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slave
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05 Mar 2015, 8:29 pm

Stargazer43 wrote:
I really don't want for this thread to turn into a debate about religion, but I have a question about Christianity that's been bugging me for a while. I consider myself a Christian and have fairly strong spiritual beliefs, but I can't seem to reconcile one particular aspect.

I notice when I go to church that typically, the pastor will pray to Jesus, worship Jesus, and basically treat Jesus as God. Oftentimes he will never even say "God", but instead replace it with "Jesus". This seems to be the case regardless of denomination, but seems much more prevalent in the so-called evangelical or Baptist denominations. I know that this all goes back to the concept of the Holy Trinity, that suggests that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are inseparable. I have never fully bought into that concept though. As far as I know, there isn't a single instance in the Bible where Jesus referred to himself as God, or asked his followers to bow down and worship him...so why do we do so today? There is even a quote from one of my favorite stories in the Bible in which Jesus says "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God". That quote in and of itself suggests a separation between them and also suggests that even as the son of God he still had his flaws. Does anyone have any insight?


Didn't the Father figure engage in coitus with the temporarily-just-human Mary and inject her egg with some limited edition Holy Ghost?

But wait, how can Jesus be one with the Father if he was born.....umm...cause then he's an eternal being that was .....born???

But wait, if Jesus is actually the Father then he engaged in coitus with his own Mother.......OMFG!! !!....Ewwww-Ewwww!!
Freud would love this ....except no wait....he was Jewish....oh f**k if I know!! !

I'll stick with things that are logical and pass on the UFO's, mother goose, Nibiru, god myths, etc.....



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05 Mar 2015, 8:35 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:
The trinity began to take shape after Jesus' death. There was a 300+ year debate regarding High vs Low Christology. IE was he a deity before he became human or did he become a deity after his death, and if he was a diety before his humanity what kind was he, was he eternal and infinite like god or did god create him.

The gospels essentially go backwards in time with a Low christology. Mark has him adopted by god at his death, Mathew at his baptism and Luke at his conception. Paul (the earliest of the christian writers) has him as a lower deity who is then elevated to the same level as God, and this is where the trouble starts.

Gradually a High Christology was adopted with Jesus being ever more highly deified, with people arguing was The Logos (The Word) and therefore eternal. Others continued to argue that he was created by god, maybe he was I Am or Wisdom.

Eventually a major row broke out between the priest Arius and his Bishop Alexander of Alexandria. Arius (from Wikipedia) "Arius taught that the Son had a beginning, and that he possessed neither the eternity nor the true divinity of the Father, but was rather made "God" only by the Father's permission and power, and that the Son was rather the very first and the most perfect of God's creatures" where as Alexander maintained he was the Son and therefore divine in the same sense as the father.

Now at this time the Roman Emperor Constantine had converted to Christianity and he saw in it the unifying ability of only having one God, this meant that all the petty arguments about whose gods were greater simply disappeared. Constantine in an attempt to stop all the debate calls a council of Bishops to Nicaea. At the council they thrash out the problems and face a major hurdle. If there is only one God and both the father and the son are the same level of deity IE they have always existed and will always exist, then that makes 2 Gods. If however Jesus is not the same level of divinity then this lessens his status and leads back to raging debate about his power.

Anyhow they settled the matter with the trinity, stating Jesus was the eternal Logos of the Father and they were one and the same and separate, binding them was the Hypostasis (the holy ghost/spirit) and hey presto The Trinity is born. The Nicaean Creed is formed and for ever after anyone not agreeing with it is guilty of Heresy


I always love pointing out that many Atheist know dramatically more about Xtianity than the people indoctrinated by it.

Many Xtians I've met have never even read the Bible, they just know what the Clergy told them to believe.

makes me :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:



DentArthurDent
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05 Mar 2015, 9:36 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
Shep's a cool guy. He just happens to believe in God.

Oldavid probably decided it wasn't worth it any more to go on the Internet under a Persona--in order to provoke people into arguments.



More to the point we seem to have stopped taking the bait.


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09 Mar 2015, 8:44 pm

On a side note but on the topic of Christianity, I'm kind of amazed at just how bad the general menu of thinking is when you compare what popularly gets passed around and what you have to do digging for.

I was checking in on Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, hearing a lot of things coming from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's thinking about God, the nature of faith and salvation, pagan culture/antiquity and its relationship, and was amazed to hear nothing like I'd hear in the US, I mean Christianity with real circumspect.

Not sure whether this guy is of more importance or similar importance but the way he seems to address the issues as well fascinates me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Barth


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