The Trinity

[JacobEzra.]

.



as far as yeshua is concerned, how do you really know he was divine??? because Constantine told you what to believe?? because the same people who thought the earth was flat, and had four corners, created 6000 years ago, and that we are all inbred from ancient hebrews after a global flood told you so?????????????????????????

Jesus was believed to be divine, way before Constantine was born.

 

[outhouse]

Jesus was believed to be divine, way before Constantine was born.

yes ,,, correct


but how divine he was said to be, was ruled on in 325AD

he was defined, and that definition holds today

 

[outhouse]

"Most scholars" yea, as if not naming any of them is going to give weight to your shallow arguments that you keep parroting.

you might want to have a look at historical jesus


sorry you dont like the facts at hand

Historical Jesus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The quest for the historical Jesus operates under the premise that the New Testament does not necessarily give an accurate historical picture of the life of Jesus.

Jesus as divine

Some scholars interpret Jesus as a charismatic preacher who taught the principles of salvation, everlasting life, and the Kingdom of God.[7] E.P. Sanders sees him as accepting a divine role as God's viceroy in the coming kingdom.[82][83] It has been argued that Jesus' use of three important terms: Messiah, Son of God, and Son of Man, reveals his understanding of his divine role.[7][83] Jürgen Becker sees Jesus taking his authority directly from God, in contrast to the prophets who revealed the future or will of God.[82] M. de Jonge argues that Jesus saw himself as God's final envoy.[84]
Burton Mack on the other hand supports the hypothesis of the Messianic secret first proposed by William Wrede. This hypothesis holds that Jesus' instruction to his disciples not to reveal his identity as the Messiah was a later invention by the early Church to deal with the embarrassing fact that early traditions did not show Jesus as claiming to be the Messiah.[85]


Messiah

Main article: Messiah
In the Hebrew Bible, three classes of people are identified as "anointed," that is, "Messiahs": prophets, priests, and kings.[83] In Jesus' time, the term Messiah was used in different ways, and no one can be sure how Jesus would even have meant it if he had accepted the term.[83] Though Messianic expectations in general centered on the King Messiah, the Essenes expected both a kingly and a priestly figure in their eschatology.[citation needed] The Jews of Jesus' time waited expectantly for a divine redeemer who would restore Israel, which suffered under Roman rule. John the Baptist was apparently waiting for one greater than himself, an apocalyptic figure.[86] Christian scripture and faith acclaim Jesus as this "Messiah" ("anointed one," "Christ").


Son of God

Main article: Son of God
Paul describes God as declaring Jesus to be the Son of God by raising him from the dead, and Sanders argues Mark portrays God as adopting Jesus as his son at his baptism,[83] although many others do not accept this interpretation of Mark.[87] Sanders argues that for Jesus to be hailed as the Son of God does not mean that he is literally God's offspring.[83] Rather, it indicates a very high designation, one who stands in a special relation to God.[83]
In the synoptic Gospels, the being of Jesus as "Son of God" corresponds exactly to the typical Hasidean from Galilee, a "pious" holy man that by God's intervention performs miracles and exorcisms.[88][89]

 

[outhouse]

Son of God - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For thousands of years, emperors and rules ranging from the Western Zhou dynasty (c. 1000 B.C.) in China to Jimmu Tenno of Japan (perhaps c. 600 B.C.) to Alexander the Great (c. 360 BC) have assumed titles that reflect a filial relationship with deities






n the Book of Exodus Israel as a people is called "God's son",

god having a son was nothing new. If Yeshua would not have been there. Another would have filled his shoes sooner or later


. In Jewish literature, the leaders of the people, kings and princes were called "sons of God"



NOT A OUNCE OF DIVINITY IN THESE HEBREW SONS OF GOD

 

[outhouse]

Geza Vermes views the different accounts of Jesus' birth given in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew as "pious fictions".





E. P. Sanders describes them as "the clearest cases of invention in the Gospels".[





Raymond Brown notes that "it is unlikely that either account is completely historical",[31] and suggests that the account in Matthew is based on an earlier narrative patterned on traditions about the birth of Moses

 

[sojourner]

No

it was a combination of influences

Soo..
El the mountain god didn't miraculously morph into Yahweh???

because in my opinion they created him.

Ah! But they didn't. They stole Yahweh from the earlier Sumerian El. And changed El. Just as Xians changed Yahweh. I don't know about you, but I'd rather fly GPS than I would dead-reckoning. It seems that subsequent understandings are better.

false

peoples imaginations change regarding what they want to believe.


No one has a understanding of something they know nothing about. Every person has their very own definition of what god is and NONE are a like. vast as imagination can carry.

