Dr. Jeff Riddle reviews ‘…Matthew Barrett’s comments on problems with modern translations, with respect to the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, in his book Simply Trinity (Baker 2021), recently named by Christianity Today as a 2022 book of the year in the category of theology and ethics (read about it here).
Among other things, Barrett points out that in the twentieth century scholars “erased ‘only begotten’ from John’s corpus and replace this phrase with ‘only’ or ‘unique’ instead,” adding that due to this change “generations of Christians were never introduced to the concept of eternal generation” (186). He also announces, “that consensus is now changing, and fast” (187).
This illustrates the sometimes subtle (or not so subtle) theological problems that arise from modern texts and modern translations.
I also covered this issue in WM 207, reviewing part of a conversation between Barrett and Charles Lee Irons, and I did a text note on John 1:18 in WM 56.’http://www.jeffriddle.net/2022/01/wm-222-barrett-modern-translations.html
Political
All posts tagged Political
If something different doesn’t occur at the May Federal election this nation, Australia, is in serious trouble. The two major parties, LNP and Labor, are out of touch with reality. What Australia needs is a party that stands for all Australians. That party, in my opinion, is the United Australia Party. Here is a link to Part One of UAP’s Craig Kelly being interviewed by Professor David Flint. https://www.unitedaustraliaparty.org.au/video/part-1-craig-kelly-mp-interview-australia-calling/#fvp_102,2m45s
What a silly question! ‘Do you trust Pfizer?
The answer is a resounding no from author Kurt Mahlburg who joins us for episode 11 of Conservative One: Pandemic Unmasked.
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer who has researched corporate mainstream media reports to build a dossier of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s history of criminal behaviour and questionable ethics.
He has compiled a top list of their most notorious and egregious violations and they are but scratching the surface of Pfizer’s lack of corporate and social responsibility.
Kurt writes for The Daily Declaration as well as Caldron Pool, Eternity News, The Spectator and The Good Sauce. He has his own blog at kurtmahlburg.blog and is author of the book Cross and Culture: Can Jesus Save the West?
His article “8 reasons Pfizer cannot be trusted” can be read at The Daily Declaration.’https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/conservative-one-pandemic-unmasked/id1508102034?i=1000549275221
This link will also take you to the podcast https://www.georgechristensen.com.au/podcast/mahlburg
In Nazi ‘Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan has announced a new Covid health order that will ban unvaccinated parents from seeing their sick children in hospital. The rule comes into place on January 31.
There is the possibility of obtaining an ‘exemption’, but the chances are tiny leaving most unvaccinated parents without access to their own children. Such exemptions would be assessed on a case-by-case basis, according to a government spokesperson.
McGowan has hinted that these excessive restrictions on unvaccinated people could remain in place for many years. This comes shortly after the premier indefinitely delayed the re-opening of the Western Australia border (except to international students).
The new measure forms part of McGowan’s self-declared ‘broadest vaccine passport measures’ that locks unvaccinated citizens out of almost every part of life – including the public spaces which their taxes pay for.
McGowan proudly announced that he would make life ‘very hard’ for the unvaccinated.
“They [the unvaccinated] won’t be able to go to the football, they won’t be able to work in a whole range of industries. They won’t be able to go to concerts, restaurants, bars, cafes, pubs, fitness centres, gyms – all those things will be restricted. Life is about to get very difficult for you… it’s a big encouragement to go and get yourself vaccinated,” said the premier.
Most reasonable people would call that a threat, not encouragement.
Hospitals are deemed a ‘high risk’ location covered under the premier’s general health order that forbids unvaccinated people entry to a wide range of locations.
“Entry into a hospital or RACF by unvaccinated individuals (in those jurisdictions) is prohibited unless an exemption is in place or permitted under compassionate grounds, such as visiting a family member during the terminal phase of their life. In situations where visitation is permitted by unvaccinated individuals, additional risk mitigation precautions are required to be met by the individual,” said Dr Andy Robertson.
Given the data coming out of New South Wales and Victoria – not to mention the rest of the world including 100% vaccinated Israel – it can be stated categorically that being fully vaccinated and boosted against Covid does not stop the spread of Omicron while banning unvaccinated people from these locations does not prevent Covid from entering them.’https://www.rebelnews.com/unvaccinated_parents_banned_from_seeing_their_own_sick_kids?utm_campaign=rb_01_28_2022&utm_medium=email&utm_source=therebel
How did China take over the world? All one has to do is look at most products sold and it is easy to see that China manufactures almost everything we purchase but that’s not enough! Now, with the China virus being expanded into its third year our Western so-called democracies are continuing their ripping away our freedoms at a more aggressive pace. Here in New South Wales Australia the Covid lunacy continues!
