Considering Jesus independently from the Bible

[lewisnotmiller]

Jesus probably existed; but if he was claiming to be God, teaching his disciples to eat treif foods and breaking the Sabbath, then he probably deserved his punishment.

'Deserved'...ouch.
I'm not signing anyone up for crucifixion unless they support the LA Lakers or something.

 

[omega2xx]

Those who read the Bible and interpret whatever verses they love the most do not know who they are in God. They think God is something they can find in a book or in a church building or somewhere else besides their own mind where they get all their thoughts. What do you think the mind of Christ means?

1 Corinthians 2
10: God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
11: For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
12: Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.
13: And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.
14: The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
15: The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
16: "For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

I or 2:14 is my favorite verse to show unbelievers the prove the accuracy of at least one veres in the Bible. Also notice it says CANNOT, not will not.

To that we need to add I Cor 2:7 - We speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages for our glory.

To solve any mystery, we need clues and we must believe the ones we find in other parts of Scripture are true. There are 16 things in the Bib le called "mysteries." If we follow them, we will have the information to solve all of God's mysteries. At the end of the age, when the 7th trumpet is sounded, the mystery of God is finished(Rev 10:7).

 

[omega2xx]

But not all events in the phenomenal world pertaining to our sacred texts are literally true. For example the earth being the centre of the physical universe, the earth being literally created in 7 days, and events that transpired in the Garden of Eden. Just because God is omnipotent does not make these events literally true. We must consider the spiritual reality not the physical. The same applies to the physical resurrection.

The Bible does not say the earth is the center of the universe. Very few Christians accept the Bible as all literal---just all true.

A truly omnipotent God would have no trouble producing the universe is 6 seconds(not 7) if it served his purpose, and that is the most logical explanation of the origin of the universe and life. We know lifeless elements can't be the source of life. God is omnipotent and if there is something He can't do, He is not omnipotent.

Even if you want to make the creation account an allegory, and it certainly has some allegorical teachings in it, ALL Biblical allegories have their basis in literal, historical events.

Spiritual realities do not have creative powers.

Its about the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31) as well as life and resurrection.

Right, but the main emphasis is on His death. Even the elements speak of that. The broken bread symbolizes His death, broken for us. The wine speaks of His blood spilled for us and the new covenant. All of the offering had a drink offering, but it was poured out, not drank.

There is no death in Christ my friend.

God says there is, so I will stick with him until you have more than an opinion.

"And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.

Lk 22:19 - This is My body, given for you. The breaking of the bread point directly to his death.

And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it;
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins" Matthew 26:26-28

Shed for many also points to His death.

"But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee." Matthew 26:32

He claimed to have seen Him as well
"Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born." 1Corinthians 15:7-8

Good catch. I certainly missed that one. However, "appeared" does not always indicate a personal appearance. God appeared to men in visions, as He did to Abraham(Gen 15:1).

Even when God met with Paul on the Damascus road, it could been in a vision. The men with Saul, heard Jesus speak, but did not see Him. IMO,k that indicates Saul heard and saw Jesus. Not only that, if the Bible says Jesus appeared to Paul, he appeared to Paul, unless you have some Scriptural evdence He didn't.

 

[omega2xx]

Hold up right there. That's a mighty big assertion and one that doesn't hold water in the least. Why does God have to be omnipotent in order for spiritual truths to be rationally defensible?

You are right. I worded that poorly----All spiritual truths are rationally indefensible.

God being omnipotent is one example of a spiritual truth.

No, God is omnipotent is a literal truth. Spiritual truth has not creative powers.

You might as well say All spiritual truths are rationally indefensible if one very particular spiritual truth is rejected or disproved.

I just said that. Let me explain; no spiritual truth can be proven scientifically. They must be accepted by faith alone.

This is very bad logic. It's rationally indefensible.

My original statement, yes; my corrected statement, no.

Spiritual truths would be spiritually true even if no God (of the omnipotent variety) exists at all. A spiritual truth is a subtle profoundly meaningful truth derived from spiritual experience. One could reasonably argue that God is the source and substance of all those truths, therefore spiritual truths cannot exist without God. But then one is defining God as little more than "that which one encounters while having a spiritual experience."

