Why does christianity consider Jesus(pbuh) as God?
if Jesus was (is) a human like us?
are christians monotheist while they believe in three Gods?
is there more than one God for christians?
what does Jesus do that he is God or like God?
please don't say that 3=1 this statement dosn't justify a wise guy.
thank you.
Why does christianity consider Jesus(pbuh) as God?
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Post #14
quote="secondboy"
If it is nonsensical for God to worship God, then it makes sense that God does not worship God. But you say that that is sinful; and God cannot, presumably, sin. So you have constructed an argument that is nonsensical.
I think that you are a Muslim, and Muslims understand the term 'Son of God' incorrectly. It does not denote that Jesus was a filial relation of God; it means that he was the manifestation on earth of the supernal God, who made himself subject to physical needs and wants. Now it cannot be a sin for God not to worship God. It is only a sin for those who are not God to not worship God.
But you asked about the Christian point of view. Why did you ask for that, and not simply state it to be wrong?I think our(especially your)imaginatio of God isn't true.
If it is nonsensical for God to worship God, then it makes sense that God does not worship God. But you say that that is sinful; and God cannot, presumably, sin. So you have constructed an argument that is nonsensical.
I think that you are a Muslim, and Muslims understand the term 'Son of God' incorrectly. It does not denote that Jesus was a filial relation of God; it means that he was the manifestation on earth of the supernal God, who made himself subject to physical needs and wants. Now it cannot be a sin for God not to worship God. It is only a sin for those who are not God to not worship God.
Last edited by Tilia on Sun Feb 12, 2006 1:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Post #15
1 x 1 x 1 = ?Why does christianity consider Jesus(pbuh) as God?
if Jesus was (is) a human like us?
are christians monotheist while they believe in three Gods?
is there more than one God for christians?
what does Jesus do that he is God or like God?
please don't say that 3=1 this statement dosn't justify a wise guy.
thank you.
Maybe Christianity is the first "thinkers" religion? Of course not; ask John in his Gospel.
It would have been oh so easy to just have one prophet but independent thinking is far more a gift.
Creative Followers?
If Jesus never claimed to be divine, and never claimed it in the sense that is indicated in the Gospels, it is reasonable to expect that:
The enemies of Christianity and the early church would have declared that Jesus never made such claims, or was misunderstood. Some did indeed do this, but wrote quite some time after the fact. There is no record contemporary or closely contemporary with Jesus (first century AD) that indicates that He never made any special claims for Himself, or that the church invented the claims. Even after that time, however, the major skeptics of the first several centuries never argued this point. Celsus, for example, said that Jesus called Himself the Son of God, but wrongly. Porphyry, one of the most-feared skeptics in the early church, did not deny Jesus' claims to divinity, but instead tried to 'downgrade' Jesus into a hero-type deity (a third-class deity in the Roman hierarchy!). This adds up to strong evidence that (a) the Jesus-never-claimed-divinity argument had not been advanced by skeptics of the time, and (b) if it was used, perhaps by some skeptic whose works we have totally lost, it was so easily dismissed or so lacked adequate credibility that it could not be used by the best anti-Christian skeptics.
A parallel movement, that acclaimed Jesus as merely a good teacher, would have emerged alongside Christianity. To be sure, there are those such as Burton L. Mack, author of The Lost Gospel, who would have us believe that a such a movement did exist; but conveniently enough, he tells us, it came and went too quickly to leave behind any concrete physical evidence for us to know what happened to them!
As it is, there are no extant texts from the first century, or even from the century thereafter, that represent Jesus as claiming to be only human or only a prophet--He is ALWAYS portrayed as making exalted claims to a super-human status. Later heresies of the church, such as Gnosticism, involved paganistic and/or mystical additions upon what Jesus meant in the Gospels when He claimed to be God; they never denied that He made any special claims about Himself. As we noted previously, the earliest known pagan critic of Christianity to address the issue, Celsus, argued that Jesus did apply the title "Son of God" to Himself, but wrongly [Wilk.ChrRom, 109]; only much later did those critics deny that Jesus made such claims. The argument that Jesus never claimed to be divine is in fact nothing more than an unsupportable conjecture, an argument from silence competing against the scream of the available data. Each of the above claims, and every known document of the church, even the heretical ones, acknowledge that Jesus claimed divinity. There is absolutely no evidence to the contrary that can be cited. Saying that there is no evidence that Jesus claimed divinity can only be managed by ignoring reams of evidence, or by facile dismissal.
And now the final point, which will lead into our essay on the trilemma. If we allow that Jesus' claims were manufactured by His followers, or that His claims were misunderstood by them, we do nothing more than create a different sort of trilemma! Jesus' followers were either:
A.Telling the truth, and they knew it;
B.Telling a lie, and they knew it; or,
C.Telling a lie, and they didn't know it because they misunderstood.
If we choose B), we are left to wonder what motivated Jesus' followers to begin lying and maintain that lie. They did not benefit at all by claiming that their Master was God incarnate: They were ostracized, criticized, rejected, persecuted, and in many cases martyred. Nor did they make loads of money by claiming what they did - no Jim Bakkers in this crowd! This being the case, we may ask why none of Jesus' followers cracked under pressure, or got fed up with persecutions and inconveniences, and admitted that the divinity claims by Jesus were a fabrication. We may, of course, speculate that it is possible that Jesus' followers lied, but there are no signed confessions, no counterclaims by the Pharisees trumpeting the recanting of a disciple of Jesus - nothing. To argue this, we must argue from silence. More than that, we must argue AGAINST the data of their lives and the witness of history. To raise it as a MERE possibility does not constitute advancing evidence for the speculation.
