Problems with christian theology

format_quote Originally Posted by tolpuddle

Christianity stands - and will stand until world's end - because it is true.

All sacred books include apparently contradictory texts; the Bible does, the Koran does.

But the theology of the Church does not contain contradictions.

The Deen show is, of course, beneath "our Greatest Priests'" attention.

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The Deen show is, of course, beneath the attention of "our Greatest Priests.'"

All sacred books include apparently contradictory texts; the Bible does, the Koran does.

But the theology and teaching of the Church do not.

Thus Christianity contains no lies, no faults, no flaws, no mistakes.

And no honest Christian says that it does.

Please define what you mean by 'Church'. Do you mean the Christian community as a whole; or one particular denomination e.g. (Roman) Catholic; or Anglican; or Lutheran, etc?

format_quote Originally Posted by tolpuddle

Christianity stands - and will stand until world's end - because it is true.

So are Mushrikeen (idol worshippers) and atheists. Is that your proof for christianity being right? Hitler had a lot of followers too, do you think he was right too?

format_quote Originally Posted by tolpuddle

All sacred books include apparently contradictory texts; the Bible does, the Koran does.

Where are you getting these lies from ? The Holy Quran is free from any imperfections, from any mistakes because it is from Allah (SWT). Before you make statements (lies) about Holy Quran, go and prove them first. Because what you said is akin to my saying

Your mother has a questionable character <- i have no proof of that but look at me, i made a statement that makes look like a liar and an idiot unless i prove it.

I have seen guilty criminals try to win an argument by doing this "oh but i am not the only criminal, look at x he's a criminal too". Just because Bible has proven man made dirt added to it doesn't mean Holy Quran has. It just simply shows that you are living a lie all you life that you find it hard to believe that there can be a book that is free of any man made bullshit.

Which is why you should read Holy Quran and go and understand it with an open mind and then you will find that it is the only truth.

format_quote Originally Posted by tolpuddle

But the theology of the Church does not contain contradictions.

The Deen show is, of course, beneath "our Greatest Priests'" attention.

Huh? Your priests admit themselves to believe in lies because they admit bible has lies added to it. What theology of church?

Watch the video, in it a christian says what he asked from christian high priests and what they answered. That was my point of posting the video. Then go and ask the same questions from your priests or if you are so knowledgeable then answer it yourself.

You are like a kid who puts hands in his ears, closes his eyes and then yells "la la la" so despite the huge contradictions you see right in front of you, you ignore them and question something else.

You think you are winning an argument but all you will be doing is damning your own soul to hell. Wake up from your lies and read this article again
http://www.nola.com/religion/index.s..._scholars.html

Do you want to believe in a book that has "mistakes, lies" added to it or a book that is perfect down to every word, every letter?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaS5NsvZ4yM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWUy_luMq0Q

I mean look at what the article says

In the conclusion to Mark, the description of Jesus(PBUH) appearing to various disciples after his resurrection does not appear in the earliest manuscripts.

^That is a HUGE detail and completely changes the narrative.


What’s at work here, Warren said, is that even after the 4th century church definitively settled on the books it accepted as divinely inspired accounts of the Christian vision, some of the texts within those books were still subject to slight changes — and some had already seen changes since being first published.


All of those early changes are well known, and have been for hundreds of years.


Beyond that, Warren estimates there’s 10 more years of work to do on the rest of the New Testament.

Use your brain, use your logic. Don't be that little kid and use your eyes, ears and brain!

format_quote Originally Posted by tolpuddle

But it is believed, by all Christians - even those who study theology !

Not by Joshua (dude in the video), and he's studying for his PhD in theology... look what happened to Bart Erhman? He became an atheist after studying Bible polemics!!!

Now, stop making blanket statements and address the issues within your faulty dogmatic doctrine!!! And puhlease, no appeals to emotion!!!

