west@sdcsla.UUCP (12/23/83)
<<<___>>> In replying to Laura Creighton, Dave Norris brings up a point that I've been curious about (off and on) for some time: ----: begin quote :---- Bad choice of words on my part; it would appear that I meant Jesus did not exist before He was born (which of course is contrary to Christianity). Maybe it would be better phrased as "Jesus came to earth as a man". Christ- ianity teached that Christ has always existed just as God has always existed. ----: end quote :---- My questions are: 1) So why wasn't Christ mentioned earlier in the Bible? 2) What was he doing before coming to earth? 3) What exactly do you [not just Dave] believe the Trinity to be? 4) Are God and Christ two separate individuals [in your view] or two facets of the same being? 5) Why the emphasis on the Father/Son relationship between God/Christ if in fact they are supposed to be ``the same''? Or rather, what is the meaning of the terms Father and Son in this case? 6) Did God exist before Christ? 7) Given the existence of God/Christ, is it unlikely that the Father/Son relationship is a convenient fiction [like `good' and `evil'] used to convey the closeness of Jesus to God? That is, since I doubt anyone will respond to #5 by saying that God literally fathered Christ, is the Father/Son relationship more symbolic than literal? This question is probably more pertinent to those who believe in the absolute literal truth of the Bible. I'd be interested in serious replies. I'll leave it to you whether this should be done on the net or by mail... -- Larry West UC San Diego possible net addresses: -- ARPA: west@NPRDC -- UUCP: ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdcsla!west -- or ucbvax:sdcsvax:sdcsla:west Actually, I'd be interested in humorous replies, too. Didn't mean to discriminate.
ka@hou3c.UUCP (12/29/83)
I'll probably regret this, but here goes...
1) So why wasn't Christ mentioned earlier in the Bible?
The later sections of the Bible include references which may not
be very clear but which were believed to prophesy the coming of a
christ. The terms "messiah" and "anointed one" are synonymous
with "christ", and "the Son of Man" is a code phrase referring to
the predicted messiah.
2) What was he doing before coming to earth?
If he was the Christ then he wasn't doing anything because he
hadn't been born yet. Mark, the oldest of the Gospels, is quite
plain that Jesus was believed to be, and believed himself to be,
the Christ. It gives little support to the notion that he
believed himself to be a deity. Indeed, Judaism is a
monotheistic religion, which means that worshiping any deity
besides the god of the Hebrews is prohibited. Had Jesus claimed
to be the literal son of God, he would have been guilty of the
crudest sort of heresy and could not have gained the following he
did.
7) Given the existence of God/Christ, is it unlikely that the
Father/Son relationship is a convenient fiction [like `good' and
`evil'] used to convey the closeness of Jesus to God?
You have hit the nail on the head. That is the way the phrase
would have been interpreted by the Jews at the time of Christ.
Indeed, even today a person might refer to "our heavenly father"
without believing that they are literally a son of God.
4) Are God and Christ two separate individuals or two facets of
the same being?
Presumably the (non-Jewish) believers in Christianity elevated
Jesus to the stature of godhood; they were people who were
accustomed to polytheistic religions. Zeus, for example, had
children all over the place with mortal women. By the time the
last Gospel (John) was written, an attempt had been made to
harmonize the belief in the divinity of Jesus with the monotheism
of the Old Testament, and we are told:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
So there you have it: "was with God" implies two distinct
beings, and "was God" states that Jesus and God are the same. In
addition, Jesus is also the "Word". (Anybody want to provide a
decent translation of the term?) If that doesn't satisfy all
factions, you can't blame the author for not trying!
Kenneth Almquistrao@utcsstat.UUCP (Eli Posner) (12/31/83)
...!mcnc!ka@hou3c.UUCP says : "The term 'messiah' .... sysnonymous with 'christ', and the 'son of man' is .. referring to the predicted messiah." Says who!! Why is ' the son of man' = Jesus, why not me or Rick Vaive ?? You base it on trust ??!! New Testament??!! Ha! All those references in the (Old) Testament about 'messia' aren't necessarily talking about Jesus, it could be (and is) talking about the Jewish Messiah.(yeah i know that Jesus was Jewish , but you know what I'm getting at) Eli
gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner) (12/31/83)
1) So why wasn't Christ mentioned earlier in the Bible? He IS. As early as the major prophets (Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, etc. all mention Him.
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/03/84)
Kenneth, Your interpretation of the Fourth Gospel is interesting, but not in accordance with anything that I have read on the subject. To begin with, it is highly likely that the fourth Gospel was written by Jews who were also Christians and who had a Samaritan element. It is still likely (but not as likely as the above) that the Jews who formed the Johanine community had been followers of John the Baptist. It is very likely that there were very few Gentiles (here we are not going to call the Samaritans Gentiles, which is not strictly speaking correct) in the community. <See Raymond Brown's The Community of the Beloved Disciple for an outline of this>. The time scale is right for this as well. In addition, the first pagans that became Christians were not believers in the Roman Gods -- they were Zorastrians and Gnostics, for the most part. Thus the Epistles of John may very well show the effect of the entry of a pagan element into Christianity, but the fourth Gospel does not seem to. If you look up referecences to "the world" in the fourth Gospel, you will find that while the expression "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son" is the most often quoted, the world is actually described in rather disparaging terms, which is not what you would expect if the bulk of the community had come from the world. This is in contrast with what Paul, for instance,has to say about the World. The other thing to remember is that while it is only in the 600s that explicit doctrines on the Divinity of Christ become official in the Church, there seems to be an element in Christianity which always believed that Christ was Divine. It is not a matter of absorbing polytheism and making it part of Christianity, it is a very real conviction of the Divinity of Christ on the part of the early Christians. For instance, it seems that the trouble that the Johanine community had just prior to ~90 AD (when the Gospel of John was written, unless you like the other date and say ~120 AD) had with the Jews was because they wished to remain Jews and still talk about the Divinity of Christ. The emphasis of Christ's divinity in 600 AD was a direct attempt to attack the Gnostics and the Arianists. The Arianists and the Christian Gnostics at the time claimed to be Christians and had been practicing Christians for a long time but they were declared heretical (which fit in well with the political aspirations of certain members of the Church, by the way) over the issue. It remained a pretty settled issue of Christianity from that time onwards. it is interesting to realise that up until that time it was not necessary to believe that Jesus is God to be a Christian, whereas these days this is often quoted as the central tenet of Christianity. laura creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura