The Nicene Creed

[historia]

Here is the Creed that was affirmed at the Council of Nicaea, broken down into separate lines:

1. We believe in one God,
2. the Father almighty,
3. maker of all things visible and invisible;
4. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
5. the Son of God,
6. begotten from the Father uniquely --
7. that is, from the essence of the Father,
8. God from God,
9. Light from Light,
10. true God from true God,
11. begotten, not made,
12. of the same essence as the Father --
13. through whom all things came to be,
14. both the things in heaven and the things on earth,
15. who for us human beings and for our salvation
16. came down,
17. and was made flesh,
18. and became human,
19. and suffered,
20. and rose on the third day,
21. and ascended into the heavens,
22. and is coming to judge the living and the dead;
23. And in the Holy Spirit.

Question for debate:

Which lines, if any -- you can just refer to them by number -- do you disagree with? And why?

[OneJack]

[Replying to Mr E in post #170]

If we say Jack dear--- are we then allowed to state definitively that he never actually hears from Jesus? Let's establish some fair boundaries.

I’m not bullying Tam, her narratives prove all she’s saying emanates only from the pages of the bible. She can’t present direct utterances from the ‘still small voice’ she hears in her mind; hence, how can she hear from that voice, which she claims is Christ?

[Mr E]

[Replying to OneJack in post #171]

I’m not bullying Tam, her narratives prove all she’s saying emanates only from the pages of the bible. She can’t present direct utterances from the ‘still small voice’ she hears in her mind; hence, how can she hear from that voice, which she claims is Christ?

With respect, it appears you are.

I'll ask you again about your encounter with Jesus from 2001 to 2014-- would you care to share some details? Anyone could pronounce that your utterances from Jesus are nothing but your imagination. You can't see that her experiences with the Christ are every bit as valid as your claims to the same? In fact, your claims are made much more ridiculous because they contradict his words as recorded in scriptures, while hers align with the record.

[OneJack]

[Replying to OneJack in post #171]

I’m not bullying Tam, her narratives prove all she’s saying emanates only from the pages of the bible. She can’t present direct utterances from the ‘still small voice’ she hears in her mind; hence, how can she hear from that voice, which she claims is Christ?

With respect, it appears you are.

I'll ask you again about your encounter with Jesus from 2001 to 2014-- would you care to share some details? Anyone could pronounce that your utterances from Jesus are nothing but your imagination. You can't see that her experiences with the Christ are every bit as valid as your claims to the same? In fact, your claims are made much more ridiculous because they contradict his words as recorded in scriptures, while hers align with the record.

See my response in the link below:

viewtopic.php?p=1191383#p1191383

[historia]

Can you give me examples of people making such comments in relationship to the Creed? Say, a Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox theologians commenting on the Creed.

I gave you twenty examples.

That was just you saying things. I'm asking you to show me actual Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox theologians saying those same things when commenting on the Creed.

The creed was written to counter Arianism, which holds that Jesus was a man, born human like any other human born rather than the catholic belief that he was God born.

That is not what Arius taught. You probably got this mistaken notion from The Da Vinci Code.

Of course Constantine made it a crime against the State to hold this view and the Arians were politically persecuted for countering the catholic trinity dogma. It was the equivalent of losing your 501c3 status- if you were a church who claimed any belief apart from his adopted position.

And what happened after that?

[historia]

He would exist before (or outside) 'the first moment in time.' Correct?

Since space and time are part of creation, we should certainly affirm that God exists outside of time.

And while that would entail God being logically prior to time, I don't think we can say that God is temporally "before" time, as you seem to be suggesting. 'Before' and 'after' only make sense for things in time, right?

. . .

Now, unless you think God has no interaction with his creation whatsoever, we should also affirm that, while God is eternal, God is also present to each and every moment of time. In that way, if we (who are in time) could go back to the beginning -- the first moment of time (t = 0) -- we would find that God is present there, in that moment. Correct?

Yes of course, there is no argument here.

Cool. I think this serves as a common frame of reference for our continued discussion.

Okay.

A question, then: Did God choose to be eternal or is being eternal intrinsic to his nature?

In every example we have of anything, doesn't the generator exist before the generated?

Any example we might point to is necessarily an object inside of space and time. So, yes, objects inside of time are ordered in such a way that the generator exists temporally before the generated. But, as we noted above, God is outside of time.

Similarly:

Does not a father exist before his son? The sire before the sired? And is not THAT how both Christ and His Father describe their relationship? Father and Son.

Can you give me an example in nature of a father directly giving birth to a son without a mother? If not, then we can't say that everything that is true about fathers is true of God, right?

Recall what I said at the outset of this part of our discussion:

The ubiquitous analogy (keeping in mind, of course, that all analogies are inexact) you see throughout the writings of the Early Church Fathers, including those well before Nicaea, is that of the Sun

An analogy is "a comparison of two otherwise unlike things based on resemblance of a particular aspect," so Merriam Webster. In that way, all analogies are inexact.

When it comes to God in particular, however, we have to keep in mind that God is not an object in space and time, and so is fundamentally unlike anything we can point to. That doesn't mean we can't use analogies, or analogous language, when talking about God -- Jesus did -- but we have to keep in mind that it is always inexact.

The claim is that we can illustrate how the Father can 'eternally generate' the Son - by looking at rays which are generated by the sun. But it does not appear that both the sun and its rays (the energy produced from the sun) came into existence at the same time.

That, by itself, just illustrated the Son being 'begotten' of the Father.

To illustrate the Son being 'eternally begotten' of the Father required us to consider a hypothetical scenario where the Sun is itself 'eternal'. Let's go back to that:

In this analogy of the Sun, what 'begotten' is describing is that the orb is actively 'generating' the rays. If the orb stopped doing that, then the rays would disappear, right? So, it's describing the relationship between the orb and it's rays.

We can still talk about that relationship even if the Sun is 'eternal'. If you went back to the first moment of time (t = 0) and discovered that both the orb and the rays of the Sun were already there, we would have to say both the orb and the rays had no beginning -- there was never a time when they did not exist -- yet the orb is still 'generating', or 'begetting', the rays, right?

In that way, the rays are eternally begotten.

But you have to first assume that both the orb and the rays existed eternally. We know that is not true.

Well, yeah, I'm not trying to argue the Sun is actually eternal. I'm posing a hypothetical scenario here to illustrate a logical point. If it helps to think it's a different star than our Sun, just substitute that instead.

Suppose we go back to the first moment of time (t = 0) and we see the orb and rays of the Sun already there. Both would have no beginning -- there would have been no time when they did not exist, right? But the rays are being generated from the orb -- if the orb stopped generating the rays, then the rays would disappear, right?

Correct.

In so far as you understood this when you said 'correct', then the analogy did its job. It's illustrating how, even if two things are eternal, one can still be logically prior to the other without being temporally before it, since there was no time when they both did not exist.

But we have actual descriptions about God.

Sure, the Creed is that too.

We have actual descriptions of God from His Son. Who knows Him. Who has seen Him.

The Creed takes all of that, and more, into account.

I do not understand this 'and more' part. What could be 'more' than the Son, and the image He has given us of His Father?

The Creed doesn't just talk about the Father. It describes 'more' than that.

Note that you didn't disagree with the Creed's description of God the Father (lines 1-3), so your objections here seem misplaced.

Lines 1-3 are in line with what Christ teaches. That is why I do not object.

Okay, so the Creed and the "actual descriptions of God from His Son" are in alignment. This renders your initial objection here -- "we have actual descriptions about God" -- moot.

He was not created (as in made) - that is correct.

You, me, and the Creed agree on that.

But John is saying something a little different here. The word that he uses in 1:3 is egeneto. It doesn't mean 'made'. It means 'to become', 'come to pass', or 'come into existence', which is why the translation of "come into being" (so NRSV, NASB) captures this well in English. John is saying that the Son is not in the category of things that have come into being.

