Originally Posted by No Robots

What seems to get lost is that we have here a portrait of a man whose personal power and originality so completely overwhelm all categories that we can only give him the title of Messiah (Christ).

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

We have such a portrait of personal power and originality that it requires us to grant an inappropriate title to him?

Originally Posted by No Robots

I recommend looking at Joseph Klausner's summary of the portrait of Christ's power and originality, from which we read:

The contradictory traits in his character, its positive and negative aspects, his harshness and his gentleness, his clear vision combined with his cloudy visionariness—all these united to make him a force and an influence, for which history has never yet afforded a parallel.

Originally Posted by bacht

The first problem is that there are at least four portraits of Jesus (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) as well as somewhat mysterious treatments in the epistles. If you think these can all be harmonized then you're not doing disinterested analysis.

Originally Posted by No Robots

They all attest, each in its own way, to a single powerful personality.

Here is Brunner:

In the New Testament, the person and the life of Christ is everything (I have already said that genius has taken the place of the divinity); everything is held together in unity by the man Christ, whose reality is established all the more firmly through the manifold views of him. The Jacobite, Petrine, Synoptic, Pauline, Johannine approaches, different as they are from one another, all guarantee and cause us to discern the One Christ. So that is enough of historical proofs!—which we do not need, though we must not forget that we have them. We have all possible proofs; there is no kind of proof lacking.

Originally Posted by bacht

The word "catholic" means universal, ie inclusive of everything. The hodgepodge of ideas in the NT is testimony to the desire of early Roman Christians to bridge as many beliefs as possible in the developing canon. This tells us more about the roots of orthodoxy than about Jesus himself.

Originally Posted by No Robots

I didn't say it is inappropriate.

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

I'm not. Your argument is related to the OP and I am simply pointing out the rather obvious logical flaw in it. :huh:



Only if you refuse to correct your argument and continue to make logically flawed claims. I'm still optimistic despite past experience.

You could but it would have no basis in reality or the rules of logic. I am dealing with your argument as it relates to the OP so your complaint has no basis whatsoever.

Make better arguments.

Originally Posted by No Robots

The Christian religion is an amalgam of Christ's pure Judaism and paganism. Here is Brunner again:

If Christianity is to become what it wants to be, it must renounce the desire to know anything that pure Judaism in Christ neither knows nor wishes to know: it must renounce symbols, dogmas, articles of faith, liturgy, worship; it must want to know nothing of creation, the Fall, redemption and justification, heaven and hell, the incarnation of God, the Three Persons of the Godhead, the single Personality of God; it must not hold on to a single item of religion's superstition. If Christianity is to come about, Christ must be the Master, revealing to the heathen that they are but men (Ps. 9:21).

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

The title is clearly not appropriate for the man described in the stories.