Jesus as Christ

ElishaElijah said:

About what you have now, maybe a step up.

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No, that much more accurately describes your beliefs. I do not base my beliefs upon fiction.

There is a reason that I ask people so often how they would test their beliefs properly. And they almost always fail. They know that they cannot afford to do that.

Subduction Zone said:

No, that much more accurately describes your beliefs. I do not base my beliefs upon fiction.

There is a reason that I ask people so often how they would test their beliefs properly. And they almost always fail. They know that they cannot afford to do that.

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Your line of reasoning is similar to Satan’s when he was tempting Jesus in the wilderness.

ElishaElijah said:

Your line of reasoning is similar to Satan’s when he was tempting Jesus in the wilderness.

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Not really, since Satan is another mythical critter. I am merely using sound reasoning. You have not been doing so well at that.

By the way have you ever read 1 Peter 3 15? You are failing rather terribly at what that verse tells you to do.

Redemptionsong said:

Can there be, or does there need to be, more than one Christ?

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Don't you think that should be for God to decide what humans need? After all, God is the Creator, so God should know best what humans need.

Redemptionsong said:

Truth is truth and does not change from one generation to the next. Why, therefore, is it necessary to sent repeated manifestations?

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You are correct, spiritual truth does not change from age to age, it is eternal, so what Jesus said will always be the truth.

Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

But man and the world he lives in do change markedly over time, so that is why God sends new Manifestations in every new age, to meet the needs of the changing times.

“The Prophets of God should be regarded as physicians whose task is to foster the well-being of the world and its peoples, that, through the spirit of oneness, they may heal the sickness of a divided humanity. To none is given the right to question their words or disparage their conduct, for they are the only ones who can claim to have understood the patient and to have correctly diagnosed its ailments. No man, however acute his perception, can ever hope to reach the heights which the wisdom and understanding of the Divine Physician have attained. Little wonder, then, if the treatment prescribed by the physician in this day should not be found to be identical with that which he prescribed before. How could it be otherwise when the ills affecting the sufferer necessitate at every stage of his sickness a special remedy?” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 80

Redemptionsong said:

The purpose of coming to earth, according to Christian belief, was to pay the price for sin and fulfil the law in righteousness, which Jesus Christ accomplished. The giving of the Holy Spirit is testament to the resurrection of Jesus and his ascension to heaven.

Repeated manifestations suggests failure rather than success.

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Jesus did not fail. Jesus fulfilled His purpose when He died on the cross for the sins of all of humanity and brought the Holy Spirit, but humanity had additional needs after that. Humanity continues to have needs and those needs vary according to the circumstances of the age in which he lives.

“As the body of man needeth a garment to clothe it, so the body of mankind must needs be adorned with the mantle of justice and wisdom. Its robe is the Revelation vouchsafed unto it by God. Whenever this robe hath fulfilled its purpose, the Almighty will assuredly renew it. For every age requireth a fresh measure of the light of God. Every Divine Revelation hath been sent down in a manner that befitted the circumstances of the age in which it hath appeared.” Gleanings, p. 81

Subduction Zone said:

Not really, since Satan is another mythical critter. I am merely using sound reasoning. You have not been doing so well at that.

By the way have you ever read 1 Peter 3 15? You are failing rather terribly at what that verse tells you to do.

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What good did it do anyone to come face to face with Jesus, be healed, delivered and see all the miracles Jesus did yet never be saved or changed by that? No amount of historical facts can open the eyes of the blind only a personal encounter with God does that where you are born again and changed.

Wildswanderer said:

You would literally not accept any proof. Get real. If Jesus came down and put sugar in your coffee you would decide it wasn't enough evidence.

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If Jesus came down and put sugar in our coffee, then of course atheists would believe that person was real. The issue is that he never, ever, ever does that. Just like dragons never swoop out of the sky and set fire to homes and livestock, or I would likewise believe in dragons, but otherwise they're almost certainly myths. We're talking about the normal reliable standard of evidence that we use to believe everything else about the world. The fact that your invisible disembodied beings can't meet that standard is your problem, not ours, and the fact that we refuse to lower our standards for one specific claim, like you do, is evidence for a flaw in your epistemology and a consistent standard for ours.

We atheists are the intellectually consistent ones, as much as you wish you could paint us as unreasonable for disbelieving your baseless claims.

