Was Jesus 'mortal' or 'immortal' ?
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Ronald David Bruno
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Jesus was fully God and fully man. Mortal means that you are human and subject to death. That was Jesus purpose, to become human and then die. His body was resurrected, as our bodies will be resurrected. That could happen in a couple years from now as we enter into a Great Tribulation period. One day the wind will stop blowing on the entire planet, the last trumpet will sound and we will be caught up into heaven. All Christians whether dead or alive will receive a new eternal body.
CadyandZoe
Well-Known Member
Yes, dead bodies decay over time. But if a body is raised from the dead, it will not decay. Thus, Jesus was not found in the tomb after three days because he was raised from the dead before then.
The fact that Jesus was mortal is an essential element of the gospel message. According to Paul, If God raised the mortal body of Jesus back from the dead, then he can do the same for his followers. (Romans 8:9-11)
Most people will choose to believe whatever makes them comfortable whether it is true of not.
Scripture passages are usually not accepted when they disprove a belief. I find it ironic that, while claiming that all scripture is "God breathed" with one side of the mouth, the other side apparently says "but not that passage."
Our challenge to establish that all passages must agree with each other is rarely taken up - especially by those who choose truth based on what keeps them comfortable.
Scripture passages are usually not accepted when they disprove a belief. I find it ironic that, while claiming that all scripture is "God breathed" with one side of the mouth, the other side apparently says "but not that passage."
Our challenge to establish that all passages must agree with each other is rarely taken up - especially by those who choose truth based on what keeps them comfortable.
But all passages don't agree with each other, at least on the details that, thankfully, aren't very important from a theological aspect. How to square this fact with the "God-breathed" nature of Scripture is a challenge worth discussing.
Quite right that some passages seem to contradict. In our English bibles it does happen, because man has not been able to give a translation unaffected by held doctrines and desires of the translator. Solving those issues can be difficult.
I personally believe that no doctrine should ever be made on a passage that has a contradicting passage that has not be resolved by OTHER PASSAGES into one truth.
I have a different view. I think many passages actually contradict. Happy to give examples later, but here is the problem:
I will concede that with sufficient presumptions and mental machinations indulging the improbable, virtually all of these facial inconsistencies can be harmonized. My question is, why indulge them? The only reason I can see to do so is in order to shore up one’s initial presumption of inerrancy. For example, in attempting a harmonization of Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:2-10, Vern S. Poythress states “We have the accounts in Mathew and Luke, which are inspired by God. They are what God says and are therefore trustworthy. That is the conviction we have and the basis on which we work.” Poythress, Inerrancy and the Gospels: A God-Centered Approach to the Challenges of Harmonization (Crossway 2012) at 21.
And here is where I must dissent. This approach seems to me to be reasoning the matter backwards. Inerrancy should be a conclusion from the evidence, not an axiom by which to assess the evidence.
Ronald David Bruno
Well-Known Member
Sure it is, you just can't see it. We don't make this up.
I, at one time, had a much more difficult time understanding scripture. I learned over time that my view of scripture was because I lacking the mind of a 2000-year-old Jew. There are cultural differences that affect how scripture was written that mess with our minds, but would not be a complex to a Jewish person in Judah.
Here is a suggested topic that has helped me and probably applies to these references you provided.
Agent, Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion, R.J.Z Werblowski, G Wigoder, 1986, p. 15.
Agent (Hebrew. Shaliach); The main point of the Jewish law of agency is expressed in the dictum, “a person’s agent is regarded as the person himself” (Ned. 72B; Kidd, 41b) Therefore, any act committed by a duly appointed agent is regarded as having been committed by the principal, who therefore bears full responsibility for it.
R.A. Johnson, The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of God
In a specialized sense when the patriarch as lord of his household deputized his trusted servant as his malak (his messenger or angel) the man was endowed with the authority and resources of his lord to represent him fully and transact business in his name. In Semitic thought this messenger-representative was conceived of as being personally — and in his very words — the presence of the sender.”
