useless
Social Justice Rogue
And if it does, why doesn't it work everytime, even for the most devout of Christians?
Ask an Evangelical Christian
- Thread starter GhostWriter16
- Start date
- Status
And if it does, why doesn't it work everytime, even for the most devout of Christians?
Midgard Eagle
Warlord
Should anyone be interested in what the Bible* says...timotfly said:
Genesis 3:2-5
The woman said to the snake, 'We may eat from the trees of the garden, but of the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, "Do not eat from it, and do not even touch it, or else you will die."'
The snake said to the woman, 'Surely you will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.' The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for the knowledge it could give. And she took fruit from it and ate it. She gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
Genesis 3:22-23
Then Yahweh God said, 'The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must be prevented from reaching out his hand to take from the tree of life, lest he eat from it and also live forever!' So he drove the man away and stationed cherubs at the east of the garden of Eden, and a whirling flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life.
So basically, Adam and Eve were mortals all along, and God's warning that they would die if they ate from the tree was completely meaningless. God lied. Doesn't matter anyhow, the humans had no way to tell that what they were doing was wrong, because until they ate the fruit, they had no knowledge of good and evil. All they had to go on was God's warning that the fruit was dangerous, and thus logically when the snake informed them God had lied to them, they had no more arguments against taking the fruit. Anyone would act the same way.The woman said to the snake, 'We may eat from the trees of the garden, but of the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, "Do not eat from it, and do not even touch it, or else you will die."'
The snake said to the woman, 'Surely you will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.' The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for the knowledge it could give. And she took fruit from it and ate it. She gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
Genesis 3:22-23
Then Yahweh God said, 'The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must be prevented from reaching out his hand to take from the tree of life, lest he eat from it and also live forever!' So he drove the man away and stationed cherubs at the east of the garden of Eden, and a whirling flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life.
That bothers me about fundamentalist Christians in the first place... they are OK with mass murder, rape, genocide, torture, blackmail and executions, but a simple lie? No, surely He would not do that, He is so good and omni-benevolent and loves us
.*a very obscure book that laid the foundation for Christianity a long, long time ago. Today most people pay it little attention and few if any Christians have the faintest idea what it says.
If prayer works (and by works, I mean God does something), then how does free will exist?
timtofly
One Day
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2009
- Messages
- 9,445
Should anyone be interested in what the Bible* says...
Genesis 3:2-5So basically, Adam and Eve were mortals all along, and God's warning that they would die if they ate from the tree was completely meaningless. God lied. Doesn't matter anyhow, the humans had no way to tell that what they were doing was wrong, because until they ate the fruit, they had no knowledge of good and evil. All they had to go on was God's warning that the fruit was dangerous, and thus logically when the snake informed them God had lied to them, they had no more arguments against taking the fruit. Anyone would act the same way.
The woman said to the snake, 'We may eat from the trees of the garden, but of the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, "Do not eat from it, and do not even touch it, or else you will die."'
The snake said to the woman, 'Surely you will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.' The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for the knowledge it could give. And she took fruit from it and ate it. She gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
Genesis 3:22-23
Then Yahweh God said, 'The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must be prevented from reaching out his hand to take from the tree of life, lest he eat from it and also live forever!' So he drove the man away and stationed cherubs at the east of the garden of Eden, and a whirling flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life.
That bothers me about fundamentalist Christians in the first place... they are OK with mass murder, rape, genocide, torture, blackmail and executions, but a simple lie? No, surely He would not do that, He is so good and omni-benevolent and loves us
*a very obscure book that laid the foundation for Christianity a long, long time ago. Today most people pay it little attention and few if any Christians have the faintest idea what it says.
I have one command for you. Do not post in this thread again. You do not have to know the rules of this forum. You are even free to post in every other thread. If you post in this thread one more time, you will be banned for life. You do not even need to know why I am replying like this. You just have to trust me. Now this may be a bad anology, but God did not lie. God told Adam not to eat of the fruit. Adam broke that command. He did not have to know all the rules of the "garden" to brake this one command.
Free will is not freedom to do. Free will is the ability to choose. Part of prayer is asking that God's will be done and our own will should take a back seat. One who does God's will by choice is not at odds with himself, but aligns their will with God's. Even if it seems hard to do, God's will is more beneficial in the long run. That is how faith is involved. Doing God's will is a step of faith and faith is confirmed and strengthened as one continues to do God's will.
MobBoss
Off-Topic Overlord
_random_
Jewel Runner
Why the distinction? Surely she didn't only bare God, but conceive, birth, nurse, and raise him.
Jesus Christ is God.
St. Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, St. Mary is the Mother of God.
It's a pretty simple oblique syllogism. Care to make a god case that the relative term is intransitive?
So what do you believe is the proper honor due her?
