Now read Isaiah 53...

Jeanniebean

What makes you belive the NT is false?

Jeannie bean

The suffering of this servant leads to his exhaltation. All people to the ends of the earth, all who die, will kneel before him. Future generations will remember what he accomplished that suffering day. We are here discussing it even now.

The whole thing is written in the past tense as though it had already happened. Yet it is a future event at the time of writing. One thousand years future, and when Jesus died He highlighted it by quoting its first lines.

All those who see him mock him...David is the writer. What do you think he was writing about. Himself.

Krisma

Ok...now that you ask. I would like to prove the bible is true. I wouldnt mind proving Jesus is the savior. Not just a Savior. Your savior. This will take time and patience. Are you alright with that? I keep going off on meaningless tangents. This will have to end. Will you allow me to state my case and prove it?

We can start with Psalm 22.

Let me know if we have an agreement.

Krisma

Theres your error.

It might be MORE consequential than you think!!!!!!!!!!
There I think we differ.

I bring up Abracadabras motive to find where his heart is in all this discussion. It is pertinant to the debate. I need to know where he is coming from by the thrust of his arguments.

Jeannie bean

Psalm 22 for the third time.....but you wont read it.

Jesus qouted it then fulfilled it...My God My God why hast thou foresaken me? It says they have pierced my hands and my feet, long before roman crucifiction.

He read it and fulfilled it. But He could not have had the romans gamble for his vesture, which they did. And psalm 22 says that they would.

He could not have made the mob say SAVE YOURSELF mockingly. Psalm 22 says that they would.

It even says He would rise from the dead and live forever.

Sun 08/24/08 05:06 PM
Abracadabra

If the whole thing is futile according to you....Then what is it you are searching here for. I want to assume you have a higher purpose, an uplifting decent cause....state it....

Abracadabra

If there is no evidence, only faith, and you have none.....Then what are you here for?..... Keeping others from faith maybe? Destroying those who have faith perhaps? What is your noble purpose man????

Jeannie bean

What proof do you bring to the table to prove your unique and rather lonely, I say lonely since I know no credible scholar with such a view, assertion....Secular scholarship is not so bold. I want evidence....

Voileazur

You said something funny.
You said "absolutes are absolutely wrong"

The statement is itself an absolute.

The statement is therefore absolutely wrong, which in turn means that absolutes are NOT wrong.

I cant help myself. I debate like I play chess. Ruthless and decisive......but I understand yours and Krizmas sentiment.
I do.

You are very diplomatic....I am not quite nearly as charming.

Hi Jeannie bean

Psalm 22 written by David 1000 yrs prior to Christ....
Is 53 by Isaiah, 750 bc

These are too accurate on the details and accounts of Jesus death and resurrection for me to deny.

manuscript and textual evidence leads me to believe both their accuracy in translation, and their time of writing 100's of years prior to the event they foretell etc....

The laws of avgs and statistical evidence is astronomically in favor of the voracity of scripture and the life of Christ when these and the many other prophecies are literally fulfilled in Jesus life and death.

Let me know what you think after you read these two chapters....

Krisma

Allow me some fun...

When you say there is no final word here, I just have to ask. Is that 'your' final word?

You see, I believe there is a final word here. There is a truth. 'The' truth. Our opinions line up with that truth...ie the real world or they do not.

I say there is a final word here, christianity is true or it is not. You say no, there is no final word here, only speculation and theory. But in saying there is no final word here you are allowing yourself the "final word" on this matter and denying me the debate.

Krisma

When you say there is no right and wrong here....

Why are you investing so much time and effort attempting to prove Christianity wrong? Your efforts to prove it wrong defeat your own belief statement....that there is no right or wrong. Your actions undercut what you say.

In other words....

You prove you really do believe it is right or wrong, no matter what you say, or there would be no debate. Why debate otherwise.

The christians are right or wrong. The real world exists no matter how we posture ourselves to it. Right? It either is as the Christians say it is or it isnt.

Are you still there.......

All of it.

Hi Krisma
Allow me.....Is it possible that Christianity is true in your own mind?

Heres another cs Lewis essay I liked....

