The Quran and the Son of God

[Niblo]

They take everything literally, so why should we take flesh with bones and all?

Regards

Because we are conversing in English; and in English the word 'flesh' can be rendered 'human being'....bones and all!

Best regards.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Please consider this a reply to both of your latest posts to me. It is my intention - God willing - to cover all that you have said; but let’s try and eat this elephant one piece at a time.

You say that Peter ‘speaks of God being perishable’. Please cite the relevant text. It does not spring to mind.

You say that the Bible ‘teaches that God is inside all things, supporting even the existence of individual people by His Spirit and power.’

I have said as much:

‘Against Deism, which teaches that God, having created the universe, leaves it to run itself, the Church teaches that He continually preserves in existence all created things. The First Vatican Council declared: ‘God, by His Providence, protects all that He has created. If His Providence did not preserve all things with the same power with which they were created in the beginning they would fall back into nothingness immediately.’ (Denzinger 1784).

‘God’s act of preservation is said to be a continuation of His creative activity. The Church cites a number of biblical verses in support of this doctrine: ‘And how could a thing subsist, had you not willed it? Or how be preserved, if not called forth by you?’ (Wisdom 11: 25); and again: ‘(Jesus’) answer to (the Jews) was: “My Father still goes on working, and I am at work, too.”’ (John 5:17). Paul ascribes the preservation as well as the creation of the world to Christ: ‘He existed before all things and in him all things hold together…’ (Col 1: 17); and again: ‘He is the reflection of God’s glory and bears the impress of God’s own being, sustaining all things by his powerful command.’ (Hebrews 1:3).

‘God preserves created things by His very presence; and He is present inside every single thing that He has created; and not only inside but outside, of course, since He is omnipresent. But who among the Christians would suggest that God actually becomes that which he sustains; or that they become God because of His presence within them? Why should Yeshua be the one exception?’ (Post 98: 19th Sept)

You write: 'The ‘concept of God as immutable is based on presumptions of who God is and what He can do.’ I outlined, in Post 98, the Church’s doctrine on God’s immutability. Here it is again:

‘We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only one true God, eternal and immeasurable, almighty, unchangeable……’ (Fourth Lateran Council: Constitution 1. Confession of Faith); and again: ‘First, then, the holy Roman church, founded on the words of our Lord and Saviour, firmly believes, professes and preaches one true God, almighty, immutable and eternal.’ (The Council of Basel: Session 114).

By ‘immutable’ is meant that in God there can be no change whatsoever. Aquinas bases the absolute immutability of God on His absolute simplicity (a Spirit, having no parts); on His pure actuality (He has no potential for change); and on His infinite perfection. According to Aquinas, mutability includes potentiality, composition and imperfection and as such is irreconcilable with God as ‘actus purus’ (the absolutely simple, absolutely perfect Essence). (cf. Summa Theologica: Part 1; Question 9; Article 1).

I have no argument with this doctrine.

How can you say that you have no ‘problem with God becoming flesh’, when you have stated that He is ‘immutable, unchangeable’; that He ‘never changes’; and that He ‘does not act contrary to His nature’? If we accept that God is immutable, then it is nonsense to claim He can change.

If, on the other hand, we say that God can change, then He cannot be immutable. Something has to give. Either He is immutable or He is not. He cannot be both, since they are mutually exclusive.

Please respond.

Thank you for your kind and lengthy reply.

I said (hope I didn't mistype) that Peter said gold, not God, is perishable. Peter says even an atomic element can be made/unmade by God.

It is considered in orthodox Christian belief/Biblical belief a heresy that Jesus wasn't man and God, fully, yes. It is considered a heresy in Islam for God to be flesh, so this becomes a sticking point.

Let's indeed bite the elephant slowly. Moses sees a burning bush talking to him and reports "the bush had a voice". God was talking. A donkey and other unlikely flesh speak God's Word in the Bible as well. Allah was talking.

