I was just thinking this morning of a Lutheran priest/pastor who asked these questions and added one more: Why didn’t God deliver Jesus from the Cross?
That question puts the others in a different perspective.
Thus demonstrating that they are their own god, demanding that God conform to their wishes.
I think the first thing to consider is whether it is reasonable to believe that a man rose from the dead.
One thing I did a few years ago to show that science and faith didn’t need to be in conflict was host seminars discussing science and faith topics while on staff with a campus ministry organization. I made it student-led and our first talk was on the history of the creation-evolution controversy. After that, we branched out to talk about the ethical implications of artificial intelligence and genetic engineering and the theological implications of life in the universe, among other topics. the students really enjoyed it, though after I left it seems to have mainly become a platform used by more conservative students to promote a run-of-the-mill young earth creationism.
he was anointed with the holy spirit for a reason. It made him one with God.
It was the word of God that made him live indeed, and it was not abracadabra, but to love thy neighbour like thyself - and as I always emphasise, not oneself !
It was the holy spirit in him that made him atone what as to be atoned and to set us free from the demon that holds us to ransom, the demon of the “self”. He never claimed to be God, he claimed to be his son, rightfully so, as it was his will that made him live. He was as much of God as we can ever see in our material world. If he and God would be one he would not sit to the right hand of God. I think they still struggled to comprehend fully what they witnessed and the distance to the events might help us to see it differently. The key is to see it through the lens of loving a loving God
thanks for your reply
why is there no redeemer without an irrational explanation of Jesus. The explanation I give is perfectly logical, in fact more logical than the magic incarnation. If we allow God to enter in our reality only by some unnatural process we have a problem. The question is why one would not accept the natural one. Would it not be good enough for God to join us in the form of a “Bastard”? It is precisely that judgement that Jesus actions speak against.
The prophecy says that a virgin will become pregnant and bear a son. This is nothing unnatural as any virgin can conceive at the first intercourse. Why do we have to insist on an unnatural explanation? When referring to the Virgin it is a credit to her innocence. I explained the divine action in detail, and the description that she and Joseph encountered the Holy Spirit is all the evidence required.
the atonement theory presented to us is based on a picture of a God that kills us in revenge for a problem of his own making. It is logically incoherent as it is God who set mankind free. Death is a logical consequence of becoming an individual / self based on a material thus time dependent body. God Warned them about eating from the tree of the realisation of good and evil and said “if you eat from that tree you are going to die” not “if you disobey me I am going to kill you in revenge”
That’s sad. A university friend had a similar experience; he was the prime mover to get a “Campus Conservatives” club going that presented serious speakers addressing social issues from a conservative perspective, then after he graduated it fairly quickly became a mediocre far-right Republican group.
He claimed it all over the place, by doing things only God could do, saying things only God could say, and claiming various Old Testament descriptions of Yahweh as being about Himself. We don’t see it because we’re not first-century Second-Temple Jews, but they saw it.
Just one: when confronted about violating the Sabbath, Jesus reminded His accusers of an Old Testament incident involving the Temple, and proceeded to tell them that He was greater than the Temple. In that setting, the only thing greater than a temple was the deity to whom it belonged.
That method allows you to totally rewrite the message of the Gospels.
Indeed if He was not the eternal Word made flesh, then we have no redeemer.
Because the definition of “redeemer” in the Old Testament requires the person to be close kin to both sides of the issue.
And who says it’s “irrational”?
No it isn’t, it’s a mix of Docetism and Adoptionism, both of which were the result of Greek philosophy being set above the scriptures. A proposition is only logical if it’s faithful to the premises of the system of thought in which it is made – indeed it is illogical to address a proposition from outside its system of thought.
There is no “magic incarnation”. Making that assertion shows a failure to understand both magic and the Incarnation.
But our problem is exactly why Messiah had to enter “our reality” by an unnatural process: our reality was enslavement to death and sin, which was and is itself an unnatural situation, so it’s appropriate to address the issue with unnatural methods.
But the natural one was for God to become human – that’s the logical conclusion of God’s original intent in Eden on through Abraham and the Exodus and the periods of the judges and then the kingdom and finally the prophets.
No, because a bastard cannot be a redeemer, he has to be an actual relative.
That’s playing word games – no woman conceives who is a virgin because virgin means she’s never had intercourse.
No one back then would have taken it that way. You’re imposing later standards on ancient text.
And a victim of rape would not be innocent.
We must insist on the explanation the scriptures provide, not make up our own. And in fact your explanation is unnatural because it is alien to the worldview of the scriptures.
No, you mutilated the divine action which is stated plainly:
*In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
. . . .
