[RD] Ask a Theologian V

I think the point being made is that Plotinus actually does have real-world academic credentials on the subject of theology.

Indeed.

He's not a plumber, dude. It's not like there's some grand theological certification board. Anybody can be a theologian.

If you plod through the training program, yes. The statement 'anybody can be a theologian' is about as valid as 'anybody can be a plumber' or 'anybody can be an astronaut'. In real life only theologians, plumbers and astronauts are theologians, plumbers and astronauts.

Especially one with lots of money to sink into an education where a degree is seen as a means to a salery.

A salery? A sellery? Some other similar sounding word?
 
A person can absolutely become an expert in a field without credentials. But people tend to underestimate how much work is required. An undergrad is 220 hours or so of class-time, with at least another 400 hours spent studying. You don't get there from reading a few articles. You don't even get there from being an avid reader, unless you've been an avid reader on the topic for years and years.

Now, if you have a solid base, you could probably finish off a degree with only the last two years. But that's still almost a hundred hours using only advanced sources. Having flit through Strong's concordance a few times just doesn't equal that. Heck, I listen to ~3 hours of economics seminars per week, and I'd still get schooled by someone who'd studied the material in a focused way.
 
A question. Mary conceived Jesus, fathered by Joseph, through immaculate conception. I assume this follows from the doctrine that Jesus, while being Son of God, also is identical to God. But Mary also gave birth to Jesus' siblings - we assume via normal conception. Just as Joseph did, but that was immaculate. So basically, after Jesus' conception Mary was no longer immaculate. Or does the immaculation stretch on to the next conception? Or was Mary only immaculate at the exact moment of baby Jesus' conception? Just wondering.

(Also still waiting on the spiritual cannibalism extrapolation, in case we'd forgotten.)
 
Immaculate conception, as I understand it, refers to the doctrine that Mary was born without sin, not Jesus.
 
Yes - it's a common misconception that immaculate conception and virgin birth are essentially the same thing. You then have 'perpetual virginity', which has been around since medieval times but which, given how virginity was understood at the time, requires the sort of biological gymnastics that you don't want to think too hard about.
 
Sorry, I will get to the outstanding queries.

But they're right, "immaculate conception" refers to the conception of Mary herself. She was supposedly conceived in the normal way, but miraculously did not receive original sin, allowing her to remain sinless.

Again according to orthodoxy, Jesus was not fathered by Joseph, who was basically his step-father. It was a virgin birth involving no male human agency. (I don't think this does follow from the doctrine of Jesus' divinity - it's perfectly possible to believe that Jesus was divine without thinking that there was anything unusual about his birth - but there you go.) This has nothing to do with Mary's immaculate nature. Protestants believe in Jesus' virgin birth without believing that Mary was immaculate.

The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus' siblings were not really his siblings at all, but cousins or other relatives, or perhaps Joseph's children from an earlier marriage; and so Mary remained a virgin all her life. While this is possible there's no particular reason to think it true other than the dogmatic assumption that she did remain a virgin all her life. I don't see any particular reason, even from within an orthodox viewpoint, to make that assumption, which really rests on the deeper assumption that there's something wrong with women who aren't virgins.
 
So basically, the people who wrote the NT were wrong and the Catholic church is right. Because if Joseph wasn't Mary's husband at the time of conception this would be highly unseemly (and yet, there is no mention of that), and Jesus' siblings are mentioned as well (without any suggestion they were anything else than his direct kin)..But perhaps I remember this wrong.

I asked about the spiritual cannibalism with regard to the eucharist, because there seems to be something similar in one of the then mystery religions. (Mithras, I believe.) The difference is that in the other religion it is meant as partaking in the deity (during initiation, if I remember correctly), whereas in Catholicism it's a repeated ritual, which apparently has a limited effect.
 
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It may be worth noting that the Greek term for "brother," "aldephos," literally means "from the same womb." The term originally referred only to siblings who shared a mother, regardless of whether their fathers were the same. However, about 500 years before the gospels were composed the meaning had already shifted so that it could be use more loosely to include any siblings or half siblings who shared either parent in common. It did not refer to relatives with no common parents though. There is really no basis for the common Roman Catholic idea that "adelphos" in this context should be interpreted to mean "cousin." That notion just does not fly in the Eastern Orthodox church were more people speak Greek. They instead tend to hold that Joseph was an older widower with enough children that he was not seeking a wife to provide him with more offspring but rather someone who help care for those he already had.
 
