Perhaps I Had Too High Hopes For You, Tovia Singer

Why didn't you say so, Tovia Singer? · Perhaps I Had Too High Hopes For You, Tovia Singer

I mean "the moment it matters, you don't understand" in your video on Genesis 6 or your foolish dream about winning a war against Iran proving Ezechiel 38 refers to such ethnic Israelites who practise Judaism and their relatives ... and even worse, in so doing disproving the Church Fathers.

However, I began an answer on the Biblical authors of the New Covenant, these being 8 or possibly 9 people (some claiming Hebrews was not by St. Paul, but by Gamaliel's other disciple, St. Barnabas).

"We don't even know who the NT authors were"

In general.

I think I have heard this one before, but about the OT authors too.

No, Moses didn't write the Pentateuch. Daniel's prophecy of the two rams wasn't in the time of Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus and the whole book is later. There were two Isaias.

Tovia, you seem to give some credence to one author being Paul, and then you divorce him from the main character of the second half of Acts and from the author of the Pastorals. That's a fair parallel to accepting the Isaias of IV Kings 19 as author of part of Isaias.

You know why we both know Moses wrote the Pentateuch, even if he was not the primary source for Genesis 9 and even if Deuteronomy 34 was written by Joshua? Because that's what the tradition says. The tradition among Christians, which we inherited from Second Temple Jews, the tradition among Samarians who refuse the book of Ruth, the tradition among Jews, also inherited from Second Temple Jews, which is not the same thing. If one of these traditions is right, whichever it is, Moses wrote the Pentateuch.

I'm not ignorant of which is true, I'm just keeping the argument accessible to those who have parts of the Catholic truth.

You would say the Jewish tradition is the true one, I disagree, vehemently, but on this theory too, Moses wrote the Pentateuch.

Now, the same applies to why we believe Daniel is the author of Daniel and the two rams prophecy was given to one deported by Nebuchadnezzar. And to why Isaias has one author.

This presumes, we normally trust tradition on who wrote what book. Even outside sacred scriptures. I trust tradition that Julius Caesar penned Commentarii de Bello Gallico. I trust tradition that Arrian wrote a work on the Life of Alexander the Great. _Anabasis of Alexander._ I also trust tradition that he was not at all a contemporary but had access to lost works by such, by two of Alexander's generals.

It's not trusting a tradition on an authorship which takes a special argument, it's not trusting one. Saying "Moses wrote the Pentateuch, Daniel wrote Daniel, Caesar wrote the Gallic War, Arrian wrote Anabasis of Alexander, Xenophon wrote an older Anabasis, from which I will recall "pente parasangas"* until I die, presumably, but Paul didn't write Timothy and his disciple didn't write Acts" is special pleading. As such it needs a special argument.

Luke and Acts were written much later.

I will here not content myself with referring to your video.

You gave the reasons, 1) Luke copies Mark, Mark is post-AD 70, and 2) Acts so late that Luke missed out on Paul being executed under Nero. I've heard a reason 3) that Mare Adriaticum was in the time of St. Paul still called Mare Illyricum and so the change occurred in 140 AD, showing an anachronism.

1a) Luke copies Mark.

Not according to tradition.

Now, you could say, tradition is in this specific case not to be trusted, since there is a Synoptic thing going on, seeming to indicate there is some copying.

Here is my response.

I'd tend to go with the version in Stromata, by Clement of Alexandria. Matthew was written first. Then Luke, ignoring Matthew, wrote his Gospel.

He brought it to Peter in Rome to get it approved (so, this is, if so, an early attestation of Papacy, since Luke was probably in the Holy Land when he collected the witness accounts).

Peter already knew Matthew, and spontaneously picked up scrolls, one brought by Luke and one he already had by Matthew. He started reading in alternation from both (starting after the childhood accounts, which are complementary). He also inserted some remarks on his own. Mark was his secretary and thought he was finally dictating a Gospel, so started to take this down as dictation.

Peter remarks what Mark is doing and authorises that as a Gospel and Luke after it.

This story pretty fully accounts for the Synoptic unity or near unity of loads of text.

Two more details. It's not all that probable that this alternate reading went on all the time without either of St. Peter or St. Mark noticing what happened. It's also not excluded, the reading time being in English one hour for silent reading and someone has stated reading it aloud took 1 h 30 min. If St. Peter's enthusiasm lasted that long, St. Mark takes a palm in good secretary taking down-ship. Indeed, among other patronages, he's not just invoked for Alexandria, where he was the first bishop, and Venice, where his relics are since the Crusades, but also precisely secretaries.

The other possibility is, Peter noticed what was happening, perhaps halfway through, perhaps earlier, took it as a sign of the Holy Ghost, and then continued. Perhaps he didn't tell St. Mark, whose witness in Alexandria would have been accessible to Clement the Stromatist.

The other thing is, while St. Luke was doing his interviews, it's very probable the Christians he interviewed already had the Gospel of St. Matthew, were used to hearing episodes or pericopes from it (you already know, some other readers of mine don't know, in Hebrew that's a Parashah). This may well have coloured the wording they reported to St. Luke.

So, no, forget the Prussian Kulturkampf shtick that "Matthew and Luke copied Mark" ...

1b) Mark is post-AD 70

This is based on the idea that Jesus did not predict the destruction of the Temple.

You have pretended to find fault with how He predicted it, namely the words "not a stone shall be left on a stone" and you point to the Western Wall.

First, it's clearly not from Herod's time.

Coin discovery sheds new light on sacred Jerusalem site
Nov. 24, 2011, 1:38 AM GMT+1 / Source: The Associated Press | By Matti Friedman
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna45419597

But that would still be before AD 70, so what's going on?

Christians have proposed, and I'll add a third:

• Western Wall is the wrong site
• Western Wall is outside the actual temple as such and part of a surrounding complex, like around the Court of the Gentiles
• Jesus prophecied only about the stones already standing in His time, the Western Wall was added later (Archelaus II, perhaps).

Or even "not a stone on a stone" describes a figure of speech or is sufficiently fulfilled in all the buildings that were destroyed.

So, the idea that the prophecy is wrong doesn't stand.

The idea that the prophecy is added after the event has been pretended about Daniel's two rams prophecy too, as I've mentioned.

2) Acts is written so late that Luke didn't get the memo that Paul was executed under Nero.

Or, Acts is written under Emperor Claudius, making the Gospel of Luke early too.

At this time, St. Paul was in prison, but definitely not executed yet. The reason that the martyrdom of Peter and Paul isn't mentioned is that the book was already finished when it happened.

3) Mare Illyricum became Mare Adriaticum in 140 AD

This seems to be one reading of the texts, there is no official declaration that "Mare Illyricum" should be renamed "Mare Adriaticum" from the time of Hadrian or his successor. It's simply the idea of a man who found "Mare Illyricum" in Cicero, I presume, perhaps Caesar too and "Mare Adriaticum" in a post 140 text, not sure which.