Unrelated:
In light of Exodus 19:6, which was delivered right before God set apart the Levitical priesthood, and the fact that "presbyter," meaning priest, was used to describe ministers in the New Testament do you see a problem with a ministerial priesthood under the New Covenant?
Moderator Action: Yes, it is. Please choose more carefully in future.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
Prayer is really us talking to God to get what he wants us to do. He only ever has the best for us so us doing what we want is often a recipe for disaster. every time I have done things I have wanted things go bad, but every time I do what God wants me to do, things have been good for me, so really me praying to God is something is best for me, since I know that God's will is always best for me.
@Random, Jesus is only the mother of Christ not of God. She was only the human vessel chosen to carry Jesus into this world, other than that, there is nothing special about Mary. She is to blessed among women, not above women.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Yes
No, the cutoff is about 60,000 years.
Expert knowledge based on scientific research.
If there's a conflict something is wrong with the methodology, one looks into the methodology to discover the flaw then determine which date (if any is correct) it is.
Why?
GhostWriter16
Deity
I've heard whispers in my heart.
Well, there's a lot of factors that come into play, the sincerity of the prayer, what you prayed, exc. And prayer doesn't work like a tool, its speaking to God, and it always "Works" but God doesn't always say yes.
Should anyone be interested in what the Bible* says...
Genesis 3:2-5So basically, Adam and Eve were mortals all along, and God's warning that they would die if they ate from the tree was completely meaningless. God lied. Doesn't matter anyhow, the humans had no way to tell that what they were doing was wrong, because until they ate the fruit, they had no knowledge of good and evil. All they had to go on was God's warning that the fruit was dangerous, and thus logically when the snake informed them God had lied to them, they had no more arguments against taking the fruit. Anyone would act the same way.
The woman said to the snake, 'We may eat from the trees of the garden, but of the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, "Do not eat from it, and do not even touch it, or else you will die."'
The snake said to the woman, 'Surely you will not die! For God knows that on the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.' The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for the knowledge it could give. And she took fruit from it and ate it. She gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
Genesis 3:22-23
Then Yahweh God said, 'The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must be prevented from reaching out his hand to take from the tree of life, lest he eat from it and also live forever!' So he drove the man away and stationed cherubs at the east of the garden of Eden, and a whirling flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life.
That bothers me about fundamentalist Christians in the first place... they are OK with mass murder, rape, genocide, torture, blackmail and executions, but a simple lie? No, surely He would not do that, He is so good and omni-benevolent and loves us
*a very obscure book that laid the foundation for Christianity a long, long time ago. Today most people pay it little attention and few if any Christians have the faintest idea what it says.
God didn't lie, they did die, just not immediately.
The problem is "Mother of God" makes it out like she's a deity. When in reality, she isn't even the mother of Jesus Christ in the sense that one might think, as Jesus is older. She is really only the mother of Jesus' incarnate flesh.
Not much. Honoring men (Or women as the case happens to be) isn't really a good idea. I don't believe in "Veneration" or whatever the term is...
Technically, the Melkizedeckan (Acknowledged that I can't spell) Priesthood includes all believers. I don't agree with priests as ministers, however its not the name that I take issue with, but the Catholic/Orthodox concept that the priest is essentially Christ in the flesh (Or standing in as him rather.)
Jesus is the Mother of Himself?
I know that was a typo, but WOW!
But in all seriousness, you are correct that she's not special in the sense that she doesn't deserve veneration or prayer.
_random_
Jewel Runner
But wasn't the whole person of Christ made incarnate?
Why not?
I can address this part later, but a bit of a curiousity: If you were to meet a Catholic/Anglican/Orthodox priest, would you refer to him as "Father [Name]?" Would you kiss his hand?
If God is intervening on earth, then your freedom to choose is compromised. If you hear, as Dom3k rather nicely put it, the whispers of God in your heart, you no longer have free will.
So then prayer is like guidance? If God is interceding or even guiding human events, this negates free will.
GhostWriter16
Deity
Well, yes, but my point was that the "Word" was around before Mary (I'll explain this better tomorrow when I can focus.)
Well, I don't go so far as some people and say "All Catholics worship Mary" or whatnot, but I do think veneration does, unintentionally for the most part, bestow honor upon man which he does not deserve.
Absolutely not and absolutely not. I'd try to be as kind as possible in my refusal, but I wouldn't, since I think that bestows unnecessary honor on a man.
Jehoshua
Catholic
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2009
- Messages
- 7,284
would you address a monarch by the term Your majesty, a medical practitioner by Doctor, or the President by Mr President?
