Divinity of Christ

[LittleLes]

[quote name='Socrates' date='Jun 13 2005, 10:11 PM'](1) Historical.  And if you don't beleive anything in the Gospels, what's the point of trying to use them to prove your points?

(2)  Jesus Christ, being True man, as well true God, in His human nature would not desire to undergo the tremendous torture of the Passion.  Yet, He unites his human nature to the Divine Will of His Father perfectly, and He undergoes the Passion.  Christ never does anything contrary to the Divine Will.
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Response:

(1) To show that many of these passages are not historical.

(2) The old "in his human nature "answer. I'm afraid that the two natures don't act separately. They act together as a unit. But they are not reported to have done so in this case.

"Jesus' two natures are not "mixed together," nor are they combined into a new God-man nature. They are separate yet act as a unit in the one person of Jesus. This is called the Hypostatic Union. "

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='Jun 13 2005, 07:15 AM']How about proving an article of your faith using a creditable source? []
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I asked a simple question. You seem so afraid to come out of the shadows.

[LittleLes]

[quote name='Mateo el Feo' date='Jun 14 2005, 09:44 AM']I asked a simple question.  You seem so afraid to come out of the shadows.
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What part of this are you having difficulty with? You ask why would I want to prove an article of faith using a source that I don't believe.

The simple answer is that once again you are thinking in terms of "all or none." I might not believe everything that the President tells me, but that is different from disbelieving everything he tells me.

Do you understand the essential difference?

[Socrates]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='Jun 14 2005, 05:40 AM']
For those of you new to the LittleLes game, LittleLes' method is to keep repeating the same nonsense over and over endlessly after it has previously been refuted.  So, for the benefit of those who have just entered this debate, I will repost my previous reply to this same nonsense:

Response:

I carefully list the argument. You have not refuted it. Writing a nonspecific ramble embellished with unrelated scriptural quotations is not a refutation.

In Acts Peter is not claiming Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus was "raised" by God.

Acts 2:23-24
This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it.

Who acts and who is acted upon here?

And in the Lazarus legend, only found in John and not any of the other gospels, Jesus prays to the Father to act.

John 11:41
So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, "Father,  I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me."

Compare with:

Ezeh 37: 1, 10:

The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he led me out in the spirit of the LORD and set me in the center of the plain, which was now filled with bones...Then he said to me: Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy, son of man, and say to the spirit: Thus says the Lord GOD: From the four winds come, O spirit, and breathe into these slain that they may come to life.
I prophesied as he told me, and the spirit came into them; they came alive and stood upright, a vast army.

Does this make Ezekiel divine too?
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My quote from John, "I am the Resurrection," shows that Christ says that [b]He[/b] is the resurrection, that the power of resurrection and authority over life and death belongs to Him. He says belief [b]in Him[/b] is necessary for eternal life. Pretty explicit.

Your refusal to beleive in the Trinity does nothing to refute Christ's divinity. As we have seen earlier, the Gospel of John is quite explicit about Christ's divinity.

And your Ezekiel quote is rather irrelevant. This passage is a vision, given by God to Ezekiel, in which the dry bones represent the "dry bones" of Israel, which Ezekiel is to bring back to (spiritual) life by his preaching.
You're just playing games here again, Les.

Edited June 15, 2005 by Socrates

[Socrates]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='Jun 14 2005, 05:43 AM']Response.

Aren't Catholic priests suppose to be able to forgive sins too. Is this proof that they are divine? Or, like Jesus, can we believe that God was the one who really forgives the sins?
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Ask any good priest. Christ forgives the sins, acting through the priest. (Just as the apostles baptised and worked miracles in Christ's name). The priest does not forgive sins by own authority or power.

In the passage, Jesus claims that [b]He[/b] has the authority to forgive sins (a power belonging only to God) - thus proving Christ to be divine.

Edited June 15, 2005 by Socrates

[Socrates]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='Jun 14 2005, 05:54 AM']Response:

(1) To show that many of these passages are not historical.

(2) The old "in his human nature "answer.  I'm afraid that the two natures don't act separately. They act together as a unit.  But they are not reported to have done so in this case.

"Jesus' two natures are not "mixed together," nor are they combined into a new God-man nature. They are separate yet act as a unit in the one person of Jesus. This is called the Hypostatic Union. "
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(1) You have done no such thing. You have only shown that the gospels frequently contradict your modernist "party line" (and thus you deem them "unhistorical.")

(2) Jesus' human will is united to the divine will. Jesus never did anything contrary to the divine will. The fact that you are unable to comprehend the nature of the Trinity and Christ does not prove this false.

[Socrates]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='Jun 14 2005, 11:28 AM']What part of this are you having difficulty with?  You ask why would I want to prove an article of faith using a source that I don't believe.

The  simple answer is that once again you are thinking in terms of "all or none." I might not believe everything that the President tells me, but that is different from disbelieving everything he tells me.

Do you understand the essential difference?
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This is the root issue here. You simply pick and choose from the gospel according to what fits and doesn't fit with your preconceived notions (or "party line") - i.e. that Christ is not divine. If something in scripture goes against your belief, you either claim it is "not historical" or try to argue that it really means something other than its plain meaning.

You have given no proof for any of this - it is all based on the criteria of what does or does not support your forgone conclusion.

This is an easy game to play, and is quite silly and fallacious. You simply refuse to accept evidence which contradicts your "party line," and decide what is and what is not historical, or how to interpret passages based simply on the authority of your own assertions, or some modernist critic.

Thus any argument from scripture becomes pointless.

I'm tired of playing this silly game and repeating my same refutations to your same claims which you endlessly repeat.

Your entire method is a farce, and has made you a laughingstock.

People who are curious can look back at earlier posts for refutations and answers. If you have nothing new, I am through wasting time repeating myself here.