Here is wiki on the ancient names, I'm omitting a subsequent paragraph of the section that gives non-Classic names:

The origins of the name Adriatic are linked to the Etruscan settlement of Adria, which probably derives its name from Illyrian adur 'water, sea'.[2] In classical antiquity, the sea was known as Mare Adriaticum (Mare Hadriaticum, also sometimes simplified to Adria) or, less frequently, as Mare Superum '[the] upper sea'.[3] The two terms were not synonymous, however. Mare Adriaticum generally corresponds to the Adriatic Sea's extent, spanning from the Gulf of Venice to the Strait of Otranto. That boundary became more consistently defined by Roman authors—early Greek sources place the boundary between the Adriatic and Ionian seas at various places ranging from adjacent to the Gulf of Venice to the southern tip of the Peloponnese, eastern shores of Sicily and western shores of Crete.[4] Mare Superum on the other hand normally encompassed both the modern Adriatic Sea and the sea off the Apennine peninsula's southern coast, as far as the Strait of Sicily.[5] Another name used in the period was Mare Dalmaticum, applied to waters off the coast of Dalmatia or Illyricum.[6] During the early modern period, the entire sea was also known as the Gulf of Venice (Italian: golfo di Venezia),[7] although that name is now informally applied only to the northern area of the sea, from Maestra Point in the Po Delta to Cape Kamenjak on the Istrian Peninsula.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriatic_Sea#Name

But suppose this were the case, suppose this were an anachronism. I didn't look it up, so I gave the other possibility.

Like scribes in the Tabernacle and Temple changed names in the Torah to update, after the cities of Exodus 1:11 were renamed, so also a Christian scribe could have changed the name after 140. But I find it likelier that wiki is right, and that the prevalence of the name Adriatic ows more to Acts than to Emperor Hadrian.

"Paul ... definitely was not a Pharisee."

He does not apply Pharisaic thinking.

From the parallel passage on the Gospels, I presume you mean, he's not getting into legal stuff. And when he does, as in Timothy, you say it's another person and not Paul.

The problem here is, on the Christian view, which is the right one, the old law was done away with when Jesus died. Debating what work you can or can't do on a Sabbath after Good Friday is like debating how the Holy Roman Emperor proceeds when naming a duke, after 1806 and 1918.

So, lot's of the things St. Paul learned when he studied under Gamaliel, simply doesn't apply any more, and that's why he's not using that type of questions. Jesus famously was saying the thing about donkeys before he was crucified, when the Old Law still was in full force, except Judah had lost the sceptre, Rome didn't allow Jews to carry out death penalties, and if they did so anyway, it was illegal lynchings. Also, people were High Priests on a rotational basis and that's unlike the rules foreseen by Moses about Aaron.

"He is also quoting from Menander."

If you don't believe the Messiah has come, you won't try to be relevant to people who need to accept him.

St. Paul did believe He had come, had asked for the Gentiles on top of the Jews, and so St. Paul was complying by being an efficient missionary to Gentiles.

"Completely at home in the Greco-Roman world"

As you are in the US of A. You may disapprove of things, some I would approve of, but you know your stuff. You don't take California for a Caliphate, even if that's part of where the name came from.**

For instance, you mention Einstein. Princeton. How is that less abhorrent than Menander?

I mean, his cousin Alfred is making decent statements about music history. He compares Gregorian music to Synagogal recitation and finds common ground, but a huge difference in Gregorian having a smoothing out of rhythmical differences and no chromatism.

But the guy who pretends everything is determined? He was worshipping a false god.

"He is applying Middle Platonic thinking everywhere."

Like Philo and Josephus aren't doing so? Josephus was also a former Pharisee, and Philo did some parallel work to them. Between Philo and Pharisees, St. Paul at least scores one Pharisaic point in clearly believing the Resurrection of the Dead.

"Pharisee means the exact same thing as Orthodox Jew."

No. The earliest Pharisees were not yet parts of Rabbinic Judaism. The earliest tractates of the Mishna are pre-Christian, therefore not anti-Christian. This is by the way not the case with Sanhedrin 59a, Yohanan Ben Zakkai. He wrote after the Destruction of Jerusalem. This arguably totally switched the way the LXX was viewed (OT accessible to Gentiles).

"Paul claims to be a Pharisee."

You mention Philippians 3, and here is a passage which might solve the objections you have to that claim:

Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other thinketh he may have confidence in the flesh, I more Being circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; according to the law, a Pharisee According to zeal, persecuting the church of God; according to the justice that is in the law, conversing without blame But the things that were gain to me, the same I have counted loss for Christ
[Philippians 3:4-7]

In other words, if there is a noticeable lack of Pharisaic thinking in St. Paul's letters, it's because he gave that up.

"Always talking of himself."

Always be wary if someone throws this around about someone he disapproves of!

I check Romans, quick overview: a few verses in the presentation, chapter 1, three verses in chapter 9 ... no, he actually isn't.

I have recently been obliged to talk about myself for a purpose, and some might pretend this is a very representative sample. It also isn't.

Only Luke in Acts claims Paul was a student of Gamaliel.

This is dealt with in the part about Acts and Luke, and it is dealt with in part in above objections to his being such.

But did you know that wiki on Gamaliel states that he was a grandson of Hillel, but even so, he is passed over when Pirkei Abot gives the lineage of the Hillel school, reference to 1—2.

Perhaps Gamaliel too was not very typical as emerging "Orthodox" Judaism was concerned. Perhaps the very little there is of Gamaliel in the Mishna is due to Yohanan Ben Zakkai being the gatekeeper between Second Temple Judaism, recently destroyed, and emerging Rabbinic Judaism.

Did I forget anything?

I suppose I'll be watching your video again, just to make sure, maybe write a PS or maybe another post, but in the meantime, I'll finish this one. I came to notice, one passage in St. Paul would probably have appealed to basically every Pharisee:

For the justice of God is revealed therein, from faith unto faith, as it is written: The just man liveth by faith For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable

Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents

Foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them
[Romans 1:17-32]

This would be a Midrash if you like on

Behold, he that is unbelieving, his soul shall not be right in himself: but the just shall live in his faith.
[Habacuc 2:4]

And why would it be worse to cite Menander than to cite Bugs Bunny?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Thursday in Pentecost Novena
21.V.2026

The post was mostly in reference to:

Rabbi Tovia Singer - Are the New Testament Authors REALLY Jewish? 2331
TeNaK Talk (TaNaCh) | 13 May 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=564eZ2eeoZ0

* 15 to 22 1/2 miles, or 24 to 36 km, it seems the exact value is not fully known. Too brisk a walk for me, I'm sure, even back in 2004. After one thirty km day, I had sores. ** See Will There Be a Real Hobbiton or Beruna? There Is California.

Charges Against C. S. Lewis

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: On CSL and Mike Schmitz · New blog on the kid: Did C. S. Lewis Publically Attack Catholicism? · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Charges Against C. S. Lewis

Found a meme on FB, an Evangelical attacking C. S. Lewis about doctrinal matters:

Some of the charges are true, and in some cases, they are charges against Catholicism and so against me too.

Purgatory is a real place ... he insisted it didn't include flames, though, despite 1 Cor 3:15. I wish he had been more into this. And less into excusing the Reformation by blaming the "flame imagery".

Catholic sacraments are necessary ... again, I wish he had been more into this. He did not explicitate what exact view he held of the Eucharist, but felt some need to excuse the Reformation by taking a distance from Real Presence and Transsubstantiation.

Anglicans and under their influence by now also Lutherans do have seven sacraments, but recognise only some of them as "Gospel sacraments" ... C. S. Lewis confessed regularly, but unfortunately to a priest who had no actual power to absolve him.

