If He had it would be out of date in 2000 years time, and someone living then would be asking the same questions…
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I think there’s a difference between worrying and planning wisely for the future. In his parable Jesus praised the man who built his home on the rock rather than the sand. He commended him for being wise. Without appropriate planning, the early church could not have cared for its members and would have ended.
I suspect the early disciples got confused over what Jesus said regarding the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, thinking He may return just after that. But that isnt what He said, rather there would be signs of the coming destruction to look out for, but no signs of his return. Perhaps that is why they had a certain expectation, if indeed they did.
Even if you were correct, that doesn’t mean we draw the line in the right spot. Per Acts (not sure of its historicity) the early church pooled all its resources. That is lastly different than individual retirements and trying to bank a years salary etc…
I disagree in part. We like to water down the teachings of Jesus because they are hard and we lack the faith to fully just trust God for everything as Jesus suggested.
And the parable of the house being built on rock vs sand might mean the opposite of what you may or may not be implying. Money and/or the world or relying on yourself is the sand. Storing your treasures in heaven is the rock. I don’t think Jesus was giving architecture or structural engineering advice. Or telling you to invest in a 401k. He was telling us to trust in God for all things because God is the only foundation truly built on rock.
In fact at the beginning Jesus says:
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them.”
Jesus applauding what you think he is in that parable is like saying he applauded slavery because he referred to it in a parable
Vinnie
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Maybe. Maybe Jesus didn’t know himself (Matt 24:36) and said stuff that set up that expectation (John 14:2-3).
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I remember kicking this idea around in the study room of the physical science building, trying to think of what God could have inserted into scripture that would point to nature/science while not falling out of date. The first thing we all settled on was that for the dimensions given for the great “sea” in the Temple God could have said ten cubits across and thirty-one and a half cubits around – close enough to pi for a simple by-the thumb measurement system. He also could have put in something about stars flaring up super bright, and something talking about eclipses of the moon. But things that atheist challengers propose, like a mention that light is a particle while also a wave, wouldn’t work because they would make no sense to anyone for two or three millennia – and tossing in things that make no sense would detract from people paying attention to the message (though I got a chuckle out of what someone said in a YouTube comment on a Neil Tyson video: God could have added a verse saying “But Pluto is not a planet”).
And as one of my (favorite) professors noted, not long after Paul had to collect money from other churches to bail out those in Judea.
In public comments concerning a proposed housing development on sand dunes that covered where a city dump used to be, a second grade girl commented, “The foolish man built his house upon the sand”. That comment from a child redirected the entire discussion and led to a much less dense development than had been proposed (I think the new rule meant only 2/3 as many houses got built).
It’s a balance. A Roman Catholic priest when I was attending university noted in a homily that totally failing to provide for your future can be very similar to throwing yourself off the top of a tall building (he also had some scathing remarks about people piling up more than they really need). And that makes me think of a couple I knew who built up a monster of a retirement fund – and they didn’t tell anyone but their (Lutheran) priest why they were piling up so much until their retirement party held at the church: they’d always wanted to do missions, so they had built up a large enough fund that they could meet their own needs from the income on their investments and slowly draw down the total through spending it on helping people as they traveled (which makes me think of a guy who was a church elder at a non-denominational church who had built up his annual income to about $600k, who tithed but most of his money went to acquiring ever-larger and ever more luxurious houses and didn’t give so much as a dime to any charity).
In grad school I remember thinking that the issue was just how long an “age/eon” is: it lasts till it is ‘completed’, and in case of “the end times” eon there was no way from Jesus’ perspective to know if those end times would last one generation or a hundred. So it was easy to expect it would be just a generation when in fact it would be much longer.
Sure, but if he says to a group, "I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am, "it’s reasonable to think the “you” refers to the people listening, and that they wouldn’t be long dead by the time this promise was fulfilled.
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It is also reasonable to believe Jesus didn’t always know he was going to be crucified and resurrected and wouldn’t be talking about coming back at all. He would be preaching the Kingdom of God. After he dies and his followers believe he appears to them, they think the general resurrection is at hand. Later events are then projected back onto the lips of Jesus.
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Except He plainly told the disciples that this was the plan.
There’s just too much material in the Gospels where Jesus shows awareness of the plan for this to work.
I think you mean “the author of the gospel(s) has Jesus plainly telling his disciples that this was the plan.” Most critical historians will naturally disagree with that assessment. Betrayed by a best friend, crucified by Rome? These are embarrassing and it’s not hard to understand why this would be softened. Jesus naturally predicted both all along. John 6 even goes further with the damage control….and my statement, again, is this is an entirely reasonable position to hold to.
Yes, for Christians this is a hard sell, much like believing Jesus was not an exorcist. I don’t know where I fall on this because the gospels are hella creative at times. They are not history but contain some. I also believe the later church likes to retell the past using present beliefs. That happens in the Bible from cover to cover. The gospels don’t get a special exemption from me.
I think Jesus came to understand his life as a sacrifice but I think this is a later development in his ministry. I don’t think for one instant he knew this all along. I see that Gethsemane (a tradition like it) appears multiply attested in source and form. In Epistle and Gospel. This makes it a stronger tradition historically.
So while I affirm Jesus was a willing sacrifice and came to learn of it, I think he came to learn this at the end of his ministry, and not something he programmatically taught. My God my God why have you forsaken me also comes into play, as does Jesus’s activity in Gethsemane, all the disciples fleeing etc…
I think the gospels just go all in with it.