It may be worth noting that the Greek term for "brother," "aldephos," literally means "from the same womb." The term originally referred only to siblings who shared a mother, regardless of whether their fathers were the same. However, about 500 years before the gospels were composed the meaning had already shifted so that it could be use more loosely to include any siblings or half siblings who shared either parent in common. It did not refer to relatives with no common parents though. There is really no basis for the common Roman Catholic idea that "adelphos" in this context should be interpreted to mean "cousin." That notion just does not fly in the Eastern Orthodox church were more people speak Greek. They instead tend to hold that Joseph was an older widower with enough children that he was not seeking a wife to provide him with more offspring but rather someone who help care for those he already had.

But that's just another speculation for which there is no basis in the NT. Thanks for the explanation though.
 
It may be worth noting that the Greek term for "brother," "aldephos," literally means "from the same womb." The term originally referred only to siblings who shared a mother, regardless of whether their fathers were the same. However, about 500 years before the gospels were composed the meaning had already shifted so that it could be use more loosely to include any siblings or half siblings who shared either parent in common. It did not refer to relatives with no common parents though. There is really no basis for the common Roman Catholic idea that "adelphos" in this context should be interpreted to mean "cousin." That notion just does not fly in the Eastern Orthodox church were more people speak Greek. They instead tend to hold that Joseph was an older widower with enough children that he was not seeking a wife to provide him with more offspring but rather someone who help care for those he already had.
But that's just another speculation for which there is no basis in the NT. Thanks for the explanation though.

Actually it is. When Jesus was on the Cross, he asked John a non relative to take care of Mary. The last we really hear of Joseph was when Jesus was 12 or an "adult" That may have been when Joseph could have been released of any responsibility for Mary and Jesus. That Joseph was much older and perhaps even dead is a possibility, but who Jesus's actual siblings or step siblings were and the fact that Mary was "without sin" is mere speculation. For Jesus to ask John to take care of Mary seems to indicate other family members had been released of that responsibility or never had it to begin with, as they were not born of Mary. Yes there was speculation later with the Roman church as to the authority direction the church was taking, and it has been reported that one Roman Bishop terminated the whole Jesus' sibling line to settle the authority issue. We do know that the Jewish Leader James did claim to be the brother of Jesus, but even as a step sibling of Jesus' legal relationship with Joseph regardless of Joseph's responsibility, may still be considered as some claim of familial authority when it comes to a church leadership role.

It could even be speculated that Mary never even knew a Joseph and the Jewish authors just made up the story to give James a position of authority. Although it may have appeared specious to have a single female and Jesus as the only actual family unit that Jesus knew. It never says that Mary was a harlot, although the other Mary was referred to as one. Perhaps they were one and the same person and the stories got twisted together?? For mere speculation Mary could have just found a baby one day, and God told her to raise the child. Mary never gave birth to a single human, but was attributed as the only mother that Jesus knew growing up.

Speculation aside, the writer Luke was said to have straightened it all out, and even gave two genealogies. One for Mary and one for Joseph. It seems likely that both parents were responsible for raising Jesus, but Jesus birth as only having one biological parent, who may or may not have had more biological offspring may be an unknown. Having a legal sexual relationship would remove all sin associated with an out of wed-lock sexual encounter. Joseph was afraid that he was to blame for the birth, but was re-assured that he would not be charged, and neither should Mary as she remained sinless in the whole matter. Joseph was released not because he did it and was forgiven. He knew that he did not have a sexual encounter with Mary, but even today there are humans who claim he did have a sexual encounter with Mary before Jesus was born. As for original sin, that was a much later doctrine, that gave need for Mary to be born immaculate. The Apostle Paul claimed that sin entered the world with Adam, but that is not the same as saying that there was an original sin and humans are now born with it. Sin is not part of the genetic makeup, that can be genetically altered. Sin is a condition that is inescapable, but it has to do with knowledge and not genetics.
 