Ronald David Bruno
Well-Known Member
Oh, I'm speaking to a Non- Trinitarian. Well, only maybe 2-3 % of over 2.66 billion are in your camp. I guess You weren't baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? (Matt. 28:19) Did you miss that step?
I am, of course, "not a real" Christian (and certainly "not a true" Christian), but I have found it extremely liberating and beneficial to my mental health to accept that the Bible is the Word of God in only the broadest sense of expressing a core message and essential spiritual truths. The inerrancy game strikes me as almost a form of insanity. Weirdly, when I was with Campus Crusade for Christ and in a Southern Baptist seminary 50 years ago - about as conservative as things could get - no one spoke in terms of "inerrancy" being some sort of litmus test as to whether one was a "real" Christian.
Ronald David Bruno
Well-Known Member
Is He not referred to as the Son of God and the Son of Man? He was born out of Mary's womb and He said "Before Abraham was, I AM. The Book of John presents Jesus as Deity. The problem is with your vision.
I see this a lot... baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. What does that do? I was baptized by the spirit of Christ when it came into me. What does that other stuff accomplish? It makes no sense. It's gotta be Catholic. That's probably why.
Ronald David Bruno
Well-Known Member
You believe in Christ. But who do you say He is? And do you helieve everything He said? Because Matt. 28:19 was a final instruction to the disciples before He ascended. He also said all authority was given to Him. He must be omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent to handle that. They worshipped Him and I do. If you don't think He is God, I could see why you wouldn't. He told us, He would send another Helper, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom also the Father would send. You deny that the Holy Spirit is a Person, which why you do not have a relationship with Him. Therfore, you lack discernment which comes from Him, Who lives in those who are born again. Being baptized by the Holy Spirit is what being born again means.
That is what " that other stuff" accomplishes.
No, what you missed is that, in every other case in the N.T. the people were baptized in the name of Jesus. Only Matt 28 claims support for the trinity and it was a later change.
I am tempted to weigh in here, but the Moderators might shut it down. So I will just add this for my $0.02:
One can believe in the Trinity (as I do), yet still concede (as I do) that Scriptural "proofs" are ambiguous enough that no definitive conclusion can be drawn from them. You won’t find me underscoring supposed proof-texts, because I’m convinced that none truly qualify as “proof.” From the standpoint of word meaning, Scripture is maddeningly equivocal. Arguments over Hebrew words ending in “-im” as establishing plurality; over how kurios or adonai are to be interpreted as a referent; over proper rendering of phrases like theos en ho logos from a language with no indefinite article and which uses case rather than word order to convey meaning – all of these arguments are, in my view, ultimately unpersuasive, and while each of these have their standard bearers (who will now come gunning for me!), it’s obvious that nothing will ever be decided in this way.
Even where word meaning is clear, intention of the author often is not; we sometimes need to pay mind to the historical context, the intended audience and the purpose of writing in order to distill that intention.
Then there is the matter of separating the pre-incarnate Son from the incarnate Jesus, which injects additional ambiguity when, for example, construing gospel passages indicating Jesus’ subservience to the Father – all of which were all uttered during the 30-odd years that Jesus had “emptied himself” of whatever “equality” he may have had with the Father (Philippians 2:7). How much are we to discount those subservience quotes as a result?
And enough ink has been spilled over John’s Prologue – obviously a key piece of Scripture on our issue. I can add little, other than to point out an exegetical question: given that John was the last to write a (canonical) gospel, are we to understand his Prologue, to quote James J. G. Dunn, “as a variation on an already well formed conception of incarnation or as itself a decisive step forward in the organic growth or evolution of the Christian doctrine.” If the former, it will inevitably cast the incarnation as a refinement of first-century Jewish messianic expectations (which, by the way, come in several flavors), and inform our interpretation of the Prologue.
I am persuaded that the Trinity is, in fact, the outgrowth of the early Church’s effort to understand and explain its own experience of the risen Christ in philosophical terms. And I think they got it right.
My fellow Trinitarians who are in the sola scriptura camp will chastise me. So be it. (I think sola scriptura is so galactically stupid as to make it difficult for me to engage in debate over it -- but I am straying off topic . . .)