Scimi

format_quote Originally Posted by tolpuddle

1) Your quotes from non-Christian (i.e. anti-Christian !) sources are irrelevant to me, as are your quotations from biblical transaltions not recognised by the Catholic Church
2) The book of the Prophet Daniel is (whatever its true author) reagrded by the RCC as Holy Writ; whatever some French Dominicans may say !
3) When Jesus says that the son of man has "nowhere to lay his head" and "is Lord of the Sabbath" - He is very clearly referring to Himself, and only to Himself.
4) Like your Unitarian friend, you have been influenced (corrupted) by non-Christian views of Christ.
5) As Jesus DID ascend to Heaven, a Jewish rabbi's saying He couldn't is beside the point.
6) Many of those most learned in Scripture have the least claim to expound it. Many of them hate Christianity (and perhaps Jesus Christ Himself) therefore can hardly claim to be unbiased. And of course, many learned people in this field are monsters of arrogance - "Knowledge puffeth up" as St Paul observed. Gurgling enthusiastically about the Original Aramaic is of course the invariable mark of Humbug.
7) The trial of Jesus was a political one - it is most unlikely to have followed Judge Cohn's theories. Which are merely theories. And as we know - scholars alwys disagree.
8) Pilate was cruel - but also cowardly and insecure. Afraid of Rome's Jewish stooges in Jerusalem; afraid too of his Roman bosses who sacked him a few years later.
9) I know my New Testament well, my Catholic doctrine better. There is no reason to believe that John's Gospel is NOT God's Word - unless you WISH to.
10) Your brother Muhammad's Law of Contradiction drivel is the most worthless (certainly, irrelevant) babble I've ever come across.
11) God became man only in taking on human natiuure IN ADDITION TO His pre-existing Divine nature, which remained quite unchanged throughout. Surely even you and your brother are not so dim as to be unable to see the difference between: 1) Addition; and 2) Substitution or Replacement. If you build an extension onto your house, your original house can perfectly well remain wholly unchanged.
12) This taking on of human nature was in no way a contradiction of Jesus' divine nature or a violation of it - since that divine nature remained untouched. Jesus the Christ was both spirit and non-spirit; but the divine nature within Him was not - it remained Spirit, and Spirit only, throughout Jesus' earthly life.

Unitarianism is, of course, a form of Judaism and began with the influence of Italian Jews on Sozzini and of Aragonese crypto-Jews (forced by the Spanish Crown to pretend to be Christians) on Servetus. I reject Jewish theology, as do you.

Please don't brandish the opinions of Jewish rabbis against Christians. After all, the rabbis' views on Islam are no less hostile. Especially today, when most Jews have moderated their traditional hostility to Christianity; mainly because they've wisely twigged that attacking Christianity merely increases the likelihood of Islam's global triumph; which might prove uncomfortable for them.

You write: ‘Your quotes from non-Christian (i.e. anti-Christian !) sources are irrelevant to me, as are your quotations from biblical translations not recognised by the Catholic Church.’

Response:

Here’s the section of Daniel I quoted (and to which you are referring): ‘I gazed into the visions of the night. And I saw, coming on the clouds of heaven, one like a man (kibar 'anash). He came to the one of great age and was led into his presence. On him was conferred sovereignty, glory and kingship, and men of all peoples, nations and languages became his servants. His sovereignty is an eternal sovereignty which shall never pass away, nor will his empire ever be destroyed.’ (7:13-14).

This quote is taken from the ‘Jerusalem Bible’ (published in 1966); a version recognised, and approved, by the Catholic Church (and used in its daily liturgy)! I’m surprised that you didn’t recognise it.

The ‘New Jerusalem Bible’ (also a Catholic Bible, and published in 1985) reads: ‘I was gazing into the visions of the night, when I saw, coming on the clouds of heaven, as it were a son of a man (bar nasha’). This version bears a footnote: ‘Like the Hebr. ben ‘adam, the Aram. bar nasha’ used here has the primary meaning “man”’.

The footnote invites the reader to compare Psalm 8:5: ‘What is man that you are mindful of him, and a son of man (ben ‘adam) that you care for him?’

Like it or not (and you clearly don’t, for you write: ‘Gurgling enthusiastically about the Original Aramaic is of course the invariable mark of Humbug’) Daniel 7 is written in Biblical Aramaic. I inserted the words ‘kibar 'anash’ into my original quote simply because that is the Aramaic for ‘one like a man’. Had this version read ‘as it were a son of a man’ I would have inserted ‘bar nasha’.