Some of the charges are true, and I take a distance.

The Bible is not inspired or inerrant ... he actually believed the Bible inspired but not everywhere inerrant, especially on topics outside doctrinal or moral core doctrine. To him it was good enough if the Bible conveyed truth, even if on some issues it didn't convey literal fact.

Evolution is true ... this to the amount that he didn't believe in a literal Adam. Lots of Church of England didn't already before he returned to it. There is some indication in late essays he was maybe reconsidering this, but in two works of the 1940's, this was very unfortunately the case. In Miracles, it matters less, he enumerates Evolution among the truths that only quasi transcendent claims of reason could reveal with certainty to us. In Problem of Pain, it matters more, he gives a whole chapter on what happened instead of the actual story in Genesis 3.

The Bible is not literal ... more like diversly literal or otherwise in diverse books. Genesis he classed as mythology, so, not literally true.

Obviously, I cannot be held solidaric with these actual errors given I have explicitly stated my adherence to the opposite truths.

Some are what I consider and he would probably also have considered debatable topics.

Christ did not atone for our sins ... by substitutionary atonement, as Evangelicals understand it, if so understood, it is actually correct. Jesus was not temporarily damned so we needn't be. He was temporarily dead, so we could be raised. But He won our delivery from sin by other means, i e sacrifice.

CSL was not totally into the Catholic view of Christ's sacrifice, which has more of atonement in the Evangelical sense than his position had, he certainly believed Jesus saves us through the Cross, and he was content to say "I don't understand how, I just believe that."

Pagan religions have truth ... if we take this as them having some truth, that is obvious.

There is a God Who created Heaven and Earth is a truth admitted by unbelievers like Jews and Muslims.

There is a clear question on how much such truth can be hoped to contribute to an adherent's salvation. I would say, and CSL would not say "if he didn't convert from that community, it didn't contribute enough, though."

God is found inside man ... how so?

If you mean "inside man, as opposed to in Bible or Church", that's not just a heresy, but a heresy CSL didn't utter.

CSL would have stated, and I would agree, that some things that happen inside man, for instance universally valid reasoning, even if we are sometimes inattentive enough to reason invalidly or on false premisses, or universally valid moral principles (sth other than "universally agreed" as in conventions!) are known if not always obeyed, do in fact point to God being the reason why they exist.

Natural Man is not condemned ... what "natural man"?

The word "natural" in the context of man or his habits is used in two different ways. CSL as a linguist knew both.

• as opposed to elaborate, studied, cultured, possibly overcultured and degraded to unnatural man, and in this sense Christianity does not condemn natural man;
• as opposed to regenerate man, and in this sense not just all of Christianity, but CSL with it admits that man on his own, without redemption, is headed for damnation.

I suppose some sects are so good at making the "discipleship" a perversion of human nature, that they tend to confuse the two senses. For instance, it's natural man in the first sense that is disgusted at Double Predestination, and yet a Calvinist will pretend this is just the reflex of Unregenerate Man, Incurved into himself. This is obviously a well known and old example, but there are some newer ones too.

White Magic is good ... when and where?

CSL would have classed what Jacob did with painted staffs in Genesis 30 as "magic", and somehow he considered that even so God allowed it back in this confused time, when very little of revelation was public and known on earth.

CSL might have classed what St. Raphael did in Tobit as magic, in this case, it's his prerogative as an angelic being. It's men who are forbidden to use angelic powers at their own command, since the only angels providing such to some would be demons.

In the parallel creation called the world of Narnia, he supposed there was no such rule. Perhaps because in Narnia, the magic would not have been provided by demons. He would probably have denied that in our world it would be licit to call on help magically by blowing a horn, aware that no one likely to hear it would be willing or able to provide help.

When Merlin offers help, his help is accepted, but with a caution, and someone tells him that such things "were never quite licit even back in your day"

And some of the charges are simply false.

Hell is fiction ... if you had said "Hell is unreal" you would have been up to something about what CSL thought.

He thought that every damned person in Hell is unreal, like a drama queen is unreal. Like you are telling someone "get real" you don't imagine you are God calling them into existence. You are calling them out of a real or supposed unreality of their own self perception and perception of their circumstances.

That kind of unreality, Hell, on his view, has plenty of, and Satan was the first drama queen. And it "rubs off on the landscape" too. But Hell is as unreal as a person or place gets without not existing at all, Hell is not unreal like a fictional story. As a Platonist, CSL believed "reality" or in other words "being" has several different graditions, not just that God is more an IS than any created thing is, but also that there are differences within creation.

God's creation was flawed ... if you mean "before sin", no. As he admitted Evolution, he admitted sadness and pain before human sin, but he put this down to creation being corrupted by Satan. I think Copeland has said the same thing, and does so in connection with Gap Theory, the creation days supposedly coming after "Satan's Flood" after a flood in between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 over God condemning how Satan had misruled and corrupted earth.

This is wrong too, but CSL never said this was how God's creation originally was.

Mysticism supersedes the Bible ... no. He definitely does not say mysticism supersedes external authority, whether of Bible or of Church Magisterium.

We should pray to the dead ... he said we and the dead can pray for each other, he clearly didn't feel at home in directly asking dead, presumably having died in Christ, to pray for him.

On praying to the saints, Anglicans are divided from Catholics by a ban ... which CSL respected. On praying with them, well, Anglican "common prayer" as well as Lutheran "mass" (but not a valid one) have liturgic traces of the Catholic mass and both say things to the effect of "Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, ..." so, CSL insisted we have the right to pray WITH the saints, but while he respected his friend Tolkien under a different ecclesial authority praying to them, he didn't do that.

God is not the only object of worship ... again, I don't see CSL even took up praying the Hail Mary, just so as to avoid making some person other than the Three Persons of the Trinity an object of any kind of cultus.

In Catholicism, God is the only object of the cultus or worship of adoration. CSL unfortunately (like other Protestants) took this to other kinds of cultus as well, denying saints dulia or hyperdulia. The most Marian prayer he allowed himself was arguably the Magnificat, because he thought it was OK to pray with Her.

We also adress Her with the words of Gabriel and Elisabeth, of an angel and a priestwife of the Old Testament, and some prayers from the tenderness of the faithful over the centuries. He didn't, alas.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre BU
Wednesday of the Pentecost Novena
20.V.2026

Why didn't you say so, Tovia Singer?

Why didn't you say so, Tovia Singer? · Perhaps I Had Too High Hopes For You, Tovia Singer

If you had, I could have converted you years earlier!

Well, not too late to convert now, God will then repay you years eaten by the locust!

But, say what?

I mean all of this video:

Rabbi Singer Exposes What Everyone Missed in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount
Tovia Singer & Tassja Cadoch | 30 April 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hak5NJ2HPY

And especially the part about the Sermon on the Mount. But, let's take first things first.

According to Isaias 11:2,3, can God become the Messias?

And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness And he shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge according to the sight of the eyes, nor reprove according to the hearing of the ears
[Isaias (Isaiah) 11:2-3]

Your argument is, God fears no one, so "fear of the Lord" in a person proves he cannot be God.