When I drill down to the root disagreement with most Christians, it seems like it's not a matter of evidence for you guys but rather it's about emotional assurance. That is literally how faith is commonly used. Atheists simply have no need for such assurance because we don't think we're inherently evil and worthy of violent punishment by default, and so some desperate need for assurance or escape can't trump our normal evidentiary standards, like Christians seem prone to doing. You've been told that you're sick with an imaginary disease, and you've been trained to be dependent on the idea of an imaginary cure for your happiness, self-worth, and purpose. So sure, your faith feels great, and you feel scared and terrible thinking about losing it. You have the emotional triggers ingrained, but there's no actual evidence for any of it.

ElishaElijah said:

What good did it do anyone to come face to face with Jesus, be healed, delivered and see all the miracles Jesus did yet never be saved or changed by that? No amount of historical facts can open the eyes of the blind only a personal encounter with God does that where you are born again and changed.

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And now you are back to claiming that God is evil.

Redemptionsong said:

In claiming to be the Son of God he was claiming that the Spirit of the Father rested upon him in full measure [Luke 4:18]. The question is whether or not a human being can 'see' the Spirit of the Father that worked through Christ.

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Humans who saw Jesus saw the Spirit of the Father working through Him. How do you think we can see it now that Jesus has ascended to heaven?

Redemptionsong said:

But its also true that he was distinct from the Father, as every son is distinct. Jesus was the mediator between God and man whilst on earth.

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I fully agree, Jesus was distinct from the Father and He was the mediator between God and man whilst on earth.

ElishaElijah said:

The Scriptures aren’t man-made but God inspired and His Word. John 1, Isaiah 9 Colossians 1, Revelation are just a few showing that Jesus is God and the Son. Duped is the person who is deceived by Satan and led astray by a false message.

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The Scriptures are not man-made, they are the inspired Word of God, but the doctrine of the Trinity is man-made. It was made BY MEN at the Council of Nicaea.

The Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical debate held by the early Christian church, concludes with the establishment of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

Council of Nicaea concludes - HISTORY

Subduction Zone said:

It is only in John that he appears to claim to be God,

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Not even there.

Wildswanderer said:

You have that backwards.

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I worship God, not Jesus. Jesus was not God so Jesus did not want to be worshiped as God.

Subduction Zone said:

Actually there are Christians on both sides of this issue and they both use the Bible to support their claims.

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Actually, the Bible can be used to support any claims people want to make, if they cherry-pick the right verses.
However, if the verses in their totality are understood properly then they support the claims of @DNB.

ElishaElijah said:

What do you take that to mean? Was Jesus good? Yes, He was and is Perfect, Jesus said this to lead this person to faith and to see that Jesus is in fact God in the flesh. Ask yourself the question? Is Jesus good?

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Mark 10:18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

From this verse we can logically conclude that Jesus is not God since Jesus compared Himself to God, so that means there are two entities, God and Jesus.

In comparing Himself to God, Jesus humbles Himself before God and says that only God is good but that does not mean that Jesus is not also good. Relative to God, no one is good, that is what Jesus meant.

God cannot become flesh because God is and has always been immensely exalted beyond all that can either be recounted or perceived, everlastingly hidden from the eyes of men. We know that many people saw Jesus but nobody has ever seen God. Thus we can logically conclude that Jesus is not God.

John 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

1 John 4:12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Moreover, the Old Testament Scriptures state that God is not a man. God does not change His mind, so God did not suddenly decide to become the man Jesus.

Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent

1 Samuel 15:29 He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a human being, that he should change his mind.”

Job 9:32
For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together.

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Why do you want Jesus to be God? Jesus was a Manifestation of God and that makes perfect sense and fits with all the Scriptures.

1 Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

There is a difference between being incarnated in the flesh and manifested in the flesh.

“The Christian equivalent to the Bahá'í concept of Manifestation is the concept of incarnation. The word to incarnate means 'to embody in flesh or 'to assume, or exist in, a bodily (esp. a human) form (Oxford English Dictionary). From a Bahá'í point of view, the important question regarding the subject of incarnation is, what does Jesus incarnate? Bahá'ís can certainly say that Jesus incarnated Gods attributes, in the sense that in Jesus, Gods attributes were perfectly reflected and expressed.[4] The Bahá'í scriptures, however, reject the belief that the ineffable essence of the Divinity was ever perfectly and completely contained in a single human body, because the Bahá'í scriptures emphasize the omnipresence and transcendence of the essence of God…..

One can argue that Bahá'u'lláh is asserting that epistemologically the Manifestations are God, for they are the perfect embodiment of all we can know about God; but ontologically they are not God, for they are not identical with God's essence. Perhaps this is the meaning of the words attributed to Jesus in the gospel of John: 'If you had known me, you would have known my Father also' (John 14:7) and 'he who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9)…..”