So, if something always has existed and always will exist, and it did not itself come into being, then how else might we describe that thing other than that it is 'eternal'?

I do not understand that verse to be referring to Christ. It would be the same reasoning used this Colossians verse:

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

Clearly, 'all things were created' does not refer to God, even though it states all things in heaven, visible or invisible.

It seems to me these two verses say something quite similar: Colossians is ultimately describing a category of things that have been created. Likewise, John is describing a category of things that have come into being. It's not unreasonable to conclude that those are the same category. Agreed?

I agree that they are saying something similar - but I think we disagree on what that is.

When Paul states that all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, were created through and for Christ - Paul is not including God (or Christ) in 'all things.' It is implied that Paul means all things other than God (or His Son.)

It seems the same with John 1:3.

It seems we agree completely here. God and the Word are not among the things that have been created or have come into being.

If something didn't come into being, it is eternal, right?

[historia]

If people bore witness to Christ speaking a couple thousand years ago, and He speaks also to someone(s) today, then it tends to add a little credence to that original testimony - especially when other witnesses wrote that He said His sheep would listen to His voice.

Okay, as far as I can tell, this is the epistemological ground of your position.

You've quoted this passage in the Gospel of John more times than I can count, but when I asked you (twice) to explain how you know that Jesus actually said this -- what justifies that belief -- you didn't have an answer.

Which is fine. But that just means that your approach takes as a fundamental assumption that Jesus said this.

We don't have "witnesses" (plural) who wrote that Jesus said this. We have a single, anonymous text written probably 60 to 80 years after Jesus' crucifixion that attributes these words to him. No other gospel records this saying. You personally have no more reason to think that the Gospel of John has recorded Christ's actual words than the Gospel of Thomas has recorded Christ's actual words. And that's before we even get into your interpretation of this passage.

That seems like a shaky foundation on which to build your approach.

He is the Word of God (the living Word of God.) Why would He not speak?

That idea, in itself, is not controversial, as the example of Ananias, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Silouan the Athonite, and many, many other saints down through the centuries readily attest.

What is controversial is the suggestion that someone's private experience of hearing Christ -- or, more precisely, their interpretation of that experience -- can supersede the teachings of the apostles and the historic faith and practice of the Church.

That's what we're talking about here: Using these private experiences as one's personal guide to determining doctrine. The wildly divergent beliefs of individuals following this methodology demonstrates that this is a completely unreliable approach.

I do not recognize these people you are calling 'early church fathers'. (I don't even know who they are except that these would not be the apostles.)

I'm using the terms Early Church and Early Church Fathers as those are generally understood. If you're unclear as to who or what I'm referring to, those Wikipedia articles will help.

What is this catholic approach to 'establishing beliefs'?

The Catholic approach, in short, entails adhering to Scripture and Tradition.

The Catechism provides a fuller explanation in the section on The Transmission of Divine Revelation (§ 74-100, pgs. 24-30), which is worth reading in full.

So to say that the RCC methodology does not produce dissenting beliefs (official beliefs), this is not saying much.

Here's where the example of the eastern churches undermines this objection.

We already talked about the Eastern Orthodox churches above (see post #129). But we should also consider the other eastern churches, such as the Church of the East, which separated in 424. Despite being independent for over 1,500 years, their beliefs and practices are so similar to those of the Catholic Church that very little separates them.

Compare that to the individuals and religious communities that claim to only follow the Bible or "go directly to the One." These 'Restorationist' Christians are all over the map in terms of their beliefs and practices. In just a couple of centuries, they have separated and diverged and now disagree on pretty much every fundamental issue, with no way to resolve those differences.

The eastern churches show that this isn't about strict control or punishment -- those are ancillary concerns you introduced into our discussion. This is about how Christians arrive at their beliefs in the first place. The Catholic approach doesn't produce wildly different beliefs.