Now, this misunderstands what the Incarnation is. It doesn't mean God takes on human flesh, but retains as His only consciousness the one He has as God. No, He takes on human ways of experiencing things, therefore human experience. In human experience, fear of fearful created things is part, but fear of God, which drives out that fear, is part of the experience of holy men.

So, God could cry when as an eight day old baby He was circumcised. And if fear of the Lord is a fear of displeasing Him, the fact of having a human body and mind not used to since eternity doing the complete holiness of God, well, as God He didn't fail in doing God's will, but He could be nervous, perhaps. Even if your first bike lesson doesn't mean you fall, it may mean you are nervous of falling. And the human consciousness of God incarnate is not shielded from that by divine knowledge of His in fact not falling.

But above all, it's an attitude when we approach God, and doesn't necessarily mean being afraid of something. I don't know Hebrew, but I can look up the interlinear and then the meanings in Strong.

Meaning and core idea

יִרְאָה (yir’ah) speaks of an attitude of awe-filled reverence that may include trembling before God’s majesty but always presses toward loving obedience. It can describe dread of judgment (Genesis 20:11) or the glad worship that springs from recognizing the LORD’s holiness (Psalm 2:11). The word therefore gathers together emotion, intellect, and will: the heart is struck by God’s glory, the mind acknowledges His authority, and the life aligns with His ways.

Totally compatible with the fact of Jesus being God incarnate. Just as His praying was so.

Can the Messias be God and offer sacrifice for His own sins?

On Calvary, Jesus bore our sins nearly as if they had been His. But that's not all of it.

Every day, the Messias is actually offering sacrifice for His own sins. How does that work?

Every Catholic priest who is validly ordained and celebrates Mass is saying:

Nobis quoque peccatóribus fámulis tuis, de multitúdine miseratiónum tuárum sperántibus, partem áliquam, et societátem donáre dignéris, ...

To us also Thy sinful servants, who put our trust in the multitude of Thy mercies, vouchsafe to grant some part and fellowship ...

The priest offers the sacrifice, and he does so for his sin and that of the others ... but where does the Messias come in? Well, the priest is, became at ordination, a second Christ. He become united to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is offering, as well as being offered, whenever he celebrates Mass. So, the Messias actually does not in his own person, but in the united person of the priest, "sins of his own" to offer sacrifice for.

Did Jesus speak the sermon on the Mount?

I absolutely didn't miss this. I enjoyed every second.

Jesus, habitually spoke Aramaic. Therefore, He didn't use the allitterations on pi in the Beatitudes. But how come there is this allitteration in Greek?

If there were nothing else, one would need to have this takeaway: the criticism presumes Jesus to be a purely human author, with no way at all of knowing what the words he spoke would sound like translated. Come on, He spoke the universe and every one of our souls into existence, and somehow He couldn't say a few lines in Aramaic so that when His disciple Matthew (Matatiahu ha-Levi) translated them they would allitterate in Greek? Come on. What do Rabbis do, if they are caught in such a blunder that even a five year boy would get a reprimand in the Yeshiva? You should do that (I don't mean damage control).

But there is one more level to this. Jesus had spent part of His childhood in Alexandria, presumably. Jews there spoke Greek. In Galilee, bilingualism in Greek would have not been uncommon. And we know from Matthew 4 that Jesus was in Galilee:

And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom: and healing all manner of sickness and every infirmity, among the people And his fame went throughout all Syria, and they presented to him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and such as were possessed by devils, and lunatics, and those that had palsy, and he cured them And much people followed him from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond the Jordan And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set down, his disciples came unto him And opening his mouth, he taught them, saying
[Matthew 4:23-25, 5:1-2]

Matthew is highlighting possibly one occasion, possibly repeated, within this span of time in Galilee.

So, as He is in Galilee, He could have been speaking Greek.

But there is one more level to this too. Church Fathers have said, the Sermon in Matthew is the first sermon to the disciples, and the Sermon in Luke is the ensuing sermon to the crowd. Let's highlight the relevant words from Matthew 5:

And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set down, his disciples came unto him And opening his mouth, he taught them,

Does them mean "the disciples" or "the multitudes" ...? Both "mathetai" and "ochlous" are masculine plural. The disciples are the closer other referent, so, the Church father takes this as what He taught to His disciples (while the crowd was getting ready and sitting down and things).

And all the multitude sought to touch him, for virtue went out from him, and healed all And he, lifting up his eyes on his disciples, said: Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God
[Luke 6:19-20]

Here the first Marcan beatitude is adressed to the disciples, but in the presence of the crowd. So, the Church father is saying the Lucan Sermon is the one adressed to the crowd. The one where He has the greater chance of speaking Aramaic is what He said to the disciples, the one where He has a less small chance of speaking Greek is what He said to the crowd or to the disciples in front of the crowd. And the Lucan Beatitudes alliterate less in Greek. So, it actually is more likely, as God He foresaw that the longer Beatitudes would be translated with allitteration. And as a Levite, Matthew certainly didn't overlook it once he saw what words in Greek were available.

I think we can take miracles and historicity of the Gospels another time, but the more "in principle" objections of the video, well, this was it ... one more. You misrepresent what the acceptance of Jesus' teachings would have implied to a Second Temple Jew.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Joseph Workman
1.V.2026

Solemnitas sancti Joseph Opificis, Sponsi beatae Mariae Virginis, Confessoris, opificum Patroni.

The Introibo Blogger Repeats A Blunder by Henry Drummond

Creation vs. Evolution: I Hope, For Galileo's Sake, He Did Retract · Parallax and Heliocentrism · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: What's the Nature of Theism and the Pagan Alternative to Theism in Romans 1? · The Introibo Blogger Repeats A Blunder by Henry Drummond

At a certain point here, in this* post, he makes Abiogenesis out to be very unlikely. So true.

Then he continues:

Now you might expect me to say, “Therefore, God must have started life on Earth! It’s the only possible explanation. We must have a Creator!” However, making that kind of argument would be a mistake. As a matter of fact, I do believe that God is the one who got life started on our planet. Yet I don’t believe it just because scientists haven’t come up with a definite explanation.

I want you to imagine for a moment that you have grown up believing in Zeus—the Greek god of lightning. Every time there is a storm, you look out of your window and shudder at the rumbling thunder and flashes of light. You know that what you’re seeing is Zeus hurling a thunderbolt through the sky, and you fear for those who are feeling the full effects of his anger.

Now imagine that you go to school one day, and your physics teacher announces that the topic for today’s lesson is lightning. You listen in amazement as you discover how electrical charges build up inside clouds as ice crystals rub together. The lecturer explains that a flash of lightning is a huge spark that discharges this built-up electricity. In other words, lightning and thunder are just a giant version of the snap that happens when you’ve rubbed a balloon against your woolly sweater and then someone touches you.

You stare at your teacher as the penny finally drops: Zeus isn’t real. You believed in Zeus because you needed an explanation for thunder and lightning. But now you have a better explanation—one based on science. So you don’t need Zeus anymore. It makes no sense to believe in him, now that you know what you know. This is because Zeus is what we call a “god of the gaps.”

I'm sorry if this might encourage some Neo-Pagan, but no.

A god or spirit of lightning is not reduntant because ...

electrical charges build up inside clouds as ice crystals rub together

... since the unpredictable event of when the built-up electricity will discharge is still unpredictable.