You and I would say God made sound issue from the tree a donkey. You and I would say God can make any flesh shaped any way and do anything, His Spirit and power made the donkey's vocal cords, the cells in them, do things.

God is Spirit, the best analogy I might have would be electrical power or the power of gravity. In gravity's case, nothing flesh or physical is discerned. This is so true that dark matter, considered to be 30% to 70% of the universe, is invisible/never seen/never measured but is firmly considered to "exist". God holds everything by the word of His power.

Gravity exerts force on us and also (at most times!) on Jesus Christ. The power of God through gravity affected every cell in the body of Jesus the man. The power of God sometimes affect us, too, God can do miraculous healings on our cells/diseases, He can end our lives, He can do many, many things. Allah can raise up bodies from their atoms on the last day, for judgment, and Allah can make people live forever, never decaying, in Heaven, by His power in our cells.

So God's power was in the cells of the fully human Jesus. God never changed, He is immutable Spirit. Think of it like this, Spirit is the air we breathe, the oxygen and nitrogen, you don't see it, but if the air turned orange, we'd all have orange inside us, inside our individual cells as oxygen/carbon dioxide, etc. and all be walking in orange, all flesh.

The air is still air inside my body but I'm 100% human.

Or how about water? Water is ice, steam or water, but is still water droplets. God is in Jesus.

PS. I'm far less inclined to take for doctrine statements of councils and church leaders, and prefer Bible doctrines only. A lot of the so-called "father" were centuries after the Bible. Many of them, like Augustine, believed and taught heinous doctrinal heresies.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Jesus was not made of flesh only, he had bones also. Right, please?
Jesus was neither god nor son of god, in literal and physical terms, he was but a human being.

Regards

Biblically, it is a heresy to say Jesus is less than God and less than fully man. Like a person with air inside them, they have air within, even in their cells as oxygen/carbon dioxide, but are flesh-and-blood people.

Biblically, people who deny Jesus is the God/man are not saved.

 

[paarsurrey]

Because we are conversing in English; and in English the word 'flesh' can be rendered 'human being'....bones and all!

Best regards.

Flesh does not mean human being even in English, brother. I have checked it.

Regards

 

[paarsurrey]

The Quran and the Son of God

The topic of the thread is "The Quran and the Son of God" so the discussion/debate is to done from Quran.

Regards

 

[Niblo]

Flesh does not mean human being even in English, brother. I have checked it.

Regards

I don't need to check it. I've been speaking the language for almost seventy three years (I admit my first words are likely to have been 'goo goo' or 'da da', but hey! We all have to start somewhere

English Standard Version:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The word 'flesh' is rendered (correctly, when one considers that Yeshua was a man) as 'human' or 'human being' in the following versions. And what is a human if not a human being?

Living Translation:

So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son.

Contemporary English Version:

The Word became a human being and lived here with us. We saw his true glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father. From him the complete gifts of undeserved grace and truth have come down to us.

Good News Translation:

The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father's only Son.

God's Word Translation:

The Word became human and lived among us. We saw his glory. It was the glory that the Father shares with his only Son, a glory full of kindness and truth.

Have a nice day, and very best regards.

 

[paarsurrey]

Biblically, it is a heresy to say Jesus is less than God and less than fully man. Like a person with air inside them, they have air within, even in their cells as oxygen/carbon dioxide, but are flesh-and-blood people.

Biblically, people who deny Jesus is the God/man are not saved.

The Gospels is neither authored by G-d, nor written by Jesus. It was anonymous narrations adopted by Pauline Churches after lot of doctoring. Most of it is simply heresy itself. Jesus was born of Mary and was only a human.

Regards

 

[paarsurrey]

Biblically, it is a heresy to say Jesus is less than God and less than fully man. Like a person with air inside them, they have air within, even in their cells as oxygen/carbon dioxide, but are flesh-and-blood people.

Biblically, people who deny Jesus is the God/man are not saved.