I’ve mentioned the consensus among Jewish scholars that the ‘man’ in question is meant to be Israel itself; adding that there is a difference of opinion as to whether this is a personification of the people, or an actual personality representing Israel, such as the Messiah or Israel's guardian angel (Michael).

Referring to this same ‘man’ the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops declared: ‘Scholars disagree as to whether this figure should be taken as a collective symbol for the people of God or identified as a particular individual, e.g., the archangel Michael or the messiah.’

Remarkable consensus between Jewish and Catholic scholars, don’t you think. Neither can agree (among themselves) who this ‘kibar 'anash’/‘bar nasha’ truly is.

By the way, which is the greater ‘humbug’: Proclaiming the truth (that Daniel 7 is written in Aramaic); or denying the truth (that Daniel 7 is written in Aramaic)?


You write: ‘When Jesus says that the son of man has "nowhere to lay his head" and "is Lord of the Sabbath" - He is very clearly referring to Himself, and only to Himself.’

But of course he is referring only to himself, that is why he uses the Aramaic equivalent of the first-person singular nominative case personal pronoun ‘I’; and, as I’ve said before, every one of his listeners would have realised that!

And when he says: ‘For the son of man is master of the Sabbath’ he is merely affirming that humankind is master over the Sabbath. Compare his reported words in Mark 2:27:- ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’


You write: ‘The trial of Jesus was a political one - it is most unlikely to have followed Judge Cohn's theories. Which are merely theories. And as we know - scholars always disagree.’

Allow me to remind you: Haim Cohn was an Attorney General and Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel. He was also a scholar of Jewish legal history. His knowledge of the law, and of legal procedures (both Jewish and Roman), extant at the time of Yeshua is based, not on ‘mere theory’, but on a study of scholarly sources. The fact that the ‘evangelists’ got their ‘trial’ accounts so very wrong is only to be expected, since none of them were around at the time.


You’re a very funny guy, Tolpuddle. You write: ‘I know my New Testament well, my Catholic doctrine better…….Your brother Muhammad's Law of Contradiction drivel is the most worthless (certainly, irrelevant) babble I've ever come across. God became man only in taking on human nature IN ADDITION TO His pre-existing Divine nature, which remained quite unchanged throughout. Surely even you and your brother are not so dim as to be unable to see the difference between: Addition; and Substitution or Replacement. If you build an extension onto your house, your original house can perfectly well remain wholly unchanged.

‘This taking on of human nature was in no way a contradiction of Jesus' divine nature or a violation of it - since that divine nature remained untouched. Jesus the Christ was both spirit and non-spirit; but the divine nature within Him was not - it remained Spirit, and Spirit only, throughout Jesus' earthly life.’

Comment:

The doctrine of the incarnation does not teach that the ‘Word’ assumed human nature ‘in addition’ to its divine nature’; becoming ‘enfleshed’; wrapped in flesh, like a parcel, so to speak. It teaches that the ‘Word’ became flesh. This is quite a different matter.

Pope Benedict writes: ‘As the Prologue of John clearly shows us, the Logos refers in the first place to the eternal Word, the only Son, begotten of the Father before all ages and consubstantial with him: the word was with God, and the word was God. But this same Word, Saint John tells us, “became flesh” (Jn 1:14); hence Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, is truly the Word of God who has become consubstantial with us. Thus the expression “word of God” here refers to the person of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father, made man.’ (Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation ‘Verbum Domini’).

According to the doctrine of the incarnation Yeshua is nothing like an extension tacked onto the side of a house; nor, for that matter, is the ‘Word’ (where do you get your theology from…. Builders’ Weekly?).

Christ is said to possess two natures; one divine, one human. He is, as they say, wholly God and wholly man; and shall be ever thus.

The Church agrees with you when you say that the ‘Word’ did not suffer loss (that it ‘remained untouched’); that there was no subtraction involved. But that is not the issue here.

The questions to be answered are:

How could the Word (pure spirit) have become flesh at all without violating the doctrine of God’s immutability?

How can the ‘Word’ be both flesh and non-flesh at one and the same time?

How can Yeshua be both wholly man and wholly not-man (God, after all, is not a man) at one and the same time?

