton That's great, and it could well be that I'm an idiot, but I think most people are still able to think plenty hard enough about what they're reading when it's written in contemporary English; perhaps more so

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lady_valor_07 "necessary to worship God" - no
Necessary for discipleship and a maturing faith - yes; the church body gathered should edify us and send us out, revitalised, into our communities

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton For me, it's not the government's role to make anyone/anything holier or less holy. The church should work on making us a holier nation, the government should absolutely work on improving the economy, which will benefit everyone, including the church

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton @HumanistQuaker Every person does accept Christ - every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton @HumanistQuaker Inheriting his sin nature is not the same as being guilty for his trangressions

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton @HumanistQuaker The point is that Jesus saves us from those consequences. The idea that hell is "needed" as a place of eternal, retributive punishment is an affront to the character of God.

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton @HumanistQuaker No you're not - Jesus dealt with that. And that wouldn't make it infinite anyway...

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton @HumanistQuaker ...but because for the word to maintain any sense of meaning or intelligibility, punishing a finite crime with an infinite, retributive punishment is not "just", and there's nothing that the creator of the universe has said that would require to back down from that opinion

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton @HumanistQuaker Of course my opinions don't matter more than God's, I wouldn't think my opinions matter much at all. Of course what God has said counts - but none of that negates what I say. I can't be justice, not because I say so... cont'd

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@HumanistQuaker @lukeappleton You're right, it could never be considered "justice" and you have done nothing to enrage God to this extent - God loves you and delights in you; not all of Christianity views hell in the same way as presented in this thread

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton One of your better tweets, to be fair

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton @PierreGira83610 What, to your mind, is the role of the creeds?

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton help me understand, for example, Ezekiel's vision of the temple. This also includes specific measurements - what is this a vision of? Presumably, in your view, a literal temple?

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton secondly, telling me that your couch is 2m long does nothing to tell me whether or not we're talking about a literal couch

cont'd...

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@Roaring_T_Rex @lukeappleton Also, numerological stuff like this is often left uninterpreted - the number of the beast being 666, or 616 in some manuscripts. Does the text give us the interpretation of this number?

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@Roaring_T_Rex @lukeappleton Thanks for this, but I again don't see how the conclusion follows. There must be plenty of metaphors that aren't explicitly interpreted for us in scripture; in fact, wasn't Jesus famous for talking in metaphors that even his disciples didn't understand?

cont'd...

[Stephen Pal-George @StephennGeorge]

@lukeappleton But I don't see why? Why would repetition and specificity be indicators of literalism?