‘What are we to make of Jesus Christ?’ This is a question, which has, in a sense, a frantically comic side. For the real question is not what are we to make of Christ, but what is He to make of us? The picture of a fly sitting deciding what it is going to make of an elephant has comic elements about it. But perhaps the questioner meant what are we to make of Him in the sense of ‘How are we to solve the historical problem set us by the recorded sayings and acts of this Man?’ This problem is to reconcile two things. On the one hand you have got the almost generally admitted depth and sanity of His moral teaching, which is not very seriously questioned, even by those who are opposed to Christianity. In fact, I find when I am arguing with very anti-God people that they rather make a point of saying, ‘I am entirely in favour of the moral teaching of Christianity’ — and there seems to be a general agreement that in the teaching of this Man and of His immediate followers, moral truth is exhibited at its purest and best. It is not sloppy idealism; it is full of wisdom and shrewdness. The whole thing is realistic, fresh to the highest degree, the product of a sane mind. That is one phenomenon.



The other phenomenon is the quite appalling nature of this Man’s theological remarks. You all know what I mean, and I want rather to stress the point that the appalling claim, which this Man seems to be making, is not merely made at one moment of His career. There is, of course, the one moment, which led to His execution. The moment at which the High Priest said to Him, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am the Anointed, the Son of the uncreated God, and you shall see me appearing at the end of all history as the judge of the universe.’ But that claim, in fact, does not rest on this one dramatic moment. When you look into his conversation you will find this sort of claim running throughout the whole thing. For instance, He went about saying to people, ‘I forgive your sins’. Now it is quite natural for a man to forgive something you do to him. Thus if somebody cheats me out of five pounds it is quite possible and reasonable for me to say, ‘Well, I forgive him, we will say no more about it.’ What on earth would you say if somebody had done you out of five pounds and I said, ‘That is all right, I forgive him? Then there is a curious thing, which seems to slip out almost by accident. On one occasion this Man is sitting looking down on Jerusalem from the hill about it and suddenly in comes an extraordinary remark — ‘I keep on sending you prophets and wise men.’ Nobody comments on it. And yet, quite suddenly, almost incidentally, He is claiming to be the power that all through the centuries is sending wise men and leaders into the world. Here is another curious remark: in almost every religion there are unpleasant observances like fasting. This Man suddenly remarks one day, ‘No one need fast while I am here.’ Who is this man who remarks one day, ‘No one need fast while I am here.’ Who is this Man who remarks that His mere presence suspends all normal rules? Who is the person who can suddenly tell the School they can have a half-holiday? Sometimes the statements put forward the assumption that He, the Speaker, is completely without sin or fault. This is always the attitude. ‘You, to whom I am talking, are all sinners,’ and He never remotely suggests that this same reproach can be brought against Him. He says again, ‘I am the begotten of the One God, before Abraham was, I am,’ And remember what the words ‘I am’ were in Hebrew. They were the name of God, which must not be spoken by any human being, the name which it was death to utter.



Well, that is the other side. On the one side clear, definite moral teaching. On the other, claims which, if not true, are those of a megalomaniac, compared with whom Hitler was the most same and humble of men. There is no halfway house and there is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him: ‘Are you the son of Brahma?’ he would have said, ‘My son, you are still in the vale of illusion.’ If you had gone to Socrates and asked, ‘Are you Zeus?’ he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, ‘Are you Allah?’ he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius, ‘Are you Heaven?’ I think he would have probably replied, ‘Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.’ The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion, which undermines the whole mind of man. If you think you are a poached egg, when you are not looking for a piece of toast to suit you you may be sane, but if you think you are God, there is no chance for you. We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met him. He produced mainly three effects — Hatred — Terror — Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.



What are we to do about reconciling the two contradictory phenomena? One attempt consists in saying that the man did not really say these things; but that His followers exaggerated the story, and so the legend grew up that he had said them. This is difficult because His followers were all Jews; that is, they belonged to that Nation which of all others was most convinced that there was only one God — that there could not possibly be another. It is very odd that this horrible invention about a religious leader should grow up among the one people in the whole earth least likely to make such a mistake. On the contrary we get the impression that none of His immediate followers or even of the New Testament writers embraced the doctrine at all easily.



Another point is that on that view you would have to regard the accounts of the Man as being legends. Now, as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don’t work up to things properly. Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone else who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so. Apart from bits of the Platonic dialogues, there is no conversation that I know of in ancient literature like the Fourth Gospel. There is nothing, even in modern literature, until about a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into existence. In the story of the woman taken in adultery we are told Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing comes of this. No one has ever based any doctrine on it. And the art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is a purely modern art. Surely the only explanation of this passage is that the thing really happened? The author put it in simply because he had seen it.