‘Masks
All people over the age of 12 must wear a face mask:
- in indoor areas (e.g. while shopping, when at a library)
- in indoor areas of common property of apartment buildings
- at a public transport waiting area
- while on public transport (including in taxis and rideshare services)
- if you are working at a hospitality venue and dealing directly with members of the public
- on an aircraft when the aircraft is flying above NSW and in the airport.
- all staff and students in Year 7 and above, and all staff in K to 6, must wear medical grade masks. Medical grade masks will be supplied to all schools. All students in K to 6 are also strongly encouraged to wear medical grade masks.
Exemptions are available. Learn more about face mask rules and using a face mask.
Masks are strongly encouraged in settings where you cannot physically distance.
COVID-19 Safe Check-in
COVID-19 Safe QR check-ins are required at:
- retail premises
- food and drink premises
- pubs, small bars and registered clubs
- hairdressers, spas, nail, beauty, waxing, and tanning salons, tattoo parlours and massage parlours
- gyms (except dance, yoga, pilates, gymnastics, and martial arts studios)
- hospitals (except patients of hospitals or hospitals with an electronic entry recording system that records sufficient information that can be used for contact tracing)
- residential care facilities or hostels (except in relation to the residents)
- places of public worship, like churches, mosques, temples, meeting houses and synagogues
- funeral, memorials and gatherings afterwards
- nightclubs
- casinos
- strip clubs, sex on premises venues, sex services premises
- indoor music festivals with more than 1000 people.
Occupiers of premises are required to continue to take reasonable steps to ensure people can check-in or provide their contact details when they enter these premises.
If you are entering a premises where check-in is required, you must:
- check in with the Service NSW app
- provide your details to the occupier of the premises.
Learn more about mandatory electronic check-in.
Vaccination evidence
Most premises in NSW are now open to everyone, regardless of whether you are fully vaccinated or not.
You no longer need to show evidence that you are fully vaccinated at most premises.
However, you still need to show evidence that you are fully vaccinated if you:
- attend an indoor music festival with more than 1000 people
- if you work in certain industries.
Follow the vaccination requirements for workers.
Check what you need as vaccination evidence.
Venues may set their own COVID Safe conditions of entry
In addition to PHO requirements, some premises may choose to require people to be fully vaccinated or to wear a mask as a condition of entry.
It is a matter for the occupier of each premises to exercise judgement on what is appropriate for their premises and the well-being of their staff and customers.
If you want to enter premises where an occupier has chosen to require you to be fully vaccinated, the occupier may ask to see your vaccination evidence. You do not have to show the occupier your vaccination evidence, but if you do not, the occupier may not let you in.’https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/stay-safe/rules/people-in-nsw?utm_source=servicensw_consumer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2022-01-27_sfmc_694_con_covid_newsletter&utm_content=02_current_restrictions&utm_term=see_current_restrictions_button#toc-masks-covid-19-safe-check-in-vaccination-evidence-and-registering-a-positive-rapid-antigen-rat-result
WHEN WILL THIS ALL END?
‘Will our courts defend the people against medical tyranny?
That’s the hope of retired judge Stuart Lindsay who joins us for episode 10 of the Conservative One: Pandemic Unmasked podcast.
Stuart Lindsay is a retired Federal Circuit Court judge who presided in more than two thousand Family Law Act cases and in many cases in other parts of the Commonwealth jurisdiction.
He was admitted to the bar in 1981 and worked as a solicitor & barrister until being appointed to the Federal Circuit Court in 2004. He retired in 2014 to continue working as a barrister.’ The podcast may be hear @ https://www.georgechristensen.com.au/podcast/lindsay
I’m originally from southern Iowa and so glad ‘Republican Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds took a public stand in favor of the rights of parents during an interview with a local news reporter on Monday. She specifically defended the right of parents to decide on the appropriate subject matter in their children’s schools.
The interview centered on disputes around the nation regarding some of the books local school districts are placing in their school libraries. Some school library books contain explicit erotic material and have been challenged as inappropriate for school-age children. In Iowa, in particular, six local districts around Des Moines face these controversies.
During the interview, Gov. Reynolds read aloud from one of the books involved, “All Boys Aren’t Blue.” That book includes essays described as a “memoir-manifesto” about growing up gay and black.
She read a passage from the book for the reporter that described a graphic carnal act between two boy cousins. The passage used explicit language to describe boys in the nude having oral intercourse with each other. When she finished reading the passage, Reynolds said she didn’t know if Iowa parents feel that material is appropriate for children in K-12 education. Still, she feels that it is a decision that they should be able to make.
The reporter asked Reynolds if she agrees with Iowa’s Republican state Senate President Jake Chapman. The latter said teachers’ unions have a “sinister agenda” to normalize deviant behavior among school children. Reynolds said she “absolutely agrees” those inappropriate things are displayed in Iowa classrooms and libraries without explicitly commenting on Chapman’s statements.
Some schools around the country have been removing “All Boys Aren’t Blue” from libraries, although the author defends his book as having an “important message” for young boys and girls “struggling with their gender.” He said that removing a “resource” doesn’t mean “Black queer youth” will not experience what he describes.
