40 posts were split to a new topic: Human thought and language acquisition
No, I do not have any interest in a theology you have made up about Jesus ascending into heaven as if that were actually some place in the sky or whatever else you want to change this imagery into. Nor do I have any interest in a theology which annihilates life and consciousness by turning the whole world into a story which has already been written. I certainly don’t think any of this is anywhere close to obvious let alone worthy of an expectation that others should agree. Atheism is a perfectly rational alternative. What does interest me is that Christianity doesn’t have to be this magical deal where you have purchase salvation in exchange for rational thought and the objective evidence of science - because only a rational Christianity holds the slightest interest for me. I don’t think Christianity has to be fairy story, or fantasy story right out of a comic book. I think Christianity can be rational, meaningful and about the reality we experience everyday.
Golly, I’m flattered that you think I made that up. But… news flash… the story was written in the first century AD, and its importance in “theology” established sometime around AD 325 when it was written into the Nicene Creed.
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Here are my thoughts on the issue, which I had summarized earlier in a blog in celebration of Christmas: Why Jesus was born of a Virgin, and the Origin of the Soul
I guess I didn’t express myself clearly enough. I wan’t talking about the story but about inserting this theology that somehow Jesus going to be with the father meant God has a genome. And the fact is, I see no reason to believe that the resurrected spiritual body Paul talks about in 1 Cor 15 is something with a genome, or even atoms or any of that physics stuff. The spiritual body (not a natural or physical body according to Paul) is clearly something that has nothing whasoever to do with the laws of nature and thus there is no need for DNA chemistry which is by nature fragile and perishable.
That would certainly be a reason for saying this isn’t a valid scientific hypothesis let alone a scientific theory. But the according to the more general definition of the word “theory,” your objection isn’t correct. But to be sure this is more in the realm of religious belief and I would tend to agree with you that this isn’t one that agrees very well with what can be tested. I certainly disagree with all such pre-existence ideas even when there is no claim of knowledge retention.
Sounds a lot like the Gnostics, who believed we are all trapped in the evil world of the Demiurge, and this is a large part of why I don’t like any of this “soul” stuff. I prefer Paul’s explanation of a spirit body in 1 Cor 15 which comes after the physical body.
You realize that even competent scientists can go off the rails later in life. Look at Linus Pauling,the great Mr. Vitamin C.
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I am with Beaglelady on this one. It is highly unlikely that a young woman of marriageable age in that culture was sleeping around, at any rate. And the impetus for some of the early aspects of the birth account — the possibility of Mary being stoned, Joseph’s anguish, and so on — comes, at least, from some uncertainty as to how Mary/Miriam ended up preggers without the usual prelude. That was an agricultural society. Kids grew up knowing “how babies came.” No one was fooled on that score. The taunts about Jesus’ legitimacy — found in some extrabiblical sources – seem to affirm that the issue was in question from the beginning.
And Nicea was quantifying issues that had been in the air since earliest times of Christian history.
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There are hints that maybe his legitimacy was being questioned even in the canonical Scripture. See John 8:
Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. 16 But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. 17 In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. 18 I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.”
19 Then they asked him, “Where is your father?”
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And in Mark 6 where he is referred to as the son of Mary, rather than the son of Joseph.
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Yes, that is what John 8:41 has often been said to suggest. That interpretation was made early on regarding the passage of verses leading up to, and including, v 41. It could also mean that people in the crowd were saying that they were children of God – at a point when Jesus was noting that their rejection of Him as Messiah and God suggested that they had a different father. There is a bit of a debate on that section of verses — see Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel and his sources.
Nevertheless, the idea that Jesus had a suspicious or uncertain heritage goes back to the beginning. I understand that if they were disputing or uncertain of a man’s parentage, he could be denied admittance to the Temple in Jerusalem — which really made someone an outcast.
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@beaglelady, you don’t seem to play fair with @mitchellmckain. You seem very fond of animals, and I’m assuming you believe they have spirits. Is it not logical to assume that our human spirit, our soul, is intrinsically different because there is a mysterious connection between Mind & Spirit–how a human soul ‘grows’ as it is influenced by the growing mind (and conscience) with which it is associated. At 20 weeks into pregnancy the human mind begins to react to stimuli–to sounds surrounding it in its mother’s belly, and later to her voice and to music. Upon entry into the world, the infant mind is suddenly subjected to an avalanche of new information, which it files away for future use in making choices which determine its spiritual as well as material nature.
