Stuart d Kirkley wrote:
>
> --
>
> On Fri, 1 Mar 2002 15:24:28
> bivalve wrote:
> Even being born as the heir apparent to Caesar
> would have made the Creator physically dependent on others to feed
> and clean Him.
>
> I still, for the life of me, can not understand how people can rationally state that Jesus was God incarnate. To me this is one of the biggest stumbling blocks of theololgy which stems from and leads to a narrowness of scriptural interpretation. If, as the Bible states clearly many times, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to be the Saviour of the world, reveals God as Parent and Son as offspring, distinct and individual, how do you arrive at the idea that Jesus was God???!! I just find it incredulous that well reasoned people can actually hold to this doctrine.
> Sorry, I had to get that out.
1) The real stumbling block (_skandalon_) is not simply that Jesus is God Incarnate but that he died on the cross - I Cor.1:18-31.
2) Scripture also says that "the Word was God" (Jn.1:3), that "in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily" (Col.2:9) &c.
3) "Rationality" is a criterion for judging not premises but the way one thinks from premises. Christian thought properly begins with the belief that Jesus is fully human and fully divine and develops - rationally - its concept of God from there. It does not begin with some philosophical assumptions about the unity of God and then try to shoehorn the divinity of Christ into that understanding of God - though unfortunately that's the way that theology often has worked.
4) The proper Christian understanding of God is trinitarian, not because of an _a priori_ belief that God is three and one but precisely as a way of trying to make sense of the belief that the one who died on the cross is "true God of true God."
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Dialogue"
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