Would the divinity of Jesus be affected by the consideration of a finite beginning?

[Wallydraigle]

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<< << An intolerant biggot who never misses an opportunity to insult or belittle the beliefs of another. Go away troll, this thread isn't for you. >>


You refuse to listen to another opinion? Why? You're feeling too comfortable in your own little world? >>




What little world would that be? I'm pretty open to new ideas, I just don't like being condescended to by elitist biggots. You know quite well that your only intention in posting here was to make someone feel inferior to you for believing what they do. Why the need to proselytize? Feeling a little too insecure in your own beliefs? Why are you still here? Go crap in someone else's thread. >>


You've not even the faintest clue what I'm talking about, have you?

You would make a very lousy scientist and Buddhist.

This 'little world' of yours is the ideology in which you believe, which keeps you trapped. Unable to see beyond this ideology, you're a victim of superstition. >>



Elledan, you don't have the first clue. I have no idea where your comment about be being a poor scientist and Buddhist came from. I chalk it up to language barriers.

I don't have an ideology. You seem to lump me in with Christians just because I don't like arrogant, elitist thread crappers. How open minded of you.

You are not an agnostic. You have time and again stated that the concept of any sort of god is flawed, and that there exists a 0% chance for such a being. Why would you say such things and then say that you have yet to make up your mind? Doesn't seem logical does it? Why are you still here?

 

[Moonbeam]

AMD, you might be right but where's the logic in God is human or begs himself for release, much less the body went to heaven? It's all very hard to understand.

 

[rgwalt]

<< It doesn't have to be an either or thingi. The most fit for survival didn't survive a direct comet hit, but in the stillness of the vast oceans even a slight advantage would tend (tend) to servive. >>

'

Um, huh? I think you lost me in the translation there big guy.



<< It's all very hard to understand. >>



Ryan

 

[AMDJunkie]

<< Why do people follow the leader(s) of a cult? Not because they perform some miracles. >>

Remember the audience, the Jewish people of the area. The Messiah is supposed to be a great king who would lead them to eternal salvation and victory over their enemies. Jesus Christ was certainly not that. People follow cult leaders not just becasue they promise some object, but seem like they can give it. What could a simlpe son of a carpenter have to offer these people, and what authority did he have to give it?

<< << Surely the son of God must be able to control the cosmos. >>


- the existance of not a single god/goddess has been verified.
- the existance of Jesus is doubtful at best
- therefore it's illogical to call Jesus the 'son of god'. >>

Nitpicking and out of context. "Surely" the people of Jesus's time (who believed in God) thought "the son of God must be able to control the cosmos."

<< Uhm, these followers of Jesus weren't the only one who could have written down something about Jesus. Outsiders who did not follow Jesus certainly would have written down something about 'a most peculiar man', or something similar, if they even described some local events. >>

The very article you posted has authentic reports from several of a "Christ" that the people followed. In the article it wasn't so much that there wasn't a "Christ" though as much as it was who was this "Christ".

<< D'uh. Just like there are doubts about the existance of every single god, yet no one can disprove the existance of these gods. >>

We have quite a pointless hobby. The faithful need no proof and the skeptics can never have enough.

 

[AMDJunkie]

Interesting point, isn't it? Some say Jesus left nothing behind but his words and acts (if he left anything at all to please certain readers). And Jesus asked of things from the father often in the Bible. Why did God want John the Baptist to baptize Christ if Christ is God? They are a type of symbollism, showing that even though Christ is God, he acted upon the Father's commands.

 

[MadRat]

<<The Messiah is supposed to be a great king who would lead them to eternal salvation and victory over their enemies.>>

Okay, this answer is off topic, but it begs to be answered. Jesus DID lead his people to victory over their enemies. His weapon was the opposite of conventional wisdom, instead of bringing destruction on the foe he spread love and submission. Folding to the enemy was much better than combatting the enemy. The Muslims put thousands to death for not renouncing the name of Jesus Christ, not because they were fighting the Muslims - but because they were pests to the Muslims. Muslim doctrine stated equivocally for the convergence to Islam, or death of all non-Muslims. (Such a peaceful start to their religion! Not.) Eventually the Muslims grew weary of the bloodshed and stopped their massacres. Actually the massacres re-emerged with the Crusades, but thats beside the point. But the point is Jesus laid down the rules and the survivors lived on well beyond the persecution.

 

[JupiterJones]

I had a question you didn't answer that was, I thought, on topic save for the request for Christians only. Why didn't you answer it?