Ice crystals are material objects. Material objects can be moved by God or by angelic beings at will. The frequency of the rubbing can therefore to some degree be controlled by either of above (to a total degree by God, to some degree by an angel who is only moving material objects). Clouds move at various speeds. Wind also is material objects in movement.

If an angel is allowed to control or is informed of the speed and will know who passes by at a certain time in the direction of the cloud, either guessing or being informed by God, he can, by controlling the movement to the degree he is allowed, make sure that the discharge is (with probability or certainty) when a certain person shall pass.

In other words, a spirit can control lightning, and to some degree (under what God allows) even whom it will kill.

It may be needed to add, the spirit most often seen by Christian theologians as enjoying this hobby is Satan. There is a case for the "seat of Satan" in Pergamon (Apoc. 2:13) being the Zeus-altar, which has been moved to Berlin and part time to Leningrad. The other alternative would be, it's the Red Basilica.

The case for it being the Pergamon Altar is then that Zeus and Satan are sharing the hobby of lightning wielding.

The point being, the lesson on the ice crystals need not turn the Zeus believer into a sceptic. And a Christian should perhaps not require him to be so, he should perhaps concentrate on making the Zeus believer see he is worshipping sth real, but also evil: Satan enjoying a power because of Adam's sin.

If I'm right that Odin (the guy who told Swedes or possibly Swabians that "Odin, Vile, Vé" were brothers, killed a giant and created Earth and even the sky from it, not the imagined giant killer on a gigantic scale) was from the Holy Land, and perhaps his son Thor repented for playing the role of Thunder God, then the Boanergs would have a very real case of moaning like oxen if Jesus ever brought up they were "sons of Thunder" ... I right now stare in disbelief in seeing the Vulgate say:

et imposuit eis nomina Boanerges, quod est, Filii tonitrui

and the interlinear say:

καὶ ἐπέθηκεν αὐτοῖς ὀνόματα Βοανηργές, ὅ ἐστιν, Υἱοὶ Βροντῆς;

I recall them saying:

et imposuit eis nomina Boanerges, quia, Filii tonitrui

and:

καὶ ἐπέθηκεν αὐτοῖς ὀνόματα Βοανηργές, ὅτι Υἱοὶ Βροντῆς;

A bit like a certain Apollo mentioned in Acts might have felt when reminded of the demon in Delphi (but he could have been thinking of the physician, the father of Aesculapius).

Given what the immediate control over thunder and lightning implies in Christian theology, "Υἱοὶ Βροντῆς" would make someone moan. And Boanerx means "maker/doer" of "an ox-moan". If the reading "ὅτι" exists, I think it's preferrable. Either way:

According to the course of this world, (i.e. the customs of this wicked corrupt world) according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit, &c. meaning the devils, who are permitted to exercise their power upon the earth, or in the air. See John xii. 10.; xiv. 30.; xvi. 11. (Witham)

From the Haydock comment on Ephesians 2:2. George Witham was a Catholic bishop for the English who ... had a relative who was named Robert Witham. When Haydock quotes "Witham" it's probably Annotations on the New Testament of Jesus Christ, in which, 1. The literal sense is explained according to the Expositions of the ancient Fathers. 2. The false Interpretations, both of the ancient and modern Writers, which are contrary to the received Doctrine of the Catholic Church, are briefly examined and disproved. 3. With an Account of the chief differences betwixt the Text of the ancient Latin Version and the Greek in the printed Editions and Manuscripts, [Douay], 1730, 2 vols. By the latter.

But apart from the logical blunder about the hypothetic Zeus believer, you could ask Hindus is they believe in Indra, the sentiment as a whole is summed up:

Throughout history, many people have believed in various gods because they wanted explanations for things they had no other way of understanding. The gods filled the gaps in people’s knowledge. But as science has developed, many of those gaps have gone away. We don’t need to believe in a god of lightning anymore because lightning isn’t a gap anymore: we know how it works. So if your only reason to believe in God is “We don’t know how life on Earth began; therefore there must be a God who miraculously made it happen,” you’re making the same error as the ancient Greeks. You’re believing in yet another god of the gaps—it’s just a different gap. If scientists discover more about what was going on in the very earliest stages of the earth, the gap might go away, and so will your belief in God. By contrast, the reason why I think God is the person who started off life on Earth is that I have lots of other reasons to believe that he exists and that he created the world. My belief in God doesn’t depend on a particular gap, or even on a combination of gaps.

There are several problems with this one, one being that a fanatic Free Church of Scotland pastor named Henry Drummond coined the exact phrase and that Friedrich Nietzsche had expressed a very similar sentiment.

But beyond Nietzsche being an Apostate and Henry Drummond a Heretic close to Apostate, a believer in an Evolutionary origin for the human body and soul, probably a denier of an individual Adam, as well, there are other problems.

In modern popular media, notably social ones, "God of the gaps" is presented as a fallacy. Now, the problem is, modern fads don't have the power to add a new fallacy any more than to add a new valid syllogism. Syllogisms of the first figure, where the predicate of the minor is the subject of the major, only come in the flavours Barbara, Celarent, Darii and Ferio. The syllables are coded with the vowels meaning specific types of sentence, and the order is Major, Minor, Conclusion. Barbara has three A, that being a universal and affirmative sentence. There are only these four. A "Barbari" or a "Celaront" would indeed prove the stated conclusion, but they actually prove a more universal conclusion as in Barbara and Celarent.

Similarily, the fallacies are already predefined, you don't invent new ones. A "Celerant" would be totally invalid. It's a fallacy of a false syllogistic form. Let's start with a "Celarent" that's valid. "No mammals have feathers, all dogs are mammals, therefore no dogs have feathers" ... the conclusion really does follow from the premisses. It's impossible to imagine a syllogism really having this form and premisses being true but conclusion being false.

If I turned sentences around changing one premiss to the conclusion and the conclusion to one premiss, it would be the faulty syllogism "Celerant", as in "no mammals have feathers, no dogs have feathers, therefore all dogs are mammals" ... while all dogs are mammals, one can easily imagine a conclusion of this form that's false. Simply tirn the two first sentences around and then subject and predicate in the last one. "No dogs have feathers, no mammals have feathers, therefore all mammals are dogs" ... no, they aren't.**

So, Introibo tries to show "God of the gaps" is a fallacy by a hypothetic scenario. In a sense, that scenario is as hypothetic as my "No dogs have feathers, no mammals have feathers, therefore all mammals are dogs". But the problem is, while "No dogs have feathers," and "no mammals have feathers" are not hypothetical, in Introibo's case it would be the premisses of the scenario that are hypothetical, not just the argument. That's not how you diagnose a fallacy, and that's not how Aristotle diagnoses fallacies.

If scientists discover more about what was going on in the very earliest stages of the earth, the gap might go away, and so will your belief in God.

