A) Excellent!
B) We couldn't disagree more on free will.
C) Thank you!
You're fluent in Koine Greek, Hebrew and/or Aramaic?
What translation do you refer to?
B) If your will was free you'd be able to pass your hand through a counter top like Kitty Pryde. But it isn't free. You're bound by the laws of nature...the same nature that is controlled by God, or the Universe or whatever you want to call it.
C) I'm not fluent in those languages. But because I speak other languages besides English, I'm aware of how differently something can be interpreted and how different the translations can be because of those differences.
English is a horrid, bastardized language. Ask any foreigner and they'll tell you it's easier to learn other languages than it is to learn English. Most languages are more direct, simpler and less complex.
In English you can have one word mean multiple things and have multiple words mean one thing.
I did most of my learning through an organization called "The Concordant Publishing Concern"
www.concordant.org/version/Long story short, it was extremely difficult for me to accept that I was likely misled and brainwashed and then when I let myself learn what the Bible was actually saying, my eyes opened up in a way they never had before and it changed my life.
20 years later, I'm still shedding a lot of my past but I'm so much further ahead now than I was even 5 years ago. The "Catholic / Religious" guilt I had was crushing me.
I'm free of it now.
The Concordant Publishing Concern was started by an old German scholar who was fluent in 6 languages, I believe. When did is separate the entire NT, all the words on cue cards (no computers back then) and then he gave each Greek / Aramaic New Testament word ONE English word.
Then he translated the NT this way and a clear and simple message emerged that was impossible to see with other English Translations.
The largest and easiest discrepancy to prove how bad they got it is the translation of the world Hell.
In the NT you have several words in Greek - Hades, Gehenna, Tartarus - all entirely different things, and yet in English they are all translated as HELL.
Not possible.
Hades is Hades where souls are kept.
Gehenna is the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem.
Tartarus is Tartarus where fallen Angels are kept.
How can 3 totally different things be one and the same? They can't.
And once you translate things properly, everything falls into place including apparent contradictions.
Free will is the ability to CHOOSE, not just the ability to DO. What we commonly DO day-to-day is limited by the laws of nature
unless God grants that a miracle is performed by him through us. Freedom consists not in doing whatever we want, but in the choice to do what we
ought and what is right. That is where the idea of being a "slave to sin" comes from. Doing what we ought NOT do and what is NOT right in the eyes of God is not freedom, it is sin and Christ came to free us from that slavery to sin, though his infinite mercy.
Notice that almost every miracle in both the old and the new testament is performed by God using a willing faithful person, or better yet, in cooperation with that person.
God uses Moses as the instrument to perform certain miracles, and commands Moses to do some small WORK (strike that stone, raise your staff, hold up a forged serpent, etc.) and from that small WORK, initiated first by Moses' faith, a mighty miracle is performed by God through him.
Likewise, Jesus very often has someone do some small WORK (fill pots with water, throw your nets into the water, gather five loaves and two fishes, asking if the man wants to be healed, etc.) and through that very small ACT of living faith from the respondent, a far greater miracle is performed by God.
That is free will - the ACT of faith, not just the thought, or belief, or faith alone.
The will to do a certain good is erased by the chosen ACT to NOT do that good. The work or act is the
fruit of the faith which must be there first, but without the act or work fruiting from that faith, then that faith is dead.
True faith MUST be acted upon or else it is a useless and dead faith.
Example - if one suddenly and yet TRULY believed that a brick was falling from the sky and was about to hit them on the head, they would duck and cover even if they didn't actually see the brick yet.
Their ACT of ducking and covering was the fulfillment of their faith of their belief, and it was their WORK (initiated by their faith/belief) of moving out of the way that saved them.
Faith alone would not stop them from getting hit, they must ACT in accordance with their faith to be saved. I know it's an analogy and no analogies are perfect. But our ACTS/WORKS initiated BY and WITH our faith, TOGETHER, are what brings us salvation.
Believing in God is not enough, for as Jesus said, even the demons believe in God, and shudder. Even the devil believed Jesus was the Son of God when he tried to tempt him. Belief is not enough ("Not everyone who says 'Lord Lord' will be saved, but the one who DOES the will of the Father").
So, we have free will as creatures made in the image of God, bound by the physical world and our flesh, BUT - in the instances when God uses our faith and cooperation, we can certainly pass our hand through a counter-top... if that is a miracle that God wills to perform through us.
Even Jesus, in a resurrected yet still physical body, passed through locked doors of the upper room. I doubt there are many times however when God wills that we would pass our hand through a wall. But, we would need to consent to it, to have faith, and to then act for it to occur. God does not ever force anyone to perform his miracles.
As far as the Concordant Bible you speak of, I have read several Knoch Concordant Publishing letters and Gospels of the NT translated that way. They are atrocious, hack-jobs of translations. Utterly missing the very points you brought up even!! A word-by-word translation is a terrible way to translate languages because SO much of language is based on context and syntax.
So many of Knoch's Concordant translated phrases are essentially "word salads", words tossed together in a string that is almost nonsensical because languages are not meant to be translated, literally word-for-word, in sequence.
I am sorry you dealt with "guilt" from your Catholic teachings - you were deceived, only taught HALF of what the Church fully teaches, just as Eve was deceived by the half-truths of the father of lies.
NO person should be overwhelmed by guilt in Catholic teachings - if they are, then they were lied to, deceived and spiritually abused, not by the Catholic Church, but by particular "leaders" who failed, rather than the whole body of Christ's Church.
If one is taught nothing but "sin, sin, sin, hell, punishment, damnation" (which it sounds like you were with 'fire and brimstone' preachers or pastors) then they are getting less than half of the message of the Church.
"Mercy triumphs over justice." THAT is the full message of Christ and the Church.
There is justice, yes. But there is also mercy through Christ that is greater than any sin anyone could feel "guilt" over - except for the refusal to accept Christ's mercy and humble oneself to Christ's authority.
Again, I'm sorry you were "guilted" out of the Church, but you were lied to, given half-truths and not given pastoral comfort and mercy to draw you to repentance and union with the body of Christ in his Church.
camera angle at the exact same second! The photoshopping is so obvious a high school student could have done a better job! He looks stone dry in the altered pic!