I feel like you might be bypassing the fact that the Catholic religion did persecute, imprison, and execute so-called 'heretics'.

I'm trying to bring some precision to how we talk about this. A 'religion' (as such) cannot persecute, imprison, or execute anyone. People do those things, and who does that and why matters.

In the example you and Mr E raised above concerning the Council of Nicaea, it was agents of the imperial Roman government who carried out persecutions. The government exiled Arius after he refused to affirm the Creed. And then, just a few years later, the government changed its mind, brought Arius back, and then exiled Athanasius, who had affirmed the Creed.

To give another example: In a recent thread, placebofactor claimed that the "murderous" Catholic Church burned William Tyndale at the stake for translating the Bible into English. But it was agents of the Habsburg government who executed Tyndale (for heresy not translating), initially at the request of the king of England who, at the time Tyndale was executed, had already broken with the Catholic Church.

The reason why civil authorities (emperors, kings, princes, etc.) did this historically is because they associated dissent from the established religion of their realm -- regardless of what that religion was -- as treason. And not always without reason, as dissenting religious groups were, in some instances, connected to attempts to overthrow the government. These were decidedly political moves that had little, if anything, to do with the beliefs and practices of the religions in question.

I'm not saying that the leadership of the Catholic Church has been perfect -- far from it. But a lot of people on this forum uncritically repeat what is essentially just bad anti-Catholic propaganda when they point to examples such as these without looking into the historical details. As always, the details matter.

Jesus himself started a sect.

He did not start a new religion, and sect is defined as a breakaway religious body.

Correct, the earliest Christians were a small group of Jews who broke away from the religious groups of their day because of differences in beliefs and practice -- the very definition of a sect.

Let's remove the word sect since it is distracting from the point. Every religion and denomination out there lies. Purposefully or not.

To me, this is not just a terminology issue. The fact that Jesus established a community -- regardless of what term you want to use to describe it -- is critical to the issue of authority we are discussing.

Jesus didn't write a book and tell everyone to just follow that. He didn't tell everyone to go off on their own and just listen for a voice in their heads. He created a community and left people in charge of it.

He did not say that we should listen to the apostles.

That is not even possible.

In a recent thread you noted this:

The story of the rich man and Lazarus is not about the judgment (at the end of the thousand years.) It cannot be about that since the 'rich man' asked for Abraham to send Lazarus to his family so they would repent. This means the man had family still living, with time still to be convinced (since Abraham also said they could listen to Moses and the prophets.)

How is that possible?

I think that meant by listening to what Moses and the Prophets had testified to Christ (and which was written as scripture.)

Okay, so 'listen' doesn't just mean to audibly hear, it can also refer to reading what has been written.

When Paul writes, "listen to my appeal" (2 Corinthians 13:11), he's inviting anyone reading that letter to listen to him, an apostle. So, clearly, this is entirely possible.

I am asking you to produce your evidence for something you seem to believe.

A reasonable request. But what counts as evidence for what Jesus said?

A reasonable request and yet you have not done it.

I said from the start that you could post where you got it from.

Indeed, I'm withholding my answer and posing your question back to you as a way to get you to explain how we know what Jesus said. Your question here implies that what Jesus said can be independently verified -- otherwise, why ask for "evidence" at all?

But if people - including people in Christ - disagree on a matter, then what should they do? Talk it over, bring it to Christ, speak from love, reason with one another, share what one has been given, test the inspired expression, hold everything up to Christ - and in the end, remain in Christ.

Perhaps you can demonstrate that: You and OneJack should get together, talk things over, and decide which of you is wrong. Because you both claim to go directly to Christ, yet have completely contradictory views on God.

Onejack and I have talked things over. Evidence has been presented. Reasoning has been done as much as possible, to date.

During this time, Onejack has admitted openly that he is not listening to the Son of God. What more needs to be said than that?

OneJack clearly believes that he is listening to Christ -- it appears you two just disagree on what names and titles to ascribe to him.