Jesus said clearly and unambiguously that if you pray, it will come true:
Source: http://godisimaginary.com/i1.htm
(the website continues to list more such examples, I simply quoted the first two)
Berzerker
Deity
the nefilim means those who came down from heaven, not giants
there are 2 relevant time periods - slavery in Egypt and the Flood patriarchs ending with Abram. Those older stories from mesopotamia predate the episode in Egypt... Check what Joshua had to say upon leading the people into the new lands (24:2-6 or thereabouts), he tells them of their ancient history when their fathers served other gods in the land between the 2 rivers (Sumer). Thats where these stories came from...
none, thats the point - if all those people drowned with the other critters in a flood, where did their bones go? It seems you're saying God separated them out from the animals, is that right? Angels can be seen, the Bible's full of divine encounters. Do you have a scriptural reference for this separation of people from critters in the flood?
But what was the fruit? What was the disobedience?
God never told Adam and Eve to procreate... There were people already on Earth because of the 6 days of creation, those people were populating the world before Adam and Eve were ever mentioned.
They were ashamed by their nakedness and the fig leaves tell us it was specifically their reproductive organs. Eve was pregnant, thats why God became angry and kicked them out.
They were never immortal, but why does "the curse" on Eve refer to childbearing if the fruit had nothing to do with procreation?
if ignorance is perfection, what is God?
Both had to partake, they procreated
of course God was angry, he's cursing everyone involved and kicking them out of the Garden.
Where did God say that when describing what happened as a result of eating the fruit? The people created before Adam and Eve were made in God's image but not Adam's children?
where'd Abraham come from?
Those were from God, that was the curse he placed on Eve and it was God who blocked their way to the tree of life - the serpent merely told the truth.
Someone said that this is meant to be “Ask an Evangelical” and not “Correct an Evangelical”, but I really have to say something about the comments on Jesus’ birth and Mary’s status in addition to the exactly right correction that Jehoshua wrote. Domination3000, you are, from the viewpoint of Christian orthodoxy, straight-out wrong about this, plain and simple. There is of course nothing wrong with that in itself, but I think it’s going to be very hard for anyone to explain how this is compatible with evangelical Christianity, which as far as I can tell is based completely and utterly upon the assumption that the church fathers were correct in their views.
As _random_ said, this is outright Nestorianism, which is heretical. In fact Nestorius himself made precisely this claim, that Mary was the mother only of the human “part” of Christ, not of the whole Christ and certainly not of his divine “part”, and therefore should not be called “mother of God” or equivalent titles.
You are confusing your terms. What was born to Mary (and I speak here in the assumed voice of an orthodox Christian) was Jesus, who was the incarnation of the Son, that is, the Second Person of the Trinity, also known as the Logos. So Jesus is the incarnation of the Son. It is not the case that what was born was the incarnation “of” Jesus – he was Jesus.
You are also confused in that you seem to think that the pre-incarnate Jesus and the incarnate Jesus are distinct people or “selves”, which I don’t think even Nestorius said. Let me remind you what the Symbol of Nicaea – which is the ultimate authority for most Christians – says:
You will notice in that statement that “Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God… came down and was incarnate and was made man”. In other words, the very same individual who was “of one substance with the Father” and “by whom all things were made” was the same one who was incarnate. There is no sense whatsoever of a former “self” and a later one.
This conviction was at the heart of the orthodox rejection of Nestorianism. The church fathers were convinced that the person who lived in Galilee and died on the cross must be the very same person who existed from eternity with the Father. That is what the title “mother of God” for Mary is meant to express. The human being Jesus, who was born of Mary, really was identical with God – he was not just a close associate of God.
You’re also confused in your understanding of what it means to call someone a mother. It doesn’t mean that they are responsible for the existence of their son. It means merely that they give birth to him and (perhaps) provide at least some of his genetic material. (I say “perhaps” because one might, or might not, think that a surrogate mother is a true “mother” – just as one might, or might not, think that an egg donor is a true “mother” – but minimally, at least, being a mother must involve at least one of these two elements. And we’ll leave adoption out of it.) In the case of Jesus, orthodoxy holds that the Son did indeed exist from eternity and in no way was Mary responsible for his existence – only the Father was. But that is not inconsistent with saying that Mary was his mother. Saying that Mary was his mother means saying that she gave birth to him and that she was the source of his genetic material, or at least some of it. (In fact I believe the usual view is that Mary was miraculously given the ability to give birth to a boy genetically distinct from herself, but presumably still genetically related to her to the same degree that a son usually is to his mother.)
Now you are right to say that orthodoxy holds that Jesus existed before Mary ever did, in a non-incarnate state, but you are wrong to say that this means that Mary could not be his mother. It simply means that, in Jesus’ case, his mother was not responsible for his existence, although of course she was responsible for his humanity.
