Relative to Jonas Alexas, We are always communicating our state whether we like it or not. Jonas' beliefs are getting in his way. Beliefs are useless baggage. The Root of the Nazorean Gospel is Perfectly Obvious as Prior Reality. LAURENT GUYENOT is worthy of his friendship and brotherhood.
St Jerome (347-420), the greatest biblical scholar of his time (& possibly of all time) & knowing not just Latin & Greek but Hebrew as well, had access to many MSS that were later lost during the chaos of the Fall of Rome, and the teaching authority of the Church at the time in the person of Pope Damasus made his Latin Vulgate the official version of the Bible. It is the best & most accurate, as is the English translation of it, the Douay-Rheims.
A great scholar in modern times, Archbishop Fulton J Sheen, PhD, DD, the popular radio & TV personalty in the 1940s & 50s, wrote an excellent & best-selling Life of Christ, the first chapter of which, "The Only Person Ever Pre-Announced" is very thought-provoking & should reel the reader in to reading the rest.
guyenot's categorical rejection of the OT is too ambitious and can't help but fail. i don't know if kevin is denying anthropomorphic god, but that's wrong too.
> Jewish tribalist portrayal of Yahweh is both absurd in many respects (beginning with anthropomorphism)
no! we are made in the image of god. we 'evolve' towards the godhead, starting with our bodies, rising up through our struggling souls. god has an anthropomorphic side (99 names).
rejecting that is the slippery slope to chucking 'good' patriarchy and making god motherly love.
that's not the main 'love' of god. it is manly, brave, protecting love that ... protects us!
motherly love is unconditonal, once we are safe from US-israel genocide, so it must be carefully nurtured, protected. that's god's love too.
The Qur'an strongly advises us not to view God as a father: "So believe in God and His messengers and do not say, 'Trinity.' Stop!—for your own good. God is Oneness! Glory be to Him! He is far above having a son!" (an-Nisa 171). The 99 names are abstract qualities, way above the level of the human, and involve characteristics or energies that we can aspire to reflect, but they do not in any way reduce God to the level of being like a bigger more powerful human being, much less a tribal patriarch as in much of the Torah. Islam's approach to God is much closer to the via negativa of certain Christian theosophists (and to concepts of or relating to God in philosophy, Buddhism, Taoism, the Upanishads, etc.) than to the anthropomorphism of mainstream Judaism and Christianity.
mea culpa for suggesting biology. that was not my intent. only to make clear god is not a goddess, lady, mistress. he is lord and master. that means good patriarchy is the natural order.
Kevin, you have said that you believe the Christian belief in the Trinity of Persons in One God is "irrational." It is not irrational but supra-rational, above human understanding but not an absurdity or contradiction in terms. We see reflections of the Trinity in nature & in an especial way within ourselves. Our immaterial & immortal soul, which gives life to our body, has 3 faculties: intellect, will & intellectual memory (we share sense memory with the lower animals).
One God in 3 divine Persons has been revealed by Jesus, whom you do not believe is the eternal Son of the Father who took on a human nature to not just teach but primarily to willingly suffer & die as a perfect sacrificial offering for the forgiveness of the sins of mankind, a sacrifice having infinite value because He is God & able to be applied to us sinners because He is man.
As far as the historicity of the Gospels goes, we have older MSS of them than we do of many Greek & Roman classics which are accepted by scholars as reliable.
Have you ever read a good defense of the truth of Christianity? Do you really believe, as the Koran teaches, that someone else died on the cross, not Jesus, therefore no resurrection from the dead? Not even the Jewish leaders thought that worthy of a cover story. The best they could come up with is that His disciples stole the body while probably 12 Roman soldiers were sleeping (a capital offense)! The evidence for the Resurrection is overwhelming. BTW, have you ever studied the Shroud of Turin?
Try reading Sheen's Life of Christ, linked above, or if you prefer greater scholarship, The Lord by Romano Guardini. And/or if you want a very intellectually stimulating read, try the inimitable G.K. Chesterton, widely considered one of the deepest thinkers that ever existed & who writes in a unique & very engaging style, in his comparison of Christianity with other religions & philosophies in Part 2 of his highly acclaimed book, The Everlasting Man, here:
As a scholar yourself, you should be acquainted with the best defenses of what you refuse to believe in. Besides, the forgiveness of your sins & the salvation of your soul just might depend on it ;)
Thank you, I will try to check out Chesterton. And you too might ask yourself: What if the truth is different from, greater than, or not constrained by, the dogma of the creed I've accepted? What if divine unity is a better way of conceiving God than trinity? What if God has send down a great many messengers bringing various perspectives on the ineffable truth to different groups throughout history, as Islam teaches, and it's a case of the blind men and the elephant?
