Yes, but at least they have some claim to public authority, the AP style-guide really has a pretty limited purpose.

I have doubts about equating changes in language to changes in the AP style-book. They aren't the English language equivalent of the Academie francaise. They are just a bunch of people with an opinion.

Lots of people think whole history of the universe is post-Fall.

To me the bigger problem is that the left, in much of the west, have adopted a number of ideas and practices that are not only useless and time-consuming, they are divisive, and when taken together seem quite dangerous if you have any knowledge of the history of the political left and should seriously worry anyone who thinks its important. A propensity to examine the comments of people around them for double meanings that can be construed as crossing lines determined by a fairly specific group of people. A very hierarchical and exclusive mechanism for deciding which voices count A view that says if people feel offended, something is in fact offensive A very strong impulse to limit the exchange of ideas which are considered offensive, or could possibly be construed as offensive. This is most evident at universities but also includes things like casual conversations. A resulting tendency for people to have to consider making even casual comments made to neighbours in case they could possibly be seen in the wrong light. A demand, when people have transgressed, that they immediately accept the correction, admit their error and how harmful it was, and say that they now know better and won't sin again. This is not a confluence of tendencies that we should be blasé about.

Sure, you can respond to things depending on the situation and what makes sense. It's not the case that that particular word is as long gone as you think, it was an option on the census within the last 10 years because some people still self-identified with it. IN any case, the point is that language is not a simple matter of people all know the right words, or for that matter some group gets to decide what is the right words or things to think. There are all kinds of reasons people may not do what you expect, will have different experiences, even with fairly simple questions like archaic language. Many people simply don't put much stock in that kind of examination of language and despite what some people think, it's not clear that they have worse outcomes or are wrong. In the OPs case, it's not even that obvious, you really have to be making assumptions about his intended meaning and it's far more a matter of positing a thought crime based on flmsy evidence. That's certainly not what I said, and if you believe it is you aren't listening. Well, perhaps you should say to the person that brought up using outdated words that you don't think it is relevant. I believe their point was that if people feel something is offensive, it is offensive, whatever the speaker actually means. I think that is not clearly true even in cases like that, and in an example like the OPs discussion, even less so.

Usually, no, theologians would say the Crucifixion is not really a blip in eternity (though its not totally straightforward.) It's a permanent change in the nature of reality. Christ being the second person of the Trinity is eternal, but after the ascension he goes to Heaven with his body and the wounds of the cross in him, it's not all wiped away somehow. Also - from God's perspective, no time is past, all time is present. I don't personally find considering the sacrifice angle very helpful though some do. I think maybe what I do find useful along those lines is the idea that suffering is something that goes beyond individuals or even human beings. I do find it helpful to think of it in terms of what problem is it meant to solve. The idea is that the Fall represents humans making a choice that is a kind of paradox - they know who and what God is, but they don't do what he tells them is right. They want knowledge which in itself is a good, but they have rejected Truth in order to try and get it, an immature decision. This has the effect of cutting them off from the source of being and so you have the beginnings of decay and death. Not just at the level of human beings, because reality doesn't work that way. Everything is interrelated - this unravelling of the edges affects all of nature, even the laws off nature. A lot of the early parts of the OT are a sort of description of this unravelling, the first murder, the passing down of a social ills through family and culture and circumstance, people turning away from their duty, and how impossible it is, as a finite being in such a world, to bridge that gap to the infinite and solve the problem. The Incarnation then is seen as the bridge, where god acts to unite himself back to that world, including the pain and the problems and imperfections. The gap is infinite and so only something infinite can cross over. I often think of it as a sort of patch on a computer system that's been infected with a virus and gone increasingly off kilter. the program can't fix itself because it doesn't know how, the programmer who knows what it is supposed to look like has to actually fix the code, replace what was damaged with something new. There is actually argument in traditional Christianity about how to talk about why Christ had the particular death he did, why not just fall into a hole or something, that would unite him to the whole of human experience. There really isn't a definitive answer to that, but to show us clearly that God is united to us even in our suffering is one answer often given, and perhaps to teach us somethig inportant about the nature of suffering, about God, about what kinds of things to value. If the incarnate God died victorious in a battle on a fancy horse it would be quite a different sort of story than an incarnate God who dies being tortured and mocked as a criminal.

