Ted Hoffman

Ilgwamh Heres my refutation: For (1)
First of all, from the way you have formulated your argument, its evident that you have treated Lord and God as synonyms. You have not bifucated them and thus I will treat them as synonyms. I could also throw in Occams razor at this point but I dont thinks its necessary.
Jesus, during his supposed death, said:
Mark 15:34,37 (Matthew 27:46,50)
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"-which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"...with a loud cry Jesus breathed his last.


Luke 23:46
Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.

And John 17:3:
Jesus, says: "And this is life eternal, that they might know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent

These three passages clearly show that Jesus was not God.

(1) Therefore fails.
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(2) The Bible says God can't lie
If I pay someone and send him to kill Ilgwamh, I am still a murderer thus God too, lies:
God lies by Proxy. As the bible illustrates in the following verses:
1 Kg.22:23
"Now, therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee."
2 Chr.18:22
"Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets."
Jer.20:7
"O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived."
Ezek.14:9
"And if a prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet."
2 Th.2:11
"For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie."
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(3) God wrote the Bible ...
Which parts of the bible? Leviticus? Acts of the Apostles?
(3) Is only correct if God wrote the whole bible himself. Luke "investigated" and wrote Acts of the Apostles, Paul was a self-proclaimed apostle, Mark was Peters interpreter as Papias is claimed to have said (I don't buy anything from Eusebius).

So tell us, which parts of the Bible did God write? And mind you, if you rephrase (3), you need to reformulate your argument.

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(4)Thus Jesus wrote the Bible cause he is God.

It simply does not follow. You are begging the question. In any case this is a fallacy of affirmation of the precedent. You are assuming that only God can write the bible. This has not yet been established. The bible could have been (and indeed was) written by men. You need to demonstrate that that was not the case.

Otherwise your argument is invalid.

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(5) Thus Jesus is Lord.
Assuming you are using "Lord" and "God" synonymously, this conclusion is invalid because it is based on false premises. Address them then we can adress (5).
If you are using "Lord" and "God" to mean different entities, then (5) Fails because it simply does not follow.

Rebut my refutation

[ June 10, 2002: Message edited by: IntenSity ]</p>

jenn

WHERE in the bible does Jesus claim to be GOD? I must have overlooked it all three times I read it...and then some. Jesus to my knowledge NEVER claimed to be GOD.

James Still

In Mark 2:28 Jesus says that the "Son of man is lord even of the sabbath." The Greek word here is kyrios which means "master" as in "I've mastered the skill of caligraphy." The word is also used in Mark as a title of respect in the same way that Americans use "Sir" universally and the British use "Lord" and "Sir" for upper class males. Thus, the Syrophoenican woman says famously in 7:28:

"Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."

She humbles herself before the rabbi to ask him a favor. The reason the translators capitalize the title is to show that it is a title of respect. It's not to be confused with God as in the case when Jesus arrives in Jerusalem and the crowd says "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" which does refer to God. It is this conflation of uses that crept into the Greek text and/or translations into English that is the source of the problem. Consider this pericope from Mark 12:35-37:

And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, "How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand,
till I put thy enemies under thy feet.' David himself calls him Lord; so how is he his son?" And the great throng heard him gladly.

Confused? So is Mark. He's redacting Psalms 110:1, which reads: "A Psalm concerning David. HaShem says to my master: 'Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.'" The Psalmist is saying that God (HaShem) has privileged David (my master) and will assist him in his military adventures. It's written in the third-person about David.

But Mark changes that meaning to argue (via Jesus) that David calls someone else "my master" (or "Lord") and who could that be? You guessed it, the Messiah or Jesus. This is Mark's way of elevating Jesus above David and this understanding will sink deeply into the movement until Jesus becomes, not just the lord over David but the Lord (God) himself. This is just one passage out of several others we could look at of course. But the point is that very early in the post-Easter situation we see a tendency to position Jesus above David (and the Baptist) in the pecking order. And to compound the problem Jesus spoke Aramaic; after his death his words were preserved in the oral tradition in Greek so there's bound to be confusion even before Mark gets ahold of his sources.

hezekiah jones

I always thought Ezekiel was the "Son of Man," denoted as such by the direct Speech of Gawd. How many "Sons of Man" are there?

Vinnie

""""Impossible! Guess I'll have to quibble with some of the axioms...."""""

