So the apostle Paul was a Gnostic then according to you?
Thomas touched the spiritual body of Jesus. Do you equate spirit with air? God is spirit. Do you worship air? That was the whole point of Jesus showing up with wounds of the crucifixion. It wasn’t because He could heal Himself or because decapitation victims are resurrected carrying their heads under their arms. It was so that we would know that the spiritual is NOT nothing – it is more than the physical/natural not less.
Ah yes… the appearance and disappearance of rabbits from the magicians hat. That magic isn’t real – you know that, right?
I suggest you take your time. Think your question through and then explain more completely what you would like the answer to in a single post rather than in so many fragments.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
46
‘Modern medical science’, as opposed to modern medicine or medical science or just science, says nothing about Lazarus not actually decomposing for four days in mid spring in the Middle East.
So Jesus who is The Truth, The Life, The Way, you’re saying was deceived about Lazarus. But somehow, through the command, “Lazarus come out” got him to wake up and walk out. He must have shouted real loud to wake him up or to get him out of his coma or whatever his issue was.
You really believe Lazarus wasn’t dead, dead? I never interacted with someone who thought Jesus didn’t know dead from not dead.
I would simply say that you are reading things into the story which are not in the text. No word for coma, paralysis, respiratory arrest, brain death or knowledge of these states existed at that time. Lazarus is instead variously referred to by Jesus as “ill not unto death,” “fallen asleep,” as well as “dead”
That you are deceived for whatever reason does not equal Jesus being deceived.
According to the understanding at the time, he was dead. But according to modern medical science, if it had been available, he most likely would not have been considered dead.
It is the same as the portrayal of the Earth as a table in the Bible. There was no concept of the Earth as a whole planet. Is this because God didn’t know? Or is it simply the changing meaning of the human words used in the Bible. The meaning of both words “dead” and “Earth” have changed.
John 11:40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
So the glory of God was shown by yelling at Lazarus and waking him up?
John 11:45 Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him.
So, many Jews put their faith in Him because He could yell loud and wake someone up?
Well the glory of God certainly isn’t shown by whimsical inconsistency and frivolous alterations of His own creation for the sake of an evil generation seeking a sign. That sounds to me more like the fake show of the imagined glory of self-important religion mongers. The glory of God is shown more by integrity and doing what needs to be done in a consistent rational manner.
AND I would like to see YOU wake someone up from a coma by yelling at him. But over and over again Jesus explained that He only did what the Father told Him. And that is why Jesus said we would do greater things than He has done. Because it was never about Jesus having magical powers but that God can work miracles in the world (without altering the laws of nature), if we would ask Him in faith.
I do NOT believe in magical fairy tale times where the universe worked differently than it does now – a time when dead flesh magically turned into a living person. But I do believe in people waking up from comas – and that is a miracle which even happens in our own times. That is real and not just a fantasy.
Apparently people have done the walk on water trick. Look it up.
As for the storm. Even though I do not believe God controls all the weather, I do think that God can when it is required and yes do it without changing the laws of nature in the slightest.
How? I have explained this before. The laws of nature are not causally closed or determinate but open to things outside the laws of nature altering the course of events. So it is not control of all things by God or control of all things by nature alone. Things are mostly controled by nature and sometimes directed by God – not by magic but by a flexibility built into the laws of nature themselves.
No. God the Father did the trick. That is what made it a miracle.
John 5:19&30 “I can do nothing by myself, but only what I see the Father do.”
John 12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; 14 if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.
So was Jesus the same as Lazarus? No. Huge difference. Lazarus continued his life on the Earth. Jesus did not. Jesus according to the teaching of Paul in 1 Cor 15 was no longer of the Earth but of heaven. Yes, Jesus could put in an appearance (without opening a door), just as God has done. But His place was no longer on the Earth because he wasn’t of the same stuff anymore.
Nope. There is no bypassing of natural law. Natural law operates according to fixed mathematical equations. But these do not determine the outcome of all events. Ever hear of quantum indeterminacy. Things happen which have no cause in the scientific worldview making them happen in that particular way and these can change the direction of events. In this way God can interact with His creation without breaking any laws of nature.
The storm simply stopped. They do that. Nothing unnatural about it. But it was a miracle, because God had a hand in it even if no laws of God and nature were broken by this.
Neat trick huh. But comparing that to what I have seen done by famous magicians? Not such a big deal. It was miracle, but not because laws of nature were broken but because God did it. That is why what the magicians do are not miracles. That was by their own ingenuity and planning.
If natural law cant change from its creator how did God interacted with his creation then? This is a foolish argument. If am the creator of something as complex as a computer for example i can still change and interact with it whenever and however i want
You can interact with the computer because you designed it that way. You don’t interact with the computer by making it do things it was not designed to do. Everything in the computer operates according to the way you made it work and you don’t need to change that in order for it to follow your commands. Of course God designed the universe so He could interact with it too. That is precisely why He doesn’t need magic or breaking the laws of nature for this. Neither the computer nor the universe are a causally closed system. They are both open to input from outside.
This nature of the mechanism for receiving that input tells a lot about what we can expect. The quantum back door is a very narrow one and certainly insufficient for the body to be operated like a puppet by a nonphysical entity. That is why we must conclude that the mind is a physical/natural entity operating according to those same laws of nature. The things of the mind are not evidence for a spiritual aspect to our existence. That outdated sort of thinking of dualism just will not fly any more. BUT this doesn’t mean we have to accept the premise of naturalism that the laws of nature are all there is to reality. We may have no evidence for the spirit but don’t have any evidence to exclude it either. It thus remains a matter of faith rather than proof.