It is really as simple as this: if Jesus was God, and if Mary was the mother of Jesus, then Mary was the mother of God. It’s a straightforward substitution of terms. If you deny that Mary was the mother of God, then you must be denying either that Mary was the mother of Jesus, or that Jesus was God. Either of those denials would be heretical. The latter is obviously heretical, because it is a denial of Jesus' divinity. The former is heretical because it is a denial that Jesus was human in a way importantly similar to us. It is arguable that someone could be genuinely human without having been born to a human mother. If Adam and Eve existed, they were not born, but Christians have traditionally regarded them as human. So presumably, on this view, Jesus could have not had a mother and yet still been human. However, he would not have been cut from the same cloth as us. He would have been a new human creation, distinct from the mass of humanity he came to save. But Christian orthodoxy has always stressed that Jesus was not simply human, but one of our humans, if you like. He had to come from the same race as us if he was to save us. You claimed earlier that the doctrine of original sin is very important. But if by that doctrine you mean the idea that sin, or sinfulness, can be passed from one generation to the next, it is essential for God to become human in the same genetic population as that infected with original sin. Otherwise the sin is not stopped in its tracks. The whole point of the doctrine of original sin, as it originally developed, was to draw a parallel between Adam and Christ: Adam unleashed sin to wreak havoc among his descendants, and Christ is a new Adam who stops it from doing so. If Christ, the divine person himself, is not a genuine descendant of Adam, with his humanity drawn from Adam's stock, then this doesn't happen. If you deny that Mary was the mother of Christ then this is what you are saying.
Now of course you might, like most Christians, suppose that Adam and Eve were not real historical people. But that doesn't change things. Adam and Eve symbolise humanity in general. It is humanity in general, according to orthodox Christianity, which has sinned and needs to be saved. If, in the incarnation, God does not genuinely become a member of this group, then his salvation is worthless.
That is why the church fathers condemned Nestorius and upheld the title of Theotokos for Mary. Now you may personally disagree with this decision, of course, but you must be aware that in so doing you reject Christian orthodoxy as well as standard evangelical belief.
The intent behind the title was to give honour to Jesus, not to Mary. As I said above, it is intended to stress (a) Jesus’ divinity and (b) his true birth as a human being. Being concerned about unduly honouring Mary is irrelevant to that. If you have such concerns you would be better advised to think about why being “mother of God” should not lead to undue honour – not denying (heretically) that she is “mother of God” at all.
Also, let me make another correction:
Christians have always believed that man is an animal. The classical definition of man is “rational animal”. As MagisterCultuum says, “animal” merely means something with a soul (animus) – in the Aristotelian sense of being alive and having the ability of movement. So there’s no problem whatsoever, from a Christian point of view, of thinking that human beings are animals.
Of course, Christians do not believe that human beings are merely animals. However, the theory of evolution does not say that human beings are merely animals either, so there’s no problem there.
I think that the real reasons why fundamentalists reject the theory of evolution are quite different. But it’s not for me to comment further on that matter.
Anyway, on to my questions.
My question is: why do you believe this?
This has been touched on already, but I don’t think it’s been adequately answered. Let me say: first, I am asking this not in order to attack your views, but out of genuine curiosity, because I really don’t understand why people believe this (although I have my suspicions), and second, I would really appreciate a full answer, not simply a one-line reference to something in the Bible. Because if it’s really so important it deserves more than that.
Now, you’ve already said:
But this response doesn’t answer the question at all. This is for two main reasons.
First, the passage in question doesn’t say what you claim it does. Here is that passage:
That passage doesn’t talk about “the Bible”. It talks about “all scripture”. But what did the author mean by “all scripture”? Did he mean the 66 books of the Protestant biblical canon? That seems unlikely since at least some of them hadn’t even been written, and plenty of the others weren’t regarded as scriptural at all. The Jews at this time had no agreed canon of scripture, and when they did agree on one (some time later) it wasn’t the same one as the Christians. Now you might say, “The author of this passage didn’t know all the books of the Bible as we have them, but this passage still refers to all the books of the Bible as we have them, because it is inspired by God, and God knew which books he was going to include in the canon.” But this is not a legitimate response. We’re questioning whether the Bible was divinely inspired, and whether that makes it inerrant, in the first place. You can’t appeal to the fact that it was divinely inspired when trying to explain why you think it was divinely inspired – that would be viciously circular reasoning. Moreover, if you say this then you’re saying that the true meaning of a biblical text is something other than the author’s intent, which seems to me to open a huge can of worms – because while it may be hard to establish the author’s intent, that is surely easier than establishing God’s intent if that’s something different!
