Welcome

I welcome you to the website. Although I am confident that you will not find this website agreeable, I hope you will find it interesting. I have found that I learn more from those who disagree with me than from those who go along to get along. This website is full of content meant to challenge everything you have ever been told, not for the purpose of abandoning your “Christian faith,” not to move away from God, but to move toward him.

I hate long introductions, making promise after promise without delivering on any of them, so let’s get right to it.

Root Cause of Division

God divided people by confusing their language. Restoration is about restoring our language to the way it was before it was confused. Restoration is also about restoring our unity to the way it was before we were divided, with the exception that this time, God is at the center of our unity.

Luckily, we have text that was written in a language that is not confused. It is the language of the Bible.

^{1 Corinthians 14:33}For God is not the author of confusion but of peace.

When God spoke to us through the Scriptures, his language was not subject to the confusion he used to divide us. His words were not authored in confusion, and his purpose was unity, not division.

^{Isaiah 50:4}“The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary. He awakens me morning by morning, he awakens my ear to hear as the learned.”

Listening to a message spoken by the tongue of the learned must be heard with the ear of the learned, otherwise the message is spoken into the air. Or the listener may sincerely believe that he understands when he doesn’t, which perpetuates the division.

It Is not enough that God has spoken to us in a learned tongue. Unless we listen to his words with the learned ear, there can be no clear meaning of scripture, for there will be many “clear meanings” depending on the ear with which one listens. This is the underlying reason that the church is divided: everyone has their own version of the “clear meaning of Scripture.”

The goal of this website is to restore unity among God’s people by first reestablishing our unity with him. This requires us to learn the language God used when he spoke to us through the Scriptures. We must first learn the language of the learned.

What are the characteristics of a confused language? What did language look like before it was confused? Answering these questions is where we shall begin.

I invite you—indeed, I dare you—to join me on this journey into uncharted territory. Be warned: the path is treacherous. Let this website stir your thoughts. Let it test your assumptions. Let it call into question even those doctrines most central to the faith—doctrines you may have been taught never to question, lest the salvation of your soul be placed in peril.

Those who believe that what they believe is what makes them a believer: their faith is in their faith.

Divided by Language

^{Genesis 11:1}Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. ²And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. ³And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. ⁴Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” ⁵And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. ⁶And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. ⁷Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

This passage describes the event that triggered the confusion of language. God confused language for the express purpose of dividing us. The people were building the Tower of Babel, but they were doing it in their own initiative, apart from God. God wanted unity, but not a unity that left him on the sidelines as a spectator.

Let’s begin by examining how language was structured before the confusion.

^{Genesis 2:19}Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

God brought the animals to Adam, one by one, and he assigned names to them. Each name he assigned signified an animal. Names represented animals. Words inherited their meaning from the things they signified.

Text was constructed with words that signified things, and text derived its meaning from the collective understandings of the words in the text.

Communication was an orderly progression of understanding: words inherited their meaning from the things they signified; text got its meaning from the identity of the words.

Paul describes language as it should be in 1 Corinthians 14, and he describes the consequences when language deviates from the proper structure.

Signification

^{1 Corinthians 14:6}Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine? ⁷And even things without life giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? ⁸For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound (φωνην, phōnen), who shall prepare himself to the battle? ⁹So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air. ¹⁰There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices (φωνων, phōnōn) in the world, and none of them is without signification (αφωνον, aphōnon). ¹¹Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice (φωνης, phōnes), I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.

This is Paul’s treatise on language as it should be. His main point is that there is no benefit to you if I speak with sounds that you do not understand.

Although Paul begins with glossolalia, his argument in 1 Corinthians 14 quickly turns to the broader question of intelligible sound. His repeated use of φωνή (phōne) and its equivalents shows that his concern is not sound as such, but sound as meaningful utterance. Thus, in verse 8 the trumpet must not give an indistinct voice, and in verse 10 he insists that no voice in the world is devoid of signification. Paul’s point is clearly decisive: sounds are not valuable merely because they are audible or ecstatic, but because they signify something knowable to the hearer. Only when the φωνή (phōne) is understood does speech become an instrument of edification rather than a voice spoken into the air.

In verse 11, Paul concludes that if I do not know the meaning of the sound (phōne), I become a foreigner to the speaker, and the speaker a foreigner to me. The defining feature of this estrangement is not ethnicity, but unintelligibility: we do not share a language that can be understood. (full disclosure – these are my thoughts processed through the lens of AI. I was pleasantly surprised how it was able to express my thoughts without introducing thoughts of its own.)

Language After the Confusion

In contrast, here is a description of language as it is currently structured:

Lexicographers serve as the custodians of language, maintaining and documenting our vocabulary. Understanding how they track and record an evolving language helps explain the nature of this confusion. Here is a brief overview of their process.

Definitions are created by lexicographers who analyze how words are actually used in everyday communication, rather than inventing meanings. They use a corpus (a large, searchable database of texts, books, and spoken language) to find evidence of a word’s usage. A word is typically added to a dictionary after it has demonstrated “widespread, frequent, and meaningful” usage.

