athletec64

What did his death really do? Maybe he was buried, and his phosporous from his body helped the plants around him grow.

llamaluvr

But he is praying that his disciples would be one entity- the church. My NIV notes put it like this: "it is much more than unity of organization, but the church's present divisions are the result of the failures of Christians" (emphasis added).

This becomes clearer in the context of the rest of the NT. The church is not simply considered a band of people or a club with a unified purpose. It is portrayed as the arm of Christ on earth, working as one entity. Before I get razzed for the hypocrisy in this, it should be noted that the present reality is that the parts of this arm often "walk" off on their own and do whatever they want.

There's still passages, however, that cannot even be wedged into your interpretation, such as John 1 ("the word was God...").

Anyway, I think Jesus's comparision of the relationship between his disciples and between him and God can help clear up what exactly the trinity is.

Christians don't think that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the exact same thing, and neither does the Bible. They're all God, or, rather, they're all part of the godhead. I think it works like Paul's "parts of the body" illustration (Corinthians 12:12-17) , which he uses in reference to the church, and, since Jesus compares the godhead's relationship to the church, I'm hoping Jesus would agree with me ;-). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all different parts of the godhead's "body". But, if you see or refer to one, you should be able to just say, "Well, that's God!". If you see John Doe's hand sticking out of a door waving at you, you generally say, "Oh, John Doe is here!". The hand is a separate part, but it is representing John Doe.

I'm going to risk going over the heads of non-programming types with this example, but it helps me. In Java, there are two ways of comparing strings (objects containing plain text), or any other pair of objects, for that matter. If you say "string1.equals(string2)", that will evaluate to "true" if the value of string1 contains the same value as string2. if you say "string1 == string2", that will evaluate to "true" only if string1 is the exact same object as string2 (as in, they occupy the exact same address in your system's RAM).

Jesus is God and the Father is God, so "Jesus.equals(God)" will evaluate to "true", but they're not the exact same part of the godhead, so "Jesus == God" will evaluate to "false".

This isn't complete, because the Bible doesn't reveal every detail of exactly how the godhead is assembled, but I think it's about the best we can understand it.


Anyway, TruthIsTold, that pertains more to the link you posted (linked again here ). I feel like your post considers Jesus and the Father to be 100% exactly the same, which is not correct. Jesus was not being schizophrenic when he prayed to the Father.

Also, I think a few things need to be clarified in your preconditions before you can attempt to make the conclusions you did:

1) There are different levels in which God is immanent in things. God being immanent in everything does not mean that he is one with everything, nor does it mean that he "communes" with everything (that is the deepest level, reserved for believers). It simply means that he has some presence within everything. That said, immanence is vauge enough that I think it has no bearing on any conclusions you might try to draw.

2) It is meaningless to say something is omnipotent unless the universe of discourse, and its restrictions, are understood.

When talking about atonement and salvation, we should consider the universe of discourse to be God's dealings with man. One of the restrictions on this universe is that the penalty for sin must be maintained. Therefore, any actions which do not preserve this condition are absent from the set of all possible actions in this universe. God is omnipotent, because he can perform any action in that set, but he can't just sweep everybody's sinfulness under the carpet and ignore it, because any action removing the penalty of sin is absent from the set.

Anyway, I am failing to see, based on your preconditions, how your points #1 and #2, on which the rest of your argument stands, are rendered as being true. Could you elaborate?

may

[QUOTE=llamaluvr]

There's still passages, however, that cannot even be wedged into your interpretation, such as John 1 ("the word was God...").

jQUOTE]
According to the teaching of the Trinity, there are three persons in one God, that is, there is “one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.� Many religious organizations teach this, even though they admit it is “a mystery.� Are such views of God correct?