I have said before: The Church responds to the first question by stating that the ‘hypostatic union’ is a: ‘Mystery of faith, the reality of which could not be known before its revelation, and the inner possibility of which cannot positively be proved even after its revelation…. Pope Leo the Great says: "That both substances unite themselves in one Person no speech can explain if Faith does not hold fast to it".’ (Ludwig Ott - ‘Fundamental of Catholic Dogma’; Page 152).

Concerning the second and third questions:

Aquinas writes: ‘All confess that God is omnipotent; but it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence precisely consists: for there may be doubt as to the precise meaning of the word 'all' when we say that God can do all things. If, however, we consider the matter aright, since power is said in reference to possible things, this phrase, "God can do all things," is rightly understood to mean that God can do all things that are possible; and for this reason He is said to be omnipotent.

‘Therefore, that which implies being and non-being at the same time is repugnant to the idea of an absolutely possible thing, within the scope of the divine omnipotence. For such cannot come under the divine omnipotence, not because of any defect in the power of God, but because it has not the nature of a feasible or possible thing. Therefore, everything that does not imply a contradiction in terms is numbered amongst those possible things, in respect of which God is called omnipotent: whereas whatever implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence, because it cannot have the aspect of possibility.’ (Summa Theologica: Part 1; Question 25; Article 3).

Note very carefully the words: ‘that which implies being and non-being at the same time is repugnant to the idea of an absolutely possible thing, within the scope of the divine omnipotence.

That which implies ‘being and non-being at the same time’. Sound at all familiar? That which is ‘A’ and ‘not-A’ at the same time is….. ‘repugnant to the idea of an absolutely possible thing, within the scope of the divine omnipotence’. In short….can’t happen!

There are certain ‘intrinsically impossible’ things that even an omnipotent God cannot do.

First, God cannot do anything that would contradict his nature. For example, He cannot sin, since to sin is repugnant to His nature (and to omnipotence in any case). Aquinas writes: ‘To sin is to fall short of a perfect action; hence to be able to sin is to be able to fall short in action, which is repugnant to omnipotence.’ (Summa Theologica: Part 1; Question 25; Article 3).

Second, God cannot do anything which would be logically impossible. He cannot, for example, create a man who is, at the same time, a donkey; for in the statement that a man is a donkey ‘the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject.’ (Summa Theologica: Part 1; Question 25; Article 3).

C.S. Lewis writes: ‘(God’s) Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say "God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it," you have not succeeded in saying anything about God.

‘Meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words "God can."… It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.’ (The Problem of Pain).

None of this means that God is, somehow, less omnipotent than He might otherwise be. To infer that He is, is plain nonsense.

Read this part of C.S Lewis again, and very closely: ‘It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; NOT BECAUSE HIS POWER MEETS AN OBSTACLE, BUT BECAUSE NONSENSE REMAINS NONSENSE EVEN WHEN WE TALK IT ABOUT GOD.’

And so the questions remain:

How can the ‘Word’ be both flesh and non-flesh at one and the same time?

How can Yeshua be both wholly man and wholly not-man at one and the same time?

They can’t…..anymore than you can have your left hand clenched (‘A’) and open (‘B’) at one at the same time (see post 15).

This is the law of non-contradiction in action. Anyone who claims that this is ‘irrelevant babble’ is either foolish or perverse.


You write: ‘Unitarianism is, of course, a form of Judaism and began with the influence of Italian Jews on Sozzini and of Aragonese crypto-Jews (forced by the Spanish Crown to pretend to be Christians) on Servetus. I reject Jewish theology, as do you.

Reply:

Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eḥad - ‘Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is One.’

Yeshua would have recited these very words, at prayer, every morning and evening of his life. He would have done so in obedience to his Lord and God. Yeshua was a Unitarian. He did not believe in the ‘Trinity’. Had he done so, he would surely have preached it, without fear, without ambiguity, and often. He never spoke of it, not once.

You reject this aspect of Jewish theology - of Yeshua’s theology (that much is clear). I, on the other hand, most certainly do not. Nor does any Muslim.

format_quote Originally Posted by tolpuddle

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Christians be like, Christianity - woooo !!! then they get put on the naughty step!