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.