Worse, the passage doesn’t say that scripture is inerrant or infallible or anything like that. It only says it is “inspired by God” and useful in various ways. The ways in which it is useful could be said of plenty of books and are certainly not unique to the Bible. That leaves “inspired by God”. What does that mean? Well, it’s something that people in antiquity generally thought of certain writings about the gods, mainly those of Hesiod and Homer, and also (for some) those attributed to Orpheus and Musaeus. The idea was that the gods had spoken through these poets to provide information about themselves. They did not, as far as I know, believe that this mean that those poets were formally infallible, although they were certainly quoted as definitive authorities, and interpreters spent their time explaining how the unpleasant bits in their works were not meant to be taken literally but were true nevertheless. But I cannot see how one can legitimately jump from “inspired by God” to “infallible”.
You may say, of course, that anything God inspires must be infallible. But that’s not a legitimate response. First, if you argue in this way, you’re going beyond what the Bible says. You may think it’s a reasonable inference to go from “the Bible is divinely inspired” to “the Bible is infallible”, but whether it’s reasonable or not, it’s something that isn’t in the Bible. And so you’re breaking the “sola scriptura” rule. As soon as you start arguing for a non-biblical claim on the basis of a biblical one, you lose the ability to criticise the Catholics or anyone else for doing that. Second, it seems quite plain to me that being divinely inspired does not necessarily mean infallibility, because “inspiration” comes in all sorts of forms. An author who has an experience that is genuinely of God (I will assume that God exists and can be experienced, for the sake of argument) might, in the light of this experience, write something about it. In fact, enormous numbers of mystical authors, Christian and non-Christian, have done precisely this. Such writings could legitimately be called “inspired by God”, just as, if I write a poem about how great Nelson Mandela is, I could legitimately say that this poem is “inspired by Nelson Mandela”. But I see no reason whatsoever to suppose that mystical writings of this kind must be infallible just in virtue of being inspired in such a way. Now, you may say that when the Bible is said to be “inspired by God”, it doesn’t mean this kind of inspiration. It means, perhaps, that God actually took over the human authors and spoke directly through them, playing them like instruments (as some ancient authors believed the gods had done with Hesiod and the other pagan poets). But here again the claim is illegitimate, because that claim isn’t in the Bible. It’s just your interpretation of what is in the Bible. So once again, you can’t claim biblical authority for this view.
So the 2 Timothy passage doesn’t say that the Bible is infallible at all (because it’s not about the Bible, and it doesn’t talk about infallibility). That is the first problem with citing this passage. The second problem is even more obvious. It’s that if the infallibility of the Bible is what you’re trying to defend, then citing the Bible itself in defence of this view is circular reasoning. If you don’t yet believe that the Bible is infallible, then you’re not going to believe something just because the Bible says it, since you don’t yet have any reason to suppose that what the Bible says is true! One might just as well believe that the Pope is infallible purely because the Pope says he is, or that the Koran is infallible purely because the Koran claims to be, or that absolutely anything is. If I were to say “I am infallible” that would not be a good reason for anyone to think that I actually am. In fact, not only would it not be a good reason, it wouldn’t be a reason at all. I don’t think anyone would actually believe me to be infallible just because I said I was. Similarly, I don’t think anyone really believes the Bible to be infallible because it says it is. Even if we agree that the Bible actually claims to be infallible (which it doesn’t, as I’ve said), no-one would actually believe this to be the case simply for that reason. I just don’t think that such obviously circular and false reasoning could ever convince anybody of average intelligence or better. Since I don’t subscribe to the view that all evangelicals are stupid, I conclude that evangelicals don’t really believe in the infallibility of the Bible on the basis of the 2 Timothy passage. I think they appeal to that passage to support and strengthen a belief that they already have. So the question remains: why do they have that belief in the first place?
Also, I’d like some clarification. You said (I quote again):
“The original manuscripts of the Bible” – what are these? What is “the original manuscript” of any given biblical book? And why do you believe that these are the “infallible, inerrant word of God” – as opposed to (say) the Bible that I have sitting on the shelf in front of me?
Also a couple of shorter questions:
What do you mean by this? Do you mean that in order to be a Christian, someone must believe in a literal sense that “Jesus Christ died to pay the price for those sins”? In other words, that his death was literally the paying of a price? Or do you mean this metaphorically – that you don’t have to believe it’s literally a “price”, but something else, which “price” is a metaphor for? In which case, what is it a metaphor for, put literally?
I think this is a legitimate question because it’s about how evangelicals (or at least this evangelical) view Christians in general.
Also:
Why do you believe this? It’s not in the Bible. The Bible says that salvation comes through Christ alone, but it does not say that Christ cannot be found in other religions, as I’ve told you before.
As _random_ said, this is outright Nestorianism, which is heretical. In fact Nestorius himself made precisely this claim, that Mary was the mother only of the human “part” of Christ, not of the whole Christ and certainly not of his divine “part”, and therefore should not be called “mother of God” or equivalent titles.