What else do you think should be done, Historia?

I don't know if there is anything else you can do using the approach you outlined above. But, if two people who both claim to go directly to Christ can't resolve even the most basic questions about God in this way, then how can this approach resolve disagreements within a congregation, let alone dozens or even hundreds of congregations? In other words, how can this approach work for a community?

Who says the Gospel of John does not teach 'eternally begotten'?

Why does that matter?

This question ties together the various threads of our conversation regarding language, the Bible, community, and authority.

As already established, all language has to be interpreted: Texts have to be interepreted. Things we hear have to be interpreted.

Communities -- be they political, religious, or otherwise -- cannot function at scale with just a text or just each individual's subjective understanding of what they have heard, no matter how inspired those sources of information might be.

Communities always require human leaders who can provide an authoritative interpretation of those sources. A nation, for example, cannot just have a constitution or a set of laws, it also needs a judiciary to interpret it.

In an earlier thread I asked folks to consider this quote from Keith Mathison, an American Reformed theologian:

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone.

That is obviously true. So who says that the Bible does or does not teach a particular doctrine matters. A lot. You claimed that the Gospel of John does not teach 'eternally begotten'. Says who?

[tam]

Peace again,

Yes of course, there is no argument here.

Cool. I think this serves as a common frame of reference for our continued discussion.

Okay.

A question, then: Did God choose to be eternal or is being eternal intrinsic to his nature?

I am not sure how a being could choose to be eternal. Either they always existed, or they came into being at some point. However, I am not the expert on eternity.

Regardless, we may have to go back a step. Are you equating 'the beginning' with eternity? Because that doesn't make sense to me. "Beginning" is a starting point.

In every example we have of anything, doesn't the generator exist before the generated?

Any example we might point to is necessarily an object inside of space and time. So, yes, objects inside of time are ordered in such a way that the generator exists temporally before the generated. But, as we noted above, God is outside of time.

Similarly:

Does not a father exist before his son? The sire before the sired? And is not THAT how both Christ and His Father describe their relationship? Father and Son.

Can you give me an example in nature of a father directly giving birth to a son without a mother? If not, then we can't say that everything that is true about fathers is true of God, right?

God has both male and female in Him. Just as Adam had both male and female in him, before God removed the female from him.

Recall what I said at the outset of this part of our discussion:

The ubiquitous analogy (keeping in mind, of course, that all analogies are inexact) you see throughout the writings of the Early Church Fathers, including those well before Nicaea, is that of the Sun

An analogy is "a comparison of two otherwise unlike things based on resemblance of a particular aspect," so Merriam Webster. In that way, all analogies are inexact.

When it comes to God in particular, however, we have to keep in mind that God is not an object in space and time, and so is fundamentally unlike anything we can point to. That doesn't mean we can't use analogies, or analogous language, when talking about God -- Jesus did -- but we have to keep in mind that it is always inexact.

The claim is that we can illustrate how the Father can 'eternally generate' the Son - by looking at rays which are generated by the sun. But it does not appear that both the sun and its rays (the energy produced from the sun) came into existence at the same time.

That, by itself, just illustrated the Son being 'begotten' of the Father.

To illustrate the Son being 'eternally begotten' of the Father required us to consider a hypothetical scenario where the Sun is itself 'eternal'.

To do that, you had to invent a hypothetical scenario which actually contradicts the facts about the sun. How can a hypothetical that is based on a false premise, illustrate truth?

**

Everything you and I know is time based. Even the word eternal is a time based word.

You used a line of numbers earlier, limiting the numbers to whole numbers to suggest that there is nothing 'before' that zero. But we know that it is not true, because we have negative and positive numbers which travel infinitely in both directions.

So if you take that number line, and use zero as 'the beginning', there remains an infinity both before that zero and after it.

Even 'infinity' is a time based word.

**

I don't really see 'the beginning' as meaning the first moment in time. Maybe it is the beginning of creation. Maybe it is a place.

