Do Different Interpretations of Christianity Make God a Liar if Existant?

somewhere else: Do Different Interpretations of Christianity Make God a Liar if Existant? · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: OceanKeltoi on The Interpretation Argument ...

Lita Cosner answered a question for CMI, but not on Creation Science. It is more into general Christian apologetics, though it has ramifications into my specifically Catholic apologetics.

Here is the article:

The ‘interpretation argument’: an irrefutable argument against Christianity?
Published: 26* June 2021 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/interpretation-argument

Here are two arguments by the arguer who is there answered, both are right:

1. For any event God wants, he knows how to bring it about (omniscience)
2. For any event God wants, he is capable of bringing it about (omnipotence)
Therefore: If God chooses to bring about a particular event, it must occur.

1. For any message God wants to communicate, he knows how to communicate it such that it will be interpreted correctly
2. For any message God wants to communicate, he is capable of communicating it such that it will be interpreted correctly
Therefore: If God chooses to communicate a message it must be interpreted correctly.

I absolutely agree to both.

I also consider there is freewill and there is the fall. It would be contradictory for God to want to have any message ONLY interpreted correctly, overriding freewill with mistakes and overriding sin, so the consequence of error doesn't occur.

If God chooses to communicate a message it must be interpreted correctly.

Correct as it stands. This does not mean:

"If God chooses to communicate a message it must be interpreted ONLY correctly."

But there must be a means for a man of goodwill to get to know the difference, if it is important to him and the matter is important.

The solution is, there must be some kind of "denomination" (for want of a better word) which is not just a denomination, but outstanding.

There exist two types of claim to being that:

• the claim of having preserved unaltered apostolic tradition;
• the claim of having restored correctly a previously altered apostolic tradition.

Modern Anglicans claim neither.

Roman Catholics, Greek or Slavic or Eastern Orthodox, Copts, Armenians, Assyrians claim the former. So du certain Baptists with Baptist Continuity theory.

Mormons, JW, Church of God, and if I get them correctly, Messianic Jews as well, make the latter claim.

Now, Lutherans, Zwinglians, Anglicans, Calvinists once upon a time used to be making the claim, not quite "we have successfully and correctly restored the true apostolic tradition" (though I think Lutheran Orthodoxy in Sweden came fairly close to making it), but at least "we are in the process of restoring the apostolic tradition that the RCC bungled or perverted intentionally" - the kind of claim the JW sect would be making for Charles Taze Russell back when he was reconsidering whether rapture was Biblical doctrine or Christian tradition.

This would mean, on a first approximation, look to those making the claim of perfect doctrine.

However, there is a second approximation to make, namely to avoid the restorationist type of claim. I don't mean claims of restoring papacy after a gap of 32 years, I adher to one such claim myself, but more like claims of restoring Bible obedience after gaps of centuries. The reason is, messages of God supposedly "stantis et cadentis ecclesiae" would have been for centuries inaccessible to men of good will.

On the other hand, the mainstream of either RCC or EOC would by now accept Evolution - no way that could be part of apostolic tradition or the accomodations it now calls for (I have recently seen RC or so called such denying the individuality of Adam, a Babylonic trait in theology, and a documented such, since Babylonian "gods" were supposed to create mankind directly on a collective level, fit for working to make their celestial lives a bit easier with sacrifices of food) being accomodations that apostolic tradition allows.

One could take the view this mainstream only allows evolutionism, but this seems less and less likely to be true. Once it de facto demands it, for instance by stamping Young Earth Creationists not just as kooks in the colloquial sense, but as mentally ill, that departure from Apostolic tradition seems to be already done. Such RC are not RC, such an RCC is not the RCC. Similar observations for EOC.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. William the Confessor
founder of Order of Monte Vergine
25.VI.2021

* CMI articles are published in Australian Time Zone, available while it is still previous date in Western Europe.

Does 3.14 in any sense mean 3?

"Also a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass: it was five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits compassed it round about."
[2 Paralipomenon (2 Chronicles) 4:2]

"He made also a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round all about; the height of it was five cubits, and a line of thirty cubits compassed it round about."
[3 Kings (1 Kings) 7:23]

Sounds like someone rounded off 3 point 14 to 3, right?

Now, I was told early on by my mother that "pi" is "tre komma 14" (3,14 as per non-English for instance Swedish notation of decimals) and that area of a circle was "radius times radius times pi" and circumference was "radius times two times pi".

But here the circumference seems to be only 3 times the diameter, as if pi had shrunk?

The mathematical solution is arguably hidden in plain sight a few verses further down:

Now the thickness of it was a handbreadth, and the brim of it was like the brim of a cup, or of a crisped lily: and it held three thousand measures.

And the laver was a handbreadth thick: and the brim thereof was like the brim of a cup, or the leaf of a crisped lily: it contained two thousand bates.

When measuring the diameter from brim to brim, you measure across the top. And you hold the measure strings on the outside of the brim.

When measuring the circumference compassing it round about, you hold the measure string, the "line" as it was called, end to end with all around the "molten sea" at its cylinder below the rim, a handbreadth further in. They are diameter and circumference of two different but concentric (and vertically somewhat displaced) circles. Pi is still pi. Hat tip to Jonathan Sarfati for this solution!

King Solomon would have known a fairly exact value of pi from Egypt. He would also have known Babylonians round it off to three (Mesopotamians had made two incursions into the Holy Land, see Genesis 14 and Judges 3. He would have enjoyed the mathematical pun.

But there is another thing. As all patriarchs, prophets, priests and kings, he was aware of the Holy Trinity. He was also aware - by prophecy - that a certain passage in Exodus would be numbered as part of chapter 3 (not yet in existance) and even later than that as verse 14. Here God gives His name, which is pronounced Adonai.

So, by "making pi equal 3" he was stating "the Trinity is Adonai" or "the Father is Adonai, the Son is Adonai, the Holy Spirit is Adonai, yet not three Adonaim, but one Adonai" as St. Athanasius was going to write later on.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Boniface of Frisia
5.VI.2021