You are confusing your terms. What was born to Mary (and I speak here in the assumed voice of an orthodox Christian) was Jesus, who was the incarnation of the Son, that is, the Second Person of the Trinity, also known as the Logos. So Jesus is the incarnation of the Son. It is not the case that what was born was the incarnation “of” Jesus – he was Jesus.
You are also confused in that you seem to think that the pre-incarnate Jesus and the incarnate Jesus are distinct people or “selves”, which I don’t think even Nestorius said. Let me remind you what the Symbol of Nicaea – which is the ultimate authority for most Christians – says:
the Symbol of Nicaea said:
You will notice in that statement that “Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God… came down and was incarnate and was made man”. In other words, the very same individual who was “of one substance with the Father” and “by whom all things were made” was the same one who was incarnate. There is no sense whatsoever of a former “self” and a later one.
This conviction was at the heart of the orthodox rejection of Nestorianism. The church fathers were convinced that the person who lived in Galilee and died on the cross must be the very same person who existed from eternity with the Father. That is what the title “mother of God” for Mary is meant to express. The human being Jesus, who was born of Mary, really was identical with God – he was not just a close associate of God.
You’re also confused in your understanding of what it means to call someone a mother. It doesn’t mean that they are responsible for the existence of their son. It means merely that they give birth to him and (perhaps) provide at least some of his genetic material. (I say “perhaps” because one might, or might not, think that a surrogate mother is a true “mother” – just as one might, or might not, think that an egg donor is a true “mother” – but minimally, at least, being a mother must involve at least one of these two elements. And we’ll leave adoption out of it.) In the case of Jesus, orthodoxy holds that the Son did indeed exist from eternity and in no way was Mary responsible for his existence – only the Father was. But that is not inconsistent with saying that Mary was his mother. Saying that Mary was his mother means saying that she gave birth to him and that she was the source of his genetic material, or at least some of it. (In fact I believe the usual view is that Mary was miraculously given the ability to give birth to a boy genetically distinct from herself, but presumably still genetically related to her to the same degree that a son usually is to his mother.)
Now you are right to say that orthodoxy holds that Jesus existed before Mary ever did, in a non-incarnate state, but you are wrong to say that this means that Mary could not be his mother. It simply means that, in Jesus’ case, his mother was not responsible for his existence, although of course she was responsible for his humanity.
It is really as simple as this: if Jesus was God, and if Mary was the mother of Jesus, then Mary was the mother of God. It’s a straightforward substitution of terms. If you deny that Mary was the mother of God, then you must be denying either that Mary was the mother of Jesus, or that Jesus was God. Either of those denials would be heretical. The latter is obviously heretical, because it is a denial of Jesus' divinity. The former is heretical because it is a denial that Jesus was human in a way importantly similar to us. It is arguable that someone could be genuinely human without having been born to a human mother. If Adam and Eve existed, they were not born, but Christians have traditionally regarded them as human. So presumably, on this view, Jesus could have not had a mother and yet still been human. However, he would not have been cut from the same cloth as us. He would have been a new human creation, distinct from the mass of humanity he came to save. But Christian orthodoxy has always stressed that Jesus was not simply human, but one of our humans, if you like. He had to come from the same race as us if he was to save us. You claimed earlier that the doctrine of original sin is very important. But if by that doctrine you mean the idea that sin, or sinfulness, can be passed from one generation to the next, it is essential for God to become human in the same genetic population as that infected with original sin. Otherwise the sin is not stopped in its tracks. The whole point of the doctrine of original sin, as it originally developed, was to draw a parallel between Adam and Christ: Adam unleashed sin to wreak havoc among his descendants, and Christ is a new Adam who stops it from doing so. If Christ, the divine person himself, is not a genuine descendant of Adam, with his humanity drawn from Adam's stock, then this doesn't happen. If you deny that Mary was the mother of Christ then this is what you are saying.
Now of course you might, like most Christians, suppose that Adam and Eve were not real historical people. But that doesn't change things. Adam and Eve symbolise humanity in general. It is humanity in general, according to orthodox Christianity, which has sinned and needs to be saved. If, in the incarnation, God does not genuinely become a member of this group, then his salvation is worthless.
That is why the church fathers condemned Nestorius and upheld the title of Theotokos for Mary. Now you may personally disagree with this decision, of course, but you must be aware that in so doing you reject Christian orthodoxy as well as standard evangelical belief.
The intent behind the title was to give honour to Jesus, not to Mary. As I said above, it is intended to stress (a) Jesus’ divinity and (b) his true birth as a human being. Being concerned about unduly honouring Mary is irrelevant to that. If you have such concerns you would be better advised to think about why being “mother of God” should not lead to undue honour – not denying (heretically) that she is “mother of God” at all.
