And, I quoted the Athanasian Creed to explain why it says OUR. That was your original question, right?

But again, that was written AFTER the bible was.  The creed that you quote is meant for recitation by a congregation, which is why it uses the plural.  The part of Genesis I'm talking about is supposedly god speaking and he says 'let US make them in OUR image'...which suggests to me that there are multiple gods.

 

And I'm telling you the best way I describe my belief. Whether it was written before or after the Bible is irrelevant.

As others have said, God is the Three in One, the Three being God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. If you look at the story of the baptism of Jesus, you'll see all three present.

If you look at the story of the baptism of Jesus, you'll see all three present.

And I understand and see that, but that still doesn't really answer my question.

Never heard of the Royal 'We'? All Monarchs speak of themselves in the 3rd person plural.

I can't answer for Christian Scholars, but I can answer for myself and the Chruch of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

The Godhead is made up of Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and The Holy Spirit. Not only does the Genesis account have God speaking in the plural, if you look up St John 1:1-3 (KJV) it says:

1: In the beginning was the Word,, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2: The same was in the beginning with God. 3: All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

So, The Word (Jesus) was with Heavenly Father from the beginning, and Jesus was the member of the Godhead that "all things were made by".

So, if you take both sciptures together, there is no conflict or "schizophrenia". ;~D

" Never heard of the Royal 'We'? All Monarchs speak of themselves in the 3rd person plural."

EoIC beat me to it. Anyway, ask 100 people you'll get 100 different answers. To many of us the Bible is written in the words and perspective of the people at the time, by way of the interpretation of the translators who wrote the KJV.

I don't have a Torah handy, maybe one of our Jewish pals will tell us if their Genesis story has God referring to Himself in the plural or not. It could very well be as EoIC says, a holdover from the royal pedigree of the KJV translation.

Never heard of the Royal 'We'? All Monarchs speak of themselves in the 3rd person plural

Then why doesn't he use the royal 'we' anywhere else in the bible? Why not 'We are a jealous god'?

Baker: I'd like to take a look at the Torah to see. I think that you're right, that it's a translation thing...but it's not just the KJV, all 3 versions that I have say the same thing.

Ted: Again, the NT was written thousands of years after the OT, so either the bible was tampered with (which I think is most likely) and can't really be literally interpreted as the word of god, or....well, I really don't know what else.

What it comes down to is faith. Faith that the sum of the whole meaning and purpose of the Bible is greater than it's chapters and verses divided and disected.

It is by faith that we hold our purpose. It is by faith that we believe. We do not know if we are right or wrong. All we know is that we shall have faith in the promises of Christ.

Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light. - Helen Keller A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets. - Arthur C. Clarke

They seemed appropriate.

Peace,

Beebes

Marcie... if we take the bible literally, we can't eat pork, or shellfish. We wouldn't have an established church. We have to marry the widows of our brothers etc... We also have to accept literally the book of Revelations, which makes 0 sense at all. Going with a literal interpretation is how you get the widest varrying interpretations because everyone likes to believe one passage is more important than another etc.

Boil it down to the basic concepts God is trying to get across, and there's almost NO varrying.

Ten Commandments. Probably the only really clear list of rules that isn't tossed out by Christ. But really, those are all rules on how to not be a dick (see above post). Love, peace and harmony is what Christ and God are trying to get across. Literal interpretation of the words is what muddies the pool, what adds the confusion and disagreement.

Ever heard the phrase "Can't see the forrest for the trees?" (or something like that). It means focusing on the minutia too closely makes you incapable of seeing the big picture. That's the problem so many people are having nowadays with religion. They latch on to the interpretation of the day, grasp it as if it is the last words of God spoken directly to them. They don't stop to think that throughout history, the book they have in their hands has been added to, had parts removed and changed all for the purpose of proving someone's point. We used to use the bible to justify burning heretics or witches. We used the literal interpretations to pick and choose justifications. We missed the point completely.

We went on Crusades due to selective reading of words to support a point.
We banned books and movies and justified it on selective words.
We pass judgement on one another and justify it through selective reading of words.

We completely and utterly miss the point.

