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SR... if I say "please", will you answer my simple question (from #715)? There's absolutely NO point in multiplying citations about "the Word of God" if the very definition of the "Word of God" is in dispute! (Your citations are plainly speaking of diverse meanings, anyway--cf. your first 4 citations plainly refer to specific prophecies, and plainly not already-existing Scripture, while the NT prophecies plainly refer to something broader than those.)

It's neither disrespectful to God's Word nor logically inappropriate for me to ask you (because of reasons which I've already described, repeatedly) for a clear definition of what YOU mean by "God's Word" or "the Word of God".

Since you came to the defense of "sola Scriptura", and since you're apparently not Catholic, I'm leaning toward the conclusion that you use the 66-book Protestant Bible, that you regard THAT as "the (complete) Word of God", and that you regard all of your "e-Sword" citations as referring to that 66-book Protestant Bible.

If I'm mistaken (since the board is very sensitive about putting words into the mouths of others, and "constructing straw men"--an accusation which is trotted out both justly and unjustly, on this thread alone), then now would be the time to correct me.

Will you please give a clear and unequivocal answer to my question, or at least give me a clear and unequivocal explanation as to why you're repeatedly refusing to do so? Please give me SOMETHING to go on, here...!

I have given you plenty to go on. But I do see you are not getting what I am saying. What you are running into is the conceptual divide that so often creates the disconnect between our views. You see all those citations as having a diverse set of meanings, and at a lower level, you are correct, just as there can be an infinite number of ways to populate the variable terms of a quadratic equation. I am asking you to look at what unifies all those usages, the form of the equation, not the filled-in answer to a specific set of quadratic terms. It is that point of unity to which I cannot get your assent. The word of God is whatever God says, whenever and wherever He says it. The canonical & epistemological questions are subsidiary to the qualitative question. If we cannot agree that whatever God says trumps any and all other sources of truth claims, we will endlessly speak past each other, and there is no point in continuing.

Peace,

SR