Summations Only

I realize that sidelined is long gone from this discussion but I just thought I'd add my take on it.God the Father is straight forwrd. He is responsible for the fact that we exist at all.The Son, Jesus is as the Gospel of John says is that the Word, (or Wisdom) of God became flesh. Jesus the Son then was the perfect embodiment of the nature of God. If we want to understand the Father then we look to the Son. I suggest it is important to remember that when we say the Jesus is God is that Jesus prayed to the Father even to the point of praying to not be called to go into Jerusalem knowing what would happen to someone who did what He was about to do. It was a great act of faith.I would also go back to Jesus calling Himself the Son of Man. This is an obvious reference to Daniel 7 where the Son of Man is presented to the "Ancient of Days", (God the Father). The Son of Man is then given dominion over an everlasting Kingdom.The Holy Spirit is the connection that we have with God through our consciousness. It is that "still small voice" or what we call conscience that guides us in the direction that we should go.The nature of the three is consistent so in that way they are one, and represent a perfect unity.

It seems to me that when we think of the vastness of the universe we should also remember that it was once infinitely small. Personally I just don't see that the size of the universe should cause us to form an opinion one way or the other.

Actually that isn't Biblical. That belief came from Plato. This happened when the early Christian church allowed itself to be influenced by the Greco-Roman thing after Constantine.

The Biblical message is we are renewed bodily.YOu are reading something into your quotations that just isn't there.Here is a verse that is consistent with the NT covenant.Paul writes this in his first letter to the Corinthians. Chap 1:10.

quote:

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to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

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"All things in heaven and earth" That includes all things on earth. Revelation talks of the New jerusalem aoming to Earth and we are taught to pray "Your Kingdom come on Earth as in Heaven.All through the NT there is talk of the resurrection of the dead, which of course begs the question of what is resurrection. That's easy to answewr. We jusy look at the resurrection of Jesus in a physical body that was like but also unlike His body prior to His death on the cross.A bigger point is that in many ways it doesn't matter. What happends next is God's business. We are called to live Christ like lives based on God's love for us in this life. I suggest that it is a good idea to let God worry about the next one and just get on with loving our neighbour.

He also told Thomas to touch him. He ate fish. He walked with the two on the road to Emmaus and they clearly saw Him as a physical being. Yes, there was something different about His renewed physicality but He was physical.

Hi
I just thought I'd comment on this. When you listen to Hitchen's debates with people like John Lennox I get a very different image of him. He was definitely an atheist, but what he was passionate about criticizing was a god as sometimes pictured in the OT that called for and committed genocide and called for public stoning. As a Christian I agree with him on that issue. That was the god that he and I reject.This is the problem as trying to understand the Bible as literally dictated by God. You can't square that genocidal commands with Jesus call to love our neighbours. Although he clearly opposed Christianity his focus was on the Christianity that justified a God that could ever support genocide. Hopefully he actually was a benefit to the church by making the church think about these issues. Too often this view has contributed to help justify some very un-Christ-like actions.