Also, let me make another correction:
Christians have always believed that man is an animal. The classical definition of man is “rational animal”. As MagisterCultuum says, “animal” merely means something with a soul (animus) – in the Aristotelian sense of being alive and having the ability of movement. So there’s no problem whatsoever, from a Christian point of view, of thinking that human beings are animals.
Of course, Christians do not believe that human beings are merely animals. However, the theory of evolution does not say that human beings are merely animals either, so there’s no problem there.
I think that the real reasons why fundamentalists reject the theory of evolution are quite different. But it’s not for me to comment further on that matter.
Anyway, on to my questions.
My question is: why do you believe this?
This has been touched on already, but I don’t think it’s been adequately answered. Let me say: first, I am asking this not in order to attack your views, but out of genuine curiosity, because I really don’t understand why people believe this (although I have my suspicions), and second, I would really appreciate a full answer, not simply a one-line reference to something in the Bible. Because if it’s really so important it deserves more than that.
Now, you’ve already said:
But this response doesn’t answer the question at all. This is for two main reasons.
First, the passage in question doesn’t say what you claim it does. Here is that passage:
2 Timothy 3:16-17 said:
That passage doesn’t talk about “the Bible”. It talks about “all scripture”. But what did the author mean by “all scripture”? Did he mean the 66 books of the Protestant biblical canon? That seems unlikely since at least some of them hadn’t even been written, and plenty of the others weren’t regarded as scriptural at all. The Jews at this time had no agreed canon of scripture, and when they did agree on one (some time later) it wasn’t the same one as the Christians. Now you might say, “The author of this passage didn’t know all the books of the Bible as we have them, but this passage still refers to all the books of the Bible as we have them, because it is inspired by God, and God knew which books he was going to include in the canon.” But this is not a legitimate response. We’re questioning whether the Bible was divinely inspired, and whether that makes it inerrant, in the first place. You can’t appeal to the fact that it was divinely inspired when trying to explain why you think it was divinely inspired – that would be viciously circular reasoning. Moreover, if you say this then you’re saying that the true meaning of a biblical text is something other than the author’s intent, which seems to me to open a huge can of worms – because while it may be hard to establish the author’s intent, that is surely easier than establishing God’s intent if that’s something different!
Worse, the passage doesn’t say that scripture is inerrant or infallible or anything like that. It only says it is “inspired by God” and useful in various ways. The ways in which it is useful could be said of plenty of books and are certainly not unique to the Bible. That leaves “inspired by God”. What does that mean? Well, it’s something that people in antiquity generally thought of certain writings about the gods, mainly those of Hesiod and Homer, and also (for some) those attributed to Orpheus and Musaeus. The idea was that the gods had spoken through these poets to provide information about themselves. They did not, as far as I know, believe that this mean that those poets were formally infallible, although they were certainly quoted as definitive authorities, and interpreters spent their time explaining how the unpleasant bits in their works were not meant to be taken literally but were true nevertheless. But I cannot see how one can legitimately jump from “inspired by God” to “infallible”.
You may say, of course, that anything God inspires must be infallible. But that’s not a legitimate response. First, if you argue in this way, you’re going beyond what the Bible says. You may think it’s a reasonable inference to go from “the Bible is divinely inspired” to “the Bible is infallible”, but whether it’s reasonable or not, it’s something that isn’t in the Bible. And so you’re breaking the “sola scriptura” rule. As soon as you start arguing for a non-biblical claim on the basis of a biblical one, you lose the ability to criticise the Catholics or anyone else for doing that. Second, it seems quite plain to me that being divinely inspired does not necessarily mean infallibility, because “inspiration” comes in all sorts of forms. An author who has an experience that is genuinely of God (I will assume that God exists and can be experienced, for the sake of argument) might, in the light of this experience, write something about it. In fact, enormous numbers of mystical authors, Christian and non-Christian, have done precisely this. Such writings could legitimately be called “inspired by God”, just as, if I write a poem about how great Nelson Mandela is, I could legitimately say that this poem is “inspired by Nelson Mandela”. But I see no reason whatsoever to suppose that mystical writings of this kind must be infallible just in virtue of being inspired in such a way. Now, you may say that when the Bible is said to be “inspired by God”, it doesn’t mean this kind of inspiration. It means, perhaps, that God actually took over the human authors and spoke directly through them, playing them like instruments (as some ancient authors believed the gods had done with Hesiod and the other pagan poets). But here again the claim is illegitimate, because that claim isn’t in the Bible. It’s just your interpretation of what is in the Bible. So once again, you can’t claim biblical authority for this view.