None of which proves your claim of "false." The church lives -- it changes and grows, and our understanding of God grows and changes with it. If you were one of us, you'd know that. But you prefer to remain outside and take pot-shots at the straw men you set up.

as far as yeshua is concerned, how do you really know he was divine???

Because tradition says so -- and it's a tradition I trust. The church no longer believes in those other things. One day, our perception of Christ may change, too. Until such time, as a member of the church, I believe.

 

[sojourner]

Son of God - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For thousands of years, emperors and rules ranging from the Western Zhou dynasty (c. 1000 B.C.) in China to Jimmu Tenno of Japan (perhaps c. 600 B.C.) to Alexander the Great (c. 360 BC) have assumed titles that reflect a filial relationship with deities






n the Book of Exodus Israel as a people is called "God's son",

god having a son was nothing new. If Yeshua would not have been there. Another would have filled his shoes sooner or later


. In Jewish literature, the leaders of the people, kings and princes were called "sons of God"



NOT A OUNCE OF DIVINITY IN THESE HEBREW SONS OF GOD

As if Wikipedia is, in any way, either an authority or even a decent reference for theology. That's why leading seminaries everywhere insist that we use it as source materials for our papers. In case you hadn't noticed, there is a VAST difference between the historic Jesus and the mythic Jesus. We don't develop theology from the historic Jesus.

 

[outhouse]

They stole Yahweh from the earlier Sumerian El

Are we not missing anotgher name for the god charactor that has a plural meaning did they borrow that as well.??

I learned not to use teh word stole here in this regard because it does tick off followers of judaism who still hold belief that they are the chosen ones.

maybe you can get away with what I cannot.

Soo..
El the mountain god didn't miraculously morph into Yahweh???

proving my point hebrews created all their gods I see.

. But you prefer to remain outside and take pot-shots at the straw men you set up.

isnt that calling the kettle black lol

The church lives -- it changes and grows

not much at all.

you still believe dead men rise and live again

you believe 3 gods are one


the core has changed very very little and dogma still reigns supreme.

you maight want to look at conterceptive stances in africa the church is still indirectly responsible for millions of deaths, if you want to play that card.

Because tradition says so -- and it's a tradition I trust

Ah the magic word, iv ebeen waiting for

all you have is faith

 

[outhouse]

We don't develop theology from the historic Jesus.

because you cant


its already been done

 

[outhouse]

In case you hadn't noticed, there is a VAST difference between the historic Jesus and the mythic Jesus

here you yourself claim to be following a myth.

When I believed I never would have used that phrase.



Anyway case closed, you did it for me by claiming jesus is a myth. Not much else to debate.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

Questions of historical Jesus scholarship bring the discussion to greater maturity than, say, simply ridiculing doctrines like the Trinity or Incarnation.

But don't think that, just because you can quote Wiki profusely, you have offered any substantial refutation of Christianity and the deity of Christ. The historical critical method is itself problematic, as its initial assumptions exclude the possibility of Jesus' deity or the agency of God, and therefore its very premises seek to account for the phenomenon of Jesus on purely human terms. Where it can not explain or where it reaches a dead end it will offer hypotheses based on probability, often excluding the possibility of the genuinely novel. (eg. they wouldn't have done things that way!But why? Because we can't find any evidence of them having ever done it that way before...)

The fact that the historical critical method has yielded as many "historical Jesuses" as there are "theological Jesuses" is a clue to the fact that it is left somewhat wanting in the label "scientific". No doubt, it's useful and I think certain Christians should be very much involved in this discussion. But just because the Gospels were not written by eye witnesses does not mean that apostolic communities, situated in a society were oral transmission was commonplace, could not accurately transmit the essentials of Jesus' message and the interpretation that they shared.

Quite early, by the time of Saint Paul, a contemporary of the Twelve, we have the doctrine of Christ's divinity, incarnation and kenosis in hymn-odic form:

For, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men...

Now, I understand there is good reason to think that Paul himself did not write this, but is quoting what other Christians were already accustomed to. Here we have, during Apostolic times, the notion that Christ is not merely a servant of God emergent to do his will, but one who exchanged a previously glorified and divine state for a lowly status, taking on human flesh, suffering death and being raised into the heights as the image and figure to whom all will bow in worship, confessing that he is ho Kyrios and thereby coming to share in the covenantal life of Israel.

Isn't there a measure of reasonableness in thinking that the greatness of this man came at the beginning, rather than trying, with such roundabout effort, to account for how such fallaciously mythical structures could be built up with such rapidity?

