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You're right, @VeritatisVerba, that reason is involved in interpretation. However, it makes a huge difference whether or not you add ideas and assumptions outside of Scripture to the passages that you're trying to interpret. I grew up in a church that didn't preach the gospel and that was...

Your experience reminds me, @Edward 429451, of Joseph's escape that God guided him to make from Potiphar's wife!

Those truths that I mention are the Bible's assumptions about God and his universe, @VeritatisVerba. In my interpretation of Scripture, I use its own assumptions to interpret it, because it is God's inspired Word.

@Holy999, I don't know what you're trying to say. Tell us what point you're making. For example, what are incubus and succubus, apparently Latin terms, for us non-Latin scholars?

I was saddened to hear about Ryne (Ryno) Sandberg’s death. He, of course, was the great second baseman of the Chicago Cubs, my favorite team. My favorite memory happened this way. It was my 50th birthday and Ryne’s 33rd on September 18, 1992. I attended a Cubs-Cardinals game in Wrigley Field...

You say, @VeritatisVerba, "I can't think of any assumptions that anyone needs to hold to." I say that the Bible assumes that God created the whole universe and you and me, that humanity rebelled against our Creator and has ever since Adam and Eve did, that Jesus is fully divine and fully human...

@jswauto, you didn't mention that the Mormons reject the doctrine of the Trinity in the sense that they don't believe that the three Persons of God are one God. They also believe that we can become gods too as good Mormons and that the Father has a human body and lives on a planet in outer...

@Frankj, I believe that all of life is religious in the sense that we rely on ourselves, other people, some false god, or the true God of the Bible for meaning in life. My father was a secular pragmatist who didn't go to church, because he relied on his own ability to experience life and learn...

@VeritatisVerba, most Christian denominations agree on the basic beliefs of the Christian faith, as being biblical. It's on the minor doctrines that we get hung up. I was christened as a Methodist baby; grew up in a nondenominational, liberal/neoorthodox church that didn't preach the gospel...

@VeritatisVerba, my idea is that our reason has to be filled with God's reasoning fully informed by the Bible's teachings and history, if we are going to interpret it well. It's the Bible's assumptions that must inform our reasoning, not our assumptions about what it says. That's all I'm saying...

@jswauto, I assume that David was already saved when he wrote that Psalm, because God calls him a man after his own heart, but he sinned greatly when he committed adultery and murder. Here, he is praying the way I mention, for God's cleansing power, as God has already declared him not guilty...

@jswauto, we can agree that God pursues us like the shepherd does for his one sheep out of his 100, but I object categorically to the word "reckless" in describing God and his love. That word has negative connotation that should never be associated with God. Dictionary.com defines the word...

@jswauto, after years of studying that passage and others, I have come to the conclusion that the "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" is a whole lifetime of rebellion against his influence and truth so that, at some point, God says, "Have it your own way" and lets the person remain in his sinful...

@VeritatisVerba, for me, the objective test is the Bible itself in its whole context. Of course, every decision about pastors must be bathed with persistent prayer for God's gift of wisdom to discern his will.

Yes, @jswauto, human pride often gets in the way of true beliefs, because people want their reasoning and experience always to be true and right instead of being willing to be taught how we can improve our thinking and feeling. That's why God commands us through James, Jas 4:7 Submit...

@VeritatisVerba, respectfully, you're still trying to define and interpret the Bible by what it doesn't say and what people at that time thought it meant. God inspired the prophets and apostles to write the whole Bible. Therefore, we must go by the ways those inspired people used the words, yes...

@jesus lover, Christianity is the only religion that believes in the Bible's description of a fully-human man dying to free us from God the Father's guilty verdict that we deserve and rising permanently as fully-God to give people new life that will last forever.

@VeritatisVerba, the best way to know if a doctrine is true is to compare the Bible's passages that say similar ideas and to look at a church's beliefs and also compare them with the Bible's teachings in context. The Bible is God's inspired book, as it claims.

Here is the context of Jesus' reference to the wide and narrow gates. Jesus says that the wide gate is "easy" and that it has many people entering it who do not follow the "golden rule" of verse 12. The people going through both gates are recognized by their actions done in humble service...

@Frankj, you are asking an unanswerable question, because the Bible doesn't say what our resurrection bodies will be like, sexually or physically. It appears in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 that they will be these bodies perfectly transformed, strengthened, and full of God's glory, but beyond that...