Vinnie

When Jesus was down in Gethsemane the angel mentioned in Luke comforted him with these words:

"Jesus, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance--JUST ONE CHANCE--to come back here and tell our enemy...that he may take your life, but he'll never take YOUR FREEDOM!!!!"

Vinnie

sharon45

I will give some of christian beliefs and traditions, but as for the rest, that is serious contradiction, somewhat akin to being "kind of pregnant". Seems like you still have a long way to be able to correctly define your religious dilemma.

Vinnie

Whats a contradiction? Agnostic theism? Only if you misunderstand it.

Vinnie

Kosh

I'm undecided about agnostic theism.

capnkirk

That is such baloney I don't even know where to start to respond. Suffice it to say that you have just demonstrated the magic of myth. You can take a myth and twist it any way you want and get any meaning out of it you want.

GMark was written at least 40 years after the (alleged) event by someone in northern Syria. GJohn was written 60 years after by a gnostic with really good drugs. GJohn OPENS with a hymn to the (Greek) Logos! How "christian" is that?

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Chili

Mark was also written by a gnostic and that is exactly what is so "Christian" about it all. Christians are gnostic-without-borders and those who think that they must follow a tradition are only pretenders who are trying to figure out what to do next . . . and there is no freedom in that.

Vinnie

You two might want to define the term "gnostic" before you start tossing it out. Its one of the most commonly absude terms in Christian origins research.

Vinnie

capnkirk

I am not going to engage you on this because you don't know enough about early Xtian history (100-400 CE) to make it interesting. So, I will recommend a book instead. It is not a book by and for atheists. It was written by a respected theological scholar (who chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina). I'm even going to provide a link to amazon.com where you can read the various reviews of Lost Christianities, The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew at no risk and decide for yourself. This book is just one source to learn just how bitter the battle was between the proto-orthodox church and the "heretical" gnostics.

The author, Bart Ehrman, describes the chaos of contending beliefs that was the early church. Some groups of Xtians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but a lesser, ignorant deity (the gnostics). Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, whle others said he was divine, but not human. All of these groups insisted that they upheld the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and they all possessed writings that bore out their claims, books reputedly produced by Jesus' own followers. Ehrman offers a look at these early forms of Xtianity and shows how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. He examines in depth the bitter battles that raged between the proto-orthodox Xtians (who eventually compiled the canonical books of the NT and standardized Xtian belief) and the groups they denounced as heretics and ultimately overcame. Check it out for yourself.

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Enterprise...OUT.