Usually before its 2nd birthday a child realizes it is one individual in a human society and its behavior can give it some advantage in fulfilling its desires, even if they are purely selfish; i.e. the “terrible twos”. This is where parental discipline plays such an important role in spiritual growth [“as the twig is bent”] However, throughout history, society, while recognizing that humans are making choices at the early age of two, it does not hold them morally responsible until the “Age of Reason”, which is usually between 7 and 10. The human spirit (or soul) is constantly changing through out life, and no one knows for sure how God will judge each of us upon leaving this earth. Most humans have some sort of Faith that gives them some satisfaction that all will turn out OK.
But all this is somewhat tangential to the topic, “Jesus genome”. Did Jesus possess a God-genome at the moment of his conception? Or did he just have that potential, and he actuated it by the choices he made during his life before his ministry? Furthermore, as humans are we 'made in God’s Image from the moment of conception? Or is it just a potential that we must actuate by making unselfish choices through out our lifetimes? The solution to many of the most troubling problems of current society (e.g. abortion, capital punishment) depend on how we deal with these basic issues.
These ideas are submitted with the best of intentions–not to ‘rock anyone’s boat’.
Al Leo
Why, because I questioned his implication that I have fetishes? Or because I asked when a baby can make choices? I just don’t think a newborn makes choices and certainly viruses don’t. I don’t need a LONG lecture on human development or any other mansplaining, thank you.
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Until now, when accessing posts that have too many responses for me to read, I have given priority to yours. They seem succinct and to the point. This last post of yours definitely changes my views. It lacks both grace and insight, and it insults a (former) admirer. What elicited your unfavorable attitude? The fact that I am male? My submissions to this forum are not directed solely to you, and they get enough ‘likes’ to assure me that not too many readers regard them as ‘LONG lectures’ or ‘mansplaining’. Surely you are NOT guilty of gender bias???
Sharing a belief in a God of Love.
Al Leo
Surely not. Otherwise, why would I be here? BioLogos is OVERWHELMINGLY male (and very white to boot).
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Yes, it is clear that the spiritual body of someone is very different from the physical body. On the other hand it is important to Paul and to us that it is still a real body. The Apostles’ Creed ends: “I believe … in the Resurrection of the Body.”
The body which is resurrected looks like our body, feels like our body. and moves like our body. I see no reason why it should not have DNA like our body, because that determines the structure of our body. To be sure it is not subject to the laws of chemistry and physics, but it is subject to the rules of human interaction which means it must be real and not just a ghost or spirit.
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Yes and no. It is more powerful. Its motion and feeling has nothing to do with the laws of nature and all the decay and illness that goes along with them.
The structure of the physical body is determined by DNA and if there is an error in the DNA then the result is problems in the structure of the physical body. But no, the structure of the spiritual body is NOT determined by DNA. It is rather a matter of identity – who we really are. And yes, for most of us that means pretty much just like our physical body – as it was some point in our life anyway. It is not an animated corpse.
God is spirit and He is the ultimate reality. Therefore logic dictates that spirit is more real than the physical not less so. Ghosts are dead spirits and that is very different from God and the resurrected Jesus. Ghosts are nothing but shadows – stuck in their own private hell – with nothing that makes existence worthwhile.
Did the Holy Spirit employ a set of freshly constructed chromosomes that fused with Maryʼs? In that case, some divinely produced DNA would need to be produced that appeared to have come from a human father with a long evolutionary past of his own. Thatʼs because the divinely implanted paternal chromosomes have to line up right beside the naturally evolved maternal chromosomes in Maryʼs zygote. So letʼs say the Holy Spirit injected a ready-made Y chromosome into Mary (along with 22 others from falsified meiosis in a non-existent human father), complete with endogenous retroviruses, fossil genes, and other hallmarks of evolution that would be capable of lining up beside Maryʼs chromosomes to form a fully complementary set. So the Holy Spirit would have had to add a Y chromosome that was faked to look like it had been passed down, with occasional mutations, from an endless line of evolutionary descendants. And we know what “those” guys were like: Aggression, predation, suffering, death and even extinction were around long before the first species of upright large-brained primate — and let’s add, since we are not creationists, that that primate species had slowly evolved to a point where it could recognize such things and how awful they are, including things like nakedness, how shameful. Thus guilt was born. But in such an accommodationist scenario one is stuck with the fact that God made aggressive impulses, predation, suffering, death and extinction, even felt they were necessary in order to squeeze out upright primates in the end. So it looks more like a rise over time than a ‘fall.’ Maybe God was the one slowly evolving a moral sense over time, and the one who should feel most guilty?
How to reconcile the very method employed (of first evolving aggression, pain, death, extinctions to get to humans and then demanding they be sinless), as well as the process appearing like tinkering & a rise rather than a “fall” over eons of extinctions of hominoid&human species?