And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I do not know a man?”And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be borne will be called holy—the Son of God.*
Gabriel told Mary she was going to conceive. She objected she wasn’t having sex and never had. Gabriel said no problem, the Holy Spirit will take care of that with God’s power.
God didn’t cause sin.
So God didn’t make the problem, did He?
Besides, there’s no “revenge” involved; God was warning them of consequences, like any good parent.
there is a difference between saying “the father and me are one” and “I am the father” and his reference to be greater than the temple does not make him God himself but to be means to come before God not available by any other way as no building makes you give up your “self” but something inside you.
What is that eternal word to you? Is it Abracadabra or “do love thy neighbour like thyself” (not oneself as some people think) The latter teaches you to lay down your life for others - and that is what redemption is all about as Jesus showed us.
unless you are a materialist you have to accept that you could become the son of someone by the expressed will of the father. Kinship even in OT times was not just genetic.
The magic I refer to is the art of make belief of something to happen that contradicts natural processes. The control of the metaphysical over the natural, e.g. physical is better referred to as logic as it emphasises the power of thought over matter. To me, life is the ability to move energy or matter based on will as in the metaphysical object called information, forming material.
It might be helpful to get away from the term “natural” and “supernatural” as the supernatural is often confused with the unnatural and abnormal. The supernatural is in fact perfectly natural, it is not normal but that does not make it abnormal and it becomes more clear when using the term physical, as the metaphysical is not perfectly physical but beyond that what is physical.
The claim that Jesus had to come about by unnatural means could be understood in a way that raising a bastard with the love and care we would naturally give to a child that was created by our own choosing. This is why our “natural” response to rape is that it’s okay to abort a child conceived by such event and why most of us are disgusted by the idea that our saviour was conceived in such a way. To accept a baby conceived by any abnormal process would be more acceptable to us and our conception of good and evil. A loving God would not allow for such evil act of rape to begin with, let alone come to us in such a way. What hoops do we jump through to support our wishful thinking.
The understanding of Jesus incarnation via an act of hate and oppression teaches you that the living word of God can turn such event into a beacon of love and hope, completely turn reality upside down. Equally, his death turned this sign of of the cross as the ultimate tool of death and oppression into the symbol for everlasting life and freedom.
oh dear. Why do you think they killed the rapist and not the victim? Do you want to call the raped women guilty of being a woman?
If someone foretold you that, whilst living under brutal military occupation, you will become pregnant albeit you are not yet married, you would know what troubles laid ahead. To go through with raising that child in that society would have needed the overshadowing / protection of the holy spirit to not kill yourself and the child for facing a life shunned for being “touched”. There was no social security for single mums. And that is why Joseph also needed to be seen by the holy spirit.
the problem of his making was to give us freedom - and knowing what it meant. [
](Isaiah 45:7 KJV - I form the light, and create darkness: - Bible Gateway) comes to mind here
And he was aware of it but knew that it was good as his word could overcome the evil any time
It is surely reasonable - in case there is God who has created the world, who has established the natural regularities inherent in this world, and, therefore, who is able to suspend or transform them.
It most certainly does. You can ignore the actual worldview and meanings of terms at the time all you want, but that doesn’t change their meaning.
The Logos, as it is written:
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων· καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.
. . . .
Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας.
What does this tell us? That the Logos is eternal, that the Logos is personally with God, and the God is what the nature of the Logos is; that the Logos is a Person, that all things were made through the Logos; that He is the source of life.
And that this Logos Who is God became flesh. I’ll repeat that: He became flesh. Not “He adopted flesh”, not “He took on the appearance of flesh”, but He became flesh.
Not for being kinsman-redeemer; that required being the closest male relative by blood – not adopted.
God is materialist – He became flesh, and flesh is material.
So you’re an atheist, since existence didn’t get here by natural causes.
That’s a definition of magic.
This is best described as theology by making stuff up. It requires ignoring the fact that the Gospels were written in a specific period of history using a specific literary type within a specific worldview. It is not Christian theology.
That’s not incarnation. Again, this is theology by making stuff up.
A raped woman was considered violated. Unless she was married, her rapist wasn’t killed, he was required to marry her.
There is no “evil” in the sense of moral evil in Isaiah 45:
אֲנִ֥י יְהֹוָ֖ה וְאֵ֥ין עֽוֹד
יוֹצֵ֥ר אוֹר֙ וּבוֹרֵ֣א חֹ֔שֶׁךְ עֹשֶׂ֥ה שָׁל֖וֹם וּב֣וֹרֵא רָ֑ע
אֲנִ֥י יְהֹוָ֖ה עֹשֶׂ֥ה כָל־אֵֽלֶּה
I am Yahweh, and there is no other
forming light and creating darkness;
making well-being and creating calamity.
