My Beliefs- GDR

Of course all THAT is a bunch of sophomoric pedantic pontification too, but oh well.

But that's the point, NOTHING you said can be evidenced, it's all BELIEF.And as a matter of fact there's tons of evidence for my beliefs, it's just that it doesn't convince you. The miracles described in the scripture for instance. The fulfilled prophecies. (No other religion has genuine miracles OR prophecy). You simply choose not to believe them. But they are evidence and were given as evidence because God knows we need evidence.Too bad that you believe you are "discovering" things and don't see that it's all really just BELIEF.Golly gee, you even say I don't agree with other Christians although I've given some pretty long lists of those I do agree with and the ones I don't agree with are the ones who cave in under pressure from bogus claims for science. Sad really.But I DO agree with you that it's only likely to get worse for me because of the power of the delusion I'm up against. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

duplicate.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The usual Reformed understanding is very clear that He only died for those who belong to Him, but what that means is those who believe in Him. If you want to say He died for everybody, they still can't benefit from it if they don't believe. The message is "Repent and BELIEVE." The Kingdom of God is to be made up of regenerated people, that is, those who believe and have been born again and received the Holy Spirit. There can't be a Kingdom of God made up of people who aren't fit for the Kingdom of God, we have to be changed and that comes through faith in His death for our sins. That is so strange, every time you say it I'm practically speechless with amazement at such an idea. No, it's all about creating a new world, a new people, a new kingdom, restoring humanity to our Edenic condition or better, so that we can be truly a God-ruled people. Adam and Eve lost their God-ruled original condition, their relationship with God, when they sinned/disobeyed God, and bequeathed to their descendants an inability to love or obey God, fallenness or the "sin nature." We're all born in original sin, in "the flesh," into "enmity with God" as scripture describes it. For the Kingdom of God to come we must be restored to the Edenic condition and that can't happen unless our sin nature is dealt with and that is dealt with by Jesus' death to pay for our sin, the reversal of original sin, which we receive only by faith. We are changed one by one and brought into individual relationship with God. I don't get this notion that this makes it "all about me."

That "dogmatic" post of yours. (But of course much else besides)And by the way you were a bit too dogmatic about your definition of "dogma":Here's the online Merriam-Webster: Which is of course how I was using the word. Yes, words DO have meanings, in this case a meaning you dogmatically defined away.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What terrible slander of the Apostle Paul who was THE preacher against the doctrines of the Pharisees, against their insistence on the Law as necessary to salvation. Scripture strongly disagrees with you about Paul.