Here is another very absurd part. He pretends scientists can "discover what was going on" not just in a specific layer, behind a specific result (like a giant volcanic eruption in Campi Flegrei being behind the volcanic layer as deep as one metre and as far away as Czech Republic), but "at the very earliest stages of the earth" ... sorry, but divination isn't discovery. And if you say "if a coherent scenario is given which would have a specific result and that result is found, then it isn't divination" you have validated my view of Boanerges even more than I'm sure of it, because if the father of Zebedee had posed as a false god and made him do so in a bad youth, the mention of him posing as Thunder would certainly make his sons "moan like oxen" which is the grammatical meaning of Boan-Erges, as explained.***

But in order to get what Introibo wants, one would need to make hypothesis on hypothesis on hypothesis and hypothesis. And the origin of the code, which Introibo mentions, as clearly "information" and therefore "from intelligence" is no more obvious than other obvious things, which have been called into question. Like Geocentrism. Plus, Miller Urey conditions have very clearly not produced phospholipids in labs, and that's what cell membranes are from. It's not a question of "not yet" finding a solution, but of what we already know showing there isn't one. You have to imagine the unknown being known and the unimagined being imagined to get to the hypothetical where "God of the gaps" would be a fallacy.

Again, belief in Zeus and Thor as gods wasn't eradicated by Benjamin Franklin, but by Christian theology. Not by lecturing on ice crystals, but by exorcists. And most certainly not by freely adding to the list of fallacies.

In fact, the hypothetic scenario deals less with logic and fallacies, than with the feeling of being let down and psychology. All who are doomed to a life in psychiatry don't opt for suicide, hope I won't be tested on that one, and all who are offered a scientific explanation don't reject a theological or philosophical one ... some don't even accept the scientific one as a valid explanation. But all can see that a Celerant like "No dogs have feathers, no mammals have feathers, therefore all mammals are dogs" is refuted by the existence of cats. Therefore, Celerant is not a valid mode.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre BU
St. Hermenegildis
13.IV.2026

Hispali, in Hispania, sancti Hermenegildi Martyris, qui fuit filius Leovigildi, Regis Visigothorum Ariani; atque ob catholicae fidei confessionem conjectus in carcerem, et, cum in solemnitate Paschali Communionem ab Episcopo Ariano accipere noluisset, perfidi patris jussu securi percussus est, ac regnum caeleste pro terreno Rex et Martyr intravit.

PS, if obviously information in DNA is proof of a creator, it's not one of those that St. Paul directly spoke of in Romans 1./HGL

* Contending For The Faith---Part 50 | The "God of the Gaps"
Monday, April 6, 2026 | Posted by Introibo Ad Altare Dei at 5:15 AM
https://introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.com/2026/04/contending-for-faith-part-50.html

** I didn't enjoy E. T. A. Hoffmann's Kater Murr as much as I expected to when I had his collected works, but this was the first cat image I could find with a jpg rather than some other image format.

*** The Aramaic bene-reghesh would be rendered in Greek letters as Βανηρεγές, which doesn't seem to be the reading we find mostly. If you can say Βοανηργές is corrupt for Βανηρεγές, you can say ὅ ἐστιν is corrupt for ὅτι. I don't know how many would argue that Hebrew has bōḥănê in state construct for the plural of "sons" ... apart from Hanoch Ben Keshet. The interlinear for Genesis 10:1 has bə·nê-nō·aḥ, not **bōḥănê-nō·aḥ.

Est-ce qu'un écrivain est un homme instruit ? Et, est-ce qu'un homme instruit aime Dostoïevski ?

Je n'ai pas lu Les Frères Karamazov. J'ai lâché Crime et Punition après la moitié, juste regardant à la page finale. Une nuit, quand j'étais en 10e ou 11e année scolaire, au lycée (Seconde ou Première selon le système français), j'ai lu la première moitié. J'ai dû interrompre pour petit-déjeuner et une journée de sport. L'expérience était traumatisante, à un tel niveau que je n'ai pas pu résumer la lecture où je l'avais lâché, ce livre.

J'ai par contre lu une bande dessinée, des Classics Illustrated. Sur la vie de cet auteur, l'activité avant la fausse exécution et le temps en Sibérie après. Assez franchement, j'aime moins bien l'écrivain (une fois les romans approchés) que la personne humaine.

Et la personne humaine n'est pas non plus ma tasse de thé totalement. Désolé, c'est pas avec moi qu'on discute ce Fiodor.

Suis-je donc mal instruit ? Et, est-ce que ça me disqualifie comme auteur ?

D'abord la question de principe. Un auteur doit pouvoir écrire de quelque chose qu'il connaît bien, pour l'avoir inventé très en détail (comme Tolkien inventa le Quenya) ou pour avoir bien étudié la question (comme Tolkien était expert de batailles, pas juste des siennes à la Guerre de 14—18). Mais "instruit" ? Pas si le mot renvoie à la reconnaissance et la familiarité avec un canon préexistant, dont selon certains Dostoïevski.

Platon n'avait pas lu Beaudelaire. Aristote n'avait pas lu Boileau. Virgile et Homère n'avaient pas lu les Inklings Tolkien et Lewis.* Si même être un auteur canonique ne vous oblige pas de connaître, reconnaître et aimer un certain canon litéraire, alors être auteur tout court ne vous n'y oblige pas non plus.

Si être auteur veut dire apporter un point de vue spécifique (certains définiraient être essayiste ainsi) simplement partager le point de vue d'une masse d'hommes est en contraste avec cette description. L'auteur n'est pas le bon écolier qui se fait instruire par les moyens que son prof juge les moyens de s'instruire. Il peut avoir un côté de ça, mais il ne l'est pas par essence.

Je ne suis pas le bon écolier ambitieux qui cherche des lectures en fonction de ce qui va socialement me gêner ou profiter. J'ai cherché la lecture d'Homère et de Virgile parce que CSL et JRRT semblaient les trouver très bons à lire. Et j'ai pris l'opinion de ces deux auteurs, pas en fonction d'une ambition sociale (à l'époque ça aurait été encore davantage foûtu de le faire en Suède), mais en fonction de mon propre goût.

Si je regarde un autre essayiste aussi de la Scanie, Frans G. Bengtsson, il cultiva Homère directement par son goût (et peut-être un brin d'ambition sociale, parce qu'Homère était déjà prestigieux), mais à ma meilleure connaissance, pas Dostoïevski.

Avant de connaître l'auteur*** des Mérovingiens qui laissent pousser les cheveux, je connus déjà Gilbert Keith Chesterton. À droite sur cette image° :

Apprécié°° jusqu'à par le pape:

Encore un homme ou deux qui n'étaient pas totalement fans de Dostoïevski. Pour Tolstoï, Chesterton admirait le raconteur mais déplorait le penseur.

Mais, quand même, Dostoïevski n'est pas rien. Il écrit très bien sur les faits de culpabilité, du choix moralement mauvais, de l'existence de la loi divine et de l'occurrence de sa négation par des méchants ! En effet. J'ai un jour décrit Tolkien comme un homme capable à donner des messages essentiels de Dostoïevski mais de le faire dans un récit pas trop sombre, donc lisible.

Pourtant, les Inklings, ce n'est pas juste Dostoïevski moins l'illisible (pour ma sensibilité, au moins, voir en haut), mais aussi une solide connaissance de Chesterton et de St. Thomas. C'est de Tolkien que je me vais vers Chesterton, et c'est de Chesterton que je me vais vers St. Thomas d'Aquin. Homme assez inconnu par Dostoïevski, chose à méditer pour ceux qui prétendraient que tous et chacun devraient connaître et apprécier un canon spécifique avant de devenir éventuellement des écrivains.