If we go with a very literal translation... the story of Adam and Eve... The point can be proven that God made faith so complex because we couldn't accept something simple. Man is created in paradise, is lord of the world. Those two can do whatever they like and there's nothing bad to happen to them. They have one rule, one rule only. It's a simple rule, one that isn't hard to follow or understand. Don't eat the apple. Don't eat the apple. Man couldn't accept that simple rule... there must have been a trick... things can't be that easy... there's a catch, what's the catch? The catch was we had to forfeit the knowledge of Good and Evil. Well, there must be something to this knowledge... we had to have it. That knowledge had to unlock the rest of the secrets, cause this one-rule thing just didn't seem right.

One rule. We couldn't do it.
10 Rules. We still couldn't do it.
A friggin huge BOOK of rules. We still didn't get it.
Reset the whole thing and try to reintroduce the simple concept of Not Being a Dick. Didn't stick.

Every time we got a new ruleset, they were really supposed to replace the old ones. It was God going "Hrrm... ok, the previous approach didn't work... lets try something else" It was us, in our drive to complicate the world more than it needs to be.

A literal translation gives us a universe that was created in 6 days. By interpretation of those words, we should be the center of the universe.
A literal translation gives us a man, and a woman that then give birth to two sons. No daughters if I remember right. No genetic variation. Are we all inbred?
A literal translation gives us men who lived hundreds of years in a time before any modern medicine existed.
A literal translation would have us conducting animal sacrifices
A literal translation would have had the Second Coming of Christ a long long long time ago.

The points made through literal translation are completely and utterly secondary to the message of God. They don't matter one damn bit when you stack it up against the overriding point God attempts to make.

Love. Love God. Love yourself. Love thy neighbor and do everything within your power to make the world a better place for you and everyone else in it. You are loved by God. God wants you to succeed.

How important, really, is the argument of creationism vs darwinism in terms of faith, heaven and hell when you put it next to that message? Do the details matter anymore?

What it comes down to is faith

Some of it does, yes. Faith can be a very powerful thing...for instance, I canntell you that the sky is blue, but if you have faith that it's pink...then you'll see it as such. I was watching a show about the Shroud of Turin, and a theologian said, when questioned about the reaction the faithful would have to the Shroud being a fake "well, you could tell the faithful that it's a fake, but they have faith that it isn't....so it isn't" (paraphrased)

I'm happy for you that you have faith that your god and his son will redeem you. I don't have that faith. I have faith of a different kind.

Love, peace and harmony is what Christ and God are trying to get across. Literal interpretation of the words is what muddies the pool, what adds the confusion and disagreement.

Yes! Again, this is exactly what I think too. We've tied ourselves up in knots for years over the literal translation of the bible....a bible that's been interpreted so many times it's unreal.

Like I said, take a step back, look at the big picture, but most of all...don't be a dick. It's really that simple.

"Literal interpretation of the words is what muddies the pool, what adds the confusion and disagreement."

I disagree wholeheartedly. If fundamentalism and literalism is evil, then why aren't people railing against the Amish?

For once, for God's sake, I'd like to see someone point out that in addition to the crusades and all the other evils of the world, Bibile literalists have lived PEACEFULLY and cared for their neighbors and mankind as much as anyone else. The Bible, QUITE LITERALLY, also talks about love and charity and all the virtues we hold to be important.

The leadership of the Soviet Union killed more people in the purges than the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch trials combined. They burned books, they condemned people who differed with them... and... they were Athiests.

Please, folks stop pretending to dislike literalism or fundamentalism when own your opinions of them are literalist and fundamentalist. The crusades were wars of politics, economy, trade. Religion was an excuse. The same could be said for almost every other cruelty committed through the excuse of a literalist ideal.

The truth is, LITERALIST Christianity has been far more beneficial to the Western world than it has destructive. Religion in the last 2000 years has been abused, of course, but far less than it has bettered the billions that never burned a book or harmed their fellow man.

The Bible, QUITE LITERALLY, also talks about love and charity and all the virtues we hold to be important.

I understand that, but the point that I'm trying to make (I can't seak for Zoomba) is that often people get so caught up in trying to analyze the minutiae (much like I did in this article) that they lose sight of the big picture. Like the anti-homosexual briagde, for example. It seems sometimes that they've lost sight of the compassion, love and tolerance message of christianity and are focusing instead on hatred.

That's just my view....from the outside, rather than in.

Despite over 12 years of Catholic schooling, all I can come up with is that I try not to take the Bible seriously, especially the Old Testament parts.

All Monarchs speak of themselves in the 3rd person plural.

?????? that would be 'they'. 'we' (whether used in pluralis majestatis or not)is first person plural.