--On Fri, 01 Mar 2002 20:06:10 george murphy wrote: >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.
>> Stuart Kirkley wrote >> 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. > George Murphy wrote: >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"
>SK wrote: >OK, first I have no idea what you mean by 1., unless you mean that Jesus did not actually die as he proved three days later. The thing is, is that he did die out of mortal selfhood and was resurrected into his divine eternal selfhood which was the animating spirit of his earthly existence in the first place.
As for 2., by simply stating some Scripture does not give me any basis to understand where you are coming from. Yes, the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh, but just what is the Word? To me it is the Truth or the ever present reality of divine government which has appeared in all ages in various forms, as a burning bush, as a still small voice, as a guiding star. Jesus was the embodiment of Truth, but as a human he was not the whole of Truth. Jesus said I go unto the Father, , that is he sought the whole of Truth and lived it, but he was not that whole. Thus his humility in the face of Truth.
3. - I prefer to let God do the conceiving, after all He is the Creator. 4. Again, there are a lot of different doctrines out there, the notion of the Trinity is one of them. God said, I am that I am. To me that means one and one only and doesn't leave any room for any other entity. The trinity to me speaks more about the quality, not the quantity of God. Yada Stuart Kirkley
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