Well, did Jesus ever say that he was God? No, he never did. Rather, in the Bible he is called “God’s Son.� And he said: “The Father is greater than I am.� (John 10:34-36; 14:28) Also, Jesus explained that there were some things that neither he nor the angels knew but that only God knew. (Mark 13:32) Further, on one occasion Jesus prayed to God, saying: “Let, not my will, but yours take place.� (Luke 22:42) If Jesus were the Almighty God, he would not have prayed to himself, would he? In fact, following Jesus’ death, the Scripture says: “This Jesus God resurrected.� (Acts 2:32) so the Almighty God and Jesus are clearly two separate persons. Even after his death and resurrection and ascension to heaven, Jesus was still not equal to his Father.—1Corinthians 11:3; 15:28.

‘But isn’t Jesus called a god in the Bible?’ someone may ask. This is true. Yet Satan is also called a god. (2Corinthians 4:4) At John 1:1, which refers to Jesus as “the Word,� some Bible translations say: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.� But notice, verse 2 says that the Word was “in the beginning with God.� And while men have seen Jesus, verse 18 says that “no man hath seen God at any time.� (Authorized or King James Version) So we find that some translations of verse 1 give the correct idea of the original language when they read: “The Word was with God, and the Word was divine,� or was “a god,� that is, the Word was a powerful godlike one. (An American Translation) Clearly, Jesus is not Almighty God. In fact, Jesus spoke of his Father as “my God� and as “the only true God.�—John 20:17; 17:3.

newtype_alpha

It has something to do with the apostle Paul's interpretation of the death of Jesus. Paul, apparently, saw some kind of paralelle between the killing of Jesus and the ritual sacrifice of the Jewish temple used as an act of attonement. Paul rationalized it by stating that the sacrifice had to be a perfectly spotless animal in order for it to work. He also noted (taking for granted, I believe) what has become a kind of catch phrase for Christians as "without the shedding of blood there is no remission for sins."

Paul's lack of knowledge about Jewish customs seems evident, mainly the fact that Jesus' body was never burned, and the fact that human sacrifice is expressly forbidden in the Torah. The idea of sacrificial attonement itself is supported by refuting a theological strawman: apparently God is so strict in his standards of righteousness that if you sin only once, he will send you to hell for all eternity. Jesus, therefore, was sacrificed in order to placate God's vengeful tendencies, and as a sacrifice for the sins of the world (not really the world, just those who believe in him) he can sort of intercede on behalf of mankind. It's like a "good cop, bad cop" system: you either except Jesus' sacrifice and have God forgive all your sins, or deal with the big man yourself and get roasted. I've even heard Jesus called an"advocate," almost like a lawyer or something who argues for the character of Christians and convinces the judge that the accused isn't bad at all (where Satan is the prosecuter.) Basically this means that everyone is guilty of sins, but Jesus is the trick-lawyer who can get everyone off and all you have to do is believe that he can.

Personally I've always thought of this as rather perverse. If God is so morally uptight that he would send all of mankind to hell for even the tiniest offenses, then his system is a flawed one--as evidenced by the fact that his own son helps humans thwart the system by allowing them to be forgiven even though they don't deserve it. Christians often lament how "wonderful" the sacrifice of Jesus is, since it allows them to be forgiven even though they are "filthy rotten sinners," yet it always sounds to me a little like a serial rapist walzting out of the court room with an acquittal and saying to the press, "Damn right I did it! Thank god for lawyers!"

llamaluvr

You'll have to pardon me for beating this mortally wounded horse, but, the big problem is, if your interpretation is correct, I cannot worship Jesus without violating the first commandment.

First of all, as I said before, Jesus as God is not the *exact* same thing as the Father as God. This is taken further when Jesus takes on flesh. At that point in history, God is willfully limiting himself as Jesus, because he is restricting Jesus to acting in the natural world as a human. It is therefore reasonable to suggest that Jesus was self-restricted in other ways, too, such as what phrophecies he could reveal. When Jesus says that the Father is greater than he is, he is refering to this self-submission that he is undergoing. Obviously, at this point, he is less than the Father, because the Father is at the helm of the universe, while the Son is a carpenter's son in Jerusalem who is about to be nailed to a tree. Phillipians 2:6-8 reinforces this.

