The folks who brought you The Living Constitution now bring you The Living Bible.
=======
Article: He writes, “To anyone free of ancient prejudices, the injustice of condemning Oliveto is plain. How can love be wrong? How can love enfolded in commitment and fidelity be wrong?”
jiggyboy: The folks who brought you The Living Constitution now bring you The Living Bible.
Now, I find your comment here extremely perceptive and perspicacious. Both spheres concern themselves with what is right and what is wrong. Both are innovative. Both reject the method of returning to first principles for guidance. And their innovations began at about the turn of the 20th Century--a sort of hundred-year change of thought.
Regarding Law, the leading light of the Supreme Court was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (click here) who dismissed "natural law" as the basis for justice, adopting "case law" in its place: This affected one's view of the Constitution, and not at all in a conservative way. From the Wiki citation:
>> Holmes espoused a form of moral skepticism and opposed the doctrine of natural law, marking a significant shift in American jurisprudence. As he wrote in one of his most famous decisions, his dissent in Abrams v. United States (1919), he regarded the United States Constitution as "an experiment, as all life is an experiment" and believed that as a consequence "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death." <<
There's your "Living Constitution," which idiosyncrasy gave Charles Evans Hughes the basis to impertinently proclaim, "The Law is what we say it is," not what our federal and state constitutions and legislators say it is. That is how the law is being practiced today, precedent upon precedent. "Separation of church and state," anyone? Or Roe v. Wade?
But what about the paraphrastic "Living Bible" (TLB) and its dynamically equivalent "New International Version" (NIV)? Well, their prototype the "Twentieth Century New Testament" (TCNT) (click here), the first of a plethora of versions that no longer use a literal, grammatical, historical, cultural hermeneutic to give the reader God's Words in one's native language, but propose to tell you what God is thinking in your cultural terms, not sticking literally to what the Spirit conveyed to the original writers. They tell you, not what God wrote (Mt. 4:4), but what the interpreters today hear. In doing so, they leave the literal equivalent translation behind, giving you their opinion, not necessarily what God said (Mt. 4:6 compare Ps. 91:11-12; the KJV, DRB, and Darby literal versions show that the Devil misquotes Scripture, TLB and NIV do not; therefore a doctrine is lost).
And not only that, but the TCNT is based on an entirely different Greek newly synthesized text (1881, Westcott & Hort) that varies from the traditional text kept and used by the eastern churches for many centuries. And the differences amounted to over 6,000 instances than that Greek from which our Founders' English translation was made.
So now, not only is the law what the SCOTUS says it is, but the teachings of the Bible are what the translators now say (and disagree) they are. And now, instead of one, we have a hundred "Bibles" to tell us what God thinks is right and wrong. And they do not all say the same thing or have the same content.
Those kinds of thinking, and their implementation in law and religion have brought us to the point where--now get this--a "homosexual" (nothing sexual about it, just preferred method of other-gratification) ordained female deacon-then-elder is proposed in all sincerity to be a conference BISHOP; and resistance to it is shouted down. The issue has to be taken to the denomination's highest Court of Disciplinary LAW to (temporarily) settle the issue! What a hundred-year change of custom that reflects!
Mind you, only a few days ago on another article re this topic I posted the eexcept of the 1896/1900 AD "The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church" (click here) that shows at the turn of the last century, women were not to be at all considered for licensing as preacher or ministers at any level. That is, and always has been, correct Biblical doctrine at any age. Yet now the denomination not only has ordained as a minister not merely a woman, but one engaged openly in moral perversion, but a significant and conference-contreolling majority is determined to promote such an undesirable to the bishopric!
Truly, your comment, JB, is a pithy but true picture of America's moral state, with a declining vector pointing its future direction.
========== Matthew 4:6 TLB
6 "Jump off,” he said, “and prove you are the Son of God; for the Scriptures declare, 'God will send his angels to keep you from harm,' . . . they will prevent you from smashing on the rocks below."
Psalms 99:11-12 TLB
11 For he orders his angels to protect you wherever you go. 12 They will steady you with their hands to keep you from stumbling against the rocks on the trail.
==========
Matthew 4:6 NIV 6 "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written:
'He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.' "
Psalms 91:11-12 NIV
11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;
12 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
============
Matthew 4:6 KJV
"And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written,
He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands
they shall bear thee up, lest at any time* thou dash thy foot against a stone."
* = Note that this nuance is added by the Devil in quoting Psalm 99:12
Psa 91:11-12 KJV "For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone."
========= Regarding women teaching or ordination ==========
1 Timothy 2:11-15 KJV
Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and
charity and holiness with sobriety.
1 Corinthians 14:33-35 KJV
"For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to
speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home:
for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
==================