It seems we agree completely here. God and the Word are not among the things that have been created or have come into being.

No, I think you may have misunderstood me. Neither God nor His Son are being discussed in those verses (as the object.)

When Paul says 'all things' were created through and for Christ, he means 'all things other than God.' Obviously.

In John 1:3, everything that was made or came into existence did so through Christ.

All things came from the Father, through the Son.

This is all that is being said here. It is not a statement about the Son being (or not being) eternal.

And again, John uses a different word later in the text when he is describing someone who is born. It is a related word, but not the same one. Whereas the word being translated as 'was made' or 'came into being' often does refer to something being made, as opposed to someone being born, begotten.


Peace again to you.

[tam]

Peace to you,

If people bore witness to Christ speaking a couple thousand years ago, and He speaks also to someone(s) today, then it tends to add a little credence to that original testimony - especially when other witnesses wrote that He said His sheep would listen to His voice.

Okay, as far as I can tell, this is the epistemological ground of your position.

You've quoted this passage in the Gospel of John more times than I can count, but when I asked you (twice) to explain how you know that Jesus actually said this -- what justifies that belief -- you didn't have an answer.

Did I not?

1 - this gospel is written by an apostle and eyewitness (also referred to as 'the disciple Christ loved'.) I know this because my Lord (Jah'ehsua) helped me see who is the 'disciple Christ loved.'

2 - the statement itself is true. He does speak (there are many witnesses to this truth.) His sheep do hear His voice. I know this is true from hearing His voice.

We don't have "witnesses" (plural) who wrote that Jesus said this. We have a single, anonymous text written probably 60 to 80 years after Jesus' crucifixion that attributes these words to him. No other gospel records this saying. You personally have no more reason to think that the Gospel of John has recorded Christ's actual words than the Gospel of Thomas has recorded Christ's actual words.

See above.

And that's before we even get into your interpretation of this passage.

That seems like a shaky foundation on which to build your approach.

Like I said, the foundation or rock upon whom I build my faith - is Christ.

He is the Word of God (the living Word of God.) Why would He not speak?

That idea, in itself, is not controversial, as the example of Ananias, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Silouan the Athonite, and many, many other saints down through the centuries readily attest.

What is controversial is the suggestion that someone's private experience of hearing Christ -- or, more precisely, their interpretation of that experience -- can supersede the teachings of the apostles and the historic faith and practice of the Church.

A - 'their interpretation of that experience' are your words, not mine.

B - It was an apostle who wrote that gospel and who bore witness to Christ's words: "My sheep listen to my voice." How then can you suggest that I am attempting to supersede a 'teaching of the apostles'?

Although in truth it is not a teaching of the apostles, it is a teaching of Christ. The apostle is merely bearing witness to Him and to His words and deeds.

That's what we're talking about here: Using these private experiences as one's personal guide to determining doctrine. The wildly divergent beliefs of individuals following this methodology demonstrates that this is a completely unreliable approach.

No, that is what you are talking about.

I am talking about listening to Christ, as He said His sheep would do.

How are you (or the RCC) not overriding HIS word and teaching by saying that this is unreliable?

So to say that the RCC methodology does not produce dissenting beliefs (official beliefs), this is not saying much.

Here's where the example of the eastern churches undermines this objection.

I wasn't arguing with your claim. I was saying that the lack of dissenting (official) beliefs in the RCC isn't saying much if the RCC (or any other religion) is contradicting Christ. The WTS has a lack of (official) dissent as well. Dissenters (who refuse to retract or stay silent) can be and often are excommunicated. Disfellowshipped. Disconnected. Same thing.

Or they leave of their own volition.

Or they were called out by Christ.

I feel like you might be bypassing the fact that the Catholic religion did persecute, imprison, and execute so-called 'heretics'.

I'm trying to bring some precision to how we talk about this. A 'religion' (as such) cannot persecute, imprison, or execute anyone. People do those things, and who does that and why matters.