Et contrairement à Dostoïevski, le Docteur Angélique est lisible, pour moi.°°°

Je pense que d'aimer St. Thomas vaut aussi bien d'être considéré instruit comme d'aimer Dostoïevski. Au minimum. Mais comme dit, l'auteur n'a pas besoin d'être un homme instruit dans un canon litéraire. Item pour le fait d'aimer Chesterton et les Inklings, pas le moins si on y ajoute Hilaire Belloc et Charles Maurras.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre BU
Samedi de Pâques
11.IV.2026

Images sourcées: Frans G. Bengtsson (1894-1954), Swedish author, with his son Joachim.}} |Source =''en:Vecko-Journalen'', Christmas issue 1943 |Author =Unknown photographer. |Date =1943 or earlie; George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, and G. K. Chesterton; Telegram sent by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII) on behalf of Pope Pius XI to the people of England following the death of Chesterton

* JRRT et CSL, vu que parmi les Inklings se trouvaient aussi le fils de Tolkien, Christopher, et le frère de Lewis, Warren H. **De långhåriga merovingerna *** L'image avec le fils Joachim est par un photographe inconnu, de 1943 et en domaine public. ° Également en domaine public, 1927, The Guardian. J'apprécie également Hilaire Belloc, au milieu. °° L'image n'est pas en domaine public, car créé en 2013. Par contre les conditions CC BY-SA 3.0 me permettent de l'utiliser. Et l'ayant droit semble ne plus exister sur wikimedia: AmChestertonSoc = probablement American Chesterton Society. °°° Je pense avoir un peu mieux compris Prima Via que ce qu'en exprime Chesterton en son livre sur St. Thomas. What's the Nature of Theism and the Pagan Alternative to Theism in Romans 1? Par contre, Chesterton exprime très bien Tertia Via en son livre et après d'avoir feuilleté Gilson, il dicte la seconde moitié de son livre à sa sécretaire. Gilson réplique en disant qu'il avait raison. Did Chesterton Even Read Any Aquinas? w/ Dale Ahlquist.

What's the Nature of Theism and the Pagan Alternative to Theism in Romans 1?

Creation vs. Evolution: I Hope, For Galileo's Sake, He Did Retract · Parallax and Heliocentrism · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: What's the Nature of Theism and the Pagan Alternative to Theism in Romans 1? · The Introibo Blogger Repeats A Blunder by Henry Drummond

I'm listening to (or watching without sound but with subtitles) a video where Keaton Halley argues from Romans 1 that humanity is coeval with creation.

However, while he's perfectly right that mankind since Adam and Eve (and that being at the beginning of the world) have been able to conclude for God, he says "we can know from watching creation, there is a Creator" ... but that's not exactly what St. Paul says.

It makes sense in the modern world, where we are aware that an eternal stedy-state universe with an eternal steady-state earth isn't an option.

Hydrogen meets Hydrogen, becomes Deuterium. Deuterium meets Deuterium, becomes Helium. Happens over and over again in the Sun and all self luminous stars. It's a one way process. Hydrogen is being depleted. Helium is being replenished. There is no opposed process known to science. If this had been going on since all eternity, Hydrogen would already be completely depleted and Helium would be all that was left. Or heavier elements. However, given spectral lines, we know Hydrogen is more abundant than Helium:

For example, the abundance of oxygen in pure water can be measured in two ways: the mass fraction is about 89%, because that is the fraction of water's mass which is oxygen. However, the mole fraction is about 33% because only 1 atom of 3 in water, H₂O, is oxygen. As another example, looking at the mass fraction abundance of hydrogen and helium in both the universe as a whole and in the atmospheres of gas-giant planets such as Jupiter, it is 74% for hydrogen and 23–25% for helium; while the (atomic) mole fraction for hydrogen is 92%, and for helium is 8%, in these environments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements

So, given the universe had a beginning, a finite time ago, sorry, I'm repeating myself, how did it begin? And we can rule out Big Bang from spiral galaxies "13 billion light years away" and we can rule out Abiogenesis from the fact that Miller Urey conditions can't provide materials for cell membranes (which are essential to preserving amino acids from disintegrating in Miller Urey conditions) and we can rule out non-human apes turning to men because of language, as I have argued here:

HGL's F.B. writings: Challenge not met
https://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2026/03/challenge-not-met.html

If you aren't a linguist having never heard of "dual patterning" or "double articulation", check out the link I give in the status on the forum:

All Human Languages are Human, None are "Primitive"
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2026/03/all-human-languages-are-human-none-are.html

So, yes, we are in a position to argue not just generally for God in a Theistic sense, but specifically for a Creator God. There was never when God wasn't (and this is true of God the Son too, see the condemnation of Arians in the Fourth Century), but there was a beginning when the creation hadn't been before. And a beginning that could only originate from a conscious God, not from sth like unconscious space-time with natural laws.

By the way, in Einsteinian terms, Big Bang is a contradiction in terms. "Once, all of them matter and energy in the universe was concentrated in a point as small as an atom, then it expanded" — this doesn't work if space itself is a kind of material substance or force field. Because that one would have been expanding, but there is no extension to measure of it as a whole apart from what it contains, so the logic consequence would be, a universe as big as ours could "in our universe" take up the space of an atom, but not that the universe could gain in size against the outside, since there is no space outside it. Space can't expand, even if finite, since there are no "empty space coordinates" for it to expand in.

But, Lucretius didn't believe in the Big Bang. I'll actually go to the Pagans first. Specifically the most non-Theistic ones, the precursors (very indirectly) of modern Atheism.

He had no spectral lines. He had no idea of what happens as hydrogen to helium fusion in the Sun. He had no indication the universe had a beginning.

In the 12th C. the Shroud of Turin could have been a forgery. After Secondo Pia and Barry Schwortz we can't. Just the same way, we know the universe had a beginning, but in the 12th C we didn't know it and Lucretius didn't know it. Noah knew it because he recalled that Adam had been created a celibate adult, but some of the peoples after Babel forgot that and therefore didn't know it any more. St. Paul speaks of what observation can tell us. Even without the tradition from Adam and Eve.

Can you think of a specific observational item, not "special instruments" but "naked eye" observation, since the beginning of the world, which tells us of God, but not necessarily that He created? I can. If we take the words "his eternal power also" these are in the Greek: ἥ τε ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις and 126. aidios has two definitions:

1. (forward and backward) eternal
2. (forward only) everlasting

It's both, if it's everlasting, as we observe it to be, it can't be acquired from somewhere else, so it's eternal in the first sense too, but what we observe is, "no God didn't get tired, He gave us another day" or "another night".

St. Ambrose puts it in a very nice way in a hymn before going to bed (technically Compline, I think, no, Saturday Vespers), here:

DEUS creator omnium
polique rector, vestiens
diem decoro lumine,
noctem soporis gratia

Here is a translation:

GOD that all things didst create
and the heavens doth regulate,
Who doth clothe the day with light,
and with gracious sleep the night....

So, "didst create" is a statement of the past and is known through faith. But the rest of it "and the heavens doth regulate, / Who doth clothe the day with light, / and with gracious sleep the night...." is known by observation. This is the kind of thing we observe and which St. Paul speaks of.