Then we come to the strangest story of all, the story of the Resurrection. It is very necessary to get the story clear. I heard a man say, ‘The importance of the Resurrection is that is gives evidence of survival, evidence that the human personality survives death.’ On that view what happened to Christ would be what had always happened to all men, the difference being that in Christ’s case we were privileged to see it happening. This is certainly not what the earliest Christian writers thought. Something perfectly new in the history of the universe had happened. Christ had defeated death. The door, which had always been locked, had for the very first time been forced open. This is something quite distinct from mere ghost-survival. I don’t mean that they disbelieved in ghost-survival. I don’t mean that they disbelieved in ghost-survival. On the contrary, they believed in it so firmly that, on more than one occasion, Christ had had to assure them that He was not a ghost. The point is that while believing in survival they yet regarded the Resurrection as something totally different and new. The Resurrection narratives are not a picture of survival after death; they record how a totally new mode of being has arisen in the universe. Something new had appeared in the universe: as new as the first coming of organic life. This Man, after death, does not get divided into ‘ghost’ and ‘corpse’. A new mode of being has arisen. That is the story. What are we going to make of it?



The question is, I suppose, whether any hypothesis covers the facts so well as the Christian hypothesis. That hypothesis is that God has come down into the created universe, down to manhood — and come up again, pulling it up with Him. The alternative hypothesis is not legend, nor exaggeration, nor the apparitions of a ghost. It is either lunacy or lies. Unless one can take the second alternative (and I can’t) one turns to the Christian theory.



‘What are we to make of Christ?’ There is no question of what we can make of Him; it is entirely a question of what He intends to make of us. You must accept or reject the story.



The things he says are very different from what any other teacher has said. Others say, ‘This is the truth about the universe. This is the way you ought to go,’ but He says, ‘I am the Truth, and the Way, and the Life.’ He says, ‘No man can reach absolute reality, except through Me. Try to retain your own life and you will be inevitably ruined. Give yourself away and you will be saved.; He says, ‘If you are ashamed of Me, if, when you hear this call, you turn the other way, I also will look the other way when I come again as God without disguise. If anything whatever is keeping you from God and from me, whatever it is, throw it away. If it is your eye, pull it out. If it is your hand, cut it off. If you put yourself first you will be last. Come to Me everyone who is carrying a heavy load, I will set that right. Your sins, all of them, are wiped out, I can do that. I am Re-birth, I am Life. Eat ME, drink Me, I am your Food. And finally, do not be afraid, I have overcome the whole Universe.’ That is the issue.


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Hi Krimsa

I am back from a nice motorcycle ride and picnic....and see I am taking somewhat of a beating here. If as a christian I am right, we are only assuming for the sake of argument, then I am only trying to reach out and help others also. My intentions would be noble. Analogy....The ship has gone down. I am in the life boat safe. I am trying to pull others in the life boat with me. But they keep attacking me for doing so. Have you ever been in a position where you are trying to help someone and they keep misinterpreting your intentions for doing it?

But I see a curious thing developing, a thread that runs through the whole discourse. Its not enough to refuse to get in the life boat, continuing with the analogy....it seems that those already in the life boat must be pulled out into the water also. Then admonished for their idiocy for caring.

What are your opinions?

I rather enjoy the debate entirely too much to leave....I read some of your blogs. I am impressed with your knowledge....maybe not with your conclusions so much...but I see you have at least investigated the matter. This impresses me. Have you read Psalm 22? Isaiah 53? We know the manuscripts date before Christ. How do you explain that away?

I always want to be fair. As I assume do you. I never throw around wild accusations. Show me just one accusation, and I will apologize. Lets both be fair.
I do make statements though, hopefully factual ones. These statements are open to criticism. Show me any error in my thinking and I will correct it.
So......
I maintain that one of us is in error. The issue at hand, the issue you dispute with me, is an either/or issue. Where was I wrong or unfair.
I simply said one of us is in error. I am not offended that you evidently, by both your replies and your tone, have implied that I am the one in the wrong, have I? Nor should you be offended. No offense is intended. We are adults. And we are all here to decide what the truth of the matter is. This is both fair and clear, level headed thinking.
So.....friends?