Punctuation saves lives!
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It’s about a Father-child relationship. Not ‘signs’, proof, demanded by unbelievers. What are the rewards in the citation? Nothing?
Not so easy for some of us when we watch kids die of cancer or millions of them die because they just don’t have access to clean drinking water. Or when a tsunami comes and kills a couple hundred thousand people and so on. Proof of a benevolent Father looking over us is very difficult to have absolute intellectual faith in. What Father let’s their child die of cancer if they can stop it? What father doesn’t stop a hurricane from killing his children if he can stop it? Your whole Father-Child argument only goes so far for many of us.
But again, I am genuinely happy for you that you have a completely doubt free faith. I am also happy that Jesus had doubts and fears. Gives courage and hope to a wretch like me 
Sure, other’s experiences are not compelling to unbelievers, I get that. They can always express their faith in statistical outliers. But the meaning infused in the otherwise disjoint events is beyond probabilities. How about Rich Stearns. Have you seen that sequence?
That you appear not to rejoice in it maybe tells us something.
I don’t agree with you that we can prove the event was beyond probability.
Vinnie,. Maggie here. I was educated as a research scientist and demanded empirical evidence before I would believe anything, 52 years ago. However, faith is certain knowledge gained from experience. God proved himself to be omnipotent, loving, personally caring and compassionate to everyone to wants a relationship with him in 1969, but I still had many times when doubt engulfed me for years. Now I no longer have any doubt. He IS. Nothing is impossible to him, but not all things that we want are best; God knows best. Sometimes even he is restrained, however. God cannot work where we refuse to cooperate. For example, if he puts it in our heart and mind 20 times to call a certain person, but we never obey the prompting, we may miss an opportunity God tried to set up for us. He wants us to learn to be sensitive and obedient To his “still small voice”, without having to spell everything out in capital letters. God is observable everywhere in nature. He said his name is Y. (YAH) He said he stamped his name throughout creation. He did. YAH (Y) is visible absolutely everywhere; God signed all his handiwork. Look for Y between your fingers, veins, tree branches, river tributaries, every bone attachment, leaf attachment etc. If God made it it is signed with a Y. God does not have to do anything more to prove himself. The next step is up to us, to tell him we want to know him PERSONALLY; to have a personal relationship with him. He will not force himself on anyone, and he has no reason to do anything more than he has already done, to prove he is. However, his love is immense; he will respond if you accept the invitation he has already given to call out to him.
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Um, where did I say that it could be proven. I have been saying the exact opposite. Your failure to follow means this conversation has reached its limit, as far as I’m concerned.
Shalom, again.
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If you can’t prove it, there is room for doubt.
You said you have no doubts at all. To me that means you are absolutely certain. Your words.
You believe, put your trust in and have absolute certainty about all kinds of things that you do not doubt and have not personally proven. If you cannot think of any, I can point out everyday examples to you.
Cause and effect is one. Thanks Hume. But go ahead and make the list. My worldview and behavior takes God’s existence for granted. His light is how I see the world. Still doesn’t mean there isn’t any doubt there for me or that it isn’t natural. And you would be surprised what I put absolutely trust in or don’t. But I’d be happy to compare evidence for different beliefs of my own.
Vinnie
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If you are your Father’s child, why wouldn’t you want to see his activity in your life, even yearn for it?
How about a chair you haven’t sat in before? How did you know it wouldn’t collapse under you the first time you sat in it? Did you prove it before you put your butt absolute faith in it? Did you have any doubt?
Are we taking about the existence of the chair or the presumption that it works?
I never said you need absolute proof to believe anything. Cause and effect isn’t a certainty but we afford it an extremely high level of belief. No one would dispute it. Just as I am as certain as I can be that the chair I am sitting in exists. Maybe I am a brain in a vat but I’ve no time for that. I have to live. William James and the Will to Believe.
And trust in the efficacy of the chair presumes it exists. You analogy is bad. You are trying to show that proof is not needed to be confident in a belief. I don’t disagree with that. Being confident in a belief and living by it does not require living completely doubt free in my view.
I’m with you on your first statement. His degree of separation from Holy God with whom He had complete fellowship from infinity past as He took on the accumulated sin/sins of all humankind is beyond our comprehension. No words for it. He (“The Lamb of God Slain from the foundation of the world”) knew what was coming.
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No, I am not. I am simply showing that you can believe true things confidently without needing scientific proof. That is not the same thing.
Exactly. Thank you.
Yes he knew what was likely, but He apparently did not always think it was a forgone conclusion or absolutely necessary. He prayed to the Father that it would not happen. That is a fact of scripture. The question is why? To be sure it says Jesus was sorrowful and disturbed. And He asked quite urgently that the disciples to stay up and pray with Him, but they did not. Then after praying the same thing 3 times and the disciples falling asleep all 3 times, Jesus became resolved. What is this all about?
