Bible Teachings or Traditions of Men?

[A_Nony_Mouse]

[quote='A_Nony_Mouse' pid='434012' dateline='1366553146']

That is obfuscation. It is crap.

Greek philosophers held a person was composed of body, mind, soul and spirit.

do you have a point of reference for this assertion? I looked it up and could not find that this ideology started with the greeks.

The Greeks gods had bodies. The Christian god supposedly has none. Without a body there is only Mind, Soul and (holy) Spirit.

ah, no.
God the son had a Body. God the Spirit and God the Father two very distinct and seperate personages of God do not have a physical form.

You are an unusual Christian to be claiming your god is flesh and blood like the rest of us. Are you certain you want to run with that?

[quote]The "son" crap comes from imagining the gospel use of FATHER had a different meaning from the usage in the Our Father. In other words it is all a desperate attempt to hide the Greek origin of the three out of four idea.

-or it could be that Christ is the Son of God as He claims in these examples: http://bible.org/question/does-jesus-fac...t-infer-it[/quote]

I point the special meaning for father by the trinitarians and you reply with special meaning for son used by trinitarians. Why am I not impressed? If you have something specific which might pass the giggle test please post it. I assure you anything from anonymous sources by people of unknown character and motivation like the gospel writers does not pass the giggle test.

John the Baptist said the same thing (John 1:34).
Nathanael said it (John 1:49).
Martha believed it (John 11:27).
The centurion said so (Matthew 27:54).

Given the mountain of assumptions without evidence one has to make about whomever wrote the gospels (ALL 46 of them not just these 4) to have them citing unknown persons of unknown character and unknown motivation, piles giggle on top of giggle.

To add to that hallucinations
The angel told Mary her child would be the Son of God (Luke 1:35).
The demons called Jesus the Son of God (Matthew 8:29; Luke 4:41; Mark 3:11).
is to make one roll on the floor with laughter.

But then to admit
The Gospel of John was written to convince the reader that Jesus was the Son of God (John 20:31).
that the purpose is to deceive even the earth trembles with spasms of hysterical laughter and the skies do darken with the tears of laughter that cannot be stopped.

Having run that metaphor into the ground

15 He said to them, “And who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the anointed [the Christ], the Son of the living God [as we are all sons of OUR Father].”

Leaving anointed untranslated from the Greek, christus, is simply an omission to lie to the ignorant.

17 And Jesus answered him, “You are blessed, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven!” (Matthew 16:15-17).

As he said when asked how to pray, OUR Father, which makes legitimate MY father.

[quote]The official spokesrats for the vast majority of Christians, the Vatican, does not teach the idea of that kind of hell. That kind of hell was invented by Dante.

Two things: 1) What position are you refering to? and
2) When the the Roman Catholic Church become the authority on biblical Christianity? (The guy who wears the big hat makes rules and decrees that superceed scripture.)
[/quote]

2) When did Dante who immortalized all the invented things not found in any gospel or any epistle? Revelation is either literal or metaphor. You do not get to pick and choose.

---

From Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities pages 251-2

This is not to say, however, that proto-orthodox Christians were absolutely successful in producing a consensus on every important point of faith and practice. Indeed, as soon as the major theological issues of the second and third centuries were more or less resolved, others appeared to take their place. The battles fought in later centuries were no less harsh, and the polemic against “false teachers” was no less vitriolic. Quite the contrary, as the options narrowed, the debates intensified.

To take one example: Once proto-orthodoxy had established that Christ was both human and divine, the relationship between his humanity and divinity still needed to be resolved. How could Christ be both a man and God? Was it that Christ had a human body but that his human soul was replaced by a soul that was divine? If so, then how was he “fully” human? Or was it that the incarnate Christ was two separate persons, one divine and one human? If that were the case, would that not mean he was half divine and half human, rather than fully both? Or was it that he was one solitary person, but that within that person he had two natures, one fully divine and one fully human? Or does he have just one nature, that is at one and the same time both fully divine and fully
human? All of these options were proposed and hotly debated over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries.

Quite a useful little book - especially for blind xtians who think their shit was handed down "from god" instead of massaged by men!

Myself I don't see why Ehrman gets all the play but let me suggest an easier way.

Dig out all the official creeds like apostles' creed. Mark each distinct assertion of belief. For each of them there were Christians teaching something else. The creeds were the required teachings to be a member of the Byzantine church and to gain the benefits and protections of Byzantium and not be eradicated by Byzantium.

The amusing thing is the creeds do not cover all of the variations rather only the ones that became powerful enough to need a council to deny.