A Virtual File Cabinet for Our Studies of Christian Origins & Hebraic Faith
From ChatGPT, 11/19/2025. The line you’re looking for is a genuine Latin statement from Augustine, and the most accurate form is: “Si comprehendis, non est Deus.”Translation: “If you understand it, it is not God.” Where Augustine says it:He expresses this idea in several places, most directly in Sermon 117.5, where he insists that any concept […]
Continue ReadingThis post resulted from a post in BSA/Nerds that mentioned the author, Charles Bledsoe, believed in a “theism without supernaturalism. That idea intrigued me, and I commented that the concept would make a great thread/conversation. So, he started one, and that post is pasted below as the last part of this post. His perception of […]
Continue ReadingFrom the Hebrew Bible Matthew 9:20; Mark 6:56; Luke 8:44 The Bleeding Women Parable – She touched the Hem of his garment rather than the devout Jew’s fringe. In all three passages (e.g., Matthew 9:20; Mark 6:56; Luke 8:44), the word translated as “the fringe”, “the edge”, or “the hem” is κράσπεδον (kraspedon). Greek text (Matthew 9:20). The part of Jesus’ clothing the woman touched was […]
Continue ReadingValid Point by Marcus Borg: The documents that now make up the Bible were not sacred when they were written, but over time were declared to be sacred by ancient Israel and early Christianity. The process took about five centuries for the Hebrew Bible and about three centuries for the Christian Testament. From Chat GPT […]
Continue ReadingSlides from the above video: Link to Dr. Davis’s web page with links to his papers. Link to A Christian Natural Theology Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead by John B. Cobb, Jr. Links to the entire book. There is a need for a Christian natural theology. To John Cobb, the philosophy of Albert […]
Continue ReadingBelow are significant comments to a question posted at BSA in October 2025. The extracts pasted below are in the same order as the overall post at BSA. All emphasis is mine. Original Question summarized: Why the trinity at all? Why not a duality: The Father and Son? Why did Christians find it necessary to […]
Continue ReadingFrom ChatGPT 10/19/2025. Prompt: When and why did mainstream christian worship stop casting out demons like Jesus and his disciples did? Why and when did it become taboo? That’s an excellent and historically complex question, Tom. Critical historians and theologians trace the decline—and eventual taboo—of exorcism as a normal part of mainstream Christian worship to […]
Continue ReadingBelow is a popular story that occasionally circulates on social media and is attributed to Albert Einstein. I have no idea if Einstein is responsible for it. A professor at the university asked his students the following question: Everything that exists was created by God? One student bravely answered: “Yes, created by God.” “Did God […]
Continue ReadingBelow is a lengthy series of ChatGPT responses regarding the scriptures in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible, specifically addressing the pneuma (Spirit) in relation to Pentecost, Paul, the Gospels, and Acts. The responses were on 8/31/2025. 1st Prompt – Cite where the Greek word for pneuma (spirit) is used by Paul and the same […]
Continue ReadingA pdf of his book The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Thinking is in his directory in DropBox. From ChatGPT on 8/22/2025. Here are the original contexts and sources for Mordecai Kaplan’s quotes regarding his conception of God as an impersonal, naturalistic, or process-oriented reality: 1. “God is the sum of all the animating, […]
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