Libanius

I am not sure I understood my question. But, I know I do not understand what 'the present power is God's thorugh the spirit' means. I think the main quetion I wanted to ask was how do you work in God's power?

You are using the terms God, Jesus, Holy Spirit...and I am completely incapable of understanding the trinity, and do not want an explanation of the trinity from you, but saying the present power is God's through the spirit, is pretty much saying the present power is God's through God. Or Jesus through Jesus. Or Spirit through spirit. Redundant at the least. The clarity of thought is not inducive to understanding.


Christians have been trying to 'clean' people up for too long now. They should mind their own. Live and let live, do unto others, etc...We have received the message, the goodnews. Personally, it doesn't ring in my 'soul' as true.


Sure, I dig the love part, the helping the poor bit, but until I see churches more concerned with poor people and less concerned with real estate and worship, I will think that maybe you don't have to be a christian to value helping others. Virtue is its own reward, anyway.



Yeah, I like Johnny. :notworthy:

I see neither victory nor peace for Jesus. I see a common story. One could argue that the victory was Paul's or Constantine's, but not Jesus'. Jesus was committed to throwing the Romans out of Israel or die trying. A noble purpose. To twist that into a sacrifice for all mankind from God, based on lies of a resurrection and ascension into heaven, well, it is fraud, pure and simple.


Well, he was right to die trying to brew up a revolution to cast Rome out of Israel. How many miracles does one have to perform before poeple start believing? The disciples didn't really get it until the resurrection? After they had seen him cure Lazarus of being dead? After they had seen him feed multitudes from a couple of loaves of bread and a few fish? No, that wasn't enough, it took resurrection and ascension to convince them? If any of the miracle stories were true, Jesus would have all of Israel in the palm of his hands. The word would have spread very fast (from the discpiles themselves, not the ones at the miracle feast) and Judaism would have collapsed in favor of Jesus worship. Actions speak louder than words, then and now. Show me a man that can raise the dead, and I will, in an instant, follow that person to the ends of the earth and believe whatever he says. As it is, we are left with the knowledge that Jerusalem was completely destroyed with very few Jews having converted to Christianity. This tells me all I need to know about the powers of Jesus.

Jane H

Spamandham- absolutely; I did describe the single statement as a simplification of a range of views. The exact division of roles between the Messiah and YHWH was never clear- for reasons we now know. However there certainly was an expectation of the return of YHWH to Zion (for example Malachi 3:1-3, and at various points in Isaiah 40-55).

Libanius- I agree how the churches have failed to their mission to the poor too often. All I can say is that Christians have been very actively involved in agendas like “Make Poverty History“ and in many, many, many little ways that go under the radar.

Miracles were seen as God acting through an individual, and not as being done by the individual. Elisha, Elijah, and Paul all raised the dead, but it was interpreted as God’s action through them. God might have done miracles through Jesus, and word certainly spread (post #29), but when He died, the Christian movement died with Him, as He was shown by that to be a certain fake.

On which note I’ll move focus finally to the question of history vs. science. Were this a normal historical event, such as the destruction of the temple in AD70, it would be regarded as historically sure. But this isn’t a normal event. We know the dead don’t come back to life. If history says it happened, science and everyday experience say it didn’t, and that’s too bad for history. Science trumps history.

Well, perhaps there’s a third way.

The first thing to note is that Jesus new body wasn’t simply a reanimation of the old. There was continuity in that it could be recognised, could eat and be held. But it was different- e.g. incorruptible. It had evolved. Humanity 2.0, the first model off the production line. His was the first body of the type available to all who follow Him, to appear at the general resurrection. The term transphysical is used by some. People don’t come back from the dead- but could there be a process of change, of sudden evolution ahead?

Secondly, if you want to know what the scenery looks like on the route I propose to take, a much better version of the argument is at:

http://www.holycross.edu/departments...transcript.pdf

I will struggle to cover that ground using the forum post method, though!

Jane H

To quote Dom Crossan: http://www.zionsherald.org/archives/...iewJuly05.html

Whatever point he might be making, this represents a new way of looking at ‘miracle‘. Perhaps there is no natural. There is only supernatural. Newton’s laws were considered as fixed points of science. Then it was discovered they were wrong, being approximations that worked at low speeds to the relativistic laws of Einstein. (Mind you, the only people who need to worry about speeds close to light are scientists and certain drivers on my local dual carriageway).

But what if we’re not finished? That Einstein’s laws are approximations to some thing else, which in return is an approximation to…something involving God. Science learns from anomalies, and it may be that existing scientific theories need to be yet further refined to include things like the Resurrection.

