christianity...?

[faye]

god is not everything

for me, god IS everything.
neither i nor you can prove each other wrong. so we can agree to disagree but it is my favourite contemplation and i enjoy to see how we each think and consider reality and it's creation.

[faye]

zirey, isn't overemphasis and adoration of the messanger a deviation from the message? i think the muslim prophet, muhammad, suggested not to waste time and energy over that kind of activity.

[Al Hanif]

lol you people are still arguing about Christianity, Islam and Atheism.

There is no need to argue. The truth is obvious.

[faye]

kindergarten down the hall, luv. where's your mother?

[randolph85]

RTR,
The contrasts you listed between humanity and divinity are valid, but they do not prove that a composite union of two unlike natures in one person is impossible. Human reason cannot explain the personal union of unlike substances, spirit and matter, in an ordinary man. Yet this wonderful union is true. Much less can reason explain the composite union of divinity and humanity in the Messiah Jesus. It is yet more wonderful.

Your attempt to describe the Christian narrative regarding the two natures of Jesus showed that you still misunderstand our faith. We believe that only Jesus' human nature is 'wholly human' and only His Divine nature is 'wholly Divine', to use your terminology. It is like saying that only man's body is wholly matter and only his spirit is wholly spirit.

It was not just the Gentile Christians converted from paganism who regarded Jesus as Divine. The testimony of the Holy Scriptures is more about how the earliest Jewish Christians, born and bred in strict monotheism, also regarded Jesus as Divine. For example, the Jewish apostle Thomas, when he saw the resurrected Jesus, addressed Him as "My Lord and my God!" (John 20). The apostle Paul, a self-described "Hebrew of the Hebrews" who at first misunderstood our holy faith and persecuted Christians, called the Messiah "our great God and Savior" (Titus 3). Long before our Lord was born of the virgin Mary, the Old Testament prophecies had foretold that the Messiah would be Divine (Psalm 2, for example.)

--randolph85,
God did not kill Himself. Rather, it was sinners like you and me who unjustly put Jesus to death, even as the prophets foretold would happen. Yet He brings good out of evil and, as a result, forgiveness and eternal life to those who believe in Him.

randolph85 & RTR,
--It's odd that you find your hypothetical monk so praiseworthy. According to our faith, suicide is the unauthorized taking of a life, and therefore demonic like any other murder.
Anyway, the Messiah not only endured the Cross courageously as foretold, He also raised Himself from the dead. Now that's mastery over the flesh!

have fun with that false burden of sin on your shoulders, chief. walking into ones death when he could just as easily save himself is the same as killing oneself. jesus knowingly walked into his death according to you, that is suicide. you still haven't addressed why god had to die to forgive you of a sin you never even committed, or why sacrificing his son is such a big deal when his son was heaven bound to begin with. jesus died and was sent to heaven, something millions of christians believe will happen to them, what makes jesus so special then?

raising from the dead is not mastery over the flesh, its turning on and off the divinity/human button. something which christians can't rationalize, let alone explain in any coherent fashion. first hes god then hes a man then hes god then hes a man then he is something else. pick one and stick with it already.

my example is not exactly hypothetical either.

[Afghanistan2010]

for me, god IS everything.
neither i nor you can prove each other wrong. so we can agree to disagree but it is my favourite contemplation and i enjoy to see how we each think and consider reality and it's creation.

Wrong,
you can be refuted by logic,but the other case is if you want to be convinced.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

RTR,
The contrasts you listed between humanity and divinity are valid, but they do not prove that a composite union of two unlike natures in one person is impossible. Human reason cannot explain the personal union of unlike substances, spirit and matter, in an ordinary man. Yet this wonderful union is true. Much less can reason explain the composite union of divinity and humanity in the Messiah Jesus. It is yet more wonderful.