The rest of the verses you pointed out are great examples of why it is important to read them in context:

Luke 22:42 - Examine what Jesus is doing here. He is saying that he wishes there is another way, but that his ultimate wish is that atonement take place on God's own terms. The human part of Jesus is hesitant about what is about to happen to him, but he upholds the position maintained by the Father, and thus the godhead agrees with itself.

2 Corinthians 4:4 - Paul is refering to Satan the same way Baal is referenced in the OT, as one that is held up as a false god (notice the lowercase "g").

John 1:18 - You missed the rest of the verse, which says "but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known". John spends the whole two paragraphs up to that point waxing poetic about Jesus; who else could be the subject of that sentence fragment?


newtype_alpha, I'm having trouble discerning it from your post, but, in your first paragraph, are you saying that Paul introduced those concepts? The OT fails to back that up. It seems like every other line in Leviticus is talking about sacrificing a "-insert animal here- without blemish". Also, the notion that atonement requires sacrifice is totally supported by the OT, where animal sacrifice was the primary means of worship.

Anyway, I think it's remiss to say Paul was not versed in Jewish tradition, considering he was a Pharisee. He should have been as versed as anybody. Your objections seem to assume that the sacrifice of Jesus was just another burnt offering. Christ's death and sacrifices under the Old Covenant were fundamentally different. One of them doesn't even have the power to forgive sins. Read Hebrews 9-10 for the exact reasons why.

God, or the Law, is the prosecutor. God is the offended party here; why would he have his adversary argue the case? Not to be nit-picky, but I just want you to be clear that Satan is not on the committee that decides who goes to heaven.

According to definition, God is an eternal being. According to the Bible, God never changes his character. Morals are part of his character. So, if God decides not to be so "morally uptight" for even one little sin, what are the consequences for him?

I actually like your slick lawyer analogy. But, if we're going to highlight the similarities between the act of atonement and court proceedings, we better remember the differences, too. In the Father, we have a perfect judge. In the Son, we have a lawyer who offers an alibi the judge buys. If he's a perfect judge, he's really not being duped when he accepts what Christ puts on the table. We can consider the court's finding to be correct a priori because of the immpeccible integrity of judge.

may

[QUOTE=p

[b]John 1:18[/b] - You missed the rest of the verse, which says "but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known". John spends the whole two paragraphs up to that point waxing poetic about Jesus; who else could be the subject of that sentence fragment?

pQUOTE]
“The Only-Begotten God�

I do not deny Jesus’ godship, or divinity. But I do not share the Trinitarians’ philosophical understanding of these terms. When Trinitarians speak of the “divinity of Jesus,� they do not mean that he is “a god� or “godlike,� but that he is “God,� one of the three co-eternal persons of the “Godhead.� Perhaps this explains why many of Christendom’s Bibles render John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.� (Revised Standard Version) The majority of the oldest Greek manuscripts show, not “the only Son,� but “the only-begotten god.� The Expositor’s Greek Testament admits: “The MS. [manuscript] authority favours the reading [god]; while the versions and the [Church] Fathers weigh rather in the opposite scale.� Why? Because they feared anti-Trinitarians for whom “this appellation [‘only-begotten god’] happily distinguished Him [the Son] from the Father.�

saying: “Father, if you wish, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, let, not my will, but yours take place.� (LUKE 22-42)Here jesus is talking to his father , sorry but the bible is quite clear when jesus says , let not my will but yours take place.Jesus is not part of a God head

dannyh44

llamaluvr,

"However, like the bridge builder, he still has to work within constraints, such as logic, morality, and the need to preserve man's free will."

You state that God must act within the constraints of morality. This is not so. Whatever God does is moral, according to most Christians. So, if God says kill innocent babies, fetuses, children,etc. (1 Sam. 15), then its automatically moral, right?

He's not constrained by morality. If God said that shaking hands on Tuesday is now a sin, then it would be an immoral act. According to the Bible, there are no universal moral constants.

easychair

Yes, Abraham was justified through his willingness to sacrifice his only son. The thought (faith) was taken in place of the deed. Why then did God allow his son to be crucified even though he was clearly willing to sacrifice himself? Would sparing Jesus have been like God saving himself? I don't get it.

