Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: tp0x+@andrew.cmu.edu (Thomas Carl Price) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: invoking saints (Re: 'Veneration of the 'Saints'') Message-ID: Date: 21 Aug 90 06:17:06 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 46 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu >I know you can answer with your own set of quotations, but i think these are noteworthy. What an incredibly depressing comment. I too have felt this way, that "everyone has their own set of quotations" and it is pointless to discuss anything. I am going to respond to the objections of the passages you quoted. I will not suggest that my perspectives are right, but want only for them to be convincingly plausible. 1) Rich Man and Lazarus, Luke 16 Jesus has been telling parables for two chapters already, so it seems to me that this could be a parable too. The "Pharisees also, who were covetous", had just interrupted him with derision, and he condemned them for justifying themselves before men but being abominable before God. Then he tells a parable about a rich man and a beggar -- answering to the social positions of the Pharisees and the poor Jews whom they were supposed to 'be shepherding? And compares their ultimate positions; the actual circumstances need be no more or less literal than the banquet where guests were compelled to come in from the "highways and hedges". Again, I don't expect you to believe this, I just want you to appreciate that I can be rational and see Luke 16 in this way. 2) Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration. I don't want to sound flippant, but popping the two of them down onto earth from heaven to meet with Jesus is essentially no more or less implausible than raising them briefly, or than raising any of us for judgement at all. No extra credulousness is needed. From their point of view, since death is (hypothetically) unconscious, they see the Messiah just before seeing him again in glory -- the intervals between each sight and their natural lives are unperceived. 3) We can shift the punctuation (which is absent, as you know, from the original) of Jesus' words on the cross and read him as saying "Verily I say unto you today, thou shalt be with me in Paradise." This would, if correct, be meaningful, as Jesus is saying that the thief is being judged then and will not have to wait for Judgement day to be told one way or the other. Okay? Tom [On item 3: Generally translators depend upon grammatical and contextual clues to assign the punctuation. This is not noted in the UBS Greek as a passage where there are any questions about the punctuation, nor does the Anchor Bible Luke indicate any issue. It looks awkward even in English, particularly when you look at the question that the thief had asked. --clh]