You’ve offered several comments on this post, and I’m grateful for the attention and lack of rancor; you are not a troll. You want the story told clearly and honestly. I get that, and I’m going to return the favor — for the record.
I refer you back to the first few paragraphs of the blog post itself. We have been talking past each other; I’m aware of it, but I don’t believe you are. While this blog is certainly open to everyone, and I generally don’t censor anything but the most egregious trolling, it remains a pastoral blog for the Kiln of the Soul parish. Our teaching includes an endeavor to embrace the Hebraic viewpoint of the Bible. The Hebraic epistemology is radically different from that of the West. I recently waded through an exhaustive book review of Thorleif Boman’s Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek to highlight not only fact of a difference, but what kind of differences. It’s typical of an ongoing effort to migrate our minds to the Hebrew viewpoint since this blog began years ago.
If I were to answer you point for point, I would be missing the biggest point of all: VD is a western man, not a biblical man. You cannot approach the Bible from a western viewpoint and understand what it’s really all about. You might get some things, but the real depth will be out of reach. My comments here about VD are from a Hebrew point of view. I have tried to encourage him and his allies to recognize the huge difference, and had some hope that maybe someone would embrace the task. Sadly, it appears no one in his orbit has done that. As long as they keep trucking down the western way of thinking, they will not grasp what God is doing, and how to get involved.
Because they have not done so, I was left to warn my parish of the dangers of VD and his western approach. Whether VD likes or not, he is a leader, and he is leading people down the wrong path. He’s a bad shepherd. God is not going to look kindly upon this when He comes to visit in His wrath.
I’ve allowed your comments. Until you grasp the radically different approach of the Hebrew mind, my answers won’t have much meaning to you. Answering point by point would be surrendering the whole point of this blog. The SSH is western; it is anti-biblical. The whole of Western Civilization is doomed. All of it is an inherent rejection of Christ and His teachings.