Vicar Philip

But can't the same thing be said for Christianity? I mean, really.... turning water into wine, parting the Red Sea, a worldwide flood, the Resurrection, healing lepers, etc. Dozens of miracles designed to impress a Bronze Age audience. I agree with you that the story of Joseph Smith and his wacky glasses IS ludicrous, but so is much of Christian belief. Ask yourself this, Not_Registered: If you had been raised in a Mormon family and were part of a long, proud history of Mormon families, would you still find Mormon beliefs ludicrous? How is this any different from Christian inculcation?

Not_Registered

I have no problem at all with people disagreeing with me that Jesus was wise. I just have a problem when people will disagree with me regardless of the point made, regardless of the substance backing the argument, and just regardless. The individuals in that other thread were not talking of Jesus "not being wise" they were talking of Jesus "being stupid". There is a big difference. I can understand the viewpoint of the prior, but not the later. One can defend Jesus “not being wise�, but Jesus was not a fool.


So I guess we are going to discount all things accredited to Socrates who, based on several sources, never wrote anything down. Thus we must trust his “gospelwriters� to have correctly accredited works to him. This also applies to all great philosophers, writers, speakers, and influential people of history for which their speeches aren’t on audio or video tape or their words written in hand by them. For instance, how do we know that the many famous sayings of past presidents were correctly recorded if there is not video or audio evidence. We must trust their "gospelwriters." Also, it might be a stretch, but how can we know that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, do we have actual video of him doing this. Because for past inventions there are often others claiming that someone else invented a certain device before the accredited person. But, we trust the historically noted individual's “gospelwriters�. Maybe we don’t have to put these people’s (Socrates, past presidents, Thomas Edison, etc.) “gospelwriters� under as much scrutiny as Jesus’, but I’m just saying this to show a point. I have momentarily diverted from the topic of this thread to speak on the question raised in the above quote, but it should be know that for the sake of argument we must agree that the printed words are the words of Jesus' if we are to make any headway discussing any topic where Jesus' discourses are relevant. Otherwise, EVERY time....EVERY time...we will end up debating the inerrancy/errancy of the gospels, thus destroying the change for a conversation on anything but that.

Not_Registered

Well now I'm a little maddened....it took me 5 minutes....5 whole minutes, to find a dictionary so I could look up inculcation. Anyway, Christianity is not so similar in fairy-taleness (maybe I should look that word up too) to Mormonism, as you make it out to be. First, the miracles in Christianity are that....miracles. They are performed by God, who, if we acknowledge that He is a god, is capable of such things. On the other hand Mormons believe the following: God used to be a man on another planet, God resides near a star called Kolob, pologamy is acceptable, men and women have the potential of becoming gods, those who achieve godhood will be permitted to have his or her own planet and be the god of his own world, and the list goes on. Not to mention the ridiculous beginnings of the religion by Joseph Smith and the fact that their "prophet", whom belief in is necessary to achieve salvation, was a money-digger. These Mormon beliefs are preposterous and utterly nonsensical beliefs. Any attempt to equate them to Christian beliefs is almost the same.

To respond to your query concerning how I would react to being raised in a Mormon family. At some point I would seek the truth out for myself and find that Mormonism is crazy and abandon it. I did the same as a Christian, actually just a couple years ago. I layed down my biased opinions and looked at my faith objectively and eventually came up with the conclusion that Christianity is the correct choice, not based on mere feelings. Even the bible says to love the Lord with all your mind, which implies you should have an intellectual and logical backing for your belief, otherwise you are just fooling and forcing yourself to believe something that you really don't believe. So, I say all that to say I would at some time seek the truth and become aware of Mormonism utterly erroneous beliefs.

Toto

No one insists that I believe that Socrates death washed the world of sin. In fact, many people harbor some doubts as to whether Socrates' words are reported correctly - but it doesn't matter. They go on to analyze the words as they stand on the page.

In fact, historians do maintain a degree of skepticism on all historical sources, but for most recent sources, such as US presidents, the evidence allows us to be reasonably sure of what they wrote or said, so that when David Barton claims that George Washington left a prayer book, we can be reasonably sure that it is bogus.

If you are going to require that we accept the gospels as accurate sources - which no historian automatically does with any ancient document - there is little left to discuss. Whoever wrote the Gospels tried to portray Jesus as a wise man. Does this say anything about Jesus in fact? No. Does this mean that Christianity is true? No. So what are you trying to argue?