It is heresy for the Pauline Christianity. In Islam and many other religions to believe Jesus having the status of G-d or Son-of-God is heresy. And Jesus was also a Jew, not a Christian.

Regards

 

[BilliardsBall]

The Gospels is neither authored by G-d, nor written by Jesus. It was anonymous narrations adopted by Pauline Churches after lot of doctoring. Most of it is simply heresy itself. Jesus was born of Mary and was only a human.

Regards

Thanks! What is your evidence for this heretical belief set? Do you have documents showing these things as true or is this a set of philosophical choices you've made here?

 

[BilliardsBall]

It is heresy for the Pauline Christianity. In Islam and many other religions to believe Jesus having the status of G-d or Son-of-God is heresy. And Jesus was also a Jew, not a Christian.

Regards

Correct! Jesus could not follow Himself, since Christians follow Christ. However, Paul did not "invent" a divine God-man, since every other New Testament writer acknowledges and worships the Christ.

 

[Niblo]

Correct! Jesus could not follow Himself, since Christians follow Christ. However, Paul did not "invent" a divine God-man, since every other New Testament writer acknowledges and worships the Christ.

Have not forgotten your last post me. A wee bit hectic at the moment!

 

[paarsurrey]

Correct! Jesus could not follow Himself, since Christians follow Christ. However, Paul did not "invent" a divine God-man, since every other New Testament writer acknowledges and worships the Christ.

New Testament write-ups were anonymous documents, these were named after disciples for credulity. These narration/write-ups were doctored and selected by Pauline Christianity much later, while others were kept out.

Regards

 

[BilliardsBall]

New Testament write-ups were anonymous documents, these were named after disciples for credulity. These narration/write-ups were doctored and selected by Pauline Christianity much later, while others were kept out.

Regards

Still, that is a philosophical assertion, there are not documents to prove anything you're suggesting: "The righteous is a guide to his neighbor,
But the way of the wicked leads them astray."

 

[BilliardsBall]

Have not forgotten your last post me. A wee bit hectic at the moment!

Thank you!

 

[RabbiO]

Flesh does not mean human being even in English, brother. I have checked it.

Regards

Apparently you did not check the Cambridge Dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary or the Merriam-Webster Dictionary to name a couple of the standard English dictionaries.

 

[paarsurrey]

#132 paarsurrey
New Testament write-ups were anonymous documents, these were named after disciples for credulity. These narration/write-ups were doctored and selected by Pauline Christianity much later, while others were kept out.

Still, that is a philosophical assertion, there are not documents to prove anything you're suggesting: "The righteous is a guide to his neighbor,
But the way of the wicked leads them astray."

"New Testament write-ups were anonymous documents"

It is mentioned in the Catholic Encyclopedia ?

Regards

 

[BilliardsBall]

#132 paarsurrey
New Testament write-ups were anonymous documents, these were named after disciples for credulity. These narration/write-ups were doctored and selected by Pauline Christianity much later, while others were kept out.


"New Testament write-ups were anonymous documents"

It is mentioned in the Catholic Encyclopedia ?

Regards

I'm not Catholic, but this assertion in the Catholic Encyclopedia is not quite true, most NT documents indicate at a minimum the author and the scribe who wrote their statements!

 

[Hockeycowboy]

You write: ‘The Word = the logos of God, the mind of God. Jesus had a fleshly brain. The mind of God/thought life of God was housed in a human brain.’ Are you suggesting that the only part of Yeshua that was God was his brain?

Let’s be a lot more serious: Your claim that God ‘housed’ Himself in a human body is a deliberate corruption of the text.

You know perfectly well that the author of ‘Yochanan’ does not say that the Word was ‘housed’ in flesh; he states that the ‘Word’ became flesh. This is quite a different matter.

We are agreed that God is immutable. If He is truly immutable then He cannot change. If indeed He can change, but chooses not to, then He is not immutable. We can’t have it both ways.