Come on, you know we accept basic axioms on faith all the time (e.g. reason, geometry etc.)Don't try to pawn off circular reasoning as a critique of my well established arguement. You'd simply end up begging the question. We don't allow "Petitio Principii" fallacies here

""""I talk to Satan and believe I have the power to call down fire from Heaven if needed, and nobody has ever questioned my sanity. """"

No one questions your sanity because the power of God is clearly manifested in your life if you have such abilities. That or they are scared of you.

"""""""The Bible says Jesus is Lord.
The Bible is not true."""""""

2 Tim 3:15 and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

From birth Timothy knew the scriptures of the old and new testaments. The Bible is true. An easy modification of my arguments above could this conclusion. It can be formally demonstrated.

""""""WHERE in the bible does Jesus claim to be GOD? I must have overlooked it all three times I read it...and then some. Jesus to my knowledge NEVER claimed to be GOD."""""""

What? You've never read Jude 2:6? : "Verily, I sayest unto you, I am God become man."

""""""These three passages clearly show that Jesus was not God. """"""""

Christians accept a triune Godhead. Jesus was both 100% man and divine as well. Problems solved. Next objection.

Thus (1) does not fail btw. I'll get to your titular reductionist fallacy later.

Obviously, those are just Hebrew idioms for "God lets sin run its course." Next objection....

God wrote all of it. As professed by virtually all fundamentalists: verbal plenary inspiration. God chose the very words. Though he did not override their personalities as is evidenced by the bad greek in some of the NT.

"""You are assuming that only God can write the bible."""""

Of course I am. The bible is God's holy word. By definition only God can be the author. Its a truism. I assume God authored the Bible just as I assume liquid water is wet. What grounds do you have for rejecting a self-evident truth? Do you believe reason to be a valid window in which to view the world?

Get ready for a lexical-syntactical analysis! When Thomas exclaimed "My Lord and My God" he was obviously being redundant out of reverential awe. He was inspired by his knewly-founded knowledge that he was in the presence of God himself! Lord, Savior, Creatior, God--they are all synonyms. Any view to the contrary is a titular reductionist fallacy. If Joe uses title a to mean x then we must assume that later on if Bob uses title a without giving any meaning to its definition that it means x as well. In normal usage this might not be true but for the inerrant and infallible world of God it is a necessary hermenuetical framework. Scripture is the authority by which we judge things. You are merely attempting to equivocate the usage of the word "Lord" when applied to Jesus in the Gospels. Titles, normally, may be fluid, dynamic and subject to change but this is the Bible here. It is consistent and without contradiction. You need to have a larger context when viewing the Bible. Its an authority and the proper context is all of space, time and history because it was authored by God himself who poessesses full and exhasutive knowledge of these things. That is why the Bible is inerrant in all areas like history and especially science.

Vinnie

[ June 10, 2002: Message edited by: ilgwamh ]</p>

hezekiah jones

Eh?

Toto

Vinnie - you're supposed to use the little smiley things to let us know you're joking. Although the part about God inspiring the NT guys to write bad Greek pretty much gave it away.

(edited for selpling}

[ June 10, 2002: Message edited by: Toto ]</p>

James Still

The short answer is that "sons of man" is a generic referent for "humankind." (See Psalms 8:4 and Ezekiel). The long answer is more complicated because the meaning seems to have changed over time. The prophet who wrote Daniel saw what "looked like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven" (Dan 7:13-14). Scholars have debated what this passage means but it certainly looks like this is no ordinary man. From the handful of times Jesus uses the term in the NT, it is impossible to really pin down what he means by the phrase. And in Mark 8:27 when he asks his disciples near Caesareas Philippi, "What do people say about me?" it is clear that whatever Jesus had in mind he was keeping it to himself.

gilly54

I gave up on the "Bible as Truth" when a teenager. The verses that did it for me was when the KJV Bible mentioned unicorns.

So, when ilgwamh says that God wrote the Bible, I assume he means the KJV, which seems to be the one ilgwamh is quoting, then God believes in unicorns??!!

Gilly

Vinnie

""""""Vinnie - you're supposed to use the little smiley things to let us know you're joking. Although the part about God inspiring the NT guys to write bad Greek pretty much gave it away. """"""""""

Fabricating a nonexistant verse should give it away as well. There is no Jude 2. It only has one chapter. Not to mention the extremely circular nature of my initial arguments. I was begging the question but labeled Vorkosigan's reply as "begging the question" and I advocated a titular reductionist fallacy while accusing intensity of committing one

Vinnie