Everything centers around the towering figure in the Gospels, "The Only Person Ever Pre-Announced":
"History is full of men who have claimed that they came from God, or that they were gods, or that they bore messages from God—Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, Christ, Lao-tze, and thousands of others, right down to the person who founded a new religion this very day. Each of them has a right to be heard and considered. But as a yardstick external to and outside of whatever is to be measured is needed, so there must be some
permanent tests available to all men, all civilizations, and all ages, by which they can decide whether any one of these claimants, or all of them, are justified in their claims. These tests are of two kinds: reason and history. Reason, because everyone has it, even those without faith; history, because everyone lives in it and should know something about it.
"Reason dictates that if any one of these men actually came from God, the least thing that God could do to support His claim would be to pre-announce His coming. Automobile manufacturers tell their customers when to expect a new model. If God sent anyone from Himself, or if He came Himself with a vitally important message for all men, it would seem reasonable that He would first let men know when His messenger was coming, where He would be born, where He would live, the doctrine He would teach, the enemies He would make, the program He would adopt for the future, and the manner of His death. By the extent to which the messenger conformed with these
announcements, one could judge the validity of his claims. Reason further assures us that if God did not do this, then there would be nothing to
prevent any impostor from appearing in history and saying, 'I come from God,' or 'An angel appeared to me in the desert and gave me this message.' In such cases there would be no objective, historical way of testing the messenger. We would have only his word for it, and of course he could be wrong...."
mea culpa for suggesting father in any biological sense. i meant the archetype of father. jung. lord. master. not lady, mistress, goddess. yes, via negativa.
Relative to Jonas Alexas, We are always communicating our state whether we like it or not. Jonas' beliefs are getting in his way. Beliefs are useless baggage. The Root of the Nazorean Gospel is Perfectly Obvious as Prior Reality. LAURENT GUYENOT is worthy of his friendship and brotherhood.
There are a couple of books I would heartily recommended to anyone who is discoursing on Christianity and its meaning:
"The Quest of the Historical Jesus" by Dr. Albert Schweitzer
"The Wisdom of St. John" by Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken)
St Jerome (347-420), the greatest biblical scholar of his time (& possibly of all time) & knowing not just Latin & Greek but Hebrew as well, had access to many MSS that were later lost during the chaos of the Fall of Rome, and the teaching authority of the Church at the time in the person of Pope Damasus made his Latin Vulgate the official version of the Bible. It is the best & most accurate, as is the English translation of it, the Douay-Rheims.
A great scholar in modern times, Archbishop Fulton J Sheen, PhD, DD, the popular radio & TV personalty in the 1940s & 50s, wrote an excellent & best-selling Life of Christ, the first chapter of which, "The Only Person Ever Pre-Announced" is very thought-provoking & should reel the reader in to reading the rest.
sacredheartshrine.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Life-of-Christ-Fulton-J.-Sheen.pdf
guyenot's categorical rejection of the OT is too ambitious and can't help but fail. i don't know if kevin is denying anthropomorphic god, but that's wrong too.
> Jewish tribalist portrayal of Yahweh is both absurd in many respects (beginning with anthropomorphism)
no! we are made in the image of god. we 'evolve' towards the godhead, starting with our bodies, rising up through our struggling souls. god has an anthropomorphic side (99 names).
rejecting that is the slippery slope to chucking 'good' patriarchy and making god motherly love.
that's not the main 'love' of god. it is manly, brave, protecting love that ... protects us!
motherly love is unconditonal, once we are safe from US-israel genocide, so it must be carefully nurtured, protected. that's god's love too.
The Qur'an strongly advises us not to view God as a father: "So believe in God and His messengers and do not say, 'Trinity.' Stop!—for your own good. God is Oneness! Glory be to Him! He is far above having a son!" (an-Nisa 171). The 99 names are abstract qualities, way above the level of the human, and involve characteristics or energies that we can aspire to reflect, but they do not in any way reduce God to the level of being like a bigger more powerful human being, much less a tribal patriarch as in much of the Torah. Islam's approach to God is much closer to the via negativa of certain Christian theosophists (and to concepts of or relating to God in philosophy, Buddhism, Taoism, the Upanishads, etc.) than to the anthropomorphism of mainstream Judaism and Christianity.
mea culpa for suggesting biology. that was not my intent. only to make clear god is not a goddess, lady, mistress. he is lord and master. that means good patriarchy is the natural order.