And the problem remains: How is it possible for God – an immutable Being – to become a human being? The Church is well aware of this problem, of course. This is what Ludwig Ott has to say:

‘…..it is objected that the Hypostatic Union contradicts the immutability of God. The rejoinder to this is that the act of becoming man, as an operation of God ad extra, has no more induced a change in the Divine Essence than did the creation of the world, as it is only the execution in time of an eternal unchangeable resolve of will. Neither did the event of the Incarnation result in a change of the Divine Essence; for, after the assumption of a body the Logos was no more perfect and no less perfect than before. No change for the worse took place, because the Logos remains what It was; and no change for the better, because It already possessed in sublime manner all perfections of the human nature from all eternity.’ (‘Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma - Chapter 4 - Theological-speculative Discussion on the Hypostatic Union’).

Let’s examine this statement more closely:

First: That the act by which the ‘Second Person of the Trinity’ (the ‘Logos’) became a man is no different from God’s act of creation; since both are merely ‘the execution in time of an eternal unchangeable resolve of (His) will.’

I know of no Trinitarian who believes that when God created the universe - and all that lies therein- He actually became this universe; this galaxy; this planet; this rock; this tree; or that He became ‘Adam’. On the other hand, every Trinitarian believes that the ‘Logos’ was made flesh.

The act of creation and the (alleged) act of Incarnation are entirely different as to their natures. The former required no change to the essential nature of God. The latter, on the other hand, could not have been achieved without change (a change from spirit to flesh).

Second: That following ‘the event of the Incarnation’ the ‘Logos’ was ‘no less perfect than before (and that) no change for the worse took place, because the Logos remains what It was.’

The Nicene Creed confesses: ‘’Who for us men and for our salvation descended from heaven and was made flesh’ (Denzinger 86). To say that the ‘Logos’ was: ‘no less perfect’ after becoming flesh that it was beforehand is to say that God and man are equal in their perfection; in their holiness; in their very natures.

The nature of God: He is spirit…………He is immutable…….He is infinite………He is omnipotent…………He is not man!

The nature of man: He is corporeal…..He is mutable…….He is finite……..He is weak……..He is not God!

How can these two natures be the same? How can a change from the former to the latter not be a change for the worse?

Third: That the ‘Logos’: ‘Already possessed in sublime manner all perfections of the human nature from all eternity.’

Really? In what way can a being that is ‘absolutely simple’ (declared as such by the 4th Lateran Council and the First Vatican Council; see Denzinger 428, 1782) – a pure spirit; being neither a body nor a composition of body and spirit – possess, in any way, and to any degree, a corporeal nature?

Ott goes on: 'The change lay on the side of the human nature only, which was elevated to participation in the Personal Subsistence of the Logos.’

In other words, instead of the ‘Word’ becoming flesh, the flesh became the ‘Word’ (to use your analogy, it was not God who became the ‘tent’; it was the ‘tent’ that became God).

Yet another, blatant, corruption of Yochanan: 14.

Council of Basel decreed that it: ‘Holds, professes and teaches that one and the same Son of God and of man, our lord Jesus Christ, is perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity; true God and true man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father, and in the last days the same born according to his humanity for us and our salvation from Mary the virgin mother of God.’ (Session 13).

We are assured that: Christ is ‘perfect in humanity’….a ‘true man’…..‘consubstantial with us as regards his humanity’…..‘like us in all respects except for sin.’

The Council of Chalcedon also declared Yeshua to be ‘truly God and truly man’ (Denzinger 148).

John Hick writes: ‘(The Council of Chalcedon) merely asserted that Jesus was ‘truly God and truly man’ without attempting to say how such a paradox is possible…. Merely to assert that two different natures coexisted in Jesus ‘without confusion, without change, without division, without separation’ is to utter a form of words which as yet has no specific meaning.’ (‘The Metaphor of God Incarnate’; page 48).

