Albert Einstein’s Thoughts on the Meaning of Life

Okay, so you don't actually know what's in the bible, since the link between the Sermon on the Plain and the golden rule sailed clear over your head
what do you think of this?


Modern historical critical study of the Bible tends to atomize the Bible into smaller units of meaning, relocating them in a hypothetical reconstruction of the events, personalities, and issues behind the text. This is true not only in liberal higher criticism but also in what is known as the grammatical-historical method, which is promoted by evangelicals who disavow the extreme anti-supernaturalist bias of the historical critics. The problem is that the denial of miracles is not the only effect of philosophical naturalism on hermeneutics. The exclusive focus on the human author’s intent as the key to the meaning of the text—together with the accompanying exclusion of the divine author’s intent—is another result of a naturalist metaphysics applied to interpretation. And even if one tries to soften the blow by insisting that it is just “methodological naturalism” being employed, the hermeneutical damage is still done. This is so because the exclusion of divine authorial intent from the exegetical process forces us to interpret the text in such a way as to obscure or elide altogether the full meaning of the text. It is no wonder that the concept of sensus plenior is placed under such severe suspicion in modern biblical interpretation. And it is no wonder that the christological meaning of the Old Testament is so fiercely debated.

Perhaps the biggest problem with contemporary hermeneutics is its obsession with the single-meaning theory. Both liberal and conservative hermeneutics typically urge us to see a single meaning in each text and to identify that meaning with authorial intent. This does not sound alarming at first precisely because it is so ambiguous. If we were being advised to see the text as the word of God and authorial intention as the intention of the divine author who breathes out the text, then who could object to that? But when we read in a hermeneutics book that we must seek to identify the authorial intent, nine times out of ten what is meant by “authorial intent” is “human authorial intent.” Ironically, this is true even when we have no idea who the human author was or even what century he lived in—as is the case, for example, with many of the psalms. This is even the case when a text by an earlier human author has been edited or revised by a later human author, which makes the whole idea of human authorial intent confusing indeed. Which human author’s intent is authoritative? The canonical text may well be the latest edition in a textual process that was influenced by several different human authors/editors/communities over centuries. But no matter, modern hermeneutics insists that the fundamental meaning of the text is what the human author(s) or authors/editors meant. Sometimes this ends up meaning what a generic human (that is, not an omniscient one) could have meant. This clearly excludes divine authorial intent, even if that is not the motivation.

Why is modern biblical interpretation so determined to avoid appealing to the intention of the divine author as seen in the canonical context of the text? It seems that modern biblical interpreters, shaped as graduate students by the modern university, feel a greater responsibility to the metaphysical convictions of the late modern secularizing culture than they do to the church’s doctrine of inspiration. This tension is expressed in the fact that a typical biblical scholar has one foot in the modern university, which is under the sway of philosophical naturalism, and the other foot in the church, which holds to the dogmas of the inspiration of Scripture and the two-testament canon. Ever since the so-called Enlightenment, the academy has been trying to wrest the interpretation of Scripture away from the church and claim that only the “dogmatically neutral” scholar can interpret it objectively and scientifically. But to be “dogmatically neutral” really means being a revisionist who denies the metaphysics derived from the central Christian dogmas of creation, Trinity, and Christology and embraces the neo-pagan metaphysics of modernity. Modern metaphysical naturalism and traditional scholastic realism cannot be reconciled or harmonized. They represent two distinct and opposing visions of reality, and one or the other must shape our hermeneutics. One reason why reading premodern commentators is so helpful is because they do not share the metaphysical assumptions of late Western modernity.
 
what do you think of this?


Modern historical critical study of the Bible tends to atomize the Bible into smaller units of meaning, relocating them in a hypothetical reconstruction of the events, personalities, and issues behind the text. This is true not only in liberal higher criticism but also in what is known as the grammatical-historical method, which is promoted by evangelicals who disavow the extreme anti-supernaturalist bias of the historical critics. The problem is that the denial of miracles is not the only effect of philosophical naturalism on hermeneutics. The exclusive focus on the human author’s intent as the key to the meaning of the text—together with the accompanying exclusion of the divine author’s intent—is another result of a naturalist metaphysics applied to interpretation. And even if one tries to soften the blow by insisting that it is just “methodological naturalism” being employed, the hermeneutical damage is still done. This is so because the exclusion of divine authorial intent from the exegetical process forces us to interpret the text in such a way as to obscure or elide altogether the full meaning of the text. It is no wonder that the concept of sensus plenior is placed under such severe suspicion in modern biblical interpretation. And it is no wonder that the christological meaning of the Old Testament is so fiercely debated.