Was it this one?

Would it be fair to ask, if Jesus is God and has no beginning and end, where his body is now, the one he showed up in? I'm curious because I think that when we speak of Jesus as God the actual reality is that we aren't talking about the person or his body. I seem to recall, too, something about being forsaken. Who was it that was separated and who was it he was separated from?

Ok. Realize that I am much more of an OT guy. Let's see if we can break your question down a bit.

1. Where is his body now?

He rose from the dead, physically, and then ascended to heaven. So his body is in Heaven, wherever that is.

2. When we speak of Jesus, are we talking about the person/body?

Now we are. Before the Immaculate Conception there was no Body. Whenever God appeared to man in the OT it was Jesus. It was Jesus that walked in the Garden of Eden. It was Jesus that wrestled Jacob. It was Jesus in the oven with Shadrach, Meshack, & Abednego.

3. When was Jesus forsaken, and who/what was he forsaken from?

This was a moment on the cross when Christ suffered the penalty for my sin, i.e. separation from God. At this moment he was entirely man, and then died. You can read in John where it describes Jesus as being temporarily made a bit less than the angels.

 

[JupiterJones]

Ok, I stopped reading the thread here, so this may have been stated already. But evolution falls under the branch in science of Biology, and in Biology, theory is as high as it goes, there are no laws in biology. I just wanted to inform you, because there is more support for evolution than for any other explanation of how humanity came to be.

Thraashman,
Many of us will be familiar with the Hardy-Weinberg Law. Developed in 1908, the Hardy-Weinberg law is an algebraic formula to estimate the frequency of a dominant or recessive gene in a population based on the frequency with which the trait or condition is found in that population. It's a fundamental principle in population genetics stating that the genotype frequencies and gene frequencies of a large, randomly mating population remain constant provided immigration, mutation, and selection do not take place. Genetics 101.

Don

 

[Moonbeam]

PastorDon, you'd think I would have learn not to ask questions. I keep looking for comprehensable answers, but all I ever get are explanations or recessatations of dogma that just push the questions back to the next level. I don't mean to sound angry, I'm not. Frustrated might be closser. I can clearly see how silly the responses to your San Diego thread were. Can you see what I mean. The notion of one God as the Moslems say, regardless of their other faults, is much more logically tight and much easier to take than the Immaculate Conception etc. ever will be. I guess it bothers me that I'm required to accept all kinds of mental gymnastics and intellectual twists and turns to buy into something as important as truth. I can't fathom the mystery of faith in the way you do. It's way too hard.

 

[JupiterJones]

PastorDon, you'd think I would have learn not to ask questions. I keep looking for comprehensable answers, but all I ever get are explanations or recessatations of dogma that just push the questions back to the next level. I don't mean to sound angry, I'm not. Frustrated might be closser. I can clearly see how silly the responses to your San Diego thread were. Can you see what I mean. The notion of one God as the Moslems say, regardless of their other faults, is much more logically tight and much easier to take than the Immaculate Conception etc. ever will be. I guess it bothers me that I'm required to accept all kinds of mental gymnastics and intellectual twists and turns to buy into something as important as truth. I can't fathom the mystery of faith in the way you do. It's way too hard.

This forum doesn't really lend itself to the complex questions you tend to ask. What you are asking is about the subject of Christology, a part of Systematic Theology. I took your question as a WHAT rather than a WHY.

Understand, that "accept(ing) all kinds of mental gymnastics and intellectual twists and turns to buy into something as important as truth" isn't required to find God. Belief in the Bible tends to come AFTER salvation. In fact, if the Bible is true, then the unbeliever will consider it foolishness.

If you earnestly want to find God, then ask Him! If God doesn't exist then the worst thing is that sitting alone in a room asking outloud for God to make himself known will make you feel a bit sheepish. If he does exist and you actually desire to know him, ask him to give you the faith to believe. That is what he promises.

 

[mithrandir2001]

Elledan's breath of reason and freethinking is just what the doctor ordered.

We have DC projects to search for intelligent alien life, fight cancer, crack encryption, etc. If we could construct a project that could debunk this entire myth (and all the others), I would throw all of my technical resources to it. I wonder if I should ever see the day when freethinking and reason is embraced by society instead of fairy tales and fiction wrapped and packaged as eternal salvation.

 

[JupiterJones]

This was a moment on the cross when Christ suffered the penalty for my sin, i.e. separation from God. At this moment he was entirely man, and then died. You can read in John where it describes Jesus as being temporarily made a bit less than the angels.

