brotherofJared
Well-known member
Sure, one thing always produces the other. And while it doesn't actually mean giving birth (which I never said it did), it does mean that one produced the other. You can look at Paul's statement as being representative of creation. However, he was drawing a direct correlation between the physical nature of God and man. That God isn't made up of stone or wood or precious metal, but that we are all like him, made in his image, having similar attributes such that we are His offspring. It's very difficult, IMO, to confuse the message Paul is presenting.Why would I need to make one up? But I can make up a couple. Like saying....obesity is the offspring of overeating
LOL. Okay. Do you know what it means?I checked and the Hebrew word used here does mean "offspring".
Do you think it means that the earth made a bunch of baby earths? Because that isn't what Paul meant. Paul was referring specifically to the kind of being God is and the correlation is that we are like God, his children.
Everything literally came from it, even man. But, so did gold and stone and wood. Do you think that's the way Paul was making the connection? I think you do. Everything comes from God so, even the rocks and the metals and the trees are the offspring of God in that sense. Do you think that's the way Paul meant it? It seems odd, that if it was, that Paul specifically rejected those offspring.So did the earth literally give birth to everything on it?
LOL. No. And I don't believe Paul meant that God had labor pains either to produce us either. What you have described above and this little passage clearly indicates that God didn't have sex to make us his offspring and at the same time, Paul's use of the word indicates something far more close than simply being a creation of his, else his argument would have been moot. The debate is how close. It appears that it's a lot closer than being outside of time and space, a disinterested figure except to those who love him and then discard the rest, else why would Paul claim that he is the progenitor of man, if Paul didn't mean it exactly that way?Did it have relations with another planet and then have labor pains and pop out plants and animals? Are plants and animals the same "species" as planet Earth? IF offspring is always meant to be taken literally in the Bible?
Again, we know that he didn't give birth to each of us, either in the spirit or in life. Of course, Paul didn't mean it intimately, but he did mean it in the same sense that we are Adam's offspring. I believe db has displayed a verse that explicitly shows that Adam is the son of God. And of course, that is no more literally than me saying that I am a child of Adam. I am, but not directly.
I admit, I spoke too soon about the literalness of the word offspring. It is being used figuratively in Isa 42:5. It's used figuratively elsewhere. It is even being used figuratively in Acts 17, but; there, it is no more figurative than me saying that I'm the offspring of Adam. If it was simply as the creator, then the rocks, metals and wood would also be the offspring of God.