So the 2 Timothy passage doesn’t say that the Bible is infallible at all (because it’s not about the Bible, and it doesn’t talk about infallibility). That is the first problem with citing this passage. The second problem is even more obvious. It’s that if the infallibility of the Bible is what you’re trying to defend, then citing the Bible itself in defence of this view is circular reasoning. If you don’t yet believe that the Bible is infallible, then you’re not going to believe something just because the Bible says it, since you don’t yet have any reason to suppose that what the Bible says is true! One might just as well believe that the Pope is infallible purely because the Pope says he is, or that the Koran is infallible purely because the Koran claims to be, or that absolutely anything is. If I were to say “I am infallible” that would not be a good reason for anyone to think that I actually am. In fact, not only would it not be a good reason, it wouldn’t be a reason at all. I don’t think anyone would actually believe me to be infallible just because I said I was. Similarly, I don’t think anyone really believes the Bible to be infallible because it says it is. Even if we agree that the Bible actually claims to be infallible (which it doesn’t, as I’ve said), no-one would actually believe this to be the case simply for that reason. I just don’t think that such obviously circular and false reasoning could ever convince anybody of average intelligence or better. Since I don’t subscribe to the view that all evangelicals are stupid, I conclude that evangelicals don’t really believe in the infallibility of the Bible on the basis of the 2 Timothy passage. I think they appeal to that passage to support and strengthen a belief that they already have. So the question remains: why do they have that belief in the first place?
Also, I’d like some clarification. You said (I quote again):
“The original manuscripts of the Bible” – what are these? What is “the original manuscript” of any given biblical book? And why do you believe that these are the “infallible, inerrant word of God” – as opposed to (say) the Bible that I have sitting on the shelf in front of me?
Also a couple of shorter questions:
What do you mean by this? Do you mean that in order to be a Christian, someone must believe in a literal sense that “Jesus Christ died to pay the price for those sins”? In other words, that his death was literally the paying of a price? Or do you mean this metaphorically – that you don’t have to believe it’s literally a “price”, but something else, which “price” is a metaphor for? In which case, what is it a metaphor for, put literally?
I think this is a legitimate question because it’s about how evangelicals (or at least this evangelical) view Christians in general.
Also:
Why do you believe this? It’s not in the Bible. The Bible says that salvation comes through Christ alone, but it does not say that Christ cannot be found in other religions, as I’ve told you before.
Jehoshua
Catholic
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2009
- Messages
- 7,284
In regards to biblical infallibility/innerancy.
-
Plotinus' question is basically the same fundamental problem I have with protestant Christianity in general. That is the paradox of Sola Scriptura.
The doctrine itself states that the bible is the sole source of legitimate authority on religious knowledge, by extension of that in evangelical protestantism it is understood that the bible is innerant and infallible in every possible manner (spiritual, scientific, historical). Now the problem is that nowhere in the bible does it say that the sum total of scripture is absolutely innerant or infallible, merely that it is useful for all teaching and inspired. Thus Sola Scriptura (and by extension the foundational basis of protestantism) condemns itself in irrationality by its own strange logic as false, because Sola Scriptura itself is not mentioned in the bible thus to hold the doctrine is to at the same time reject it. Likewise as Plotinus has already said divine inspiration and being infallible in every possible way are not the same thing.
-
Plotinus' question is basically the same fundamental problem I have with protestant Christianity in general. That is the paradox of Sola Scriptura.
The doctrine itself states that the bible is the sole source of legitimate authority on religious knowledge, by extension of that in evangelical protestantism it is understood that the bible is innerant and infallible in every possible manner (spiritual, scientific, historical). Now the problem is that nowhere in the bible does it say that the sum total of scripture is absolutely innerant or infallible, merely that it is useful for all teaching and inspired. Thus Sola Scriptura (and by extension the foundational basis of protestantism) condemns itself in irrationality by its own strange logic as false, because Sola Scriptura itself is not mentioned in the bible thus to hold the doctrine is to at the same time reject it. Likewise as Plotinus has already said divine inspiration and being infallible in every possible way are not the same thing.
And equally, the Bible doesn't specify what the Bible is. The Bible is not a single book - it is a collection of books. The canon is not obvious and not self-defining. There are other books that could quite plausibly have been included in the canon, but were not. It was the church fathers who decided which books counted as biblical and which did not. To the extent that evangelicals (or anyone else) considers the Bible to be distinct from other books and different in kind, to that extent they must believe the church fathers to have been specially inspired in defining the Bible. That is why I said that evangelicalism is really based upon the assumption that the church fathers were right. Which is why I find it hard to understand (a) how evangelicals can criticise Roman Catholics for believing the same thing, but explicitly rather than implicitly; and (b) how any evangelical can reject central teachings of the early church councils, such as the doctrine that Mary is the mother of God. If the church fathers could be wrong about that (which was formally defined and defended at an ecumenical church council), what's the guarantee that they were right about the canon of scripture (which was defined and defended at local synods, i.e. councils of much less importance and with fewer attendees)?
- Status
Similar threads
