Still a Christian - ask me questions/tell me about yourselves

[speedyj1992]

The argument in response is that 1) God did show up, and revealed Himself to many people over many years.

 

As did Zeus, the Dagda, Vishnu, and countless others.  Revelatory claims made by believers don't really qualify as evidence.  My mum had an uncle who was firmly convinced that he saw faeries in his garden - this is not evidence for faeries (it is, however, evidence that great uncle Billy was as crazy as a bedbug).

[I've never heard anyone say someone is or was as "crazy as a bedbug" - that's good, I'll use that, though I'm sorry to hear about your mom's uncle. 

These are good examples, actually, and regarding Vishnu and Hinduism, requires more of a philosophical discussion as a different religion. The Zeus revelation is interesting because Zeus brings us into all of Greek mythology, and we can say now that, based on what we can observe of nature, there is no guy throwing lightning bolts. The sun is not pulled by someone in a chariot. And so on.]

  He is not obligated to us because we have forsaken Him and often continue to do so.

 

But if God wishes all to come to salvation (it says so in the Bible), then how is he not obligated? 

[The key word is "wish", which is what makes the love of God so astonishing, because it's hard to love someone who doesn't love you and reach out to them. That's why God wishes it to happen and gives us time for repentance (2 Peter 3:9 in a nutshell).]

Plus, you can't know an infinite God all at once when you're finite. That process needs to be there. 

Ok, then.  How many visitations by an infinite God are necessary for a finite being to 'know' that God (think carefully before you answer)?

[I never said we can know God entirely in this life, that's what part of an eternal life in Heaven is for. And we're never called to know God entirely, that's not Biblical, but we can get a better idea and better reflect that in our lives.]

2) The difference is you're talking about people who came after the apostles.

 

Are you contending that no post-apostolic person can have an inkling what God is about (again, think it over.  The question isn't as simple as it seems)? 

[I am not contending that at all. Yes, we can know what God is like, arguably more than an inkling because we have His Word, but they had a better idea than we do considering they spent as much time with Jesus as they did. It's a different relationship because God is very personal like that.]

The apostles themselves didn't have to die for Jesus' name's sake, in theory, except that they clearly really believed the things they preached because they knew the man. Why would they die for something they didn't believe in?

Sincerity doesn't enter into it.  People can die for fervent belief in a false idea just as much as for a true one.  The apostles' martyrdom says nothing at all about the truth or falsity of what they died for.

Boru

[Of course not, but these were the guys who directly knew Jesus, who was really about honesty, so dying for the sake of a guy who cared about honesty when you know he was lying, among other teachings of morality (basically, I'm really paraphrasing the stuff Jesus preached) when they knew it was a lie is HIGHLY unlikely. From all 12, nonetheless. Not proof, but compelling as far as a piece of evidence, considering how hard it is to die for something you believe in, let alone something you know to be blatantly false.]

I've put my responses in brackets above, to make things easier for both myself as the responder and you as the reader. Hope that clears things up.

---

Ah - well, like I said, I follow Jesus, not Josephus. And Josephus, to my knowledge, never followed Jesus, so obviously we're going to disagree on certain things.

Right. Josephus was an orthodox Jew to the end of his life. As you say, he never followed Jesus. Do you really believe that he would have described Jesus as "the Christ" and basically cream his boxers over the character?

My point in saying that Josephus thought Jesus was a "terrible misfortune", or a "sad calamity" depending on the translation, if you want to hold the TF as an authentic reference, is that the context of the passage does not support it. He begins chapter 3 of his Antiquities of the Jews book XVIII with an account of Jewish protests at Pilate's opening of a new aqueduct in Caesarea, using funds sequestered from the Temple. Much bloodshed and loss of life and limb ensued.

At that point we get the TF passage, in which JC is described in such glowing terms that one might think it was written by the guy's press office.

Immediately after, without so much as a pause for breath, Antiquities continues with "About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder, and certain shameful practices happened about the temple of Isis that was at Rome."

Do you honestly believe that the text following the TF passage is calling back to that passage, and not the text preceding it?

In all honesty, I've never read what you're referring to, but I would be interested to analyze it. Is there a website I can look at this on, or a book you would recommend for my reading?