- Many like Vinnie say that Jesus just didn’t wanna die and suffer for the sake of all mankind. Vinnie even thinks sorrowful means scared and full of doubt. But then why would his disciples not keeping awake to pray change His mind? Seems to me that this pathetic display would make Him more reluctant sacrifice so much for them.
- Others like Dale throw out the doctrine of the Trinity to say that Jesus and Father can and would be separated and it was this separation which Jesus couldn’t handle. Though the failure of His disciples to pray with Him wouldn’t change His mind at all about that.
- My suggestion is that Jesus wasn’t convinced that dying on the cross was the only way or the best way of saving mankind. There was so much more which He could teach us. But then maybe after seeing that even His disciples couldn’t do something so simple as staying up with Him to pray, He gave up on this idea. Perhaps He understood them well enough to know His death and resurrection would change them more completely – His teaching them didn’t seem to be working.
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I would say he momentarily had doubts and anxiety. The accounts then show him resolved to do God’s will. Even without supernatural knowledge he could see the end of the road the way things had gone. I personally don’t know for certain that Jesus knew he was dying for the sins of all mankind beforehand. Did he know this at 12 in the temple? This is an assumption based off of ascribing a high level of historical reliability to Mark. Smells of post-easter theology to me. The only hint of that in Mark is one verse about being a ransom. That He was going to die may have been a surprise to Him towards the end of His ministry for all I know. The beauty of the incarnation is that we believe God became man somehow. God chose to lower himself and show us the way. God then allowed his Son to die on the cross. I believe God knew the plan all along but the fully human Jesus? Not convinced. I don’t think Jesus was omniscient or omnipotent and neither do the Gospel writers (he couldn’t perform miracles due to a lack of faith, he didn’t know the day or hour nor who even touched his robe at one point).
Maybe God through an angel warned Jesus what was going to happen prompting Gethsemane. One speculation is as good as another. I believe Jesus walked around Galilee preaching the kingdom of God, not telling people he would die for their sins. We probably learn that after the resurrection.
Vinnie
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We agree on that for sure. For me I approach from a different perspective than Dale I think:
We have three possibilities:
[1] Jesus, being 100% God and 100% man knew the plan all along in that he was dying for the sins of the world.
[2] Jesus didn’t know of such a plan and may not have expected to die.
[3] Jesus may have learned of the plan late in life.
For me, whatever position you take on these points has to be defended and merely quoting a passage of scripture doesn’t do it for me. I don’t subscribe to inerrancy and I firmly believe a lot of post-Easter theology is in our Gospels. Not to mention we see mutually exclusive portraits here. Mark was written to a living community. Jesus addresses problems that community now faces at times. There is nothing wrong with this. Jesus was still alive. Jesus is always alive and speaking to his followers now.
Within the Gospels of Mark and John, I see two strikingly different perspectives on what happened here. One shows surprise and doubt but resolve to do the will of God and drink the cup the Father has poured. The other shows control and transcendence and the resolve to drink the cup the Father has poured. I must deem the former a lot less likely to have been created by the later church, some of which may have even found it embarrassing or troublesome. This means the portrait in Mark has more going for it on historical grounds whereas the portrait in John is highly suspect.
Edited to add: Mark was probably in a persecuted community. So I suppose you could make a case that Jesus in Gthsemane could fit the theology of the author. It would encourage his readers to be strong in the face of adversity like Jesus was when the world is closing in, you may have doubts and momentary weakness but pray for deliverance and stand firm in your convictions and do the will of God just as Jesus did. This may be a stretch though…
Vinnie
I don’t think it was certain that He would die in such a way. I don’t think the future is written and I don’t buy into this theology makes salvation the product of some black magic powered by human sacrifice, let alone that God would demand such a thing. At most, with Israel killing the prophets sent to them, the possibility of such an outcome was not so unlikely.
Clearly Jesus and the Father were on speaking terms and God had taught Jesus many things, so I see no reason to discount the gospels in which Jesus spoke of this outcome showing that God had shared this with Jesus.
Jesus own words in John 14:12 make this pretty clear. Oh but wait, I guess you think that was made up by the writer of the gospel of John.
I guess you are not a Trinitarian then. Why would the Father need an angel in order to communicate with Jesus?
These are hardly separate possibilities. Jesus most certainly was 100% God and 100% human (this belief defines Christianity), but while being human requires limitations, being God does require anything – God can be whatever He wants to be. The Father likely told Jesus at some point that any hope of another outcome was vanishing.
I am not so inclined to imagine agendas by these writers – the evidence of this looks rather contrived to me. Different writing styles and understanding of things to be sure. But in Mark what I see is simply so much shorter and lacking in details compared to the other gospels. It is just very interesting how they remembered such very different things from the time of Jesus – all written within the same 40 year time period.