When Jesus asked his father (in his mind) why he had forsaken him maybe he had been expecting a reprieve. What a shock for him to realize that he was actually a sacrificial lamb, not the Son of God.

Hyndis

If God doing an act makes it moral, God is a tyrant and a monster. For instance, one day God can murder all the babies in the world and the next he can write in stone "Thou shalt not murder." And both acts are moral. Its moral to murder and moral not to murder. :huh:

Or, if God can only do things that are moral, God isn't omnipotent. God doesn't have free will, either, for God can only do the most moral act at any given time. This means that God has a deity of some sort above him. This super-deity is the moral deity, and is more powerful than God.

Neither option is all the pious, eh?

llamaluvr

I'm trying to answer all questions in one post, so sorry if I don't get to exactly the point quoted immediately.

That's not exactly what I said, er, if I said it, it's not exactly what I meant ;-). God must preserve his goodness. In other words, he can't do anything that is "un-good". At first glance, this might look like an arbitrary limiting of his own power, or it might insinuate that that God is not omnipotent. It actually does neither. Let me explain.

The Bible says God is all good. It also says that his character always remains the same. Hence, if being all good is part of his character, he is always all good.

Now, let's add the whole thing about God being eternal. If God is eternal, he was never born or created. He was always just there. Since his character never changes, he must have always had the same character, And, since part of his character is that he is all good, he must have always been all good. Therefore, God's all goodness is as old as the guy himself, who is timeless. This means that God's goodness, or his sense of what is good, has never just been arbitrarily conceived- it has always been the standard.

We can say about the same regarding his feeling that sin should be punished- his sense of good isn't really much of a sense of good at all if he doesn't think being bad deserves some sort of reprimand. For the sake of argument, we'll consider the sense that punishment is required for badness to be part of his sense of good.

Now, if his definition of what is good is ever going to change, then that means his character is going to have to change. And that just isn't going to happen. It's not as if he doesn't have the power to do something bad- he certainly is strong enough to overpower somebody and steal his wallet, if not do something worse- but it's just not going to happen. His character isn't going to change, and he's sticking to that.

Think about what "perfect" means. If you are a perfect being, have been perfect for all of eternity, and have a sense of what is good, your sense of good should already be perfect, and any tinkering with it would make your sense of good less perfect. At that point, you've become an imperfect being. That's not supposed to happen to perfect beings.

------

Okay, now we can talk about all this stuff God killed. For one thing, the Bible (like many bodies of government), does not consider all taking of life to be murder. If you want to know what murder is according to the Bible, check out Matthew 5:21-26.

Secondly, before anybody actually asserts that God killed innocent human beings, one actually needs to assert that these humans were indeed innocent. Appealing to me that they were young and cute babies doesn't faze me; I'm far too jaded ;-).

Thirdly, we must recognize the limits of what God has done. OT smiting examples do not elaborate on the eternal destination of any smitten individuals. We only know that he's killed the body; we don't know about the soul.

Let me tell you about any baby that only spent 1 minute or even less out of the womb before dying. Yes, they did not get to learn to read, walk, or ride a bicycle. They never went to school, had a birthday cake, or a toy monster truck. They never went to college, got a job, got married, or enjoyed sex. They never had kids. They never rode a roller coaster. They never bought a house. They never went to the movies. They never saw Luis Gonzalez beat Mariano Rivera, Michael Jordan's game-winning jumper in game 6 of the '98 finals, or John Elway's drive against Cleveland. They never played Soul Calibur, OR Soul Calibur 2! They never cooked, and they never enjoyed a Shamrock Shake. And they never loved.

But, if they inherited the kingdom of heaven, they WON. They did as good as anybody could possibly do. They wouldn't care about missing all that stuff, because they got what is truly GOOD.


Finally, if God is perfect, and the taking of life isn't a uniformly bad thing, then he can have some perfectly legitimate reason for doing so, even if some humans on earth in on a discussion board don't agree with it :-).