:)
Hello Everyone,

Acts 7:59 says: “They went on casting stones at Stephen as he made appeal and said: ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’” Those words have raised questions in the mind of some, since the Bible says that Jehovah is the “Hearer of Prayer.” Psalm 65:2 Did Stephen really pray to Jesus? Would this indicate that Jesus is the same as God Almighty?

I personally feel that Stephen was praying to God Almighty. Please allow me to explain why I feel this way:
The King James Version says that Stephen was “calling upon God.” Understandably, then, many draw the conclusion reached by Bible commentator Matthew Henry, who said: “Stephen here prays to Christ, and so must we.” However, that viewpoint is erroneous. Why?
Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament makes this honest admission: “The word God is not in the original, and should not have been in the translation. It is in none of the ancient [manuscripts] or versions.” How did the word “God” come to be inserted into that verse? Scholar Abiel Abbot Livermore called this “an instance of the sectarian biases of the translators.” Most modern translations, therefore, eliminate this spurious reference to God.
Nevertheless, many versions do say that Stephen “prayed” to Jesus. And the footnote in the New World Translation shows that the term “made appeal” can also mean “invocation; prayer.” Would that not indicate that Jesus is Almighty God? No. Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words explains that in this setting, the original Greek word, e•pi•ka•le´o, means: “To call upon, invoke; . . . to appeal to an authority.” Paul used this same word when he declared: “I appeal to Caesar!” Acts 25:11 Appropriately, then, The New English Bible says that Stephen “called out” to Jesus.
What prompted Stephen to make such an appeal? According to Acts 7:55, 56, Stephen, “being full of holy spirit, gazed into heaven and caught sight of God’s glory and of Jesus standing at God’s right hand.” Normally, Stephen would have addressed his requests to Jehovah in the name of Jesus. But seeing the resurrected Jesus in vision, Stephen apparently felt free to appeal to him directly, saying: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Stephen knew that Jesus had been given authority to raise the dead. John 5:27-29 He therefore asked Jesus to safeguard his spirit, or life force, until the day when Jesus would raise him to immortal life in the heavens.

But this is just my humble opinion! What is your opinion on Acts 7:59?


Does Stephen’s exclamation at Acts 7:59 indicate that prayers should be directed to Jesus?

Take care,
Hope12

Jesus' model prayer in response to his disciple's request to teach them how to pray tells us to direct our prayers to Jesus' father just as he was doing when the request was made. So if we deviate from his example then we aren't following his instructions.

King James Version (KJV)

Luke 11:


1And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

2And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.

3Give us day by day our daily bread.

4And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

Awesome question! As far as understanding the book of Acts goes, there is the basic understanding of its message to consider. Acts was written (most likely) by Luke, the same guy who wrote the Gospel according to Luke. The theme within Acts about Jesus is that He has been raised from the dead by God as vindication that Jesus is the Messiah and (here's that enigmatic phrase) "Son of God." Luke's theme concerning the followers of Jesus is that they have a mission to testify to the validity of Jesus' messiah-ship to the Jewish community and then the world. And the theme concerning the resurrection of Jesus is a theological one--there is some sort of power, the original power of God, that has been unleashed upon the world through Jesus' resurrection that transforms the world into something better, making both Jesus' followers and the rest of the world better people.

Now, with this in mind, it's easy to see that for Luke one would not necessarily pray in the name of Jesus (though I think Luke has Paul using Jesus' name in an authoritative way for exorcism and preaching purposes in Acts), either from his Gospel or Acts. However, I am sure you remember the words of Jesus from John's Gospel: "You have not prayed for anything in my name to the Father; ask anything in my name and it will be given you" from John 13 or 14. How did we get from praying to the Father because He is a good God in the Synoptic Gospels, to praying to God in the name of Jesus in John's Gospel, to praying to Jesus in the Early Church?

Historical theologians have put together a picture (though they freely admit that there are some holes because of missing information and this is just the best guess) of how this move was made. In the beginning of this movement, after Jesus was crucified/raised to life/ascended into heaven, Jesus' followers prayed to God; some probably prayed to God in Jesus' name (because they would be partially praying God's name--Jesus in Hebrew/Aramaic means "Yahweh is salvation"), but most probably prayed to God without the use of Jesus' name. Over time, the community started to pray to God in the name of Jesus as a whole because of his exalted position of being God's Son at God's right hand (thus, an image of Jesus ruling with God over the entire universe). Finally, by the time of the Early Church Fathers (A.D. 100-120), many Christians, though not all, were praying TO Jesus as God because he was seen as divine as the Son of God and because of some of the indicators of divinity they found in the Gospel accounts (miracles, fore-knowledge, Jesus resurrecting people and his own resurrection, etc.).