I am Yahweh doing all these.
(translation mine)
jammycakes. I would dilute your post a bit to say that every human already functions with science. Not the rocket science kind, but the scientific method kind that underpins all our decisions. It’s the autonomic scientific examination that concludes that it’s safe to step on that unstable rock. Happens nearly instantly. More formally, it’s the scientific method that allows a person to fix their snowblower if it doesn’t start.
In that sense, we all operate as evidence-based, reasoned concluders.
Except when it comes to religion. Then many toss away that process for an unsupportable, supernatural one.
It seems impossible to me to operate under both a scientific-method driven mindset and a supernatural mindset.
No, NicholasB, what you say is not correct. The resurrection absolutely DOES contradict science. An oddity that seems to violate all the knowns of science isn’t true. You can’t make exceptions with gravity, for example.
It’s one or the other; scientific method or supernatural myth.
looks like you suffer from the doctrine of the trinity. Jesus never said “I am the father” He said that he predated Adam but not that he was God. Read John 14:6.or Mark 16:19 and tell me how you understand them to be the same. and why did the holy spirit descend on him? Did God forget to take his spirit with him when he incarnated?
God does transcend the material but he is not material, that’s the hole point. The software resides in the hardware and does act through the hardware causing the output, but it is not the hardware.
I am what I am is the essence of existence. Existence never began to exist as it is an eternal function. The earth could begin to exist but not existence. Organic life did begin to exist based on the property of love instilled into matter as love is a basic function of materials as well, only not on a conscious level, but it does inevitably give rise to that. The poetic description of God making mud pie humans as to “form humans from the dust of the earth” is a description that can be understood on the level of a childhood experience but also intellectually by understanding the abstract meaning behind the phrase. To declare someone an atheist because they try to explain how God uses natural / physical processes o achieve his objectives is odd as that by your definition makes scientists atheists by definition, something we try to argue against here.
Parthenogenesis exists in a number of species but in humans tends to lead to tumours
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987717302694
and in humans would lead to a female offspring which is why those who reject Christianity claim Jesus to be trans.
Parthenogenesis - Wikipedia is a fascinating subject and would be more regarded as a freak accident of nature if it happened in a human and you believe God created men male and female for a reason.
So if you want to give a logical coherent explanation to the birth of Jesus as a miracle, e.g. a sign pointing at an act of God and not a freak abnormality of what God ordained.
the question is why people would feel so offended of Jesus being born as a “bastard” and why a “bastard” is so abhorrent to them that they fight it tooth and nail, yet celebrate that God lets his son be crucified.
If the interpretation of the gospel requires a logically incoherent worldview - which is therefore an invalid worldview - it would not be the representation of truth. By insisting on an interpretation of the gospels that is in conflict with the systematic observation of nature, e.g. science, we create the demise of Christianity at our own peril and make it a subject of wishful thinking instead of truth. And wishful thinking is what you get via social media, not the gospels. They deal with reality.
you seem to confuse a supernatural mindset with an illogical mindset. Whilst a lot of religious people argue irrationally based on wishful thinking that is not what a supernatural mindset would be about. Unless you are a materialist you have to accept the mind as a supernatural, e.g. metaphysical entity housed in a physical embodiment. A scientific-method driven mindset is a supernatural mindset as it declares the power of the scientific method which is by default supernatural / non physical organised mind.
Wishful thinking is not exclusive to people following a religion, we are all gullible to some extend. The wish to become an immortal self is irresistible to most of us, even more so if you promise free virgins at your service to men. They’ll do everything for that illusion. However to generalise that to all is not a credit to ones intellectual capacity, quite the opposite.
is particularly embarrassing for an intellectual as one should understand that a myth does not mean something that is a made up phantasy with no relevance to truth but it deals with truth on a level beyond the physical which cannot be derived from the scientific method.
It’s a matter of common knowledge that sciences can meaningfully affirm or deny only the propositions that are subject to empirical check. As long as we discuss sciences made by humans, it’s clear that we mean “empirical checks that human beings can carry out”.
Now, the proposition "God can suspend or transform the laws of nature in order to resurrect a human being (or the entire humanity; or all sentient beings) " is not subject to any empirical check that human scientists can carry out. Observation informs us about the usual manner of divine action - it roughly coincides with the regularities of nature that scientists figure out. But it doesn’t mean that God can’t deploy some other, unusual ways of action
Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.[a] 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.
The filling of those jars was a ritual that declared its purifying power. You did not just hold it under the tap 
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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