[Technicoid]

LittleLes, I encourage you to start a new thread. You might start with what you mean by the words [i]historical[/i] and [i]contradictory[/i]. You're using these terms in a rather loose fashion, so I'd like to understand just what you mean by them.

New thread, though. This one has gone all over the map.

Peace be with you.

[Cam42]

[quote name='LittleLes' date='Jun 14 2005, 11:28 AM']What part of this are you having difficulty with?  You ask why would I want to prove an article of faith using a source that I don't believe.

The  simple answer is that once again you are thinking in terms of "all or none." I might not believe everything that the President tells me, but that is different from disbelieving everything he tells me.

Do you understand the essential difference?
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LittleLes, so which is it? Are you Catholic or not? Being Catholic is an all or nothing proposition, regardless of what you might think.

If you deny a dogma of the Church, you are not Catholic. Simple. In order to be Catholic, you must accept ALL that the Church teaches, if you don't, then you are not Catholic. You don't accept the universal truth with which the Church teaches. Furthermore, Jesus Christ is the head of the Church. To deny some tennant of the Church is to deny Jesus Christ.

All of your semantics, all of you badgering, all of your banter cannot hide the fact that we are starting to see just what you are all about. We are starting to understand where you are coming from.

The essential difference is divine faith. If you have it, then you will accept what the Church teaches, if you don't, then you won't.

An all or nothing proposition is not a fallacy.

[LittleLes]

[quote name='Cam42' date='Jun 15 2005, 07:01 AM']LittleLes, so which is it?  Are you Catholic or not?  Being Catholic is an all or nothing proposition, regardless of what you might think.

If you deny a dogma of the Church, you are not Catholic.  Simple.  In order to be Catholic, you must accept ALL that the Church teaches, if you don't, then you are not Catholic.  You don't accept the universal truth with which the Church teaches.  Furthermore, Jesus Christ is the head of the Church.  To deny some tennant of the Church is to deny Jesus Christ.

All of your semantics, all of you badgering, all of your banter cannot hide the fact that we are starting to see just what you are all about.  We are starting to understand where you are coming from.

The essential difference is divine faith.  If you have it, then you will accept what the Church teaches, if you don't, then you won't.

An all or nothing proposition is not a fallacy.
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Response:

Oh but it is. I can be Catholic without believing in the scriptural and natural moral justification for chattel slavery and the condemnation of loaning money for interest. I can believe that the earth moves in spite of the Holy Office's pronouncement (1533) that it does not. I don't have to believe that it is the will of the Spirit that Lutherans be burned at the stake, and I don't have to believe that Eve was literally tempted by Satan in the form of a serpent. I can even admit that there are contradictions and errors in scripture. Etc., etc.

Only some "True Believers" are locked in by their belief system to the conviction that one has to accept everything that the Church teaches or has taught. They can't admit rather obvious errors. In my experience, I find a number of such true believers in, suprisingly, the schsimatic Society of Pius X and in Opus Dei.

But the average "pew Catholic" has more common sense.

[Noel's angel]

I wouldn't join a club if I didn't want to follow the rules...

[Noel's angel]

Catholic Belief
I. To gain the happiness of heaven we must know, love, and serve God in this world. Man must know, love and serve God in a supernatural manner in order to gain happiness of heaven. Man is raised to the supernatural order only by grace, a free gift of God.

II. We learn to know, love, and serve God from Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who teaches us through the Catholic Church.

III. In order to be saved, all persons who have attained the use of reason must believe explicitly that God exist and that he rewards the good and punishes the wicked; in practice they must also believe in the mysteries of the Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation.

IV. By the Blessed Trinity we mean one and the same God in [b]three divine persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. [/b]

V. [b]By the Incarnation is meant that the Son of God, retaining His divine nature, took to Himself a human nature, that is, a body and soul like ours. [/b]

VI. The Church is the congregation of all baptized persons united in the same true faith, the same sacrifice, and the same sacraments, under the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops in communion with him.

VII. We find the chief truths taught by Jesus Christ through the Catholic Church in the Apostles' Creed.

[LittleLes]

[quote name='Noel's angel' date='Jun 15 2005, 10:12 AM']I wouldn't join a club if I didn't want to follow the rules...
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"Love it or leave it" verses "Change it or lose it."?

[Noel's angel]

you have strange arguements.....

[LittleLes]

[quote name='Socrates' date='Jun 14 2005, 10:01 PM']My quote from John,  "I am the Resurrection," shows that Christ says that [b]He[/b] is the resurrection, that the power of resurrection and authority over life and death belongs to Him.  He says belief [b]in Him[/b] is necessary for eternal life.  Pretty explicit.

Your refusal to beleive in the Trinity does nothing to refute Christ's divinity.  As we have seen earlier, the Gospel of John is quite explicit about Christ's divinity.

And your Ezekiel quote is rather irrelevant.  This passage is a vision, given by God to Ezekiel, in which the dry bones represent the "dry bones" of Israel, which Ezekiel is to bring back to (spiritual) life by his preaching.
You're just playing games here again, Les.
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Response,

What makes you think that Ezekiel's "vision" of raising the dead back to life, is any different that John's vision of Jesus raising Lazarus? Keep in mind that none of the Synoptic Gospels report the raising of Lazarus. If it really happened, do you seriously think they would have omitted it?

And what makes you think that John's gnostic gospel written 50 to 75 years after the events is more historical than the synoptic gospels written 40 to 50 years after the events described?

Yes indeed, John, writing for Greek readers, tries to identify Jesus with their concept of the "Logos" which is the mind of God. But not the supreme God. Perhaps, you would want to research the status of the Logos in Greek thought taken up by John, but not the synoptic writers.

Littleles