knuckles644

Through the Quicken...oops, wrong fiction story

doubtingthomas

Actually I was referring to the words "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound", not to the punctuation.

That phrase indicates that at the trumpet the changes of the dead and living will take place.

Sven

That we can not know what he said (if he even existed).

Toto

Actually, Nagus is wrong on that. For many historical figures, we have their own writings, and if we trust the manuscripts, we have their own words and not a third hand version of what they said.

ichabod crane

I beg to differ. Let's have a close look at John 1, shall we? The most crucial verse is verse 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". Now the problem is, that when the last phrase says "the Word was God", orthodox believers do not take the verb "was" in its natural sense of identity. They take it to mean that the Word was a person (hypostases) with a "God" nature (substance). They can't say "the Word=God", because they would also have to say "the Father=God", and everyone who knows basic logic knows that if X=Y, and Y=Z, then X=Z, in other words, the Word would be the Father. So they have to take the word "was" in a very odd sense indeed. Now the fact that the statement "the Word was with God" precedes the statement "the Word was God", does suggest that "was" may not be being used in the simple sense of identity, because it doesn't make much sense to say "the X was with the X". So what is going on?

Rather than imposing the orthodox creeds of three centuries later, heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, onto the gospel of John, let's try and understand it in the historical context of contemporary Hellenistic Jewish thought about the logos. It then becomes clear what is going on in John 1:1. The author holds to an emanationist ontology of the logos. He sees the logos as an emanation of God. Hence, the logos was God, but emanated from God as a distinct being, before all the creation. This first emanation of God, the "logos" was connected with "wisdom" in the wisdom literature ("The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago", NRSV, Prov. 8:22), by whom God created everything else. Since the logos is an emanation of God, it can rightly be said that in the beginning "the logos was God", since his being is an expression of the being of God and emanated from God's being. Emanationist thinkers such as the Gnostics had no trouble using the word homoousious which later became the key term in the Nicean creed for orthodoxy. John 1:1 is a mystical statement of emanation.

Then we see that "all things came into being through" the logos. Compare with "The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens" (Prov. 3:22). The logos is emanated wisdom.

It isn't supported by the Bible at all. It's a much later development in Christian thinking based on a particular Greek philosophical model.

So different books in the Bible contradict each other. So what? In any case, besides the evidence from the Septuagint, there is another reason to think that Matthew states that Judas hung himself. The writer of Matthew, being a Jew familiar with the OT, very probably was trying to portray Judas as a second Ahithophel. If you remember the story of Ahithophel, he was a the chief advisor to King David, whose counsel was said to be so brilliant that it was like being counselled by God. However, Ahithophel betrayed King David during the civil war and went over to the opposing side. When it turned out that his side did not take his advice and he realized they were going to lose, he went and hung himself. The writer of Matthew saw Jesus as a King in the Davidic mold. When he created the story of Judas the betrayer of Jesus, he probably incorporated elements of the story of Ahithophel the betrayer of David.

Yes, but doesn't that mean the were dead? You say ""sleeping" is what the dead did" ... So if you're sleeping, then you're dead, obviously! As for your preterist interpretation of the resurrection, I'll leave that aside. It doesn't affect my argument; it still means that Paul thought the second coming would occur in his or the Corinthians lifetime. But you think that he actually did return in 70 AD. That's in my view a very implausible position, but doesn't really affect the argument.

jbernier

Absolutely! I agree - and I think that orthodox Christianity has unfortunately neglected the emanationist aspects of Johannine Christology. Indeed, I think that trinitarian thought become much more comprehensible if we keep this emanationism in mind. Actually, I think that the emanation theme was a major part of the thinking of many of the fourth century fathers (particularly the Cappadocians) - however, I must admit that I am not an expert in this area so I would be more than happy to stand corrected. However, the notion that the Son (and the Spirit) are eternally generated by the Father seems to be drawing upon the emanationist theme, at least to a certain extent.

Either way, I think that one cannot reason from scripture to the later orthodox formulations. Rather must work backwards from those formulations, asking "How did Athanasius and his boys draw upon the scriptural tradition in their debate with Arius and his boys?" At the same time you need to ask "Why did the Athanasian and Cappadocian views win out while the Arian, etc., fell by the wayside?" This gets you into questions of power, authority, etc., and their implications for both theology and philosophy.

kelsos

One of my favourite contradictions refer to the ancestry of Jesus. In an effort to show, as the prophecy would have it, the Messiah must be a descendant of David, both Matthew and Luke name the ancestors of Joseph, husband of Mary, yet they can't even agree who the father of Joseph was.

A favorite apologists' claim is that one genealogy is for Joseph, the other for Mary. But both clearly end at Joseph. As Greek writers, both Luke and Matthew would ignore Mary because Greeks ignored the female bloodline.

There's more to this: both Matthew and Luke, Greeks, show their ignorance of Jewish tradition: according to the Jewish tradition it is through the mother that one becomes born a Jew, not the father.

The real kick, though, is, that both attempt to show the lineage for Jesus by listing the forefathers of Joseph, and forget that Joseph was not the father of Jesus: Mary was impregnated by the Holy Ghost.

What a mess! Haha!

It never ceases to amuse me to watch the hopeless attempts of the apologists to make sense out of that.

Amaleq13

How firm are you on the "would occur"? Would you be willing to concede that Paul thought the second coming could occur in his lifetime (and probably genuinely expected it to) but also believed that there was no guarantee of that?

doubtingthomas

He told people that they would not all die, but that some of them would be changed. Now he may not have believed that he would personally live to see the second coming; he did, however, tell the corinthians that not all of them would die before christ's return. He seems pretty certain in saying this to them, and I can't find anything in the text that suggests that he wasn't sure.

Amaleq13

Could you specify the passage?

I can't remember if the standard apologetic comes from Corinthians or another letter but I thought there is at least one passage where Paul appears to be hedging his bets.