Moonbeam,
I just had a thought which had not occured to me before. On the cross, Jesus cries "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?". The original aramaic is retained, and a interpretation make " -- which means, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

There are a number of significant things here. First, the retaining of the original language. Why? Well, I just realized that this cry is the original title of Psalm 22. Is Jesus actually telling us that his Father had forsaken him, or is he referring us to Psalm 22?

What is interesting is the response of the crowd. Some think that he is calling for Elijah to rescue him. Why? What does this have to do with what Jesus said? There is only a connection if Jesus was speaking of Psalm 22, which is full of messianic imagery. Remember that the OT ends with a promise that God will send Elijah (same Hebrew root as Joshua, i.e. "salvation", Joshua being the Hebrew name of Jesus, which is in the Greek).

Ok, my thoughts are somewhat disjointed. I'll look into this some more tomorrow, but right now I am not convinced that Jesus was forsaken on the cross. It isn't something I've studied before. What I told you before is a bit of a traditional view, but like I said I tend to stay in the OT.

Just some thoughts.

 

[Moonbeam]

Don't forget, PastorDon that OT is OFF TOPIC. You had me confused for a while there.

 

[Riprorin]

<< If we could construct a project that could debunk this entire myth (and all the others), I would throw all of my technical resources to it. I wonder if I should ever see the day when freethinking and reason is embraced by society instead of fairy tales and fiction wrapped and packaged as eternal salvation. >>



I believe that there was a project to debunk religion. It was called Marxism. Wasn't very successful, was it?

 

[MadRat]

<<I wonder if I should ever see the day when freethinking and reason is embraced by society instead of fairy tales and fiction wrapped and packaged as eternal salvation.>>

It is a sad thought to walk the earth blind to the presence of God. You will have your choice to live without God if you so choose. How proud you must be to reject the idea of a master Creator! On the day of your death, in your opinion, there will be a great relief from all of this nonsense. God gave you the right to reject him, so go ahead and do so. The rest of us will hold out the hope that you, and everyone that shares your opinion, will have a changed mind before then.

 

[mithrandir2001]

I wonder how much more advanced of a society we would be if we didn't have so much religious baggage to deal with. 9/11? Religious baggage. Horrible to have to make such a scathing example, but its undeniable. Modern Man needs to realize that these myths were founded in human experience and culture, not divine intervention. This is our only life and the quicker we come to this realization, the quicker we can overcome the baggage that holds us down and hinders our progress. We owe it to ourselves and our children, and their children and so on to put humans FIRST!

When aliens discover our little rock in space and make first contact, will we be ready? Or will we be still squabbling over these historical myths?

 

[Riprorin]

<< I wonder how much more advanced of a society we would be if we didn't have so much religious baggage to deal with. >>



The whole basis of modern science depends on the assumption that the universe was made by a rational Creator. The scientific method was stillborn in all cultures from apart from the Judeo-Christian culture of Europe. An orderly universe makes perfect sense if it was made by an orderly creator. But if there is no creator, why should there be any order at all?

 

[slee210]

<< This was a moment on the cross when Christ suffered the penalty for my sin, i.e. separation from God. At this moment he was entirely man, and then died. You can read in John where it describes Jesus as being temporarily made a bit less than the angels.

Moonbeam,
I just had a thought which had not occured to me before. On the cross, Jesus cries "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?". The original aramaic is retained, and a interpretation make " -- which means, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

There are a number of significant things here. First, the retaining of the original language. Why? Well, I just realized that this cry is the original title of Psalm 22. Is Jesus actually telling us that his Father had forsaken him, or is he referring us to Psalm 22?

What is interesting is the response of the crowd. Some think that he is calling for Elijah to rescue him. Why? What does this have to do with what Jesus said? There is only a connection if Jesus was speaking of Psalm 22, which is full of messianic imagery. Remember that the OT ends with a promise that God will send Elijah (same Hebrew root as Joshua, i.e. "salvation", Joshua being the Hebrew name of Jesus, which is in the Greek).

Ok, my thoughts are somewhat disjointed. I'll look into this some more tomorrow, but right now I am not convinced that Jesus was forsaken on the cross. It isn't something I've studied before. What I told you before is a bit of a traditional view, but like I said I tend to stay in the OT.

