You should think about it. The need for salvation came from a specific act of Adam and Eve. If they did not exist, why the need?
I’m pretty sure Jesus believed in them as actual people.
My understanding of evolving Catholic doctrine was that the Garden did not exist literally, but that Adam and Eve represent the first humans with moral capacity. Maybe you can find out more. I don’t understand how you get from there to original sin.
Note that in Judaism the Adam and Eve story is a just-so story about whey we die, have to work, and are afraid of snakes. I was never taught that it was literally true, and it is not theologically important. I’d say it is for Christianity, crucial in fact.
No, the Trinity is accepted by most Christian groups (although there are certainly exceptions).
From the Assemblies of God (a Pentecostal church):
From the Southern Baptist Convention:
From the United Methodist Church:
From the Presbyterian Church (USA):
Sure, and I’d be okay with the calm statement that Jesus is divine as a son of God. (That’s in fact how the Mormons paint it - though they go a step further and say that we’re all God’s children, then roll that back and say Jesus is the only literal one, and then roll that forward again…)
Trinitarians strike me as people who can’t reconcile the new testament with the old. In the new testament it’s fairly explicit that things got, er, fairly explicit between God and Mary, which resulted in a Jesus who said quite literally that he was the son of God. Not God himself, but the son of him. (Whether he thought everyone was a child of God is discussable.) And that’s all fine and works and is a perfectly reasonable mythology and there’s no problem there so far.
And then they noticed the first commandment and read it in a totally stupid way. The reasonable way to read is that God didn’t want you to have Jesus before him - as in, Jesus can be a god, but God is still top god. And that would work quite reasonably. But nope - they decided they needed to be full-bore monotheists. And then couldn’t think of a way to make that work, and so the notion of the trinity was born! :smack:
Okay, I’m willing to be corrected and accept that there are lots of christian sects that are incredibly stupid. (Though I’d want to check further to be sure it’s not just a communication failure - I’ve heard people describe the trinity as, basically a committee: they’re “one in thought and will” because they agree about things, but they’re still separate entities that don’t share the same pair of divine pants, at least not at the same time.)
And also, “because unexplained”? :smack::smack::smack:
I like how Jesus was retroactively added to the Old Testament by certain sects.
You’re going to find most Christian denominations have historically said pretty similar things about the Trinity (Eastern Orthodox Churches–Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox or so on–have a slightly different interpretation of the idea than Western Christians do, but it’s a pretty esoteric difference*; Protestantism has traditionally kept the same Trinitarian understanding as the Catholic Church, from which Protestantism originally split off from, with Protestants disagreeing with Catholics about a whole mess of other things, but not the Trinity). Christians in general have, on the one hand, been people who accept Jesus as “the Son of God”, and have on the other hand been very reluctant to surrender the “monotheist” label; however daffy it seems to us atheists (and for that matter, to adherents of other monotheistic religions), the Trinity is how the great majority of Christians have tried to square that particular circle. (With the most noteworthy exception being the Mormons, whose theology is quite different from that of most other Christian denominations; the Jehovah’s Witnesses are also non-Trinitarian, rejecting both the doctrine of the Trinity and also teaching that Jesus is not God.)
*The Western Church has traditionally taught that the Holy Spirit “proceeds” from both the Father and the Son; while the Eastern Church has traditionally taught that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. Hence the so-called Filioque controversy.
I’ll just concede right now that I was wrong about most christians, though I think I’ll paint that as making too many positive assumptions about them.
I don’t like squared circles.
For the record, Hinduism has been practiced for roughly ~3500 years. While it has changed fairly extensively over that time, so has Judaism (if we want to call Judaism the original religion, rather than Canaanite Mythology or the wider Ancient Semitic religions).
No, Jesus is always God. His death on the cross was God offering himself as a sacrifice for humanity.
Oh no? Then what did Jesus mean when he said “before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58)?
So god commandeered a meatbag, got it killed on a stick and then brought it back from death. What exactly was the sacrifice?
So GOD Died?
Who resurrected GOD?
Is this a video game where someone gets to put in another quarter and restart the level?
Or was he only mostly dead?
The weekend, duh. Holiday weekend also. God probably missed some good sales.
As I asked before, why did he have too? An omnipotent God could do it without a sacrifice. Since there is nothing logically inconsistent in a god who can offer salvation without sacrifice, your god is not omnipotent and therefore not God.
Or else he’s a masochist.
As I understand it, Catholics have tremendous affection for god, topped with a hefty dollop of terror (like the way I felt about my Sherry Lynn). They revere and adulate Mary, Peter and Jesus. They actually worship the church. It appears that this attitude has been cultivated for centuries, from before the dark ages.
In order to stay in the good graces of the approved side of the pantheon, they must take part in confession, mass, communion and the other wajib affects. Without the support of the ritual elements, Catholics are conditioned to start to feel anxious and uncomfortable. If I understand the dynamic correctly, it is pure genius.
But what you seem to be talking about is “re-interpreting” the Bible until the “right” message comes forth, and nothing you’ve said to date leads me to believe that “right” and “what I already believe” aren’t synonymous in your eyes. If the actual answer to a math question is “4” but you want the answer to be 5, then “reinterpreting” 4 until it means 5 isn’t reinterpretation-it is lying to yourself just to feel comfortable.
I don’t know why I bother :smack:, but here goes.
God, by definition, cannot die. It is the dogma of the Church that Jesus Christ has two natures in perfect union, one human, one divine. The humanity of Jesus died on the cross. It is impossible for his divinity to die. Jesus proved that he was God by resurrecting himself with his own divine power.
As I said before, maybe God could have done it another way. He is God after all. The theme of sacrifice is all through the OT, so it only makes sense that in the end God would become the sacrifice himself.
Did God have to bring salvation through Christ’s death on the cross? I don’t know.
Was it fitting that he did so? Yes.
Then I think you’re misunderstanding me, and I think you’re also misunderstanding the purpose of the Bible.
A body of truth exists. We are trying to find it. Some of that body of truth is known, some is not known. Scripture should point us to truth.
If the way that we interpret a part of Scripture is pointing us toward something false, then we must be interpreting it wrong. Scripture is not greater than truth.