I basically agree with that but I will quibble about God being little more than a spiritual experience. Christians do not have Biblical spiritual experiences until AFTER they have been covnerted.

The requirement of God being omnipotent becomes irrelevant in light of this other definition, unless the particular spiritual truth you are examining is the omnipotence of God. In which case I can agree with the following statement.

The spiritual truth that God is omnipotent is not rationally defensible unless there is an omnipotent God.

I agree with what you say,except to repeat what I said earlier, God bring omnopetent is not a spiritual truth, it is a literal truth.

 

[omega2xx]

I didn't get any hidden mysteries from reading the Bible. It all came to me as I was used to testify to every word, vision, dream, spoken analogies via the Holy Spirit of God, the only teacher that exists. Those who think they can read a book with words in it will remain confused until the next generation unless of course they listen to the only gospel of God that exists today.

As i said, the Bible list 16 things as mysteries. For example, the mystery of glodliness.

Do oyu think you understand all of them?

 

[omega2xx]

Nowhere in the Bible can you find the knowledge that has been revealed to me this past several years.

If you didn't find it in the Bible, I am not interested. You have no way to know it came from the Holy Spirit.

]Not one reader of the Bible can understand what the Beast is that is written about in Daniel and Revelation. No reader of the Bible understands what the Tree of Life is. No reader of the Bible will understand what is going to happen on the day of the Lord. No reader of the Bible knows when the millennium reign of Christ began and ended. Not one reader of the Bible can understand how they were created or how they will live in the future after the day of the Lord.

You have no idea if those who read the Bible donktnow those things. In fact it is the only those who read ans study the Bbile who does know those things.

 

[Meander_Z]

You are right. I worded that poorly----All spiritual truths are rationally indefensible.



No, God is omnipotent is a literal truth. Spiritual truth has not creative powers.



I just said that. Let me explain; no spiritual truth can be proven scientifically. They must be accepted by faith alone.

.

Way to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are some that would argue that something is not rationally defensible unless it is scientifically provable, but that would be a person who doesn't really understand the nature of mathematics. A mathematical truth(formula) can provable within the language of mathematics even if it cannot be proven empirically(scientifically via real world experimentation).

A spiritual truth can be discussed and defended rationally in the language of spirituality, but certain perimeters would have to be agreed upon first. We would have to agree on the definition of the difference between a spiritual truth and a literal truth. We would have to agree on what a spiritual truth is, where it comes from, and what its purpose is. We would have to agree on same basic criteria for what makes a spiritual principal or idea true as opposed to false.

Right now as far as I can tell you are defining the difference thus... a spiritual truth is a truth that some other person believes in, while a literal truth is a truth that you personally believe in. This would not be an acceptable set of parameters for a rational discussion on spirituality because it automatically assumes the superiority of your experience over mine.

You could alternatively define a spiritual truth as a truth arrived at by means of personal experience, deduction, or alternative sources, while a literal truth is is truth presented by the Bible, but this set of parameters is only acceptable if we both agree that the Bible is the best or only source of literal truth. We don't agree so again we fail to have a set of acceptable parameters.

You hinted at some sort of rational thought when you said, "Spiritual truth has not creative powers," this hints something at a different sort of definition of the difference between a literal truth and a spiritual one, but its not a developed point. You say this as if the creative powers of your literal truth are self evident, and they are not. You say this as if the lack of creative powers of a spiritual truth are self evident, and they are not.

I don't doubt that you have faith in what you believe, but your use of reasoning so far causes me to doubt your ability to engage in conversation that is anything other than making assertions of principles you hold to be true, without examining or explaining how you arrived at such assertions. Faith is a worthy thing for an individual to hold, but if you want to talk about your faith with others it helps to know how to use spiritual language to discuss spiritual principles.

Saying that you are right because you are right and everyone else is wrong because they are wrong, might feel satisfying to you, but this does not a rational argument make... not a rational argument in any language, except perhaps the language of a very small child who doesn't know any better.

 

[Dawnofhope]

The Bible does not say the earth is the center of the universe.