The Bible certainly has given us guidance for how we live yesterday, today, and forever. But, to understand it you have to believe the text is authoritative. And indeed, the one true church sees the absolute truths of scripture. In fact, that is one of the “leading indicators” your life is abiding in Christ, you live by its instruction. We are justified not by following those commands, but rather realizing our life is full of sin and we are irresistibly compelled to repent and believe. From there, a regenerated heart chases after living a life according to scripture. While the culture has devolved into a metaphysical level of madness where nothing is real, Christians see the simplicity of living according to Christ. To see the Christian life as existing withing this “complex world” is to live in it and according to it. Being sanctified in Christ is not a work, it is the natural response knowing the Creator of the universe has sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts and animates our existence to live for Him. To stand for His righteousness and not of this “complex world”. The world has always been made complex by man. But Christ is at the throne and every salvation is the progressive plundering of Satan and evil that will be soon consumed in hell. We live in a broken world, the very creation groans for the day of redemption. The one true church is and always will stand unchanged from the foundation. There are a lot of false churches that will say to the Lord on the last day they prophesied in His name and did good works in His name, and Jesus will tell them to depart and join that final eternal punishment of evil and sin. Either we are with Christ or against, but we all live forever. Either in the light of God or hell. We don’t just avoid the world, the closer we draw to Him the more we feel like foreigners in a foreign land. We go into the world only to gather the last of the sheep before the end. Today false churches say the reason they have so many unbiblical things going on in their church is because Jesus had dinner with sinners. But, that is such a caricature of truth. Jesus did not go into a strip club. Jesus did not go into a gambling den. Jesus is with people who God has given Him unto salvation. These were people of peace, ready for truth. Turn off the TV, stop watching secular news, read your Bible and hear from God.
There is much missing here from the scriptures. On Jesus birth, he was called Immanuel. Angles spoke to His parents. Shepards came to see. Many wise men came to see. Jesus was the most knowledgeable of the scriptures predicting Him and His death, down to the gambling away of His clothes. He knew he was the Christ as soon as he could put sentences together. It their time in Egypt, are we to assume His parents did not tell Him what happened? Why they were in Egypt?
The two main problems with professing Christians are one, they don’t read their Bible or two, they read into singular passages and come up with something new. The Bible self-authenticates. The person of Christ has been well understood for 2,000 years. Only in the last 200 years have people decided that the only truth is the one they make up. Recommended Reading: Doctrine of the Person of Christ (Recommended Reading: Doctrine of the Person of Christ)
And critical scholars find all sorts of problems with the infancy narratives they deem to be contradictory and filled with a lot of theological creativity.
Assuming other parts of scripture that are just as problematic or more troubling are completely accurate to argue other parts are as well is just assuming what needs to be demonstrated and a logical fallacy to boot.
I find the main problem with Christians who do read their Bible is them assuming it’s all true history narrated from up on high by God written to them.
It self-contradicts in many places. There are no easy solutions.
He was misunderstood from the beginning by many people. See when he asked Peter who do they people think I am. There were many different Christologies in the early church and over the years as well. Trinitarian belief developed over time as well.
Plus Christian theology has had to change a little the last few hundred years as we learned a lot of science and found out many of our traditional stories didn’t happen like most of history thought they did. Not to mention the church and its greatest thinkers being influenced for thousands of years by platonic dualism and a garden story that is now know to be mythological regardless of Paul’s arguments in Romans 5 or Augustine’s interpretation of them.
Vinnie
On the one hand, as someone not raised Christian and nevertheless finding value in Christianity, I have not found much of value in eschatology. Thus I find the preterist viewpoint to be more the reasonable approach.
On the other hand, you can also say the world is perpetually on the brink of destruction. It is certainly no less true of the present time. But perhaps you can say this only means that things will change as they always do and the present order of things will pass away – even as life goes on.
I don’t think this is true because the guidance remains the same – that these things which seem so terribly important to us right now, really are not as important as we think… and everything is far less is under our control than we imagine.
I don’t think it means quite what you say. I think it means to avoid involvement in so far as it is hopelessly corrupt and likely quite transient. It means that the standards and measures of the world regarding what is good and successful are flawed. And the point is that we would be greatly misguided if we sacrifice our principles (our soul) in order to be successful by such measures of the world.
A good example of this is in James 1:27 “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” This is only one of many places where it says real love and worship of God is measured best by how we care for those in need – showing that we value what God values. And the latter part doesn’t mean we should remain uninvolved with the world, but that we should not allow it to corrupt (to stain) us and make us lose sight of what is really important.
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That reference to James 1:27 is very pertinent. Thank you Mitchell
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Trinitarian belief was already found in second temple Judaism – it was an extension of the “Two Powers” doctrine that recognized that the Old Testament showed two Yahwehs, one always in heaven, one that walked on Earth in the form of a man, due to the Spirit of Yahweh being treated in some passages as a person. As far as I know it never quite made it to the “Three Powers” stage, but the concept of Yahweh as three Persons is right there in Paul.
The only thing lacking was a name for it.
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How are you equating some Jews probably embraced Binitarianism with Trinitarianism? And even in Paul, many do not think early Christians viewed the Holy Spirit as a full-fledged member of the Trinity, but simply God’s spirit at work in the world. Yes, Jesus was viewed as God incarnate by many in the early Church but this is an anachronism to equate it with the Trinity. The Son was subordinate to the Father, not to mention potential adoptionist Christology like we might find in Mark. Even the language of “first-born of creation” has subordination in it (to God) but also absolute authority (to everything else). The Trinity had to develop and there were a lot of different views of Jesus which is tautological and obvious since some hailed him Lord and others crucified him.
Vinnie
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