Just some thoughts. >>



PastorDon, i actually learned that he is referring the Psalm 22 when he says "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?". If in fact that is true, that means that a prophecy was coming true right in front of crowd. Yet the crowd still refused to acknowledge the divinity of Christ. I'm not sure about the details, just adding to your little reply, hopefully this helped.

 

[Moonbeam]

Darn, I was sure the Egyptians and the Greeks had all kinds of ideas about the order of the universe and they didn't invent modern science. I bet the explanation for it's invention in the recent west lies elsewhere than notions of an orderly creator.

 

[Elledan]

<< I wonder how much more advanced of a society we would be if we didn't have so much religious baggage to deal with. 9/11? Religious baggage. Horrible to have to make such a scathing example, but its undeniable. Modern Man needs to realize that these myths were founded in human experience and culture, not divine intervention. This is our only life and the quicker we come to this realization, the quicker we can overcome the baggage that holds us down and hinders our progress. We owe it to ourselves and our children, and their children and so on to put humans FIRST!

When aliens discover our little rock in space and make first contact, will we be ready? Or will we be still squabbling over these historical myths? >>

I mostly agree with this.

However, I think that it is undeniable that religious ideologies have played a mayor role in the development of civilizations. They provided these civilizations with a supporting 'frame', ensuring that the civilization wouldn't fall apart. Mainly it served as a way to make everyone feel like they belonged to one big group, and not just to one of many small groups.

What we can observe today is the breaking down of this 'frame'. It has served its function, but is now rapidly becoming obsolete.

 

[calpha]

Man, I started reading this thread really interested in the title.

And all these thread crappers pissed me off. Can't even finish reading. Wish only Christians, or those reading the first post would have replied.

If you think of one thing----A Day is a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day to GOD, and apply that to Creation---the 7 days may not have been literal. How else do you explain PANAGEA (sp?), dinasaours, etc.

I believe the most important part of the bible, isn't it's historical significance---we know why the bible becaem the bible. Jewish priests who had for generations passed on thier history and theology began fearing for their religions existance during the Babylonian Occupation. That being said, some inaccuracies are bound to occur. Case in Point, study Ch1 and Ch2 of Genesis.

Anyway, the most important part of the Bible is the Divine Providence of God---exactly why Jews viewed their history as so important. They were able (old Testament) to look to these stories of God, creation, MOSES, the flood, and see God's hands in their life through their history. What I take from the Bible is not literal, but the same as the Jews.....God's Divine Providince. He always was, always will be, and always is.

The facts around the scientific creation of our world to me are semantics. Evolution is not something I spit out at the mere mention of the word, nor do I view it sacrilegious. Still can't come to terms with the part of us coming from bacterium, but do agree with the thought that all creatures must evolve to survive.

But, to end my own thread crapping, I agree with the other posts I read. Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are all one. The Trinity. So it's impossible for him to have a finite beginning.

The best I heard the Trinity explained was "Think of a father---he's a son, a father, a husband, a brother". But that's only to paint the picture. God and Jesus are the same to me. But the same in a sense that I can't understand, since as a human I can't be my own father.

Anyway. Just my thoughts, so feel free to rake them over the coals. I was 2 classes away from a religion minor at school because I really enjoyed the Academic/Historical study of the bible, and Christian Ethics courses. But I admit, My knowledge is still limited.

Props to the person who brought up Josephus as a historian

 

[Moonbeam]

calpha, when you speak of the Jews thinking their culture was so important, what coultures are you contrasting that with who thought their history wasn't important. I have yet to meet souh a culture.

 

[Red Dawn]

<< And all these thread crappers pissed me off. Can't even finish reading. Wish only Christians, or those reading the first post would have replied. >>

Yeah we need a Religion Forum so the two sides can avoid each other.

 

[IGBT]

Get a grip doll...your living in a fairy tale.

 

[DougyDanger]

<< How else do you explain PANAGEA (sp?), dinasaours, etc. >>



Several of the flood models explain how panagea can occur very fast. It also offers a very good explanation as to how the Grand Canyon can happen quickly (weeks) and explains some of the modern probles such as soil deposition, the material is from the midwest not the southwest, and why all the layers are flat.


And Pastor Don, the term "immaculate conception" is a bit vague. It originates from catholic teachings. They atribute the 'immaculate conception' to the conception of Mary, not Jesus (she too was concieved of the Holy Spirit according to the Catholic church). Most protestants think this refers to Jesus. Catholic=Mary and Jesus conceived of God. Protestant=Jesus conceived of God, Mary a woman and man.