In other words, this process involves circular reasoning, where words get their meaning from text, and text gets it meaning from the words. Under this structure, words can have multiple meanings depending on context. Under this structure, the meaning of the words cannot be known until the context is determined, which depends on the meanings of all the other words in the text.

The problem runs deeper, however. Determining the contextual meaning of words in Scripture depends on how the text is understood, yet that initial understanding can shape the meaning of the words themselves, forcing them to fit the theologian’s initial interpretation. Because different theologians begin with different assumptions, divisions arise within the body of Christ, each denomination declaring its own set of essential doctrines.

For a deeper discussion on this topic, please visit Of Biblical Grammatology This link goes much deeper.

Bottom Line

Since the Scripture is written in a clear language where words have an identity – an inherent essence – by using the same tools used by the lexicographer, but limiting our text (our corpus) to the Scripture, we should be able to identify the things signified by the words God used.

The other thing that is different is that we do not begin with an assumed understanding of the text. Our aim is to conform our theology to the Scripture, untainted by our current persuasions. The goal is not to conform the Scripture to our presupposed doctrines.

All messages are encrypted where the dictionary is the encryption key. Without the encryption key, messages cannot be decoded (understood). The first goal is to find the identity of the words God used in the Scripture. The identity of the words must be independent of context.

This endeavor involves two seemingly insurmountable obstacles: The first is to determine the intrinsic essence of the terms, and the second is to describe the essence of the terms in a language that is inherently confused.

Obstacle One

To discover the meanings of terms, I focus on one term at a time, and employ the scientific method. Each term is given a hypothetical signification, and then tested to see if it is recognizable in all contexts in which it is found. In other words, I will make a guess as to what the term could possibly refer to, and then observe it everywhere it is found. The hypothetical meaning of the text must be flexed to conform to the hypothetical meaning of the terms.

This can be challenging because the hypothetical meaning affects the meaning of the whole of text, creating a hypothetical theology. This can create the uncomfortable situation called cognitive dissonance, where the resulting theology conflicts with what I consider the tenets of my faith. This discomfort can be managed by realizing that the new theology is only hypothetical.

Regardless, this hypothetical theology must be allowed to be flexible, for the meaning of the whole (text) must not influence the meaning of the part (word). Otherwise, we put ourselves back in the circular death spiral.

Basically, the question is: is there any way to make the meaning of the text conform to the hypothetical meaning of the term, regardless of “known truths?” As you can imagine, it is necessary to keep our hypothetical theologies separate from our working theology. Mixing the two would be like pouring new wine into old wineskins, exploding the wineskin and spilling all the wine, new and old.

The scientific method not only allows us the flexibility to get it wrong, but expects us to get it wrong most of the time. The scientist has the freedom to consider all possibilities, no matter how far-fetched. The beauty of science is that the scientist only needs to get it right once: to the scientist failure is considered success: being able to eliminate a false hypothesis brings us one step closer to the truth. The sooner we can eliminate a false hypothesis, the quicker we can formulate the next hypothesis. Failure to eliminate a hypothesis results in ultimate success: we have a hypothetical winner.

The scientist has an advantage over the theologian. The theologian is expected to hear directly from God. He is expected to be right all the time, since God is right all the time. Any mistaken utterance is considered heresy. One mistake and the theologian is ostracized as a heretic, clearly not able to hear from God.

The balance between the two positions is progressive revelation. The scientist engages with God, awakened morning by morning to hear with the ear of the learned. Morning by morning, line upon line, precept upon precept, he discerns the voice of the Lord, associating each sound with its potential significance. He searches the scriptures, discerning whether his understanding is accurate. When conflicting passages arise, he arises the next morning to seek clarification.

^{John 10:27}My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

In this verse, voice is the same word Paul used in 1 Corinthians 14, where he said that each voice had a signification, each sound was associated with an explicit meaning. His sheep hear his voice with the ear of the learned, and they follow him: they not only understand him, but they follow him.

Obstacle Two

To describe terms with words intended to be heard with ears that cannot hear, I will use pictures, the universal language. I illustrate the terms, showing their hypothetical identities: how they appear in their various contexts as found in the scriptures.

But before I can do that, I must develop an illustration of the kingdom of God, since the terms found in scripture exist in the kingdom of God.

^{Ephesians 2:19}Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, ²⁰having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, ²¹in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord,

To do that, I begin with the foundation of Jesus Christ, the cornerstone. From there, I continue building on that foundation using details provided by the Old Testament prophets. That model becomes the framework for understanding the terms and the text. Visualizing the Invisible Kingdom of God takes you through this process.

Listening with the Ear of the Learned

Once the model is developed, I use it to consider hypothetical meanings of terms in all their contexts. Since different versions of the Bible use different terms, I will use a Greek concordance to determine where the words are used. This will eliminate contextual noise. Here is a list of terms which have been mapped to date, each with a link to a page where the details of the exercise are provided: Grace (charis), Faith (pistis).

Text is then illustrated using the model. Here is a list of the passages that have been illustrated using the model: the parable of the talents, 2 Corinthians 4.

Finally, here are topical subjects that are conclusions based on my findings. Here is a list of topics: Priesthoods and Laws; Salvation in the Old Testament and the New; Communion. Links will be added as they become available.