Paul certainly considered the resurrection process to be a natural one (Romans 8:22): “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” The resurrection was built into the DNA of the universe, with Jesus being the first showing of it.

With the whole point of this exposition being: We just don’t know a priori how likely it is that we are living in this model of the universe, rather than the “When you’re dead you’re dead” one. Modern science and everyday experience work in both of them equally well.

Libanius

I say no. I don't buy it. That is more like the evolution that creationists 'believe in' though.

Did the people in Jonestown need a resurrection event to willingly die for their leader? The Heaven's Gate people? They certainly were dedicated, ultimately dedicated, if you will. How are they different than the disciples?

I wanted to believe that Jesus was my personal savior, and you end up in heaven with your loved ones. I want it to be true, but the more I understand history, science, the more that I understand about life in general, the less I find Christian dogma to be reliable. So I follow the evidence. This evolution you speak of, Jane, it only applies to Jesus, and wouldn't the resurrection, if Jesus was indeed an new person (but not) qualify as the 2nd coming? Jesus 1.0 > Jesus 2.0. Is Jesus 2.0 coming back for the second coming or will that be Jesus 3.0?

spamandham

The issue is more basic than this I think. Modern Christian readings of the OT tend to project back an anachronistic perspective that interprets books such as Isaiah as if they are messianic prophecy. They were not meant as prophecies of some great distant messiah to come, but were instead applicable to their own day. Knowledgable 1st century Jews knew that.

It really wasn't until Christian apologists started combing the OT looking for anything that could be construed as predicting Jesus, that these books began to be seen as messianic prophecy.

Johnny Skeptic

Up to what point? What is the minimum number of eyewitnesses that would satisfy you? Do you have any credible evidence that all of the disciples saw Jesus after he rose from the dead? What evidence do you have that all of the surviving disciples promoted Christianity until their deaths?

Matthew 28:16-17 say "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted." Do you not find that to be quite odd since almost no one believed that Jesus would rise from the dead, and and since Luke 24:33-34 say "And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon," and since John 20:19-20 say "Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord."?

Now where did Jesus first appear to some or all of the disciples, Galilee, Jerusalem, or somewhere else?

By the way, the eventual size of the Christian church is not any more significant than the eventual size of the Muslim church. The Muslim church is now larger than Christianity is based upon growth per year, and is currently growing faster than Christianity is. In addition, in the future, who knows how fast new religions, or existing religions, might grow?

Regarding the issue of women in the early Christian church, what is significant about that since Christian men continued to subjugate women for about 1900 more years? If God encouraged early Christian men to partially elevate the status of women, why didn't he encourage them to give up slavery?

Why should women have been subjugated in the first place?

In your opinion, what is God trying to accomplish?

Johnny Skeptic

This is a revision of my previous post. Please disregard my previous post because I did not state all of it like I wanted to.

Up to what point? What is the minimum number of eyewitnesses that would satisfy you? Do you have any credible evidence that all of the disciples saw Jesus after he rose from the dead? What evidence do you have that all of the surviving disciples promoted Christianity until their deaths?

Luke 24:33-34 say "And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon." Do you not find that to be quite odd? Almost no one believed that Jesus would rise from the dead, and yet the disciples and those that were with them believed that Jesus has risen from the dead on hearsay evidence that might not have even come from Peter. John 20:19-20 say "Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord." Matthew 28:16-17 say "Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted." Now which is it, did the disciples believe that Jesus rose from the dead, or did they doubt that Jesus rose from the dead?

Now where did Jesus first appear to some or all of the disciples, Galilee, Jerusalem, or somewhere else? In Matthew, the angel tells Mary to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, but in Luke and John, it appears that Jesus did not first appear to the disciples in Galilee.

By the way, the eventual size of the Christian church is not any more significant than the eventual size of the Muslim church. The Muslim church is now larger than Christianity is based upon growth per year, and is currently growing faster than Christianity is. In addition, in the future, who knows how fast new religions, or existing religions, might grow?

Regarding the issue of women in the early Christian church, what is significant about that since Christian men continued to subjugate women for about 1900 more years? If God encouraged early Christian men to partially elevate the status of women, why didn't he encourage them to give up slavery?

Why should women have been subjugated in the first place?

In your opinion, what is God trying to accomplish?

Riverwind

I can see, Johnny, that you really struggle in your relationship with God.

Chili

. . . from the other side, maybe?

Johnny Skeptic

Why yes, I do have a problem with any being who kills babies with no apparent benefit to him or to the babies.

If you will tell us what God is trying to accomplish, maybe we can make some progress, book, chapter, and verse if you please.