I didn't say it did. However for centuries the Christian Church believed this to be so, and strongly resisted change despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

My point is that early Christians viewed hell below the earth and heaven up in the sky. If we still believe these are the physical locations in the phenomenal world we are in trouble. If we believe that heaven is in an invisible realm, then Jesus physically rising into the sky makes no sense.

Even if you want to make the creation account an allegory, and it certainly has some allegorical teachings in it, ALL Biblical allegories have their basis in literal, historical events.

Spiritual realities do not have creative powers.

That's a statement of belief that contradicts both science and scripture.

 

[roger1440]

but if it didn't actually happen where did this aspect of the story come from?

In order for a person to be born again or born from above or regenerated first a person must die.

 

[Ben Avraham]

Were not for the NT, Jesus would not have existed.

 

[Furball]

It's a strange question to ask, because all we know about jesus IS from the bible. Take away the bible and you take away jesus all together. How am I supposed to guess who or what he was, said and did since the bible is the only book that talks about him??

As far as the bible goes, jesus was a failed apocalyptic preacher who was delusional about whom he was and about the coming kingdom. It never came.

 

[Ben Avraham]

It's a strange question to ask, because all we know about jesus IS from the bible. Take away the bible and you take away jesus all together. How am I supposed to guess who or what he was, said and did since the bible is the only book that talks about him??

As far as the bible goes, jesus was a failed apocalyptic preacher who was delusional about whom he was and about the coming kingdom. It never came.

As I can see, you are talking about the NT. Well, Jesus never had any thing to do with the NT. BTW, he never even dreamed the NT would ever rise which it did about 50+ years later after Jesus had been gone. Jesus was a Jew and, his gospel was the Tanach. Since there is nothing in the Tanach about him
either, all references to him in the NT are from hear-say as a result of the Hellenists former disciples of
Paul who wrote the NT. Real Jews never wrote a single page of the NT.

 

[1robin]

This is essentially a question about the historical Jesus.

I find that I'm quite fascinated by the figure of Jesus. I adored him when I was Christian, and I still have a lingering affection for him to this day. Jesus was a groovy fellow, and in general I dig him a lot.

Still it's come to my attention that modern scholarship regarding Jesus portrays him in a number of very different ways. Some see him as a political rebel, some as a spiritual mystic, others as a great humanitarian. There are disagreements on how devout he was to the Semitic faith, and some arguments that Jesus would have been deeply disturbed by the directions taken by the early church under the influence of Paul.

Who do you think Jesus was as a person? What were his primary goals and motivations? Was the resurrection an unprecedented miracle or the most elaborate hoax in history, or was this detail added later to give the Christ story more authority?

I've read a bit about this topic, and the resurrection story seems to be one of the earliest aspects of Christian faith, even when individuals in the early church had huge disagreements about what it meant, the resurrection seems to be pretty universally acknowledged in even the oldest sources, but if it didn't actually happen where did this aspect of the story come from?

First there are over 40 early extra canonical texts that mention Jesus. Countless texts mention the extremely rapid explosion of the Christian faith across the Roman Empire despite it's leader having died and his followers being persecuted. By far the best conclusion for that occurred (according to 2 of if not the greatest experts concerning testimony and evidence in human history) is that Jesus actually existed and did the things said about him.

Second the best anyone (who has never been born again) can do to determine who Christ actually is to examine the primary and most authoritative texts concerning him and to ascertain the consensus among those best trained to know. The consensus among those best quipped to know (NT historians), the following among many claims are thought to be historically reliable.

1. Jesus came on the historical scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority.
2. He practiced a ministry of miracle working and exorcisms.
3. Christ died by crucifixion at the hands of the Romans and at the insistence of the Hebrew priestly class.
4. His tomb was found empty.
5. Even his enemies claimed to have spoken with him post mortem.

Third, Paul was anointed by Christ himself as an apostle. The other apostles examined his testimony and accepted it. Every one of the other apostles validated his apostleship. Paul prevailed in every disagreement with the other apostles. Paul wrote more of the NT than any of the rest of it's authors and perhaps more than them all combined. Paul's writings are older than any other NT author. His source material dates to with a few years and possibly a few months of Christ's death. So your going to have to come up with very good reasons indeed to disqualify what he claimed.