In the example you and Mr E raised above concerning the Council of Nicaea, it was agents of the imperial Roman government who carried out persecutions. The government exiled Arius after he refused to affirm the Creed. And then, just a few years later, the government changed its mind, brought Arius back, and then exiled Athanasius, who had affirmed the Creed.

To give another example: In a recent thread, placebofactor claimed that the "murderous" Catholic Church burned William Tyndale at the stake for translating the Bible into English. But it was agents of the Habsburg government who executed Tyndale (for heresy not translating), initially at the request of the king of England who, at the time Tyndale was executed, had already broken with the Catholic Church.

The reason why civil authorities (emperors, kings, princes, etc.) did this historically is because they associated dissent from the established religion of their realm -- regardless of what that religion was -- as treason. And not always without reason, as dissenting religious groups were, in some instances, connected to attempts to overthrow the government. These were decidedly political moves that had little, if anything, to do with the beliefs and practices of the religions in question.

I'm not saying that the leadership of the Catholic Church has been perfect -- far from it. But a lot of people on this forum uncritically repeat what is essentially just bad anti-Catholic propaganda when they point to examples such as these without looking into the historical details. As always, the details matter.

Like how the Jewish leaders handed Christ over to Pontius Pilate (Rome) to be executed?

The Jewish leaders didn't have the authority to execute Him (they said), but they handed Him over to the civil authorities to BE executed.

John 18:31, 19:11

He did not start a new religion, and sect is defined as a breakaway religious body.

Correct, the earliest Christians were a small group of Jews who broke away from the religious groups of their day because of differences in beliefs and practice -- the very definition of a sect.

Let's remove the word sect since it is distracting from the point. Every religion and denomination out there lies. Purposefully or not.

To me, this is not just a terminology issue. The fact that Jesus established a community -- regardless of what term you want to use to describe it -- is critical to the issue of authority we are discussing.

Jesus didn't write a book and tell everyone to just follow that.

I have not claimed that.

He didn't tell everyone to go off on their own and just listen for a voice in their heads.

I have not claimed that either.

God said, however, to listen to His Son. Christ said to come to Him, follow Him, listen to Him.

Christ is Himself the One who said that His sheep listen to His voice, that He had more sheep to call, that they too would hear His voice and follow Him. Him saying this is not just witnessed by the disciple He loved, but also by John of Patmos, from Revelation, where He states "If anyone hears my voice and opens the door..." (Revelation 3)

You also have witnesses from among the apostles to the truth of these words.

I am asking you to produce your evidence for something you seem to believe.

A reasonable request. But what counts as evidence for what Jesus said?

A reasonable request and yet you have not done it.

I said from the start that you could post where you got it from.

Indeed, I'm withholding my answer and posing your question back to you as a way to get you to explain how we know what Jesus said. Your question here implies that what Jesus said can be independently verified -- otherwise, why ask for "evidence" at all?

I am just asking where you got it from so it can be examined. I can think of only one reason you would refuse, but so be it.

Perhaps you can demonstrate that: You and OneJack should get together, talk things over, and decide which of you is wrong. Because you both claim to go directly to Christ, yet have completely contradictory views on God.

Onejack and I have talked things over. Evidence has been presented. Reasoning has been done as much as possible, to date.

During this time, Onejack has admitted openly that he is not listening to the Son of God. What more needs to be said than that?

OneJack clearly believes that he is listening to Christ -- it appears you two just disagree on what names and titles to ascribe to him.

Is that really how it appears to you?

OneJack claims to be listening someone who claims that the Son of God is dead, long gone, not alive.

My Lord is the Son of God, who is very much alive.

What else do you think should be done, Historia?

I don't know if there is anything else you can do using the approach you outlined above. But, if two people who both claim to go directly to Christ can't resolve even the most basic questions about God in this way, then how can this approach resolve disagreements within a congregation, let alone dozens or even hundreds of congregations? In other words, how can this approach work for a community?

Well which is more important?

