Unconventional Religion

[DeistPaladin]

Continued from earlier...

The writer of many of the Epistles, Paul, also had not witnessed Christ's ministry.

Neither had Mark or Luke. Both were companions of Paul and Luke introduces his Gospel with a flat denial that he was a witness but rather compiled the account. And all this is assuming that they were the authors of the books in question.

As for Paul, he was the chief prosecutor for the Jews and had his conversion experience only a few years after the crucifixion of Jesus. I would think he would have witnessed such a grand execution that involved the rabbis meeting on Passover Eve in order to get rid of this troublemaker. But that's another issue for another thread. For now, I think you and I agree that the Epistles are more concerned with the salvation message of Jesus than his life.

John doesn't make it any less confusing.

True. Even John's Gospel isn't consistent on the question of the divinity of Jesus. My point was the Trinitarian Christians have no support from the Synoptics, books that clearly depict Jesus as being separate from and completely subordinate to his father.

That said, there was some evolution of Jesus in successive Gospels. Mark's Jesus was the most meek and mild. Mark's Jesus was unable to perform miracles where the faith in a town wasn't strong enough. Matt's Jesus says that he denied them miracles because their faith wasn't strong enough. Mark's Jesus asks the rich man "Why do you call me good? There is none good but God." Matt's Jesus edits out this line. Mark's Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist after JtB introduces himself as Jesus' forerunner. Matt's JtB expresses how awkward it is to baptize Jesus but does so anyway when ordered to. John's JtB never baptizes Jesus at all. Jesus got stronger with each successive Gospel. The tale got better with the telling.

Jesus acted as if He was not God to cover his messianic secret as well as to pose as a model for holiness.

Jesus was alone when praying at the Garden of Gethsemane, so no need for posing there.

Christ is not another God, hence the Trinity. An intercessor isn't a God. Christ was the Judeo-Christian God and a human being at the same time.

...and here we have the barking madness and near-incoherent babble of the Trinity. Jesus is God and not God at the same time, depending on the needs of the story at that moment. When Jesus is praying at Gethsemane, that's when he's not God. When he's forgiving sins, that's when he is God. Flip, flop, flip, flop.

But the madness of the Trinity is really exposed when we have to ask why a god would need to be his own intercessor with himself. If Jesus is God, there is no intercessor because he is the god you are trying to contact. If Jesus is not God, Christianity violates the 1st Commandment (in addition to Commandment #4, since the Sabbath is Saturday).

However, the madness of the Trinity is needed to explain how we can reconcile pagan concepts of an intercessor with a Divine that is otherwise out of reach with Jewish strict monotheism that has a god that interacts with worshipers directly, sometimes face to face "as one speaks to a friend". The OT god was not out of reach for the faithful and an intercessor, according to Yahweh, was neither necessary nor desired.

Jesus didn't advertise a new God.

In your opinion, perhaps. Reading the OT and comparing it to the NT, they look different to me.

Christ's description of Hell was a physical allegory used for the benefit of a very physical culture (so physical that slaughtering goats symbolized absolution for sins). It fit the culture of the time, hence it was very well understood by Jews and Gentiles.

You can assume the existence of all kinds of supernatural things that "just so happen" to resemble the natural source of their inspiration. I can't prove they don't exist, as you can't prove a negative, and the burden is not on me to do so. All I can do is show you natural sources of inspiration for the supernatural belief and state Occam's Razor, that one should not look to supernatural explanations where a natural explanation is available and plausible.

I've done my part.