One common way to divide different religious traditions is whether they mainly think about things from a philosophical perspective, so a kind of rational discourse, or whether they use a poetic perspective, like a narrative or story. It's not exclusive usually in either case, but one tends to be dominant. And a lot of it seems to come down to where the state of that society was when they produced their stories or texts. So what you see with older religions from societies where philosophy didn't really exist yet, is their religious stories and myths tend to be very poetic. A lot of these are what we normally think of as polytheistic religions, stories about gods and heroes and such that are meant to help people understand their world, morality, whatever. Once societies develop philosophy however they typically begin to think about religion in those terms. Instead of answering a question with a story they might be inclined to answer it with theology, especially if they are educated. What you notice is that while poetic religion is often polytheistic, once philosophy is added they are generally monotheistic, even if that is overlaid on top of the older narratives. So early Greek and Roman religion, or Hinduism, the different indigenous religions of China, have all kinds of inspired poems and stories about gods. But if you study the philosophers in those same traditions they will give you something that is like monotheistic structure. It's because the rational issues are the same for everyone, if you are looking for a First Principle, you can't really have two or more of them, or you then have the question of how they relate to each other. And whatever related them must be prior to them and then they aren't First Principles any more. It's a parallel question to, what is the cause of the material universe - you don't suggest two separate singularities. All a long-winded way to say I wouldn't really consider polytheism and monotheism to be on similar footing.

Do any philosophic religions think that? I guess gnosticism but it's pretty widely pointed out that it's a logical contradiction to have two first principles. Usually when religions talk about gods its a poetic approach.

I think that seems more linear than how I would put it. I don't really think of God as having a plan that he sort of thought out and then executed and things go along according to the blueprint, and maybe at some point he could have just tweaked the design a little to make it better. I suppose I would say that it's logically or inevitably attached to certain other things. So maybe, if we are creatures that know and are self-aware, suffering is always a possibility, and under some circumstances an inevitability. Or that for love to be a possibility, suffering has to be attached to that - but in Christian theology God is love, love is like a sort of metaphysical gravity, so again suffering is always a possibility. It's also perhaps related to our physicality, you cannot have physicality that is separated from the source of being without death, and you can't have death without suffering. So that is related to the Fall, again, and self consciousness. So if you want to eliminate suffering, from this perspective, you need to eliminate the body, and love, and self-aware beings. Which actually reminds me a lot of the end point of certain atheistic worldviews and I find those just completely abhorrent and certainly not an improvement in terms of compassion. There is a disagreement among theologians around whether the Fall, and suffering, were inevitable. Some would say no, if there had been no Fall, we'd be in perfect union with God and no suffering, so then the fateful human choice caused suffering. Others think it was inevitable, if you had creatures like humans (or angels) there had to be a Fall, and also the Fall in some sense was what allowed for the Incarnation and a more complete and self-aware kind of union with God. So there is a certain amount of literature, and particularly mystical literature, around this idea of union through suffering, and also quite a lot of ver interesting stuff about the interconnectedness of our suffering and the suffering of others and the world, and things like the possibility of bearing others suffering.

Because focusing on whatever language is trendy at the moment, to show you think the right way, is a great way to create social problems, and it creates a kind of very negative social hierarchy that is in no way an antedote to bigotry. Quite the opposite. Often changes don't actually reflect any specific reasoning, it's more fashion or a vague association with old-fashioned ideas. And its impossible for people. They can't keep up. Many people who are elderly don't always find it easy to even be sure what the right words are, not to mention changing their usage which is more difficult when you are older. Their friends are of their generation and also don't use the newer words, they can't hear well, they may not get out often. Elderly people speak in ways that are old-fashioned in many ways, just like young people speak in the most up to date ways and are ignorant of expressions that have fallen out of use. For that matter, some of the words you mention are used by elderly members of those communities about themselves - negro and Indian particularly. Part of respect for elders is understanding they don't have the same experience you have, and that includes recognising that there is a difference between offensive language, and old-fashioned or archaic language.

Anyway, I took Jamaica to be what came to mind specifically because he was on a beach, and a lot of Americans have visited beaches in Jamaica.

Some people might find it offensive, but offensive is not racist. I would argue that taking offence to a 90year old man saying what was considered reasonable and polite when he was younger is quite possibly ageist, and people who think that way might deserve what they get if they don't keep up with language trends when they are elderly.

I think that's not the way someone would normally interpret a comment like that. There are a heck of a lot of assumptions and logical leaps your've brought in there and placed on this guy.

But what is the implication if its racist? Noticing that the people around you are not the same demographic you usually see is racist? It's ok to notice it, but you have to pretend you don't and not mention it? You aren't supposed to notice the demographics of the people in Jamaica? Or you just aren't supposed to mention it? I've known people to complain that there are too many of a certain race in a place, or to make it clear from their tone or context that their comment is meant to be taken that way. But surely noticing a change, and mentioning it, doesn't imply racism. I don't think telling people they have to behave as if they don't see what they see is a good policy for a society.