You appears to argue that ‘all things are possible with God’; that He can do whatever He pleases; but this is not correct.

God can do nothing that is against His essential nature. For example, He cannot make Himself smaller, since He is absolutely infinite; He cannot make Himself ignorant, since He is Omniscient; He cannot will Himself into oblivion, since He is Eternal; He cannot change His essential nature, since He is absolutely immutable; He cannot sin, since He is Holy.

C.S. Lewis (a confirmed Trinitarian) writes: ‘(God’s) Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say "God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it," you have not succeeded in saying anything about God.

‘Meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words "God can."… It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.’ (The Problem of Pain). My emphasis.

Lewis is saying that God cannot do what is logically impossible; and in this he is supported by Aquinas, who writes that God cannot create a man who is, at the same time, a donkey; for in the statement that a man is a donkey ‘the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject.’ (cf. Summa Theologica: Part 1; Question 25; Article 3).

E. P. Sanders writes: ‘It lies beyond my meagre abilities as an interpreter of dogmatic theology to explain how it is possible for one person to be 100 per cent human and 100 per cent divine, without either interfering with the other.’ (The Historical Figure of Jesus’; page 134.).

And so the question remains: ‘How is it possible for a being to be both wholly God and wholly man at one and the same time?’

Just to add...we have the words of John 1:18. "No one has seen God at any time." People saw Jesus, all over Judea and Galilee!

 

[Niblo]

Thank you!

Hello again. Sorry for the delay.

Not to worry about the typo.

In a previous post you wrote: 'I'm far less inclined to take for doctrine statements of councils and church leaders, and prefer Bible doctrines only.’

About fifty years ago I had a colleague who was a Biblical Unitarian (I was a Trinitarian). We discussed (often) both the trinity and incarnation. He was older than I, and very well acquainted with the Bible. On one occasion I became angry with him (I was fiery in those days!). I grabbed my bible and thrust it under his nose. ‘This is my Book’, I hissed. ‘What’s yours?’

He smiled, and gently removed the book from my hand. ‘This!’, he replied. I was stunned. How could this man read the very same book as I, and yet reach conclusions so opposed to my own? He was no fool; neither was he perverse. He was both genuine and honest; a decent man who lived his faith according to his conscience. And yet, he did not, could not, believe what I believed. How could this be? Ira Gershwin had the answer, of course:

‘It ain't necessarily so.
It ain't necessarily so.
The things that you're liable
To read in the Bible
It ain't necessarily so’ (‘Porgy and Bess’).

Unlike ‘P and B’, argument over what is ‘necessarily so’ and what ain’t has been running for centuries. I prefer to focus on the doctrines.

Doctrines concerning the incarnation are derived from selected interpretations of scripture, augmented by the opinion of sympathetic scholars; and the Church’s methodology is no different from that of ‘bible only’ folk: Read…

interpret…discuss…reach a decision…formulate a notion…make a declaration…claim sole possession of the ‘truth’…and declare as ‘heresy’ all opposing notions. Thank you very much, and have a nice day!

You say that God ‘never changed’, that He is ‘immutable Spirit’. Agreed. But then you write:

‘Spirit is the air we breathe, the oxygen and nitrogen, (we) don't see it, but if the air turned orange, we'd all have orange inside us, inside our individual cells as oxygen/carbon dioxide, etc. and all be walking in orange, all flesh.’

If this a reference to God’s immutability, and to His ability to bring about change without Himself changing, then your analogy breaks down from the start, simply because air is not spirit. It is matter; and as such is mutable. We are ‘100% human’ with or without air in our bodies. The only difference, of course, is that without air (coloured orange or not) we will very quickly become dead humans!

It is perfectly possible for God to communicate through a burning bush, or Balaam’s talking donkey – or at least to create the illusion of so doing. On the other hand, I’ve yet to meet a Christian (or Jew) who would argue that God actually became the bush or the donkey.

