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Contra Stavrinides
by Frank Nelte
PART XX: STRIVING ABOUT WORDS
When one has listened to all the tapes and read all the Handouts, then it becomes very clear that what is being presented to us is an endless array of "arguments". In the Handouts alone he lists 61 steps in his arguments. And there are many, many more in the 26 hours live on camera.
These arguments don't take what God says into account. With most the scriptures that are brought to his attention, he strives to prove what they DON'T mean. And time and again it is just so much striving about words ... which God tells us not to do.
There are many more things in his lectures that are not true, which I could comment on. At the start I mentioned that I intended to give a "detailed" presentation of the errors in Dr. Stavrinides' thinking. I do not mean to imply that my presentation here is "exhaustive" ... not at all! But you reach a point, when you have exposed error after error, where you say:
"I have already showed up so many flaws in his ideas, that highlighting more errors is not at all necessary to make the point." Because of the extreme nature of his theory, it is inevitable that Dr. Stavrinides, in the process of defending and justifying his ideas, paints himself more and more and more into a corner ... and that is precisely what he has done.
Logically, one only has to disprove ONE of his assumed premised (e.g. "God exists outside of time and space"; or "spirit cannot have shape"; etc.) to bring down his whole theory. But there is always the point that it simply goes against the grain to let the dissemination of heretical ideas go unchallenged! And therefore I have addressed far more points than are needed to simply prove his ideas wrong.
At this point, before summarizing everything that I have covered in this presentation, I would like to mention a few more, brief pertinent point:
This means that the translators of the Greek N.T. had to use their own discretion and understanding of the concepts being conveyed in the text, to decide when to provide an indefinite article and when not to do so.
FACT: In the N.T. the article "A" appears in over 1500 verses, quite often more than once in a verse. The article "AN" appears 335 times in 318 verses (i.e. KJV). Thus, in round figures, in the KJV of the N.T. the indefinite article appears ABOUT TWO THOUSAND TIMES ... without ever being present in the Greek text!.
Now let's look at a verse like John 1:1 ...
** **** ** * ***** *** * ***** ** **** *** **** *** **** ** * ***** (John 1:1 [Editor's Note: Sorry, but the Greek text cannot be shown in HTML.)
The English translation of this reads:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)
However, the Greek text actually reads as follows, maintaining the same word order:
In beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the God, and God was the Word. (John 1:1)
This means the following:
In the beginning was a Being called the Word (i.e. Jesus Christ), and this Being was WITH "the God" (i.e. He was with God the Father), and the Word (Himself) was "a God" (i.e. Jesus Christ is also God, the second member of the God Family).
While Dr. Stavrinides would view this as heresy, it is a fact that the Greek text can correctly be translated this way ... and that would obviously reflect the understanding Mr. Armstrong taught the Church for many years.
Because of this lack in the Greek language (i.e. no indefinite articles), translating such passages correctly does not depend so much on the translator's knowledge of Greek, as it does on his correct understanding about the nature of God as revealed throughout the rest of the Bible. And, as we have seen, Dr. Stavrinides' Catholic ideas are totally unbiblical in this regard.
A scripture that ties in here is John 4:24 ...
God [is] a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship [him] in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24)
Because there is no indefinite article in the Greek, people can argue against the translation "God is a Spirit", claiming that the article "a" is not in the original. Of course, it isn't! That's because Greek NEVER has an indefinite article! But it is correct to provide such indefinite articles when translating Greek into English. Translators simply MUST provide such indefinite articles in order to translate the intended meaning correctly. And the rest of the Bible makes clear that the grammatically correct translation ...
"GOD IS A SPIRIT" ... is in harmony with what the Bible reveals.
Even a superficial study of the New Testament brings the concept that "God is a Family" forcefully to the reader's attention:
The many, many scriptures that talk about these things, TALK ABOUT GOD'S NATURE ... that conclusion cannot be avoided! Yet, Dr. Stavrinides will only address those scriptures that are brought to him to challenge his theory ... and then his goal is only "to prove what it doesn't mean".
Dr. Stavrinides summed this all up very well himself when he said, on tape #11:
"SUPPOSING I BRING SOME CONFUSION INTO THIS WORLD ACADEMICALLY."
He certainly has done that!
He mentions that Mr. Armstrong taught that God used "something" (i.e. the Holy Spirit) to do the creating, that the Holy Spirit is the building block from which everything has been created, that matter is, in fact, a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
This obviously doesn't go down too well with the Catholic "hypostasis-theory" and so Dr. Stavrinides does his best to argue against what Mr. Armstrong taught. Amongst other things he says:
Yet he admits that ...
"In Hebrew there is no word for 'to create from nothing'." and ...
"THE CONCEPT OF CREATING OUT OF NOTHING IS FOREIGN TO THE BIBLE!"
Look at that! Those are incredible admissions!
He admits that in the language in which God reveals Himself as the Creator, there isn't even a word for 'creating from nothing'! And then he goes on to ADMIT that such a concept is FOREIGN TO THE BIBLE ... yet he expects us to believe the pagan philo-sophers, who developed this concept!
INCREDIBLE!
Well, I think I have commented on enough of the errors in Dr. Stavrinides' lengthy presentation. Before we move on to the conclusion, let's first have a summary of what we have covered in this assessment of the errors in Dr. Stavrinides' theory.