Perhaps the biggest problem with contemporary hermeneutics is its obsession with the single-meaning theory. Both liberal and conservative hermeneutics typically urge us to see a single meaning in each text and to identify that meaning with authorial intent. This does not sound alarming at first precisely because it is so ambiguous. If we were being advised to see the text as the word of God and authorial intention as the intention of the divine author who breathes out the text, then who could object to that? But when we read in a hermeneutics book that we must seek to identify the authorial intent, nine times out of ten what is meant by “authorial intent” is “human authorial intent.” Ironically, this is true even when we have no idea who the human author was or even what century he lived in—as is the case, for example, with many of the psalms. This is even the case when a text by an earlier human author has been edited or revised by a later human author, which makes the whole idea of human authorial intent confusing indeed. Which human author’s intent is authoritative? The canonical text may well be the latest edition in a textual process that was influenced by several different human authors/editors/communities over centuries. But no matter, modern hermeneutics insists that the fundamental meaning of the text is what the human author(s) or authors/editors meant. Sometimes this ends up meaning what a generic human (that is, not an omniscient one) could have meant. This clearly excludes divine authorial intent, even if that is not the motivation.

Why is modern biblical interpretation so determined to avoid appealing to the intention of the divine author as seen in the canonical context of the text? It seems that modern biblical interpreters, shaped as graduate students by the modern university, feel a greater responsibility to the metaphysical convictions of the late modern secularizing culture than they do to the church’s doctrine of inspiration. This tension is expressed in the fact that a typical biblical scholar has one foot in the modern university, which is under the sway of philosophical naturalism, and the other foot in the church, which holds to the dogmas of the inspiration of Scripture and the two-testament canon. Ever since the so-called Enlightenment, the academy has been trying to wrest the interpretation of Scripture away from the church and claim that only the “dogmatically neutral” scholar can interpret it objectively and scientifically. But to be “dogmatically neutral” really means being a revisionist who denies the metaphysics derived from the central Christian dogmas of creation, Trinity, and Christology and embraces the neo-pagan metaphysics of modernity. Modern metaphysical naturalism and traditional scholastic realism cannot be reconciled or harmonized. They represent two distinct and opposing visions of reality, and one or the other must shape our hermeneutics. One reason why reading premodern commentators is so helpful is because they do not share the metaphysical assumptions of late Western modernity.
Gibberish.

Every reputable New Testament scholar studies Augustine and Aquinas, as well as the modern secular biblical literary criticism. The author sets it up as a false either/or choice
 
Gibberish.

Every reputable New Testament scholar studies Augustine and Aquinas, as well as the modern secular biblical literary criticism. The author sets it up as a false either/or choice
yes. that author is full of bullshit.

you don;t have to "read it like the church fathers" .

a plain text reading is sufficient.

the writing was inspired by god, so any idiot can read it.

the reading doesn't also have to be inspired by God. that's just another opportunity for corruption of the gospel, by worldly power organization like churches.

we agree.
 
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What did Aquinas say in the bible?

I don't remember that character?

was he the pissboy?
You asked me to respond to your article.

Your own article said this:

"One reason why reading premodern commentators is so helpful is because they do not share the metaphysical assumptions of late Western modernity."

Augustine and Aquinas are premodern commentators.


Do not ask me in the future to comment on articles you have not read yourself.
 
L
a plain text reading is sufficient.

the writing was inspired by god, so any idiot can read it.
You didn't even know that the golden rule was a touchstone in the Sermon on the Mount and Sermon on the Plain, and constituted it's ethical core. It sailed clear over your head.

Clearly we need someone besides you to read and explain the bible.
 
but he's not spiritual, he's a gatekeeper of religion to make sure it stays divisive and violent.

that's what masons do.
And thespians make people believe the world is but a stage to every great great grandchild added to the species daily, including you. You are still of the faith life isn't self evident total sum of all each does since conceived.

Evolving is a shared experience cradle to grave occupying space daily in a body of ever changing form that doesn't create or destroy the energy of evolving forward now. ancestors arrive and fade away in the same universal moment here now exactly as lived so far.

Brain navigates being uniquely alive daily, intellect chooses the narrative to die by.
 
And thespians make people believe the world is but a stage to every great great grandchild added to the species daily, including you. You are still of the faith life isn't self evident total sum of all each does since conceived.

Evolving is a shared experience cradle to grave occupying space daily in a body of ever changing form that doesn't create or destroy the energy of evolving forward now. ancestors arrive and fade away in the same universal moment here now exactly as lived so far.

Brain navigates being uniquely alive daily, intellect chooses the narrative to die by.
some things matter, buttfuck face.

people reject your nihilism dumbassery.
 
some things matter, buttfuck face.

people reject your nihilism dumbassery.
let me se if your social consensus mind can grasp this.

