Papias is clearly relating the “Elders” to the “Apostles” so when he qualifies “The Elder John” he can only mean the Apostle John, as why include that epithet otherwise, and not for Aristion, whom he calls both “Disciples”. Other Fragments relating Church History show that Papias may have dictated the Book of John from the very same. And Papias also authenticates the episode of the woman caught in adultery.

The Holy Bible

No Santa Clause dawns its pages
But a truth about life, without illusions.
People suffer, and especially the good.
There are very few happy portraits
In the holy scripture, but rather mourning
At every page, and war... even love is strife.
"Vanity vanity", thus let me mourn here
A little while, and hate my life.
So I may enter into a better Earth 
And better Heaven, where I can have
My sweet and fat; and holy laughter.

A Rare Beauty

A rare beauty indeed,
In intelligence, and body and face and form
And in her personality, too.
She makes me question,
When seeing women who pale in comparison
Having to maintain their own looks---
They are not too smart,
They are not too beautiful,
They are not too  good for marriage;
I realize she is superior,
Thus, I will not shame her inferiors anymore.
She talks of her cohort's self deceit
And I say, "Let them be a little deceived
"If you are the standard."

If I Had To Flee

If I had to flee into another land
And could only take what I may carry...
I'd take Six books.
My Mimi's NRSV Bible with Apocrypha
My copy of Martyr's Mirror by Thielman Van Braght
My copy of the Apostolic Fathers translated by J. B. Lightfoot
And Mimi's Hymnal.
Last, I'd take my book of North American Wildlife and my  Bird Book,
Given to me by my Mimi and Pop Pop. 
For nature is God's scripture, too.

Integrity And Foolishness

Better to call yourself a fool, and be called wise by others, than be called wise by your own lips, and a fool by all you know.

But truthfully, I am a fool. I conduct business badly because I put my trust in other people's integrity. And then when someone's honest, I don't know because I've been screwed so many times. I doubt my allies too much, and put my confidence in my enemies. I don't know how to tell the difference. It's a great pain, because I love everyone, but don't want to destroy myself through lies. So I try to be honest, and often that honesty gets me in trouble. Because we have a system that's built to reward lies.

On Calvinism

We're nothing without Grace. We need God's power in order to do good. We can make distinctions about what "Choice" means, but God foreknew what our choices would be. He sealed us according to His predestined election of grace. That's not to say that man has no choice--in fact, pure free will and pure determinism both can exist in accordance with each other--God's divine knowledge is omniscience. He knows everything, and every choice we're going to make. So, He predestined us according to divine election. 

However, "Once saved always saved" is also not true. There's people who taste of Spiritual Fruits and fall away, and they can never be reconciled. There are those who are written into the book of life, and are then again blotted out. There's also lost sheep and prodigal sons, who being blotted out, can be written back into the Book of Life.

But, God knows who that is, already. It's just our desire, to ask and fear God enough to write our names, and seal us, and predestine us. And to him who knocks, it shall be answered.

Which gets to total depravity. We have no power to be good, in of ourselves. Only the situations God creates can keep us out of hell. We'd be steamrolled by Satan if God didn't restrain Him. So, all our righteousness proceeds from Grace, and nothing else. And through our understanding of Christ's teachings, we move closer to Him, but through loss of desire for fear, we lose our reward. But, God knows beforehand who those who walk with Him in truth are.

So... it's hard to say. It's beyond our own understanding, but truthfully, as light and shadow exist, so does free will and determinism.

Is Man Good?

I think Solomon answered it perfectly. “Man was made upright, but he sought out many devices.”

The chapter of Genesis, “God saw all that He created, and He said, “It is Good.”

But, then you have that verse in Genesis also, that God repented of making man, and was sorrowed that He created us.

So… is humanity inherently good? The answer to that is God created us good, but our hearts are led astray by the deception of worldly gain, and factionism, and covetousness, and when God destroyed the Earth with the flood—some people say that was out of line—but all archeological evidence, shows these people were nuts. They were decorating their houses with human remains, and using blood as an ingredient in paint, and if any remnants of Egypt are shown, they also probably did necrophilia and other gross and abnormal things. And there was probably anarchy, too.

So, God was just in destroying the world.

Then you may say, “Well God told Israel to destroy Canaan.” Well, again… Canaanites, all those sins listed in Deuteronomy, they did. They ate their own babies, they had sex with animals, they murdered and raped with impunity their neighbors… so God used Israel to destroy them. As that was their religion, was practicing gross and evil things.

So… during Rome and Greece, men had sex with children, they had full blown sex on stages with actors, they murdered people on stages, they had people kill each other in gladiatorial arenas, at the end they had emperors changing their gender through gender operations, and were marrying their horses… that same emperor I’m thinking about managed to kill a host of party guests with rose petals of all things.

So… is humanity good? You decide. This doesn’t look good.

And when Humans made their first laws, there’s some argument to be made that God had a hand in it, that He directly inspired Abraham and in Mesopotamia we see the Torah some of its laws there in the codexes. And of course we have the Stone Tablet written by God’s hand, and we have Christ Jesus giving us divine statutes when He came in the Flesh, and He lived an example for us to follow, and knowing we couldn’t, He died on a Roman Cross and raised, so we could accomplish what little we could with His grace.

So, I’d say aspects of Confucianism were inspired by artefacts of the original Abrahamic Faith, which you find remnants and traces in China excerpts from the book of Genesis. And also references to their stories in their written characters.

So, I’d say God is very real. And God gave us direct command and spoke through His prophets, and twice gave us direct guidance in the form of the Ten Commandments and of course Christ Himself taught and lived.

So, I’d say man has potential to be good. Like Solomon said, man was made upright, but he sought out many sinful things.