Do I think one can simply read the Gospels from a historical perspective and say with the Roman soldier, "Truly this man was the [a] son of God?" No, certainly not. The Gospels were written, for the most part, for already believing Christian communities, not as "tracts" to be handed out to strangers.

However, that we have some objective, scientific picture of the "historical Jesus" that demolishes the "Christ of faith"? Though the claim might make a best seller out of an otherwise dry category of scholarship and fling a few professors to semi-stardom, I don't think this has been proven and the debate rages on among competent and well educated scholars about a great number of issues. No Christian ever claimed that human history, abstracted and compartmentalized, would ever in itself lead to faith.

That the Gospels give a theologized view of history, I will grant. By this I mean, of course, the deliberate typological portrayal of Jesus, as in the nativity narratives.

That one must take on faith that their theological exposition of the events of Christ's life contain, as it were, the real substance of those same events, again I will grant.

I can take on faith, or a kind of anti-faith, that this Jesus must somehow---and I stress somehow---be explained to us. Either way I doubt that the tools of objectivism can really drive back enough of history's fog to say with much definitiveness who Jesus was. He remains a mystery, which is why so many Jesus scholars still have research grants.

The real crux of the matter [as regards the initial belief of his deity], to me, is that the actions of Jesus were seen to be coterminous with the actions of the God of Israel, and that quite quickly this was seen as permission to worship Him and identify Him with Israel's Groom, Lord and Saviour. As I said before, I think the the message of Jesus has come to us for the fact that the message was understood to be identical with the messenger, which renders his claim to divinity more subtle, and even necessarily so. For it is not in the nature of a word to make a claim for itself, but to simply bear in itself the very thing it was spoken to communicate.

Moreover, of certain deeds we can have a relative historical certainty: his proclamation of a message of liberation, the coming of the kingdom, the inversion of society's values, the importance of repentance, and, above all, his suffering and death and (outside empirical possibility at this point, his rising from the dead). And it was through all of these that a community of Jews became convinced that indeed "God is among us", quite unexpectedly and yet, also always foretold. In this, yes, I absolutely have faith.

 

[outhouse]

simply ridiculing doctrines like the Trinity or Incarnation

I didnt start it out that way, I was not going after jesus complete divinity.

The topic got carried there.


Fact is as I stated, humans defined jesus divinity based on third and fourth hand information from people who write very mythical in nature. And not a eyewitness to be found in all the writings we have.

So how can man define divinity on something they know absolutely nothing about?????

The historical critical method is itself problematic

Its only problematic for the extremely religious because it goes against faith.

could not accurately transmit the essentials of Jesus' message and the interpretation that they shared

you need to understand how oral transmission works to even start to use it in a quote.


Ancient hebrews had a track record when starting a new religion to not hold to oral tradition. Once a religion is down pat, yes they can and will recite the whole book verbatim. This is exactly why biblical jesus does not mirror historical jesus. That anmd when one creates a deity one can not make a deity that is weak or human, if they did no one would follow it. Christianity was a movement, during that period many changes were made. With ZERO witnesses who would question any changes?? no one.

 

[kepha31]

Geza Vermes views the different accounts of Jesus' birth given in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew as "pious fictions".

Geza Vermes is a Jewish scholar, not a Christian one. Can you spell b-i-a-s? Or are you thinking of converting to Judaism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._P._Sanders

E. P. Sanders describes them as "the clearest cases of invention in the Gospels".[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._P._Sandershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._P._Sanders Again, you give no context. Here is a review of his book:

"...If it can be shown by the best of ECUMENICAL scholarship that Luther was wrong and that the Catholic objections to the Protestant religions were justified, then we have a most powerful argument with which to lead our Protestant brethren back into the Church. The New Perspective on St. Paul (NPSP) (by E.P. Sanders) can be a part of this endeavor.

Among the Catholic concerns are to preserve the integral necessity of good works in Christian salvation (Matt 25:31ff, Romans 2:7, James 2:20ff), the transformative power of Sanctifying Grace through Baptism (Romans 6:1ff) , love of God and neighbor as fulfilling the requirements of the Jewish Law (Luke 10:25ff, Romans 13:7-10), and good works as the final cause of our justification (Ephesians 2:8-10).