Matter sustains things universally here in plain sight and ideas that matter to people of character seeking a higher plane of existing beyond their unique time adapting since conceived have a tendency to believe anything else is possible except their time limitations of evolving here daily in plain sight changing form since arrival as their fertilized cell.

thermodynamics of objects occupying time today universally positioned and time alive each heartbeat left living so far as everything since conceived arrived in compounding condition of remaining living forward now.

Relative to periodic elements or ancestral chromosomes channeling through shared DNA progression of numbers occupying time today.
 
let me se if your social consensus mind can grasp this.

Matter sustains things universally here in plain sight and ideas that matter to people of character seeking a higher plane of existing beyond their unique time adapting since conceived have a tendency to believe anything else is possible except their time limitations of evolving here daily in plain sight changing form since arrival as their fertilized cell.

thermodynamics of objects occupying time today universally positioned and time alive each heartbeat left living so far as everything since conceived arrived in compounding condition of remaining living forward now.

Relative to periodic elements or ancestral chromosomes channeling through shared DNA progression of numbers occupying time today.
this isn't smart.

you're just negative and stupid.
 
this isn't smart.

you're just negative and stupid.
It is instinctive navigation of time I get between heartbeats of this ever changing body I am adapting to the moment with equally eternally separated ancestrally here as you have been since your unique conception.

negativity comes from not accepting all you been since conceived, then demanding everyone believe life isn't naturally timed apart genetically changing population left living every next rotation vernacularly called tomorrow when days of the week have labels that fit on a chart counting days evolved so far since celebrated day of birth, not day conceived to be a replacement for your specific previous 4 generation 30 specific persons lived before your conception.

Series parallel evolving describes living uniquely alive from rotation conceived to rotation died and that is relative time occupying space where Einstein's theory of relativity is logistics based upon 0 degrees longitude centered as the intellectual international date line in the Pacific ocean.

Tomorrow is the relative 12 hours midnight to noon while today is noon to midnight controlling people to follow the clocks and calendars believing there is a future beyond adapting uniquely alive today dawn to dusk being the end of the day.

Dawn being 6 hours beyond midnight.
 
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It is instinctive navigation of time I get between heartbeats of this ever changing body I am adapting to the moment with equally eternally separated ancestrally here as you have been since your unique conception.

negativity comes from not accepting all you been since conceived, then demanding everyone believe life isn't naturally timed apart genetically changing population left living every next rotation vernacularly called tomorrow when days of the week have labels that fit on a chart counting days evolved so far since celebrated day of birth, not day conceived to be a replacement for your specific previous 4 generation 30 specific persons lived before your conception.

Series parallel evolving describes living uniquely alive from rotation conceived to rotation died and that is relative time occupying space where Einstein's theory of relativity is logistics based upon 0 degrees longitude centered as the intellectual international date line in the Pacific ocean.

Tomorrow is the relative 12 hours midnight to noon while today is noon to midnight controlling people to follow the clocks and calendars believing there is a future beyond adapting uniquely alive today dawn to dusk being the end of the day.
you concept on the origin of negativity is word salad.

but thanks for trying.
 
you concept on the origin of negativity is word salad.

but thanks for trying.
And your factual origin is manifested into speculating life isn't genetically eternally separated adapting as displaced daily in ever changing form from the original fertilized celly your body came from nothing ever like it before, but the entire image of your previous generation gap reproducers of another generation gap in this population of homo sapiens honoring 21 religions and 1,043 political parties within the population alive today?

Rhetorical questions,
How many races actually developed within the ancestral lineages alive today came from? 5
How many average generation gaps are live same rotation of the planet per ancestral lineage(race) 5.
How many genders does it take to reproduce one or the other gender born per conception? 2:1 and within 5 generation gaps 30:1

16
8
4 middle class generation gap
2
1 each great great grandchild born daily.

Divide 8.12 billion people by their intellectual minds today and exactly where they are geographically displaced now.
 
And your factual origin is manifested into speculating life isn't genetically eternally separated adapting as displaced daily in ever changing form from the original fertilized celly your body came from nothing ever like it before, but the entire image of your previous generation gap reproducers of another generation gap in this population of homo sapiens honoring 21 religions and 1,043 political parties within the population alive today?

Rhetorical questions,
How many races actually developed within the ancestral lineages alive today came from? 5
How many average generation gaps are live same rotation of the planet per ancestral lineage(race) 5.
How many genders does it take to reproduce one or the other gender born per conception? 2:1 and within 5 generation gaps 30:1


so to sum it up.

you're an idiot.

and cypress puts Aquinas above Jesus wrongfully.
 
Your the one who claimed that the reading and interpretation of the bible was so important to discuss, but then you didn't even know the content of the two most famous sermons in the New Testament.
you put the idiot rantings of Aquinas over the clear words of Jesus.

you're a hoodwinking Masonic dumbass.
 
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