They do in fact prove it; the Analogy of Matter and Spirit; which are not necessarily contrary vs. divine and human which are in fact necessarily contrary is evident as explained previously.The Union of Unlke Substances is not the debate; the fact that human and divine are Negating Substances is. Spirit and Matter are not negations of the other.. Human and Divine are not just different but contradictory.
Merely "hand waving" over that issue does not give a rebuttal against them. Merely claiming it is "True" none the less is circular reasoning; You're merely affirming your own premise. This becomes nothing more than blind dogma.

Your attempt to describe the Christian narrative regarding the two natures of Jesus showed that you still misunderstand our faith. We believe that only Jesus' human nature is 'wholly human' and only His Divine nature is 'wholly Divine', to use your terminology. It is like saying that only man's body is wholly matter and only his spirit is wholly spirit.

This is just semantics; what your stating is essentially saying that Jesus is composed of two natures; One Jesus having Two Natures means he's Part this and part that; not Wholly this and Wholly that this negates itself. There is no misunderstanding of your faith; The problem is the terms your theology uses are intrinsically incoherent. It's a mish mash of different ideas which are logically inconsistent. And the Apologetics attempts to use clever linguistic devices to reconcile them; but this is still a red herring and they remain unreconciled.Wholly human and wholly divine are not my terms; these rae terms used by the Christian Narratives . If you say this is different than the actual Theological Doctrine then it shows that there is no precise understanding and thus the claim is nebulous

Point being the Theology of Christianity is extremely wobbly and easy to discern the errors and inconsistency in.

It was not just the Gentile Christians converted from paganism who regarded Jesus as Divine.

It was the Pagan Christians who conveyed that Narrative. Paul while being a Jew never met Jesus; so his testimony is moot as far as evidence goes. In case you were alluding to Paulian doctrine.

also regarded Jesus as Divine. For example, the Jewish apostle Thomas, when he saw the resurrected Jesus, addressed Him as "My Lord and my God!" (John 20).

Eh this verse is actually rather inconclusive; the Exclaimation Mark at the end appears to be indicating that author of this passage was not proclaiming or addressing Jesus as God but rather indicating that Thomas was exciting much the same way people say "Oh my God!" they would say "my Lord and My God"! This doesn't verify that there is belief in the divinity of Jesus. Supplementary material gives evidence that the author was not indicating that Thomas believes he was God.

Namely this verse:
"Many other signs therefore Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples,which are not written in this book; but these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ [John 20:30"

As we all know in Judaic Eschatology; the Messiah is supposed to be a man; they didn't believe he was God; so thus if they believed he was God, the author would have indicated that this narration shows Jesus was God, not Jesus was the Messiah.

The apostle Paul, a self-described "Hebrew of the Hebrews" who at first misunderstood our holy faith and persecuted Christians, called the Messiah "our great God and Savior" (Titus 3). Long before our Lord was born of the virgin Mary, the Old Testament prophecies had foretold that the Messiah would be Divine (Psalm 2, for example.)

Already addressed the faultiness of Pauline doctrine; Paul's encounter with Christianity was from Pagan Converts primarily; the claim of the Paul having super natural awareness contact with Jesus is a somewhat nebulous assertion as it cannot be examined for veracity; thus cannot be evidence. It would be thus reasonable to surmise that Paul converted to the Pagan's interpretation of Christianity

randolph85 & RTR,
--It's odd that you find your hypothetical monk so praiseworthy. According to our faith, suicide is the unauthorized taking of a life, and therefore demonic like any other murder.
Anyway, the Messiah not only endured the Cross courageously as foretold, He also raised Himself from the dead. Now that's mastery over the flesh!

I don't hold him "praise worthy"; I never claimed he is worthy of praise; but rather the example of Quan Duc demonstrates that a Human being that we have had direct evidence; was able to surpass the feebleness of a being that the Christians deem to be divine. Under the same notion; the claim that Jesus was God but allowed himself to be killed is suicide; it's called Assisted Suicide; the narrative indicates he was deliberately trying to die to serve this alleged purpose to fulfill; thus by your own claims if suicide is demonic; this would implicate that the narration indicates a demonic character.