Actually it is. When Jesus was on the Cross, he asked John a non relative to take care of Mary. The last we really hear of Joseph was when Jesus was 12 or an "adult"

Which proves nothing in particular beyond the fact that early Christians found Jesus' earthly father to be a bit of a theological problem with regards to Jesus being the son of God. As is also suggested by the genealogy of Joseph you mention (supposedly to prove a relation to the house of David), which ends incongruously with the assertion that Joseph was not the father of Jesus. And when when Jesus reportedly asked John to take care of Mary, that rather suggests that no relatives were present. Anything else is, again, speculation. But, as opposed to speculation, there's nothing in the NT to suggest that Joseph was anything else than Jesus' dad (the annunciation is merely about Mary being pregnant of a son, who she should name Jesus) and that his siblings were indeed just that.

Which in turn suggests that the doctrine of Mary being without sin and Jesus being the Son of God is not the original story. If it were, the gospel writers would have had little compunction about telling the story in such a fashion as to leave no doubt about such crucial elements in Christianity.
 
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Which proves nothing in particular beyond the fact that early Christians found Jesus' earthly father to be a bit of a theological problem with regards to Jesus being the son of God. As is also suggested by the genealogy of Joseph you mention (supposedly to prove a relation to the house of David), which ends incongruously with the assertion that Joseph was not the father of Jesus. And when when Jesus reportedly asked John to take care of Mary, that rather suggests that no relatives were present. Anything else is, again, speculation. But, as opposed to speculation, there's nothing in the NT to suggest that Joseph was anything else than Jesus' dad (the annunciation is merely about Mary being present of a son, who she should name Jesus) and that his siblings were indeed just that.

Which in turn suggests that the doctrine of Mary being without sin and Jesus being the Son of God is not the original story. If it were, the gospel writers would have had little compunction about telling the story in such a fashion as to leave no doubt about such crucial elements in Christianity.

From a logical aspect, the historical fact that Jesus was God would have been the strongest at the time of Jesus' life. The immediate authors would have written to convince the readers that Jesus was human. There were only about 1 or 2 dozen Jews who were convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. Those who accepted later were either convinced by trust or with the ability to see the truth in the evidence provided in the retailing of the events of those present to witness them.

It may be easy to look back and claim certain humans had no faults, because we only remember them for the good things they did. However at the time, the point was that the Messiah had to be a blood born Jew. The argument at the time was that any Messiah would not claim to be the Son of God. The Messiah was a descendant of King David who would take the throne of David and be the literal physical ruler just like David was. There was no spiritual aspect to the term Messiah.

The point of the Gospels was to portray Jesus as human. The Roman church had to come up with Mary being immaculate much later, because that was never a issue at the time of the writing of the Gospels. The point was to continue to convince themselves that Jesus was God. However calling her immaculate was going in the wrong direction, and the erroneous view that a virgin had to be born of a virgin, had to born of virgin.... Just like God created the universe, another God created God, another God created God..... Mary was human and capable of sin just like every other human. The point was not that Jesus was a sinless human, but that he was God and that is why he was without sin. Jesus was human and had to have a biological birth, but he was also God, not the result of two humans producing biological offspring. The virgin birth has nothing to do with Mary being a sinner nor sinless, as being a sinner would not prevent Jesus being God, nor would Mary being sinless prevent Jesus from being human. Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus, and would have to adopt him if there was to be any legal standing for Jesus to claim inheritance. But Jesus' earthly life was not about claiming an earthly inheritance but the inheritance of Being the first born Son of God, and the spiritual inheritance of reversing the result set in motion by Adam.

The Gospels kept the focus on Jesus Christ the "anointed savior". This would be in opposition to Immanuel son of David, "God with us" or The Messiah the Jews were looking for. We could speculate that his followers did address him with the name Immanuel, but that might be hard to prove as history has just recorded that they only used the term Jesus. Even the term Christian was given as a nickname for those who followed Jesus the Christ. But the name can be confusing, because the Jews were looking for an anointed King, not an anointed Savior. The claim the Gospels made was not to install Jesus on the throne of David, the point was to declare that Jesus was the human who would save the world. However the crowds kept wanting to make him their King. His followers understood he was God on earth. They had to convince the rest of humanity that Jesus was the Messiah, even though Jesus did not overthrow the Romans and reign on the throne of David.

