So when it’s clearly wrong, you’re merely interpreting it wrong.
When it becomes inconvenient / uncomfortable to stand by something in it, you were merely interpreting it wrong all these years (see reasoning, circular).
Scripture is man-made. You said so yourself.
Facts are universal, Truth is personal, and Truth derived independently from facts is nothing more than Opinion.
Let us stop right there. If the end result is declared before the research is done, and the research is dedicated to proving the pre-determined end result, then said research is fundamentally flawed.
I disagree. Truth is universal and absolute.
This is true, but I believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is historical fact. I believe that there is good evidence supporting this belief. Naturally, our disagreement on this subject gives us completely different foundations on which we build our arguments.
What is the good evidence that Jesus Christ was resurrected?
The Jews or Romans could have easily produced the body to disprove the resurrection.
The Apostles unanimously testified to the resurrection, and most suffered martyr’s deaths because of it.
Did Jesus’ disciples steal the body? It’s a possibility. But considering the fact that every one of them suffered horribly, and most died martyr’s deaths, is it likely they would have gone through all of that for something they knew was false? Maybe a couple of them would have, but all of them?
Oh, my.
When was it first put to paper that Jesus body was missing(Which, if even true is not evidence for anything other than a body is missing)? Could it be possible that the story was written years after the fact to support this new religion? This would certainly explain why the Romans didn’t go through the trouble of looking for a body they didn’t even know was missing until years after the fact.
Other than using the source that declares that it happened to prove that it happened(because the people promoting a story have no interest in giving contradictory information, do they?), do you have any evidence to support your personal belief that Jesus was resurrected?
Why is it relevant when the account was ‘put to paper’? By the time the first Gospel was written (Mark in the 60s or 70s AD), the Church, led by the Apostles and
their successors, had already been actively preaching Christ’s resurrection for 30 years or more. Peter and Paul were most likely already martyred before the first Gospel was completed, and certainly before all four were completed.
You are using a source of information that is most certainly tainted by the fact that it was all collected, collated and (in some cases) disposed of to push the beliefs of a specific group of people. Why is it relevant when it was put to paper(and who put it to paper, for that matter)? Because contemporary recollections that are verified by independent sources are worth more than uncorroborated stories written years after the fact. I can say that 100 people witnessed and cheered when I swam the English Channel back in 1964, but that statement isn’t worth jack if the newspapers don’t report it and none of the witnesses are named, no matter how many people that weren’t there at the time believe me.
Yes I get what you’re saying, but I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect written “contemporary recollections from independent sources” for an event that happened 2,000 years ago (an era of no tangible media to speak of) that inspired a, at the time, small religious sect. We have the oral Tradition of the Church, which dates back to the first Apostles, and we have the written Scriptural accounts. We have, in the tradition of the Church, written works from some of the first successors to the Apostles who learned directly from them.
Thanks for the cites.
I’ll just point out that the type of “sacrifices” this is talking about are, explicitly, things like getting up early enough to make it to church on time.
Pretending that these are the same kind of sacrifices as the ones that (as one of your later cites point out) were stated as having been rendered unnecessary by the crucifixion is a bait-and-switch based on wordplay.
Okay, there’s a fair bit to unwrap here, but the argument made is that the following is happening.
The bread and wine in mass is a symbolic recollection of the crucifixion (which is presented as having been an actual sacrifice).
Rituals are time travel. Literally. When you do the ritual you’re yanking the literal events of the past and literally jamming them into the present. This is how come the bread and wine change into flesh and blood - because the actual crucified body of Jesus the past is being dragged to the present and dumped onto the serving table. (Invisibly, one supposes.) At which point he dies again, right there in front of everybody. Or, er, in their mouths? It’s a touch unclear.
Also worth remembering that the first mass occurred prior to the crucifixion itself - which means that the time travel works both ways, and Jesus was eating his own sacrifice before he was sacrificed. Good thing he didn’t change his mind about doing it, then, or that would have been a paradox and reality would implode! (Just kidding - it just means there’s a fixed timeline and nobody has libertarian free will.)
Offering himself as a sacrifice to who? Himself?
The closest thing we’ve gotten to an explanation for why this so-called ‘sacrifice’ has any effect on anything at all is that God is so impressed by Jesus’s obedient willingness to go through with it that God’s pleasure at Jesus’s obedience distracted him from his rage over everybody else’s disobedience. This explanation doesn’t work so well if God is being distracted by his own obedience to himself. In fact it doesn’t work at all - it just becomes ridiculous. It becomes God playacting as a human (including ventriloquism at his baptism) and then entertaining himself with some light pain for a change before toddling back up to heaven for a relaxing turn in the spa or whatever. I mean, I suppose that’s one way to distract yourself, but it would have been equally effective to just kick back on the couch and play some Halo - that’s pretty distracting too.
Keeping the trinity thing in mind - where there only parties in play are God, the people he’s judging, and maybe Lucifer, just who exactly is God pleasing with his ‘sacrifice’ and whose mind and (judgemental) actions is God’s sacrifice changing?
It seems to me that God was LARPing being a human…badly.
Personally, I’m okay with the idea that the spirit is eternal (after its creation) and the flesh is transient. That’s a rule that’s (as far as I’m aware) consistent for all entities in the christian mythos.
So what we have here is God putting on a skin suit to hang out with all the other meatbags, letting the skin suit get killed, and then unkilling it to explicitly demonstrate that there was no sacrifice. With a sacrifice you actually give something up, after all. (It’s very clear about that in your cite about sacrifice.)
One thing I’ve noticed across the board with the Christian mythos is that it makes a lot of claims and statements of fact that, on their own, make sense, but start contradicting each other when you bring them together into a, well, a mythos.
begbert2,
The thing is, sacrifice doesn’t ‘do anything’ for God. By God’s very definition, nothing can benefit or harm him. He is fully complete and content at all time.
I would say that the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ was fully for our benefit as humanity. Because of our disobedience and obstinance, we need redemption. The fact that God, who had been disobeyed would literally become a human, live a human life just like us, suffer things that we suffer, and even die like we die, redeems us. It redeems everything, it makes creation whole or “good” again, as it was in Genesis. It gives us the opportunity to bring Creation back to where it was at the beginning, which is what the Church has been working on (with lots of missteps and failures) for 2,000 years.
I want you to read what you wrote again - and this time - put some reasoning behind it.
Think about something called “special pleading”.
Then I want you to read and think closely about the bolded (by me) part - "Jesus proved he was GOD by resurrecting himself - which he couldn’t do, because being GOD, he couldn’t die.
If he died - he wouldn’t have been there to resurect himself.
At best - he pretended to be dead - which is well, not being dead at all.
Read the preceding two sentences to your bolded part.
He was only mostly dead.
He was specifically LARPing as a human with cosmic power who quite explicitly wasn’t God, but was in fact his son. At at least one point he arranged for himself and “God” to be seen in the same place at the same time - well okay, God was only heard, but there was also this bird there. He also spoke with God openly a few times (talking to himself?), and accounts were told of other times he spent time chilling with himself, but in those cases there were explicitly no witnesses.
It reminds me of the times when I would have the characters in the story converse with ‘the author’ - who would answer back. I don’t do that anymore though - I try to take my writing seriously now.
He doesn’t need to read it-You need to apply it.
From my Post #558: “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.”