So here's the answer. Should we or should we not pray to Jesus? Yes and yes. One of the cool things about Christian theology is that you can make a case from Scripture, both Old and New Testament, that you can and should, or that you can't and shouldn't. The New Testament followers of Jesus were constantly grappling with how to understand Jesus as God's Son and Messiah, and thus we have a few different view points on it written at different times. While Luke at the time of his writing may not have felt comfortable with praying to Jesus, John's community did by the near end of the 1st century. Hope this helped:)

To question whether we can or should every pray directly to Jesus questions the root of the historic Christian faith - which for nearly 2000 years has called Jesus divine.

I, personally, agree with Thomas in addressing Jesus "My Lord and my God"... and I'm with the historic Christian faith that teaches that we can address prayer to our Lord and our God.

Well, we actually don't know the exact nature of the initial historisity of the Christian faith (no one really wrote down whether Jesus was divine in the sense of being God the Father, and none of us were there). We do have the New Testament, which hints at Jesus being divine, even indirectly suggesting that He was/is a divine being. However, the New Testament does not say "Jesus is God", only that "Jesus is Lord." Now the term "Lord" is used in the Septuagint (Greek translation of Old Testament) to refer to God; however, we don't exactly know if that's how the NT writers were using it, since the same term is used in the Gosples within the context of referring to Jesus as a Rabbi (which Rabbi's disciples would always refer to their Rabbi as "Teacher" or "Lord/Master"). Also, within both the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterrenean Greco-Roman world of the 1st century, someone or something could be divine without having to be fully God (like an angel). So we can't really say Christians have been saying Jesus is divine for 2,000 years (because they haven't).

Another issue in calling Jesus God is with making the connection of praying to Jesus as God. The NT writers never say that Jesus is God (until we get to John's Gospel--ca. A.D. 95) because they came from a very strict Jewish interpretation of monotheism ("Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord--one"); even if they all did believe Jesus to be God, they might have been afraid to say that because to their Jewish theological sensibilites, it may have sounded like heresy to them (and Jesus never came out and directly said, "I am God"; the most He did was say, "I am", using the Greek equivalent for God's name "I AM" in Exodus when Moses asks God His name). As for the Early Church Fathers, while it appears that many believed Jesus to be God in the second and third centuries, there were still many other Christian groups, especially in North Africa and the Near East, who did not believe Jesus was God, though they did believe He was some kind of divine being. It wasn't until A.D. 325 at the Council of Nicea that it became orthodox and therefore normative to believe that Jesus is God. And even after that council, many Christians in the East did not fully believe Jesus to be God for a few more centuries.

When Protestantism came on the scene, Luther and his followers believed Jesus was divine. But the Calvinist groups initially didn't believe it (because it wasn't specifically stated in the New Testament). However, in order to hold secular government or other political offices, everyone had to take an oath that they believed in the Trinity (it was written into secular law back in the 10th or 11th centuries, and they just kept it in there in the 16th and 17th centuries). Many Calvinist Protestants did take the oath, but within a short amount of time most of the Calvinist groups claimed to believe in the Trinity, or at least the Godship of Jesus.

While I believe Jesus to be God, I don't think we can honestly make this assertion about the New Testament Church and/or Early Christianity.

....praying to Jesus as God because he was seen as divine as the Son of God and because of some of the indicators of divinity they found in the Gospel accounts (miracles, fore-knowledge, Jesus resurrecting people and his own resurrection, etc.).


Others were resurrected before Jesus.
Moses, and other prophets also performed miracles, one even resurrected the dead as did the Apostle Paul. The prophets also had foreknowledge.
So why isn't this divinity criterion applicable to them as well?

Well, we actually don't know the exact nature of the initial historisity of the Christian faith (no one really wrote down whether or not Jesus was divine in the sense of being God the Father, and none of us were there).

Incorrect. We have not only the writings of the New Testament but also many other early writings. See many of them here (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers).

Most of the early writings are after 100 A.D. When I said we don't exactly know the historicity of the Christian faith, I was not only thinking of 100-300 A.D. but also 30/31-99 A.D. The fact is, we don't really have that much information about the daily life or detalied notes on the worship practices of the New Testament communities or what specific things each community believed (and both the New Testament writings and archaeology confirm that there were different variations on Christianity in the 1st century depending on geographical region). We do, however, have a lot of information from the 2nd century about Christianity because those who left their writings decided to write more and include more details (as well as the Romans decided to take a full-fledged interest in us by this time).

