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I Am A Good Person, Therefore, I'm Going To Heaven!

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
From Merriam-Webster.com: Justice: " the process or result of using laws to fairly judge and punish crimes and criminals." I am a sign painter and a gentleman farmer as well as king and emperor of the Mighty Kingdom of Sandy yet should I go before a judge I damn well hope that they would apply the law correctly.
Then that's a difference between you and me. I would have a serious issue with a bad law being applied correctly to me... even if there's no higher law to tell the judge that the law is bad.

I would hate to stand before my ultimate judge and have them condemn me on a whim.
The laws of my country acknowledge that principles of fundamental justice exist independent of the law. That must make your head just spin. ;)
 

savagewind

Veteran Member
Premium Member
How do you know about Jesus, but for the Bible?
I think that without the Bible people know about a Creator God and a god of understanding. They want goodness and miracles without ever hearing of any. They want to be treated fairly even though they might never have been treated fairly and never heard of Jesus. Sometimes their conscience tells them they do wrong if they break rules that they do not even know about. They want to be loved and to love.

Jesus teaches that we should take all that to the next level. It is my opinion that the next level is not for everyone.
 

katiemygirl

CHRISTIAN
Jesus didn't write the Bible. Authors, who were not Jesus, quoted him. We cannot be certain what Jesus did or did not actually say. That is why I feel that further exploration is necessary into biblical claims.
The Holy Spirit is the author of the Bible. He guided the men who wrote it. Those men quoted Jesus. Anything of real value that you or anyone knows about Jesus comes from the Bible.
 

leibowde84

Veteran Member
How do you know about Jesus, but for the Bible?
The many other gospels not included in it. But, we can certainly get a lot of information from the Bible as well. Never claimed otherwise. When it comes to his exact words, we can certainly use the Bible as a source, but, because it was mostly written by other authors, we can't be certain of its validity.
 

leibowde84

Veteran Member
The Holy Spirit is the author of the Bible. He guided the men who wrote it. Those men quoted Jesus. Anything of real value that you or anyone knows about Jesus comes from the Bible.
That is your belief, and that is fine for you. But it is not a certainty.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
Could you please answer the question?
You didn't ask me until just now.

How do you know about Jesus, but not for the Bible?
Jesus the character in a book: I learned about him mainly from the Bible and things that Christians have told me (which I assume they mainly got from the Bible, either directly or indirectly).

Edit: ... or they got it from their own imaginations. IMO, Jesus is the sort of character that people glom their own ideas onto.

Jesus the actual person: to the extent that I think he was real, about 50-50 between the Bible and Josephus (not the Testimonium Flavianum - the other reference: the presumably genuine remark about "James, brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ"). The Bible has a lot more detail than one line from Josephus, but I don't exactly consider the Bible a trustworthy source.
 

savagewind

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The person of Jesus is not so very decisive as what he stands for which is; The Father, love, faith, hope, righteousness, wisdom, self-control, integrity, gratitude and humility. Those exist without the person of Jesus, but he gives a person the strength to carry on till the end in those attributes.

So, it is my opinion, that by Jesus being those virtues, a person CAN know him without knowing the Jesus of the Bible. But by knowing the Jesus of the Bible power is added to a doer of God's will alongside every human virtue imo.

What I mean is that power is lacking until you know the Jesus of the Bible.

It seems to me though, that the people who think a person must know the Jesus of the Bible put knowing ahead of every virtue. Is knowing even a virtue? I think not.

The Bible seems to say it isn't. 1 Corinthians 8:1
 
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