What was the Atheist response? It actually wasn't Heliocentrism, Lucrece was also a Geocentric, though not as much as Sts. Paul and Ambrose. Here is a quote from a translation of De Rerum Natura, book I, 979 to 1068:

Air divides the hills; the earth
Creates the sea, and the sea gives birth
To it, and so it goes. The traits of space
Are such that even thunderbolts can’t race
Across the endless tracts of time, nor may
They rest awhile while they go on their way;
There’s such a huge abundance spread around
In all directions: lest a thing is bound
By limits, every body must enclose
Each void, each void each body, and this shows
That both of them possess no boundaries:
Unless it hemmed the other, one of these
Would be extended, stretched immeasurably,
And thus the earth, the bright-blue sky, the sea,
Mankind and the immortals could not stay
An hour in place, for all things, swept away,
Would through the massive void be borne, indeed
Would never have combined to be the seed
Of anything. For prime germs certainly
Did not with any perspicacity
Fashion themselves in order or decide
What movements for each one they should provide,
But, since they’re multitudinous and change
In many ways among the All, they range
Abroad, pushed out and beaten, venturing
All kinds of movement and of coupling
Until they settle down eventually
With those designs through which totality
Is made: for countless years they’ve been protected
Now they acceptably have been projected
Into their proper motions – thus the sea
By all the streams is freshened constantly,
The earth, lapped by the vapours of the sun,
Brings forth new brood, all creatures, every one,
Flourish and all the gliding fires which flow
Above us yet live on. They could not, though,
Have managed this at all had no supply
Of matter risen from the void, whereby
They could repair lost things. With scarcity
Of food beasts waste away, while similarly
All things must fade when matter, blown aside
Somehow, is then unable to provide
Succour, nor from outside can blows maintain
The world’s united sum. For blows can rain
Often and check a part while others come
Along, enabled to fill up the sum;
But meanwhile they are often forced to spring,
Thus to the primal germs contributing
A space and time for flight that they may be
Borne from this union to liberty.
So many things, we’re brought to understand,
Must rise, and yet the blows must be at hand
Always in order that there’ll always be
A force of matter universally.
Don’t listen to those people who profess
That all things inward to the centre press,
Dear Memmius, and that the entire world
Stands firmly while no outward blows are hurled
Against it, since neither their depth nor height
Can be unbound and all things are pressed tight
Into the centre. Therefore, do not think
That heavy weights beneath the earth can shrink
Upon it, having striven from below
To settle upside down, as images show
Upon the ocean. They also propound
That every breathing thing wanders around
And can’t fall up to the sky any more than we
Can reach the heavens by flying; when they see
The sun, the constellations of the night
Are what we view - we thus detach our sight
From theirs, our night coequal to their day.
These dreams have made these people fools since they
Embrace them faultily, for there can’t be
A centre when there is infinity.

So, his point is, the Geocentrism we observe is kind of a whirlpool movement, by lack of stability. It is also an illusion from lack of circumspection insofar as Earth is only a local centre. Much as modern Heliocentrism isn't cosmic Heliocentrism, but makes the Sun only centre of the locality known as the "Solar System".

This obviously depends on lots of unobserved assumptions, not quite unlike, in our modern Atheism, "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy". He is asking us to take unobserved "infinity" as inherent in things that are observed as finite, having limits.

So, in contrast, St. Paul tells us we can trust our perception, we don't have to fumble with unproven assumptions in the unknown, especially where they contradict what we know of things by observation, Geocentrism really is absolute, movement isn't just a whirlpool effect, and it comes from God.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Easter Thursday
9.IV.2026

Jean Colson or St. Augustine? Who's Right?

In Tractate 119 of Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, St. Augustine tells us how the Gospeller becomes the Son of the Mother of God, from the Gospel.

After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own
John 19:27

Here St. Augustine pauses to ask, "how could he even have anything 'his own' to take Her to?"

Obviously, St. Augustine belongs to the tradition after St. Irenaeus, and considers St. John the Beloved as St. John the Son of Zebedee. As one of the twelve. About whom the Synoptics say:

Then Peter answering, said to him: Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee: what therefore shall we have?
Matthew 19:27

In other words, St. John the Beloved lived in Apostolic Poverty, and didn't have a house of his own. Nothing with his property deed to it.

Part of how St. Augustine answers is this:

And every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting
Matthew 19:29

The hundredfold is involved even in this life, and part of that, for St. John, was, he had enough to host the Mother of His Master Who was now his own Mother, by adoption. So far St. Augustine. He doesn't stop here. He gives a very concrete suggestion:

And fear came upon every soul: many wonders also and signs were done by the apostles in Jerusalem, and there was great fear in all And all they that believed, were together, and had all things common Their possessions and goods they sold, and divided them to all, according as every one had need
Acts Of Apostles 2:43-45

And on this occasion, St. John had need of a house to host the Mother of God.

Did St. Augustine imagine that St. John and the Blessed Virgin were teleported forward in time to when this was happening after the First Pentecost? Probably not. In Acts 1, Our Lady is among those praying. Part of the idea behind Mediatrix of All Graces is, while we do not know if the Holy Spirit would have been sent anyway if She hadn't been there and prayed, we do know He was not sent without Her being there and praying for Him. The Apostles received the Holy Spirit to Strength and to Witness after She prayed and that means because She prayed. Also after they prayed, and that means because they prayed, but it was worth noticing She was there to pray with them.

And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Jude the brother of James All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren
Acts Of Apostles 1:13-14

So, St. Augustine definitely could have a point that community of property in Jerusalem had started before Pentecost because it was already practised before. If the practise already existed before the Crucifixion, then this could be how it happened.

However, Jean Colson said: St. John the Beloved was not one of the twelve, he was the host at the Last Supper (and left his guests among themselves before the First Mass, which means that Judas had also already left and didn't receive the Eucharist). He was a Cohen and as such he was a rich proprietor. He was the man to whom this house belonged.

After hosting God's Mother, he later came to host Her already extant legal stepsons or nephews or whatever, the "brethren of Jesus" after they became believers, like after Jesus appeared to St. James the Brother-of-God. But on Good Friday, he hosted Her, not them. One reason why She did not become their mother after the flesh is, if She had been so, they, not John, would have hosted Her. Hence, two explanations, one is they were sons of St. Joseph's first wife, and he was a widower, another is, they were sons to Her sister or halfsister. Otherwise it would be very curious, to say they least, why they weren't taking care of Her.

However, back to the practical question. In favour of Jean Colson:

And on the first day of the Azymes, the disciples came to Jesus, saying: Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the pasch But Jesus said: Go ye into the city to a certain man, and say to him: the master saith, My time is near at hand, with thee I make the pasch with my disciples And the disciples did as Jesus appointed to them, and they prepared the pasch
Matthew 26:17-19

According to Jean Colson, the "certain man" here is John the Beloved. And the scene doesn't show the disciples of Jesus and believers in Jesus already practising perfect communion of property before the Last Supper. That certain man seems to have spent his time in his property as his property. It was not full of other believers, it was not full of the poor, it was his to do with as he saw fit, and he could host a very large party.

This is then how Jean Colson explains how St. John took the Mother of Salvation home to his own that very day, that Good Friday. This is a case for his not having been one of the twelve.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Good Friday
3.IV.2026