We part company when you say that God can ‘make any flesh shaped any way and do anything’ (it’s the ‘do anything’ I disagree with, let’s be clear about that).

Let me remind you what C.S. Lewis has to say: ‘(God’s) Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power…………….. Meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words "God can."…

‘It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.’ (The Problem of Pain).

Take note of the words: You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense.’

Ludwig Ott writes: ‘To God's Infinite Reality of Being there corresponds an (intensively) Infinite Power. This extends over the whole sphere of real and possible being (extensively infinite). As God's power is identical with God's Essence, it cannot imply anything which contradicts the Essence and the Attributes of God. Thus God cannot change, cannot lie, can make nothing that has happened not to have happened (contrary to the teaching of St. Peter Damian), cannot realise (i.e. bring into being) anything which is contradictory in itself 2 Tim. 2, 13: He cannot deny himself.’ (‘Fundamental of Catholic Dogma’; the emphasis is mine).

Aquinas writes: ‘Whatever implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence, because it cannot have the aspect of possibility.’ (Summa Theologica: Part 1; Question 25; Article 3).

This is not putting God in a box (you have accused me – twice! – of doing this). No. It is merely acknowledging that He is not a God of nonsense.

You say that the power of God ‘sometimes affects us’. I would say that His power affects us at all times. It perpetuates our very existence, for example.

You write of God performing miraculous healings, and so on. I agree. You go on to say that God’s power was ‘in the cells of the fully human Jesus.’ I agree with that, also. We have to acknowledge, of course, that God ‘indwells’ the whole of creation. If we say otherwise; that He is present in humans but not, say, in rocks and trees then we contradict the doctrine of His omnipresence. I need to stress that being present in the whole of creation does not mean that God assumes the nature (the substance) of created things.

There is a second power that we have not yet discussed; namely, God’s sanctifying power (grace).

Grace is that which makes a person holy. The notion that Yeshua was made holy through grace – made a saint, if you like – contains no contradiction. This notion does not violate the doctrine of God’s immutability, since what changes is not God Himself, but the soul of the recipient. Yeshua is said to have been ‘a man like us, in all things but sin’; a clear sign of God’s grace at work within him. It must be noted, however, that sanctifying grace does not – cannot – make a person divine; for then there would be two gods: the Sanctifier and the sanctified. This is not possible, since there is only one God.

Your brief excursion into the world of dark matter is interesting (although, perhaps, a little off-topic!)

Neil de Grasse Tyson writes:

‘Thus, as best we can figure, the dark matter doesn’t simply consist of matter that happens to be dark. Instead, it’s something else altogether. Dark matter exerts gravity according to the same rules that ordinary matter follows, but it does little else that might allow us to detect it. Of course, we are hamstrung in this analysis by not knowing what the dark matter is in the first place. If all mass has gravity, does all gravity have mass? We don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with the matter, and it’s the gravity we don’t understand.

‘What we know is that the matter we have come to love in the universe – the stuff of stars, planets, and life – is only a light frosting on the cosmic cake, modest buoys afloat in a vast cosmic ocean of something that looks like nothing.

‘So dark matter is our frenemy. We have no clue what it is. It’s kind of annoying. But we desperately need it in our calculations to arrive at an accurate description of the universe. Scientists are generally uncomfortable whenever we must base our calculations on concepts we don’t understand, but we’ll do it if we have to.’ (‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry’).

Love this bit: ‘Scientists are generally uncomfortable whenever we must base our calculations on concepts we don’t understand, but we’ll do it if we have to.’

Is the behaviour of theologians any different?

Ready to take another bite, or do you still wish to chew this first mouthful?

Very best regards, and may God bless you.

 

[Niblo]

Just to add...we have the words of John 1:18. "No one has seen God at any time." People saw Jesus, all over Judea and Galilee!

Indeed. But the Trinitarian would argue that what was seen was God made flesh: Jesus being both 'wholly man' and 'wholly God'. Thank you.