The governor also described other books being challenged in Iowa, including “Lawn Boy” and “Gender Queer,” including graphic descriptions of sensual acts.https://conservativeamericatoday.com/republican-iowa-governor-defends-parental-educational-rights/
‘When I worked at the New York Times, I don’t think I ever wrote a Spiderman story.
What’s a Spiderman story?
That now-famous meme:
A Spiderman story is any investigative piece where the side the reporter is attacking can say EXACTLY the same things about the other side.
You’re misinforming!
No, you!
No, you!
No, you!
… ad infinitum.
I wrote lots of investigative pieces (mostly about drug and other medical companies) in the 10-plus years I worked for the New York Times; I’m proud of them. Some are still quoted, more than a decade after I left.
Here’s how I viewed my job: finding, investigating, and reporting on criminal/quasi-criminal and concealed/quasi-concealed corporate behavior.
All those words matter. Executives usually try to avoid breaking the law overtly. They don’t like prison. Prison isn’t fun. They prefer golf. (I’m not entirely sure why.)
Of course, there are exceptions. A few executives, like Elizabeth Holmes, are frauds basically from the jump. Other will cross the line when the walls are cracking and they get desperate. But generally, well-lawyered companies prefer to look for loopholes.
If paying a physician directly to prescribe your drug is illegal, offer volume “rebates” for drugs administered directly by physicians.
Or create a “naturalistic” clinical trial – where the physician receives hundreds of dollars for filling out a one-page form every time she enrolls a patient.
Or offer a free, all-expenses paid continuing education seminar for physicians about “new treatments” at a ski area, and keep the schedule light. And hire “key opinion leaders” – other physicians – to give the seminars – you can pay them, they’re working. And pay those KOLs to “consult” with your marketing division about the best ways to promote your drug.
You get the idea. When the product is a pill that costs pennies to make and can be sold for dollars (or sometimes hundreds of dollars), there’s LOTS of money sloshing around. You just need to put it to work.
So criminal OR quasi-criminal.
And concealed OR quasi-concealed. Obviously, companies will not go out of their way to describe clearly illegal behavior – cash in bags, et cetera. Getting at that usually requires whistleblowers (another topic) and internal documents.
But public companies have strict disclosure requirements. And pharma companies have to provide data to the Food and Drug Administration both before and after their products are approved and register their human clinical trials prospectively with the National Institutes of Health (they didn’t always). And lawsuits and the discovery process can also be great sources, which is yet another reason the vaccine immunity is so problematic.
So the truth – some version of the truth – is out there. Getting to it is often an iterative process – write a story, people talk, more documents come out, write another story, new evidence arrives in your email, et cetera. Bethany McLean did this brilliantly with Enron 20 years ago.
But please – pretty please – note two facts about the process I am describing.
First, it is a process of finding HIDDEN facts and data.
Second, Spiderman is nowhere near it. When Eli Lilly tried to hide the dangers of its drug Zyprexa from doctors treating people with schizophrenia – among the most vulnerable people in the world – nobody said the people with schizophrenia were hiding anything from Eli Lilly.
That’s investigative reporting. Bringing hidden facts to light. Protecting people who cannot protect themselves from companies with vast resources – armies of lawyers and marketers.
What Elizabeth Dwoskin (who, by the way, did not include me in her Washington Post story today – either she or her editors must have realized how terrible that would look after what I posted late last night) – is nothing of the sort. It is opinion and argument, pure and simple.
Why?
NOTHING ABOUT WHAT I AM DOING IS HIDDEN. The opposite: I present my findings every day in as close to real time as possible. And I have no hidden financial conflicts of interest.
AND READERS PROVIDE THE VAST MAJORITY OF MY INCOME. Either directly through Substack and Amazon or indirectly through publishers like Regnery and Simon & Schuster – who offer me advances in the hope they will sell enough books to recoup them, and pay me a portion of the money they make after those advances have earned out.
Investigative reporting would be: discovering that I’m lying about this and some bad actor is funding me. (Who? I even don’t know – the Russian government, maybe?) Which would be impossible, because it’s not true.
Investigative reporting would be: discovering that I have been making up sources or lying about what the documents I present say. Also impossible, because it’s not true.
Instead these people who call themselves reporters basically say, what you are saying is wrong – and not merely wrong, misinformation – because the Centers for Disease Control says so.
What?
I say again, WHAT?
You’re not Spiderman, I’m Spiderman!
I am reporting and have reported that public health authorities have vastly overestimated the efficacy of the vaccines for more than year and are presenting their data in a way that is effectively false. To say the CDC disagrees with me is not to shoot me down; it is to confirm what I am saying.
And it is not reporting, it is stenography of government institutions.
If these people had been covering Robert McNamara we’d still be in Vietnam.’https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/what-has-happened-to-reporters
