English doesn't work in only the way you dictate..., the writer gets to define the meaning of his/her words.
Absolutely not. Words have meaning. Phrases have meaning because of the words.
The problem with meaning is that someone 2000 years ago wrote a letter and people today can draw inferences from the content, adding suppositions and subtracting subtleties they don't like or catch. THAT is NOT English (or any other language).
That's why conversation is important, so that people can make their intentions and meanings more clear.
Intentions. NOT English.
Especially in a forum where quick comments are quickly written and spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure isn't in the mind of the poster. If perfect English is what you are looking for, you won't find it on the Internet in general or in a forum like this where all kinds of people are posting. It is very discouraging to argue over what is meant when someone insist on a meaning and leaves no room for clarity of the meaning that was intended.
Much of this is true, although the first sentence is a very sad commentary on people who simply do not care to properly communicate.
But the true part left CARM a decade ago. Now people, even you, are not interested in having dialogue -- just a few, but that tends to fall apart quickly. Dialogue means that we have people who have differing views and we are going to discuss the pros and cons of each, pointing to supporting facts (biblical passages, in our case) to persuade. What we have at CARM is the Reformist who thinks he is absolutely right and when someone questions that rightness they respond with "tyfyt's" and tuck and run. This makes the other people more and more jaded that a fruitful conversation can ever happen.
It's funny because here I get "tyfyt's" all the time. We talk in private and it is much more civilized and controlled. We still disagree on points. And I have never to my recollection received a "tyfyt's" from you in private conversation. Why is that?
BTW, this is why there are differing interpretations of the scriptures.
Yes.
Language is not a clear, one way road, that only means what a single reader or sect gets to dictate. Language is rather imprecise with words having various meanings and uses... and writers writing in the way we speak rather than by the rules of a lsnguage that people want to impose on their words. ?
No. Language (especially Greek) is a rather precise thing. English is precise as well. Ted, there are estimated to be 171,146 words in the current English language (circa 2018), and this does not include about 47,156 words that are considered obsolete. The average English speaking adult knows 15,000 to 20,000.
Do you think you are CAPABLE of speaking precisely when you don't even know the precise words for what you might want to say most of the time? We all use general words - learned from our communicating with people around us - to get our thoughts across. And we do a miserable job of it most time, not just here but in daily conversation.
For the example of Paul, he was a learned man who knew Greek very, very well and used his words quite exacting. What muddies it up, is our presuppositions taken into the text, the language translation barriers (because of our limited use of both our own language and the original language), and time, over which cultural meanings change (yay Heiser; pfft. I'm liking him too, 3 words at a time).
All that said: it is more important to discuss and answer questions instead of casting disparagements at people because they don't think like you do. In fact, when their mindset is focused on and limited on a subset of possibility, but you want them to consider a possibility outside of their range, you need to take extra time to explain and pull them out to see what you want to say. You have tired of this over the last decade. Although, in a forum setting, it may be that when you offer something, instead of having to get the attention of one, there are five who then jump in with altered views. Makes it harder.
Maybe, instead of assuming a meaning that you want and telling me that that was my meaning..., you should ask me what I meant.
Respectfully, I have at times. The response is always: "just what I said;" "I answered that already;" or some such non answer.
That way we can avoid your attempts to cloud the conversation with arguments over minutiae and trivial points... and we can avoid the tyfyt posts.
There are no minutiae or trivial points if we don't see eye to eye. Those points may be important to my viewpoint, but are trivial to you. The manner in which you simply dismiss and deflect causes the tense discussions and arguments. Then you give up.
I've written multiple paragraph comments only to have you dismiss it with a "Nice straw," simply because you do not share the thoughts. It makes them no less important to those who believe them, but, hey, the Reformist is always right and we need to admit that and get in line. And this is true, not an ad hom. You don't slow down for the discussion, you toss it aside because you don't believe that way.