Choosing C) offers a slightly more hopeful refuge for the skeptic. It may be objected that Jesus spoke rather cryptically at times, so that perhaps He truly was misunderstood. But as we have shown in the linked essays, it is hardly plausible that Jesus' claims were misunderstood; they are too clear-cut when understood in the context of the time and place they were made. Moreover, are there not also degrees of metaphorical difficulty? Some metaphors are easier to understand than others, and some people understand and interpret metaphor better than others! So, how can we be sure that Jesus' followers didn't at some point correctly grasp what He was saying? It is only in our modern-day arrogance that we say that they were incorrect, and we, looking down the tunnel of 2000 years, are better qualified to understand (and contrary to evidence!) what Jesus actually said!
Finally, we are told that Jesus DID explain things to His disciples privately after the crowds were gone: "He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything." (Mark 4:34 - this was standard practice for an inner circle of disciples. For a practical example of this, see the Parable of the Sower in Matt. 13.) These, of course, represent the people who wrote (Matthew, John) or else supplied information for (Mark, Luke) the Gospels. And at any rate, many of the claims to divinity are quite direct, and not in the least metaphorical.
Conclusion
Jesus claimed to be God the Son. No matter how hard we try to dissect it or explain it away, the evidence points directly to that most special claim made by Jesus. One must now answer His question: "Who do you say that I am?"
Sources for this Series
Brow.JesGM Brown, Raymond E. Jesus: God and Man. New York: Macmillan, 1967.
Bruc.JLS Bruce, F. F. Jesus, Lord and Savior. Downers Grove: IVP, 1986.
Case.SOM Casey, Maurice. Son of Man: The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7. London: SPCK, 1979.
Chars.DSS Charlesworth, James H. Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Chars.JesJud Charlesworth, James H. Jesus Within Judaism. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Chars.JDSS Charlesworth, James H. John and the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Crossroad, 1991.
Crai.ApIn Craig, William Lane. Apologetics: An Introduction. Chicago: Moody Press, 1984.
Cross.MedP Crossan, John D. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. San Francisco: Harper, 1991.
Cross.RevB Crossan, John D. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco: Harper, 1994.
Cull.CNT Cullmann, Oscar. The Christology of the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959.
deJ.CC de Jonge, Marinus. Christology in Context. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988.
Dunn.CM Dunn, James G. D. Christology in the Making. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.
Fluss.JS Flusser, David. Jewish Sources in Early Christianity. New York: Adama, 1987.
Fred.GI Fredriksen, Paula. From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of New Testament Images of Jesus. New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1988.
Full.FNC Fuller, Reginald. The Foundations of New Testament Christology. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1965.
Hare.SOM Hare, Douglas R. A. The Son of Man Tradition. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990.
Harr.3Cruc Harris, Murray. 3 Crucial Questions About Jesus. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994.
Hick.MyG Hick, John, ed. The Myth of God Incarnate. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977.
Jerem.NTT Jeremias, Joachim. New Testament Theology. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1971.
Kasp.JC Kaspar, Walter. Jesus the Christ. New York: Paulist Press, 1976.
Lind.SOM Lindars, Barnabas. Jesus Son of Man. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.
Mack.Q Mack, Burton L. The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q. San Francisco: Harper, 1993.
JPM.ScCy Moreland, J. P. Scaling the Secular City. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987.
Moul.OC Moule, C.F.D. The Origins of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1977.
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Rom Wilken, Robert. The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1984.
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Post #16
Two things that stick out about the "Christian" religion are the divinity of Jesus as it was understood by him, his followers, and the later church which includes all who claim to be Christian. The other being the blood sacrifice as atonement and the forgiveness of sins.
The virgin birth fits into the divinity problem and I understand it to be mythic and derived from misunderstanding of Matthew and community and influence of other virgin myths.
The other follows as a combination of some Hebrew thought as it is influenced by the same mystery religions. The Resurrection can be easily understood as a vision shared by the early church later used in stories of a mythic quality.
It is well understood that the early follower of Jesus resulted in many fractions as there was in the Jewish religion. Any ones claim to truth is superficial at best.
The conclusion is like a find the pea scam where the peas is not under any of the nuts.
The virgin birth fits into the divinity problem and I understand it to be mythic and derived from misunderstanding of Matthew and community and influence of other virgin myths.
The other follows as a combination of some Hebrew thought as it is influenced by the same mystery religions. The Resurrection can be easily understood as a vision shared by the early church later used in stories of a mythic quality.
It is well understood that the early follower of Jesus resulted in many fractions as there was in the Jewish religion. Any ones claim to truth is superficial at best.
Here we are given 3 false choices. Two were excluded by limiting the answers and ignoring the question leaving the first one as the only false claim.A.Telling the truth, and they knew it;
B.Telling a lie, and they knew it; or,
C.Telling a lie, and they didn't know it because they misunderstood.
The conclusion is like a find the pea scam where the peas is not under any of the nuts.
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Post #19
The wrote out the Jews by then and most of his family.
Protestants really like "John" it is so Gnostic and Greek.
I would say that the Gospel of John would have the least authentic words of Jesus and the least connection to the Jerusalem Church. It does reflect the 2nd century view of Christian that had been rejected by other Jewish thinking. It is the most alien. I am surprised they kept his Mom in the story. By this time they could have had him just jump from the clouds.
It is the most anti-Jewish of the stories.
Protestants really like "John" it is so Gnostic and Greek.
I would say that the Gospel of John would have the least authentic words of Jesus and the least connection to the Jerusalem Church. It does reflect the 2nd century view of Christian that had been rejected by other Jewish thinking. It is the most alien. I am surprised they kept his Mom in the story. By this time they could have had him just jump from the clouds.
It is the most anti-Jewish of the stories.
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