Jesus Christ in the Bahá'í Writings

AlexanderG said:

If Jesus came down and put sugar in our coffee, then of course atheists would believe that person was real.

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Jesus did come down and did a lot more than put sugar in your coffee.

Fool said:

jesus isn't God absolute. Jesus even claimed that the Father was greater. He never claimed to be the father. So being a fractal of something doesn't make you the whole of something

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I believe that Jesus was a mirror image of God in that He reflected God's attributes, but being a mirror image of God does not mean Jesus was God. In fact, it means that Jesus was not God, because an image is not the same as what it reflects.

Colossians 1:15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.

Also, being in the form of God also means that Jesus was not actually God.

Philippians 2:6-11

6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,[b] 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[c] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

AlexanderG said:

When I drill down to the root disagreement with most Christians, it seems like it's not a matter of evidence for you guys but rather it's about emotional assurance. That is literally how faith is commonly used. Atheists simply have no need for such assurance because we don't think we're inherently evil and worthy of violent punishment by default, and so some desperate need for assurance or escape can't trump our normal evidentiary standards, like Christians seem prone to doing. You've been told that you're sick with an imaginary disease, and you've been trained to be dependent on the idea of an imaginary cure for your happiness, self-worth, and purpose. So sure, your faith feels great, and you feel scared and terrible thinking about losing it. You have the emotional triggers ingrained, but there's no actual evidence for any of it.

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Whereas that might be true of most Christians and how they relate to their beliefs, that does not reflect upon Jesus and whether Jesus was a man sent by God. The evidence for that claim is in the New Testament. Whether that evidence is sufficient for you or not is another matter, but its insufficiency does not change that evidence into non-evidence.

What Christians have been told about being sinful and worthy of punishment and thus need in a Savior is based upon the doctrine of original sin, of which Jesus knew nothing. It is a man-made doctrine of the Church. I believe in Jesus and that the cross sacrifice served a purpose but I don't believe the purpose of that sacrifice was to save us from an original sin committed by Adam and Eve because I believe that story was an allegory and not a real event. Moreover, I believe that the allegorical meaning of the story of Adam and Eve was misunderstood by Christians and from that time forward Christianity went south.

Trailblazer said:

Not even there.

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It appears that he does seem to imply that rather heavily in John. He does not say it outright. And remember, even the earliest Gospel was written on the order of 40 years after the event. No eyewitnesses, which are the lowest sort of accepted evidence in a court of law. Oral tradition appears to be the main way that the stories were passed on. Again, look at what happened after Elvis died when we did have accurate ways of recording events.

ElishaElijah said:

Jesus did come down and did a lot more than put sugar in your coffee.

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Yes, according to a book that appears to be exaggerated, mythologized, or fictional. That is the entire point. By your reasoning, I should also believe that dragons exist because there are ancient stories recorded about dragons, written by people who at the time of writing believed that dragons existed. You and I aren't convinced dragons exist, for the same reason I'm not convinced Jesus was the son of a god.

Trailblazer said:

Whereas that might be true of most Christians and how they relate to their beliefs, that does not reflect upon Jesus and whether Jesus was a man sent by God. The evidence for that claim is in the New Testament. Whether that evidence is sufficient for you or not is another matter, but its insufficiency does not change that evidence into non-evidence.

What Christians have been told about being sinful and worthy of punishment and thus need in a Savior is based upon the doctrine of original sin, of which Jesus knew nothing. It is a man-made doctrine of the Church. I believe in Jesus and that the cross sacrifice served a purpose but I don't believe the purpose of that sacrifice was to save us from an original sin committed by Adam and Eve because I believe that story was an allegory and not a real event. Moreover, I believe that the allegorical meaning of the story of Adam and Eve was misunderstood by Christians and from that time forward Christianity went south.

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Thanks for the reply!

The New Testament contains the claim that Jesus was a man sent by God. It is not the evidence, like the Odyssey itself is not evidence of sirens, sea serpents, or the Greek pantheon. If I say I have a pet dragon, that is a claim, and the claim is not evidence of itself being true.

Evidence of Jesus' divinity would be something we can observe in our objective shared reality, outside of the NT, which specifically and reliably corresponds to these claims. Evidence corresponds to reality, rather than being merely a conceptual narrative we can think about or a post hoc rationalization that is consistent with a claim. As far as I'm aware, there is no such evidence.