Truth... or agreement within one, dozens, or even hundreds of congregations?


Peace again to you.

[historia]

To do that, you had to invent a hypothetical scenario which actually contradicts the facts about the sun. How can a hypothetical that is based on a false premise, illustrate truth?

It's not a "hypothetical based on a false premise." It's just a hypothetical. And, again, Jesus himself used parables -- which are fictional stories -- to illustrate all kinds of true things. So I'm not sure why a hypothetical would cause so much consternation.

I'm just asking you to imagine what it would be like if a star was eternal.

That's not an arbitrary move we're making. God is eternal. Nothing in creation is. So any analogy drawn from creation will necessarily break down at precisely that point. If we're using something in nature to illustrate what an eternal God is like, we necessarily have to ask what the relevant relationship would look like if the thing being used in the analogy were eternal.

You're doing something similar when you compare God and the Word to a father and son. There is no example in nature of a son being born directly from a father, without a mother. So the natural father-son analogy, taken by itself, breaks down. You have to extend the analogy beyond what actually occurs in nature to account for the ways in which God is different. Someone could just as easily object that you have thereby "contradicted the facts" about fathers and sons.

But look, if you don't find the sun analogy useful, that's fine. We can move on, and probably should.

[historia]

Did God choose to be eternal or is being eternal intrinsic to his nature?

I am not sure how a being could choose to be eternal. Either they always existed, or they came into being at some point.

I agree completely. So we'd have to say being eternal is intrinsic to God's nature, right?

Are you equating 'the beginning' with eternity?

No.

"Beginning" is a starting point.

'The beginning,' however, is not just "a starting point."

So if you take that number line, and use zero as 'the beginning', there remains an infinity both before that zero and after it.

That's how number lines work, yes. That's not how time works.

I don't really see 'the beginning' as meaning the first moment in time. Maybe it is the beginning of creation. Maybe it is a place.

It seems to me those alternatives are actually connected to the first: We know from modern physics that space and time are not wholly independent things, but two aspects of a single structure, spacetime. In that way, space and time are themselves part of what comes into existence with the physical universe at the beginning of creation.

In John 1:3, everything that was made or came into existence did so through Christ.

Yes, exactly! Everything that has come into existence did so through Christ. Therefore, Christ is not among the things that have come into existence. That just follows logically:

God (through Christ) => everything that has come into existence

Anything to the left of the arrow did not come into existence, and so must have always existed.

All things came from the Father, through the Son. This is all that is being said here.

But that is not all that John says. Again, he gives us a description of these "things" that came from the Father through the Son.

They are "everything that has come into existence," as you just noted. Not just some of the things that have come into existence. Everything that has come into existence. John is emphatic about this: "not one thing that has come into being" did so apart from the Son.

So, if anyone says, "Actually, there is one thing that came into being apart from the Son," they are contradicting what John is clearly and repeatedly saying here.

the word being translated as 'was made' or 'came into being' often does refer to something being made, as opposed to someone being born, begotten.

That word is egeneto, from ginomai:

LSJ, in the entry for γίγνομαι, gives the definition as: "I. abs., come into being: 1. of persons, to be born." It gives many such examples from classical Greek literature.

BDAG, likewise, gives the definition for γίγνομαι as: "1. to come into being through process of birth or natural production, be born, be produced." It gives examples from the New Testament and the LXX, including:

Wisdom 7:3:

And when I was born (γενόμενος), I began to breathe the common air, and fell upon the kindred earth; my first sound was a cry, as is true of all.

Sirach 44:9:

But of others there is no memory; they have perished as though they hadn't existed; they have become as though they had never been born (γενόμενος), they and their children after them.

John 8:58:

"Before Abraham was born (γενέσθαι), I am."

ginomai can also refer to objects that have been manufactured, or events that have come to pass. It just means 'to become' or 'come into existence', so can refer to lots of different things that have come into existence in different ways -- including, in the case of human beings, being born, since that's how we come to exist. So it does not stand opposed to being born.