(May 12, 2015 at 5:40 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: Did Jesus himself ever claim sinlessnessism ??
If his followers are just making up shit again, I would not be surprised.
It's a very good question. In some ways it is hard to know what to say on this. On a Xian forum I would simply quote bits of the NT. However if I do that here, the reply would be that the Early Church were simply putting their views in Jesus' mouth. I'm not sure that a discussion using standard historical criteria to identify probable relevant Gospel data would be short or productive here. (Boring)
So lets work from the other end. To claim sinlessness for any human being who had lived a public life in very recent memory, as Paul did, is a remarkable enough thing to say.
The Gospels continued this in a rich variety of forms with a rich variety of sources. For example, John spoke of Jesus as the Word made flesh, functionally equivalent to sinlessness. In Heb 4:15, 7.26; 1Pet 2.22 the claim is explicit. The roles the Early Church assigned to Jesus only work on the assumption of sinlessness.
So the data is very strong and goes all one way. When we say the earliest followers of Jesus believed that he was without sin, we can regard that as a fixed point historically. They may have been wrong, but they believed it.
This in turn suggests that claims made in the Gospels about things Jesus said to that effect (e.g. John 8:46) were indeed things Jesus claimed about himself. That he saw himself in roles for which sinlessness was a prerequisite.
Either way, it is a very strange and incredibly meaningful claim, that has powerful implications for how we see Jesus.
(Your sig) I might suggest that your stance against triclavianism as undermining “the soteriological foundation of Faith” doesn't perhaps fully appreciate the nature of faith, it's relationship to praxis, and the role of covenant behind dikaiosyne.
Any news on the tequila? (post#26). I could really use some.