TNo matter how was cut this this is merely an example of the faultiness of Christian Dogma.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

Zirey; in case you're still in doubt


Thích Quảng Đức (English pronunciation: i/ˌtɪtʃ ˌkwɒŋ ˈdʊk/ tich kwong duuk; 釋廣德; 1897 – 11 June 1963, born Lâm Văn Tức), was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on 11 June 1963. Đức was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam's Roman Catholic government led by Ngô Đình Diệm. Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm regime. Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for his renowned photograph of the monk's death. After his death, his body was re-cremated, but his heart remained intact.

[Zirey]

Gents,
Thanks for your replies. Al Hanif is right. It is hard to leave disagreeable statements alone, but when we start repeating ourselves, it is time to move on.

Dear Faye,
I love your wit and broad-mindedness. You raise a good point. If Jesus were only a messenger, the overemphasis and adoration would certainly be unwarranted. We believe, however, that He was more than a prophet. In fact, one of His names in the Scriptures is "the Word of God." In a real sense, He was not only a messenger but also the message itself, the Messiah foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures.

I agree with your delight in God's creation. There is much to bask in since it reflects His glory, in spite of man's wrongdoings. But God Himself is even better still. There is no need to hide from Him either by reducing religion to a number of arbitrary rules or by equating Him with His creation. You can know the love God has for you personally in Jesus Christ. He will delight in you back!

[RevolutionThroughReason]

Well Zirey;; I don't disagree with that, but it seems to me you don't present new arguments but just find different ways to restate the same thing. You keep alleging we misunderstand your notions regarding the divinity of Jesus and his Mortality. I understand what you're saying; what I am saying is when we break all of that down, and take it to it's actual basic implications; it just doesn't add up.

I mean honestly; without any hostility; your responses still do not respond to most of what I said; either because you very superficially glossed over them or simply did not grasp the distinction I have made as in the case regarding the characteristic analysis between human and the divine vs. the spirit and the body. What I stressed there is that they are not just different but negations of the other. Tall and short are not just different but "negating" this is the stage that divine and human correspond to; Spirit and Body are like Tall and Thin; both different but not negating.


Now in regards to what you're saying to Faye I don't want to intercede in your discourses with others more than I have already; But there are a variety of alternately valid explanations of "Word of God" when we consider the usage of such expressions in Semitic language. It's based on these clues that it appears that what Christianity as we know it today was more of a Pagan European interpretation of Messianic Judaism. Hence why things like "Son of God"; which in Hebrew traditions meant something totally different. Became "Son of God" in the way Zeus or Apollo may have had begotten children.

[faye]

how is the creation of the creator from godself, contrary to god?

[RevolutionThroughReason]

I agree with your delight in God's creation. There is much to bask in since it reflects His glory, in spite of man's wrongdoings. But God Himself is even better still. There is no need to hide from Him either by reducing religion to a number of arbitrary rules or by equating Him with His creation. You can know the love God has for you personally in Jesus Christ. He will delight in you back!

If you believe that; then why not just go to God directly; we don't need to believe in the standard Christian narrative about Jesus to do that. I know your natural counter reply will be to claim that God himself made Jesus the "doorway" to him; but you don't actualy know this as bonafide truth; this is just a narrative dictated to you and conditioned to the point where it appears as reality in your psyche.


Arbitrary rules are certainly a waste of time; but consider that God created an entire universe of Laws and Principles that Govern it; the rules and principles more intricate than anything humans have had to follow. It only makes sense that humans being connected to the Universe on every possible level would have laws that that reflect that. in Islam the Laws we follow are extensions of universal principles; Jesus' battle with the Legalistic cartel of the Pharasees wasn't because they had rules and laws; but because they did not understand and lost the true purpose behind these Laws; hence he said "I have come not to remove one letter of the Law ....but to fulfill it". Not to abandon or abolish the Law; but restore it to it's true aims and objectives. This is the Theory behind Islam as well.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

@Faye because God is uncreated.

[faye]

we all might just be a figment of our own imagination, which is also the imagination of the uncreated GREAT MIND, lol.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

well there you go