That is not true. Wherever the gospel went, churches were formed, usually in people's houses. The Church is the body of believers, where they meet is incidental. Jesus addressed seven churches in the first chapters of the Book of Revelation, all of them in Asia Minor, Revelation considered by conservative scholars to have been written around 90 AD. There were more than seven churches in Asia Minor at the time, and many hundreds spread elsewhere in the Middle East and Mediterranean area. Where are you getting this idea? What confusion? What fighting?There was a rapid spread of Christianity in that period and in fact the first few hundred years, despite the persecutions of believers by both the Jews and the Roman pagans. That is RCC propaganda and it's not the truth. There were hundreds, even thousands of churches in the first few hundred years that had nothing to do with Rome, and some of those churches continued down the centuries refusing to have anything to do with Rome. There were also regional Bishops, the Bishop of Rome being only one of half a dozen or so. The RCC as such did not get going at least until Constantine in the fourth century, which then did have political and military support as you say, though even that didn't really get going until hundreds of years later. But many put the beginning of the RCC as such later, in 606 AD when the papacy was officially established. But again, although Rome tried to bring all the churches under its wing, many refused. Sometimes, not always.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This is ridiculous. Few historical figures have anywhere near the attestation of their existence as Jesus has but nobody doubts their existence or what is written about them or the existence of the eyewitnesses either. The Bible is a collection of writings that includes eyewitness reports of Jesus -- Matthew, Mark, John, Peter, James and Jude being eyewitnesses who also wrote books of the NT, and others they reported on being also eyewitnesses.Consider the histories of Alexander the Great for contrast. Not one single eyewitness account still exists. All that survives is reports based on earlier eyewitness accounts, yet you probably believe in his existence.Here is Wikipedia onAlexander the GreatBesides the eyewitness accounts of Jesus in the Bible we also have all the writings of the early church fathers based on them which amounts to a much larger body of secondary writers on His life than those who wrote on Alexander, and from the sound of the Wikipedia report on Alexander the church fathers are far more in agreement with each other than Alexander's historians.It is foolishness to deny the plain statements of eyewitnesses to Jesus that were collected into the Bible. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No, but that is why we have so much BETTER attestation of Jesus, BECAUSE better evidence is needed. We have LOTS of eyewitnesses and reports of other eyewitnesses and we have LOTS of secondary writings based on the eyewitnesses that are in agreement with each other. Same with the Old Testament. Miracles need lots of witnesses and they have given their reports. Which doesn't stop skeptics from refusing to take them seriously anyway of course, but that's the skeptics' lack of discernment because the witnesses are very credible. Here's that lack of discernment. There is nothing about the story of Jesus that is in any way like "typical fiction." There is nothing in the tone of the writers, nothing in the characters written about, certainly nothing about Jesus himself, and nothing in the story, that is like "typical fiction." All you mean is that the story includes supernatural elements which you automatically prejudge as fictional, you certainly can't mean anything about the quality of the reports themselves. As I recall at least one historian did but I'm lousy at remembering which one.* But most of the pagan world dismissed the Christians as "atheists" and didn't regard the doings in Judea as much to concern them.=============================ABE: *The historian was Tacitus. Here's a Wikipedia reference on the subject of Tacitus' writings about Christ.And here's another Wikipedia article, on the Historicity of Jesus which gives Tacitus, Josephus and the Talmud as extrabiblical sources.=============================Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Some things ONLY have witness testimony as evidence, that's the way it is with all historical figures, and again I claim that the witness testimony in Jesus' case is extremely high quality. If your bias against what they are telling you leads you to dismiss them out of hand you could never learn anything that could correct your bias, and obviously you aren't going to.Way it goes.But I did add to that post apparently after you responded to it some information about the historian who did write about Jesus, that is, Tacitus, and some other extrabiblical evidence, which I'll copy here:=============================ABE: *The historian was Tacitus. Here's a Wikipedia reference on the subject of Tacitus' writings about Christ.And here's another Wikipedia article, on the Historicity of Jesus which gives Tacitus, Josephus and the Talmud as extrabiblical sources.=============================Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You ought to read the article, jar, remember it's WIKIPEDIA, not "Bible apologists" and much of the article is far from anything I would agree with. They mention the Talmud as in effect a hostile witness to Jesus, not aimed at validating His existence but confirming it nevertheless by their efforts to discredit Him.

Yes, jar, I know how well you have read the Bible, something along the lines of "wrongly dividing the word of truth" and I also know what Luther found in the Talmud blaspheming Jesus, though apparently your reading of it hasn't been good enough to discover that for yourself.

You are thinking of more recent historical figures, think ancient, such as Alexander the Great, which was my contrasting example. We don't have anything HE wrote either, OR anything by those who actually knew him, which is a lot less than we have for Jesus.As I said, there are SIX eyewitnesses who wrote part of the New Testament, three writing a gospel or narrative history of Jesus' life, three writing letters to churches, John writing both plus Revelation. You like to think of the Bible as one piece since that's how we get it now but the original writings were all written and circulated separately in the first few hundred years, all independent witnesses.And I might add that we have the Old Testament, which is the context in which the New Testament events occurred, fulfilling prophecy after prophecy. If you discount all that it's merely out of bias against prophecy, not because there isn't sufficient witness evidence. There is TONS of witness evidence.And ALL of it has survived in faithful copies by the thousands, unlike the historical writings about other ancient figures. (You do have to consider that the more "recently discovered" manuscripts, supposedly the most ancient, are turning out to be frauds, however, either gnostic corruptions or outright forgeries. The previous manuscript collection was much more pure.But I've already answered everything you said here before.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

We certainly do, we have the gospels of Matthew and Luke and yes those ARE historical records whether you like it or not. Sorry, what we have is HISTORY, in the gospel accounts. They are "questionable" only to those with an aggressive need to question them and "tainted" by the same. But in reality they are straightforward historical accounts of the life of Jesus.

Sure we do, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and there are references to each of them in other parts of the scripture to further identify them as real people. No, we have the testimonies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, actual witness testimony and history, not just tradition.