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God and Christ

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
I'll lob in my grenade.
My belief is that the Word of God (Logos) is the second Person of the Trinity, who is eternally begotten of the Father, and thus the Word is also the Son. Both are co-extant, eternal, from before all ages, and both are fully God. Through the Logos, all things were made. Within time, the Logos took on humanity from the woman Mary, daughter of Joachim and Anna, and Mary bore God within her womb, making her the Theotokos. The Logos thus, within history, became both fully human and fully God.
 

Michael Hatley

Premium Member
I believe Jesus was a man - who like the Buddha and Socrates said many wise things and wrote nothing. Some of the exact same things.
 
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cog41

Premium Member
He is the Eternal Son of God, God Incarnate, the Creator, the Beginning and the End, Alpha and Omega, Wonderful Counselor, The Great Emmanuel, The Resurrection and the Life........
He was born of the virgin Mary, fully man yet Fully God. He honored and fulfilled the Divine Law, and through His substitutionary death on the cross made provision for man's redemption. He was raised from the grave, ascended to heaven and there He sits at the right hand of the Father waiting for His rightful return to earth.


You asked.
 

jwhoff

Premium Member
"Is Jesus a Prophet to spread the word, or God in Flesh? What are your beliefs?"

Incoming!

I hope the server can handle this load Brother Blake ... I truly do.

You ole :sneaky2:'y brother.

:40:



Any Rosicrucians in the crowd?

With of course, a good dose of deism somewhere in the mix?
 
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Michael Hatley

Premium Member
If I hug the tree tight enough maybe they'll miss me entirely ;)

With of course, a good dose of deism somewhere in the mix?


*nods, I'm yer huckleberry. Franklin + Thoreau, or thereabouts.
 
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VHN5150

Registered User
I actually just did a study on the Trinity with my ministry.... ;)
Great post, as I think it's good for brothers to share there thoughts with one another.
I Have faith that Jesus is the Son of God, the second part of the Trinity, God in the flesh, and the only way to the Father. If Christ were only a prophet, it would be written as so in the Bible.
A prophet simply can not make the promises Christ made... only God can guarantee those promises, and carry them out.
The prophets prophesied his coming...
God bless Brothers!!
 

Frater Cliff Porter

Premium Member
Why can't he be both?

Just for the sake of discussion....when we read the canonical gospels we find Jesus reportedly referring to himself over and over again as the Son of Man....and provides evidence in some of his first miracles in the Gospel of Mark that it is the Son of Man who has power to forgive the sins of our world.

Maybe a better question is are we truly paying attention to the lessons of the Son of Man and trying to live those in our lives, or have we subscribed to a dogma that he, the Son of Man, never desired in the first place.
 

SeeKer.mm

Premium Member
I believe that God is the Creator and goes by many names. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the ransom for our sins by living a perfect sinless life as a human (Where Adam failed Jesus didn't , and is now the path to the Father. I believe the Holy Spirit is the means through which God touches us here on Earth.
 
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BryanMaloney

Premium Member
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.


--C.S. Lewis, ​Mere Christianity
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
Why can't he be both?

Just for the sake of discussion....when we read the canonical gospels we find Jesus reportedly referring to himself over and over again as the Son of Man....and provides evidence in some of his first miracles in the Gospel of Mark that it is the Son of Man who has power to forgive the sins of our world.

Maybe a better question is are we truly paying attention to the lessons of the Son of Man and trying to live those in our lives, or have we subscribed to a dogma that he, the Son of Man, never desired in the first place.

He is fully human, of course, but that does not preclude His Divinity, either. "Son of Man" is a poetic construction that usually meant "humanity". At that time, it would have been a common risk for people to completely deny His humanity. Instead, they would claim that He merely had the "appearance" of being human. This was the belief of the Gnostic Christian syncretists, such as the Marcionites, the Bogomils, and the Cathars. So, yes, He is both. He is a great teacher and He is God. We follow Him for his wisdom, but we worship Him for His healing power. Our worship of Him is not for His benefit, it is for our benefit.
 

jwhoff

Premium Member
Maybe a better question is are we truly paying attention to the lessons of the Son of Man and trying to live those in our lives, or have we subscribed to a dogma that he, the Son of Man, never desired in the first place.


Agreed! Agreed! Dogma is a terrible thing to perpetrate!

Why do we continue to make the same mistakes and keep ourselves apart?
 

Michael Hatley

Premium Member
I usually edge away from a conversation about this sort of topic when I catch words like "foolish" being used, even in a quote. I'm sure I'm not the only one. There is just too big a chance someone will become defensive or take what I say the wrong way if they believe that what I say is such.

But I'll say one more thing on it and leave it be. There is a whole ocean between accepting the Bible as literal truth and believing Jesus was a madman. Only the fundamentalists (which Lewis was, by the way) want it the other way, because it makes it a binary choice for the faithful. Our way, or no way.

There are many, many things which all men of intelligence believe is allegory or exaggeration within the Bible. If you haven't found an example of it, you simply have not read the entire text through, or it has been too long a period since you have. The Old Testament has bunches, stoning your kids, a mortal sin to have tattoos and that sort of thing. Every man makes some choices about those sorts of things and draws the line somewhere. Chances are every man draws it in a different place than you do, whether they attend the same Church you do or not, and whether they proclaim themselves Christian or not.

In my opinion, the biggest thing to resist is the notion that you have it right and other people have it wrong. Some sects of all the major religions teach this and have for centuries. That is the most dangerous bit, it is a sign of fundamentalism. You can think of examples readily in the present day I would imagine of how that looks when it goes bad, but the way it manifests itself in its lesser form is intolerance.

I'm more concerned with being like Jesus than the literal interpretation of the words written about him by the men that were close to him - almost a generation after his death and then reinterpreted, edited, and republished under councils of men, translated and retranslated over the aeons, exerpts of which are delivered from the pulpits all over the world, usually to tangentially strengthen a sermon. It is the essence, that to me is important, not the granulars. The essence unites us, the microscope level specificity has the potential to divide. To me it is very clear which is better to focus on.

S&F
 

Michael Hatley

Premium Member
Brother Maloney:

From Merriam Webster:

Definition of FUNDAMENTALISM

1
a often capitalized : a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teachingb : the beliefs of this movementc : adherence to such beliefs

2
: a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles <Islamicfundamentalism> <political fundamentalism>



For what it is worth, Lewis was Anglican - known more commonly in the United States by the word Episcopalian. Not Catholic. As it happens, I was an Episcopalian acolyte (Catholics call them altar boys) for most of my boyhood, and for years planned and was expected to enter the clergy. It has many of the customs associated with Catholicism, but there are many distinct differences - especially in terms of governance. There are other major areas too. For example, transubstantiation. Purgatory is another.

The irony of Lewis is that he is famous for his fiction, which are allegories about faith. But he started out as an atheist, and converts are often some of the most zealous of a sect – and certainly the most often contradictory in that they tend to exude surety in their words. I have found at least that the most sure men are usually the ones who don’t profess to be so, and vice versa – but your mileage may vary.

But I'm carefully backing away now....:laugh:


 
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