One can believe in the Trinity (as I do), yet still concede (as I do) that Scriptural "proofs" are ambiguous enough that no definitive conclusion can be drawn from them. You won’t find me underscoring supposed proof-texts, because I’m convinced that none truly qualify as “proof.” From the standpoint of word meaning, Scripture is maddeningly equivocal. Arguments over Hebrew words ending in “-im” as establishing plurality; over how kurios or adonai are to be interpreted as a referent; over proper rendering of phrases like theos en ho logos from a language with no indefinite article and which uses case rather than word order to convey meaning – all of these arguments are, in my view, ultimately unpersuasive, and while each of these have their standard bearers (who will now come gunning for me!), it’s obvious that nothing will ever be decided in this way.
Even where word meaning is clear, intention of the author often is not; we sometimes need to pay mind to the historical context, the intended audience and the purpose of writing in order to distill that intention.
Then there is the matter of separating the pre-incarnate Son from the incarnate Jesus, which injects additional ambiguity when, for example, construing gospel passages indicating Jesus’ subservience to the Father – all of which were all uttered during the 30-odd years that Jesus had “emptied himself” of whatever “equality” he may have had with the Father (Philippians 2:7). How much are we to discount those subservience quotes as a result?
And enough ink has been spilled over John’s Prologue – obviously a key piece of Scripture on our issue. I can add little, other than to point out an exegetical question: given that John was the last to write a (canonical) gospel, are we to understand his Prologue, to quote James J. G. Dunn, “as a variation on an already well formed conception of incarnation or as itself a decisive step forward in the organic growth or evolution of the Christian doctrine.” If the former, it will inevitably cast the incarnation as a refinement of first-century Jewish messianic expectations (which, by the way, come in several flavors), and inform our interpretation of the Prologue.
I am persuaded that the Trinity is, in fact, the outgrowth of the early Church’s effort to understand and explain its own experience of the risen Christ in philosophical terms. And I think they got it right.
My fellow Trinitarians who are in the sola scriptura camp will chastise me. So be it. (I think sola scriptura is so galactically stupid as to make it difficult for me to engage in debate over it -- but I am straying off topic . . .)
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There is not one verse that says Jesus is God the Son. Nor has there ever been a teaching on it anywhere in the Bible. The Jews never saw it anywhere in the entire Old Testament nor anyone in the New Testament ever taught it. The Catholics who invented this nonsense have used only about 8 verses that they have to piece together from statements that are scattered all over the New Testament. One should think if such nonsense was true and important that it would have been taught by someone. And it is not. Only in the minds of Catholics who cannot explain it.
There are many descriptions, titles, and names for God in the Bible and I would like to add God’s proper name is “Yahweh” which occurs more than 6,000 times in the Hebrew Old Testament and is generally translated as “LORD.” But God is also referred to as Elohim, Adonai, El Shaddai, the Ancient of Days, the Holy One of Israel, Father, Shield, and by many more designations. Furthermore, God is holy (Leviticus 11:44), which is why He was called “the Holy One” (the Hebrew text uses the singular adjective “holy” to designate “the Holy One." He is also spirit (John 4:24). It makes perfect sense since God is holy and God is spirit that “Holy” and “Spirit” are sometimes combined and used as one of the many designations for God. Thus, the Hebrew or Greek words for the "HOLY SPIRIT" should be brought into English as the "Holy Spirit” when the subject of a verse is God.
None of the dozens of descriptions, titles, or names of God are believed to be a separate, co-equal “Person” in a triune God except for the “HOLY SPIRIT” and there is no solid biblical reason to make the "Holy Spirit” into a separate “Person.” In other contexts the “HOLY SPIRIT” refers to the gift of God’s nature that He placed on people and the new birth to the Christian, and in those contexts it should be translated as the “holy spirit." God placed a form of His nature which is “holy spirit” upon people when He wanted to spiritually empower them because our natural fleshly human bodies do not have spirit power of their own. This holy spirit nature of God was a gift from God to humankind and we see this in the case of Acts 2:38 when the spirit is specifically called a "gift" when given to the Christian.
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