Vicar Philip

Is it possible someone could go through a process identical to what you described and come to the same conclusions regarding Islam? Why would that person be incorrect?
That is ironic, seeing how the bible initially condemns the Tree of Knowledge as a sure path to destruction. In addition, the concept of faith is constantly trotted out throughout the bible. Grace through faith. I don't know about you, but I am a firm adherent to Mark Twain's definition of faith: Faith is believing what you know ain't so. I can come up with absolutely no "intellectual and logical backing" for belief in god, no matter who is making the claim.

Not_Registered

I'm not disagreeing with you at all Toto that we must be skeptical of the accuracy of the bible. Your statement that I "require" people to "accept the gospels as accurate sources" implies that I'm forcing people to accept it for all occasions and move on, but it doesnt address that I said we must do this while discussing the topic of this thread only "for the sake of argument," not as an ultimate acceptance. If the topic of this thread was about the accuracy of the bible then we could discuss that, but it's not. This is a difficult issue because, yes I see what you're saying - the fact that we don't know for sure the accuracy of the bible allows the possibility that my and other defenses are incorrect because Jesus never really said what I'm saying He said. But, surely you can see my point - that if we continuously bring the uncertainty of accuracy of the bible up then we can never have a discussion. I think you'd agree that the overwhelming majority of knowledge we have on Jesus is from the bible. Thus, to say anything about Jesus we must rely on the bible. So of course while saying something, or anything, about Jesus (because we must rely on the bible to do so) one can divert the initial discussion to one about the accuracy of the bible. So really instead of momentarily accepting the gospels as accurate for the sake of argument we would really doing it for the sake of being able to have an argument at all.

Amaleq13

www.dictionary.com will save you some time.


Also, I'm still confused why you keep spending so much time responding to folks who will not accept your assumption while ignoring those of us who are willing to do so.

As far as I can tell, the wisdom Jesus is depicted exhibiting in the Gospel stories is no different from that of the Cynic sages offered by Mack nor is it any different from that of the "just man" depicted in Jewish Wisdom literature.

It would appear to me, to directly answer your OP question, that your amazement at Jesus' depicted wisdom results from an absence of appropriate comparative context.

Toto

Of course we can. We can discuss the character of Jesus in the Gospels. I am still waiting for you to make a substantive comment on that.

Yes - Jesus does not exist outside of the Bible. That does not mean that we have to accept the Bible to discuss what the Bible says.

Then it would help if you framed your questions as relating to the portrait of Jesus in the Bible, rather than making the mental leap to Jesus as portrayed in the Bible.

I'm still waiting for you to explain why the Jesus of the gospels was especially wise, and what conclusions you can draw from that.

But while I'm waiting, others might want to read this recent post on Crosstalk by Ken Olson on The Testamonium's characterization of Jesus as a wise man, which he traces to Porphyry:

Not_Registered

First of all, I never said nor implied this about Islam because I don't know much about the religion. I only spoke about Mormonisn. Secondly, your question is completely off topic for this thread and I am not that knowledgable on the Islamic religion so I wouldn't be able to adequately answer your question. If you really want me to address it at a later date I would advise you to open a separate thread.

Toto, as you can see, evidenced by our side discussion and mine with Vicar Philip, it is easy to deviate from the initial topic of the thread. This is the reason I wanted to, for the sake of having an argument at all, agree to accept the bible as Jesus' words - only temporarily - just for the scope of this thread...just to have a discussion regarding the initial topic. Not as an ultimate acceptance. Only a small portion of the thread has been a discussion on the topic I initially raised about the wisdom of Jesus and most people probably even forgot what we first were talking about. Most people are probably focused on what I said about Mormonism, or what I said about the bible being accurate (which I never said - I just said we should agree to temporarily accept the bible as Jesus' words for the sake of having an argument at all), or some other ulterior topic not really related to the initial topic raised.

I guess that's how it goes in the forum. I really have no problem with that or with discussing other things I just really wanted hear people's opinions on the initial topic I raised - How was Jesus so wise? I have no qualms with discussing or debating other topics I just started a new thread though because I was really interested to hear other people's opinions on my first topic.

So, I say that to remind people of the initial topic. So, if you want to still comment on How was Jesus so wise, please do. In the mean time I guess the flow of the thread will continue to go elsewhere, but that is uncontrolable.

Toto

NR - to remind you, your OP said Nothing there about just assuming that the Bible is accurate as to what Jesus said, or recognizing that only Mark called Jesus a carpenter, and it's not clear if this meant that Jesus actually worked with his hands, or if this was a metaphor for Jesus' ability to argue well in the Parisaic tradition.

You have not responded to the answers that you have gotten - that the tale is fiction, that Jesus showed an ordinary level of wisdom at most.

Discussion requires some give and take.