The NPSP has its roots in the early 20th Century when Protestant and Jewish scholars began to seriously reflect on the Jewish background of Jesus. Many times in debates during the Deformation, Catholic exegetes had argued that St. Paul was not as concerned in his writings about Pelagianism as he was about Judaizing. These arguments generally fell on deaf ears. But men like Alfred Edersheim, George Moore, Adolf Schlatter and C. G Montifiore started to discuss them openly challenging the narrow views of Protestant orthodoxy. At that time, Protestant exegesis was still strongly influenced by apologetic concerns and confessional theology. And we must also recognize that a nascent theological anti-Semitism made it had for Christians to find anything worthwhile in Judaism. It just made sense in that context that St. Paul was attacking Judaism per se as a religion of "works righteousness"...

Not only do you quote out of context, you haven't a clue what Sanders represents. You just have mindless rants. What makes you so angry? Were you spiritually abused by fundie parents?

Raymond Brown notes that "it is unlikely that either account is completely historical",[31] and suggests that the account in Matthew is based on an earlier narrative patterned on traditions about the birth of Moses

So what? Moses prefigures Christ in many ways. That does not mean they are both false.

His critics included Cardinal Lawrence Shehan and Father Richard W. Gilsdorf, who described Brown's work as "a major contribution to the befogged wasteland of an 'American Church' progressively alienated from its divinely constituted center.”[5]
Other writers, on the other hand, have criticized Brown for excessive caution, for what they saw as his unwillingness to acknowledge the radical implications of the critical methods he was using. Frank Kermode, in his review of The Birth of the Messiah, accused Brown of being too eager to secure the imprimatur of the Catholic Church;[22] Geza Vermes has described Brown as "the primary example of the position of having your cake and eating it'."[23]
Raymond E. Brown - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[/QUOTE]

Raymond Brown might be a scholar, but he is still a joke.

You have an ability to absorb numerous rebutting defeaters, which is getting easier to do.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

Jesus was already being regarded as de facto divine in stature when the Apostles were still alive. Though all we really have are the writing of Saint Paul to verify this, one does not find any members of the Twelve calling him to task on this point ---on other questions, yes (like the requirements for Gentiles).

 

[outhouse]

He remains a mystery, which is why so many Jesus scholars still have research grants.

I will grant much of his real life is a mystery. Thats why I ask, how can man define him as part of god.

This whole trinity message goes a long way to prove man creates and defines his deitys.

Not the deity defining his own existance, as it should be.


Its exactly why I dont believe in any deity. After historical research I see the EXACT pattern in which ancient men created them, exactly when they needed them.


And you kind sir are %100 as much a skeptic to deitys as I am. Out of a thousand past deity's you also believe 999 of them are false .

 

[outhouse]

So what? Moses prefigures Christ in many ways. That does not mean they are both false.

the difference is jesus has some historicity

Moses has zero historicity. Most scholars say he never existed

 

[outhouse]

Though all we really have are the writing of Saint Paul to verify this

And much of paul is known to be forged/interpolation/additions

so know it comes down to what letter did the source quote come from.

Jesus was already being regarded as de facto divine in stature when the Apostles were still alive.

If he was truely divine , maybe people would have written about him while he was alive.

not make up a story after his death

 

[sojourner]

With ZERO witnesses who would question any changes?? no one.

Zero witnesses? What about the members of the church? They were all certainly there with Jesus, and they passed their tradition to newcomers. This is what's called "apostolic teaching."

Not the deity defining his own existance, as it should be.

God is self-defining. God is I AM. Jesus echoed that. We wrote it down.

And much of paul is known to be forged/interpolation/additions

Patently false.

If he was truely divine , maybe people would have written about him while he was alive.

Not so. In an oral culture, not much was written. Those who could write didn't realize Jesus' importance while he was alive.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

A good many highly significant historical figures were not written about while they were alive.

Besides that, who are you to say that God has to come down on your terms? ie. some kind of hyperbolic Lady Gaga entrance onto the world stage?

A great deal of the significance of Jesus is his insignificance.

 

[outhouse]

Not so. In an oral culture, not much was written.

had he really been divine at all he would have been the biggest show in town and caught the eye of the literate.

It was not a %100 oral culture.

Those who could write didn't realize Jesus' importance while he was alive

because he wasnt important while alive. Your using it more of an excuse then anything else.

Patently false.

Paul the Apostle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Of the fourteen letters attributed to Paul and included in the Western New Testament canon, there is little or no dispute that Paul actually wrote at least seven.


and in modern times is considered by most experts as not by Paul (see also Antilegomena). The authorship of the remaining six Pauline epistles is disputed to varying degrees

God is self-defining.

god is illiterate and never wrote one word, ever.

man defines all gods and deitys

Zero witnesses?

that is what we are left with.

What about the members of the church?

they worship

They were all certainly there with Jesus

you do not know that. Since jesus was said to be a real person chances are he was around people. Kind of what teachers do.