It's interesting that you use that phrase, and some others seem to think in those terms as well. I've never really thought about suffering, generally, as having some wisdom attached to it. Sometimes that seems true in a particular instance, but that's not language I'd have thought to use. It seems like that implies its the best scenario, which I don't think is quite what I would want to say.

Yes, I am never sure why people want to say our free will is unconstrained now, that seems pretty clearly untrue on the face of it and I would say that is also what Christian theology says. But different frames from questions are often helpful and sometimes less familiar ones can really work better to do that because you bring fewer assumptions with you. . Plato, and Pythagorus, also said God was mathematical so you are in good company.

No. It is not racist to notice you are the only white person in a place, especially if that's unusual in some way. I mean, what is the alternative, it's wrong somehow to notice who is around us?

Yes, I think that's true Esme. It's a bit like having a patient with some terrible disease lying there, while a team of doctors enthusiastically discusses the chemical or surgical complications and innovations that will come out of their case.

That's interesting, because I would have said that the Christian view of suffering is in some ways also a non-answer, or a mystery, essentially it says that in some way, suffering is inherent in the nature of being and even in God. It does also say that suffering can be positive, which in my experience is what people often struggle with. I've not found philosophies which reject the value of suffering very amenable, though, somehow they seem to go to some very horrible places anyhow.

I agree with Quill, that pretty much everyone understands that the psalms, for example, are poetry, or that Jesus wasn't actually a plant. However, the way we read texts really changed a lot after the Enlightenment. It's a little difficult to pin down, because its something we take so much for granted. We have a very straightforward way of thinking about texts, that they say what they mean and it is meant to be fairly clear. People in the ancient and medieval world didn't have quite that expectation. One way you can see it is that even in texts that are meant to be fairly factual, certain kinds of details weren't seen as important in the way we would think, what's more important is the point. It's a bit like some medieval art, where you see a king and he is bigger than all the other people, or a man is as big as a tower. There is more emphasis on meaning. The purpose of even historical writing isn't simply to record accurately or with detail what in fact happened. The other element of that is that for the ancient and medieval person, a religious or poetic text would be read with many layers of meaning, and often the more superficial and obvious meanings were considered the least important and maybe even the least true. It's perhaps most obvious when you see the difference between a modern YEC commentator, who is so wedded to a plain meaning of the text despite whatever other information we have says, as opposed to patristic writers who are often quite willing to consider other meanings and the possibility it's not a historical description. You can even see it to some extent in modern fiction and literature, it tends to have a much more direct quality about it.

It's maybe worth pointing out that believing the Bible to be the word of God, and believing it to be "literal", don't have to go together, and that's really a recent way of thinking. There is a tendency for people on the one hand to think that if you believe in the inerrant word of God" it has to be literalism. Or on the other hand, if they realise that Christians historically have't been literalists, to think it means they didn't think the Scriptures were the inerrant word of God or could be treated in a loosey goosey kind of way.

I don't think that is a perspective the people who compiled the Bible would have recognised. It's a worldview that presumes a kind of interconnectivity, not just people who happen to believe the same thing, but which in many ways includes everyone, as well as nature. A spiritual ecology. No action or knowledge or experience or perspective is really independent, all exist only in terms of relationship, including the relation of people to God, or people living now to people living in the past. From that point of view, any way of knowing God will be communal, and will exist over time.

What you are saying is that it should be achievable without a community. That's what the Church is, fundamentally, and it's what the Bible is too - forms of the community as it exists in Christ. It's a logical enough conclusion from the point of view of an individualistic version of Christianity, I guess. But if Christianity is not individualistic, it's asking for a contradiction.

They are part of the history of God's people. The NT is meant to be the lens for Christians to look at the OT. It's not that everything is weighted or understood in the same way. Even books within each section are meant to be read differently.

But why do you think that is cherry-picking? They are working within a prescribed tradition of interpretation. The Scriptures have never been intended to be used as something that stands alone, in Judaism or within any of the traditional Christian churches. They exist along side a paradigm for understanding them and working with them. You need both, or it is indeed arbitrary. It's like this business with "inerrant". Sure I guess Christians believe that, but not if you don't actually know how to read them. And by "you" I don't mean individuals because part of the system for reading is that it's not about individuals. As for masters and slaves - the Bible doesn't tell us specifically anything about class sytems. It doesn't tell us you can't have slavery, or that you shouldn't buy t-shirts made in sweat shops, or that you ought to be supporting trade unions or minimum wage legislation. It takes for granted that people find themselves in any number of possible social arrangements with greatly varying degrees of autonomy, and which they may or may not have the power to change. What it tells us, as Christians, is that we are always to treat other people well despite these various social positions and designations and that we are all equal in Christ. If we accept that, it shapes our political institutions fairly profoundly.