The relationship between the Jews and God was not an earthly kingdom. It was in the Holy of Holies in the temple and the Glory of God as a light. Other than the physical aspect of light, there was no divine king, nor divine anything physical. Any mixed breed divinity/human was not of God, but the point that God had made physical images via human manifestations. The Jews before and even during any form of established religion as in Judaism never accepted any divinity as any physical manifestation, and that is why they rejected Jesus as even claiming to be a god, much less the God in the flesh. Yet Jesus claimed to be the Light of the World. Up until Constantine, Christians were assumed atheistic, because they never accepted any half human, half divine nor any other god/divinity that the rest of the world recognized in one or more fashion. Jesus was not a divinity in any of the normal accepted divine manifestations. In fact, the reality was that Rome had lost all authority when it came to divine beings and Constantine understanding this, gave the Roman church the temporal authority to run with this spiritual manifestation that was unlike any other known to mankind, except by the Christians of the day.

Just like the Hebrews wanted a physical temporal King to lead them like other nations, as the representative anointed of God, instead of God, the Roman church decided to place a single human as vicar and accepted the temporal authority and the armed forces that came with such authority and for the most part left the spiritual aspect of God behind. Thus turning Christianity into a mere religious temporal authority. Replacing everything spiritual with a secular physical representation, that could be economized and more easily implemented than just telling humans to "believe" in something.
 
There is literally no such thing.

It's interesting how these things become in this manner in language. It's also my, and to my understanding all, reality that Jesus and God are one being, and I don't think it's a shaking of my faith to realize this is a compartmentalized aspect of my view of reality. There's what is physical I can manipulate or anticipate and there is the esoteric, or metaphysical, divine, with which I have only spiritual contact, and might manifest physically, but I shouldn't set out to prove it, only accept it. For many, this gets combined, and thus convoluted in concept. From an exterior perspective I've thought myself into a loop, but I have it pretty definite in my mind, like setting empty set to the side when I'm trying to balance my checkbook, but always being mindful empty set exists.

The same thing is done in many parts of religious interpretation. Did people write the Bible while inspired by God or did God actually write the bible? What's the difference? Is the message in the Bible meant for the time it was written, or 1900 years later? Both, likely, but is it entirely the same message? Maybe not.
 
From a logical aspect, the historical fact that Jesus was God would have been the strongest at the time of Jesus' life. The immediate authors would have written to convince the readers that Jesus was human.

As Arakhor hinted, Jesus being God is not a historical fact. It's a historical fact that there is a doctrine stating that Jesus is God. That this at the time of the gospels wasn't yet a generally accepted doctrine is clear from the efforts - that you yourself hint at - of the authors to convince readers of the veracity of this doctrine, which conflicts with the story they are trying to tell of Jesus as a human. Nor was the divinity of Jesus a fully developed doctrine yet, leading to controversies over the nature and person of Jesus Christ, which even the Nicea council.failed to resolve conclusively.

But wanting to read such a doctrine into the gospels is the biggest mistake. With some exaggeration it's similar to wanting to find papal infallibility in the NT. That's neither logical, nor historic.
 
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I don't believe that Jesus was God, but it wouldn't change the message if he was. The only way to factually prove that Jesus was/is God is to prove the existence of God and that's not going to happen, short of a literal end-times event.
 
It may be worth noting that the Greek term for "brother," "aldephos," literally means "from the same womb." The term originally referred only to siblings who shared a mother, regardless of whether their fathers were the same. However, about 500 years before the gospels were composed the meaning had already shifted so that it could be use more loosely to include any siblings or half siblings who shared either parent in common. It did not refer to relatives with no common parents though. There is really no basis for the common Roman Catholic idea that "adelphos" in this context should be interpreted to mean "cousin." That notion just does not fly in the Eastern Orthodox church were more people speak Greek. They instead tend to hold that Joseph was an older widower with enough children that he was not seeking a wife to provide him with more offspring but rather someone who help care for those he already had.

Where in bloody hell do you make up this stupid etymology?

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=a)delfo/s

ἀδελφός just meant "brother" and nothing else. The word for womb was ὑστέρα, which sounds nothing like ἀδελφός.
 
Magister's correct. Seriously people, is it really that painful to spend 15 seconds checking wiktionary before you come in hot and heavy with your etymologies?

From Proto-Indo-European *sm̥-gʷelbʰ- ‎(“one/same womb”), from *gʷelbʰ- ‎(“womb”), equivalent to ἁ- ‎(ha-, copulative prefix) +‎ δελφύς ‎(delphús, “womb”). The initial /h/ is lost due to Grassmann's Law.

and for δελφύς:
From Proto-Indo-European *gʷelbʰ- ‎(“womb”). Cognate with Sanskrit गर्भ ‎(garbha).
 
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