In your view was Jesus a human or God or both ?

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It's a matter of faith, baby!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Every belief, both scientific and otherwise, is a matter of faith. Man does not possess -- nor is he ever thought by anyone sane to possess -- absolute knowledge. Rather, he weighs the one evidence against the other evidence, and thus eventually reaches reasoned conclusions -- conclusions that are dependent upon his faith in the correctness of his reasoning.
Scientists are such people; Christians are such people. The phrase "I know..." is always hubris, unless it is short for "After evaluating the evidence, I have come to believe..."

Just a silly word game of equivocation. Indeed how can you even talk about 'evidence of god'? Do you have any falsifiable theory of god to begin with?

(The following may or may not be relevant to your beliefs, Bill. I apologize in advance if it is not.)

Every belief, both scientific and otherwise, is a matter of faith. Man does not possess -- nor is he ever thought by anyone sane to possess -- absolute knowledge. Rather, he weighs the one evidence against the other evidence, and thus eventually reaches reasoned conclusions -- conclusions that are dependent upon his faith in the correctness of his reasoning.
Scientists are such people; Christians are such people. The phrase "I know..." is always hubris, unless it is short for "After evaluating the evidence, I have come to believe..."

So then, God did not raise Himself ... and yet it would seem He did?


I have yet to ever find faith illogical.

A brief definition of Nestorian Christology can be given as: "Jesus Christ, who is not identical with the Son but personally united with the Son, who lives in him, is one hypostasis and one nature: human."

This word refers to the Oriental Orthodox belief in the one single unified Nature of Christ; i.e., a belief that a complete, natural union of the Divine and Human Natures into One is self-evident in order to accomplish the divine salvation of humankind, as opposed to the "two Natures of Christ" belief (unmixed, but unseparated Divine and Human Natures, called the Hypostatic Union) which is held by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

Thus, the Council declared that in Christ there are two natures; each retaining its own properties, and together united in one subsistence and in one single person.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,

Hebrews 2:5-9
5 For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels. 6 But one testified in a certain place, saying:
“ What is man that You are mindful of him, Or the son of man that You take care of him? 7 You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, And set him over the works of Your hands. 8 You have put all things in subjection under his feet.”
For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him. 9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.

And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

Proverbs 30:4 (NIV) Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands? Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and the name of his son? Tell me if you know!

Matthew 3:17 (NIV) And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

Luke 1:32 (NIV) He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,

Just a silly word game of equivocation. Indeed how can you even talk about 'evidence of god'? Do you have any falsifiable theory of god to begin with?

I think I followed your reasoning about faith (not meaning to be funny here!), and that's cool for you.
For me, faith is letting go of knowledge and reason, and is rather a childlike trust.
And for the record, in no other matter other than that pertaining to Christ would I freely surrender my rationality. Then again, in my religious tradition, faith is a gift from the Spirit, inseparable from the free gift of grace, rather than a choice we make.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Then I am surprised that you believe in Christ.

There's sorta 3 views on this in Christendom. Nestorian, Tahwedo or Monophysitism, and then Hypostatic union.

So, Nestorians believe Jesus was human like the rest of us, but that God the Son lived in Jesus. Nestorians were condemned as heretical, and had a schism.

That's Tahwedo, or what the Ethiopian Orthodox believe.

I'm Eastern Orthodox, and Eastern Orthodox and Catholics believe this:


Protestants just make up stuff as they go along, as they feel like they have to reinvent the entire Christian wheel, so Protestants don't even know these theories on Christology, and come up with the exact same theories and think they're revolutionary. To quote Solomon from Ecclesiastes, "Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time."

Really, it's kinda splitting hairs on Christological nature. If you'd like to research it, then just look up Christology, and I'd say do most of your reading from Orthodox sources, as Protestant sources are just confusing and frustrating really. Me, I guess I agree with the Hypostatic Union theory, but I don't really think any of those 3 are like, horrible. I think most Protestants you ask will tell you something along the lines of the Tahwedo nature or Nestorian, while most of their actual creeds they're connected to profess believe in the hypostatic union.

Sorry, religion and Christianity is a bit of a special interest for me, so yeah.

Anyway, I believe Jesus and the Trinity was pointed to in the Old Testament scriptures. It starts off as early as Genesis.
So God is referring to himself as plural.

In Hebrews, the Psalms from the Old Testament are quoted in reference to Jesus.






So passages like that, I believe pretty much prove Jesus Christ and the Triune nature of God.

Uhm, some Christian sects are very weird, like Jehovah's Witnesses, basically have the Islamic view of Jesus. As a cool dude and a prophet, but not the son of God. Mormons on the other hand, take the "us" in Genesis in a completely crazy way. Mormons, are not monotheists. They believe "gods" existed before time, or evolved out of matter or whatever, and God the Father ascended into Godhood by serving his God very well, and then Jesus ascended into Godhood by serving God the Father well, and what Mormonism presents is the opportunity to become a god of your own planet/civilization/etc. So, those are pretty much all the Christological views of all Christian denominations. I mean, just do some reading and stuff, and see what conclusions you come to. One thing CS Lewis pointed out, if you think the Gospels are a reasonable account of at the very least sayings of Jesus, then Jesus if he's NOT God then he has to be a madman, because only a madman would claim to be God. And as far the Islamic viewpoint, Jesus obviously thought he was God, as he allowed himself to be worshipped. Keep in mind, in Revelations, the angel tells John to not worship him, so that should say something.

So yeah, sorry for my boring response, but yeah, if you're interested in the answer, there's that.

I think your criticism of mainline Protestantism - that is, those that have their roots in Lutheran and Calvinist theologies - is unfounded. Protestants had rethought theology, but never once deviated from the Trinitarian doctrine.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Huh? How the hell do you come to that conclusion?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I find your lack of faith disturbing...

Well, sorry. I think mainline might still have similar Christology views, but I very recently came from the "emergent church" kinda thing, I was raised an Independent Fundamental Baptist church/school/household as a kid. So, I think I more just have personal bones to pick with Protestantism. It's a wonder I'm Christian now, haha. But yeah, Lutheran I think is the "closest" Protestant denomination, and Luther actually respected Orthodoxy greatly, just it never worked out due to geographical constraints. Calvin, on the other hand, I don't have a very nice opinion of him.

I think I followed your reasoning about faith (not meaning to be funny here!), and that's cool for you.
For me, faith is letting go of knowledge and reason, and is rather a childlike trust.
And for the record, in no other matter other than that pertaining to Christ would I freely surrender my rationality. Then again, in my religious tradition, faith is a gift from the Spirit, inseparable from the free gift of grace, rather than a choice we make.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Fr. Barron sums up my view perfectly

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_4PSgFjtvI&feature=channel_video_title[/youtube]

As for the Calvinist discussion... I am a Molinist if anyone was wondering.

You're making a definitional error, in substituting "evidence of god" for proof -- the latter, not the former, being reached by your cited demonstrated failure to prove to be false something that is falsifiable. There is evidence for God; I do not think there is proof.

Since God chooses to reveal Himself when, how, and to whom He will in the direct ways, a person cannot show the strongest (that would be the internally-received) evidence of God to someone else. This is proof for that person, but it is not what is commonly considered "proof", because it is not shareable.