Kevin, you have said that you believe the Christian belief in the Trinity of Persons in One God is "irrational." It is not irrational but supra-rational, above human understanding but not an absurdity or contradiction in terms. We see reflections of the Trinity in nature & in an especial way within ourselves. Our immaterial & immortal soul, which gives life to our body, has 3 faculties: intellect, will & intellectual memory (we share sense memory with the lower animals).
One God in 3 divine Persons has been revealed by Jesus, whom you do not believe is the eternal Son of the Father who took on a human nature to not just teach but primarily to willingly suffer & die as a perfect sacrificial offering for the forgiveness of the sins of mankind, a sacrifice having infinite value because He is God & able to be applied to us sinners because He is man.
As far as the historicity of the Gospels goes, we have older MSS of them than we do of many Greek & Roman classics which are accepted by scholars as reliable.
Have you ever read a good defense of the truth of Christianity? Do you really believe, as the Koran teaches, that someone else died on the cross, not Jesus, therefore no resurrection from the dead? Not even the Jewish leaders thought that worthy of a cover story. The best they could come up with is that His disciples stole the body while probably 12 Roman soldiers were sleeping (a capital offense)! The evidence for the Resurrection is overwhelming. BTW, have you ever studied the Shroud of Turin?
Try reading Sheen's Life of Christ, linked above, or if you prefer greater scholarship, The Lord by Romano Guardini. And/or if you want a very intellectually stimulating read, try the inimitable G.K. Chesterton, widely considered one of the deepest thinkers that ever existed & who writes in a unique & very engaging style, in his comparison of Christianity with other religions & philosophies in Part 2 of his highly acclaimed book, The Everlasting Man, here:
https://archive.org/details/gkc-the-everlasting-man-selections
Paperback or Kindle: amazon.com/MAN-CALLED-CHRIST-CHURCH-FOUNDED/dp/B08HQ72JD3/ref=sr_1_1
See also this much shorter earlier work of his, very thought-provoking:
https://www.ecatholic2000.com/gk/blatchford/cont.shtml
As a scholar yourself, you should be acquainted with the best defenses of what you refuse to believe in. Besides, the forgiveness of your sins & the salvation of your soul just might depend on it ;)
Thank you, I will try to check out Chesterton. And you too might ask yourself: What if the truth is different from, greater than, or not constrained by, the dogma of the creed I've accepted? What if divine unity is a better way of conceiving God than trinity? What if God has send down a great many messengers bringing various perspectives on the ineffable truth to different groups throughout history, as Islam teaches, and it's a case of the blind men and the elephant?
Everything centers around the towering figure in the Gospels, "The Only Person Ever Pre-Announced":
"History is full of men who have claimed that they came from God, or that they were gods, or that they bore messages from God—Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, Christ, Lao-tze, and thousands of others, right down to the person who founded a new religion this very day. Each of them has a right to be heard and considered. But as a yardstick external to and outside of whatever is to be measured is needed, so there must be some
permanent tests available to all men, all civilizations, and all ages, by which they can decide whether any one of these claimants, or all of them, are justified in their claims. These tests are of two kinds: reason and history. Reason, because everyone has it, even those without faith; history, because everyone lives in it and should know something about it.
"Reason dictates that if any one of these men actually came from God, the least thing that God could do to support His claim would be to pre-announce His coming. Automobile manufacturers tell their customers when to expect a new model. If God sent anyone from Himself, or if He came Himself with a vitally important message for all men, it would seem reasonable that He would first let men know when His messenger was coming, where He would be born, where He would live, the doctrine He would teach, the enemies He would make, the program He would adopt for the future, and the manner of His death. By the extent to which the messenger conformed with these
announcements, one could judge the validity of his claims. Reason further assures us that if God did not do this, then there would be nothing to
prevent any impostor from appearing in history and saying, 'I come from God,' or 'An angel appeared to me in the desert and gave me this message.' In such cases there would be no objective, historical way of testing the messenger. We would have only his word for it, and of course he could be wrong...."
Continued: catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/answering-atheists/the-only-person-ever-pre-announced.html
The whole intellectually stimulating & imaginatively engaging book: sacredheartshrine.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Life-of-Christ-Fulton-J.-Sheen.pdf
I think you & E Michael Jones should have a discussion/debate on "God's Revelation: Christianity, Islam or Both?" - or something like that.
Only person ever pre-announced? What about James Brown? https://www.tiktok.com/@jamesbrown/video/7223459903313136938?lang=en
mea culpa for suggesting father in any biological sense. i meant the archetype of father. jung. lord. master. not lady, mistress, goddess. yes, via negativa.