However, I now regret having tried to answer this question using historical theology within Christianity. I may be wrong, but I sense that this is starting to become an argument, and I'd rather not play along. Besides, the initial question was prayer, not Christian roots (so, my bad on that one--sorry).

The idea that you could be some sort of divine person and not be God wasn't originated in Jewish thinking; it originated in Babylonian/Sumerian thinking before Abraham (and was then promulgated into Persian thinking when Persia took over Babylon), and it originated in the mystical/mythological Greek and Roman religions (where the gods and goddesses were coming all the time, sometimes in their full-blown glory, and sometimes specifically as humans, rather than just appearing to be human). This thinking never really took root in Palestine; it was rampant among all the Hellenistic religions of the 1st century and a form of it was seen in Diaspora Judaism (Judaism outside of Palestine).

Moses and the other prophets were never really seen this way by Jews outside or inside Palestine from 100 B.C to 150/200 A.D. (that's the time range I am familiar with; I don't know about their detailed thinking before or after these dates) because their religion did not teach them to consider them as divine. They were seen in the eyes of Judaism as ordinary humans who were graced with the privilege of being used by God; God was seen as working through them to do miracles rather than they actually doing the miracles (it was a long train of distancing people from doing the miraculous or from God dealing with people directly; it was a comfort thing).

That's why the Jewish people who believed in Jesus commonly thought He was a prophet or even the Messiah. They considered Him to be God's representative and God's spokesman; He had divine power, but only as much as God gave Him. But there were fringe Jewish groups who believed in prophets AND divine beings that were less than God (angels, the apocalyptic Son of Man, a cosmic Messiah, prophets who had died and were now divinized by God, etc.). Did that make sense and/or answer your question Starman?

The idea that you could be some sort of divine person and not be God wasn't originated in Jewish thinking; it originated in Babylonian/Sumerian thinking before Abraham (and was then promulgated into Persian thinking when Persia took over Babylon), and it originated in the mystical/mythological Greek and Roman religions (where the gods and goddesses were coming all the time, sometimes in their full-blown glory, and sometimes specifically as humans, rather than just appearing to be human?


Well, I guess we agree after all. The prophecies and miracles would not be interpreted by the jews as a sign of divinity but only as a sign that God was backing the person just as he had done with the other prophets. My question then is directed to those who do consider these things as proof of divinity and how they manage to reconcile the obvious contradiction.

Actually, it's not as contradictory as it first appears. The reason why Judaism by the time of Jesus had said there could be divine beings that were not God was to make sure that they kept a strict montheism intact (strict in the sense of conceiving of a "one God" religion in the human conception of what one means--only one thing or person that literally takes up time and space). Before the Babylonian exile, there appears to have been a thinking (that originated in Babylon/Sumer but was widespread in the ancient Middle East by about 1000 B.C.E) that there could be a multitude of divine personages, all of which could be equally gods. At the zenith of its political and pre-captivity theological formation, Israel seems to have thought of God as the divinity of Israel (He was powerful within the Israelite realm), but wasn't as powerful outside of it (this is reflected in archaeological findings from that time and from the Psalms). Though YHWH was Israel's God, they understood that other nations had their all-powerful deity. And they thought that surely God alone was to be worshiped, but that He must, like the other pagan gods, have an entourage or something. On many Israeli tombs from 1000 B.C.E. even down to 700 B.C.E. we find inscribed on sepulchres: "To YHWH and His Asherah", which was a female Canaanite goddess that usually attended the most powerful deity in that region.

After the Babylonian captivity (around 500 B.C.E. give or take a few decades), the Jewish religious and political leaders decided to avoid any kind of idolatry. Having been raised in Babylon, away from Israel, they were told the stories about how Israel angered God by worshiping idols and other foreign gods; in God's wrath, He gave His people over to the Gentiles to teach them to stop worshiping other gods and to worship only Him. Wanting to make sure a dispersion never happened again, the leaders started to take ultra-conservative views on the one-ness of God. Before Babylon came and destroyed Israel, the people seemed to think of God's oneness (if they thought of it at all) in terms of "only", to only worship YHWH; if you worshiped YHWH's Asherah, you were seen as really worshiping YHWH, not His companion. After the destruction at the hands of Babylon, God's oneness was seen more in terms of "one", as in the number one; there is only one (1) God that we worship.

After 500 B.C.E. the tendency was to re-read Scripture; instead of reading that God personally spoke to Moses in a burning bush, it was read that God gave His words to an angel, who in turn spoke them to Moses in a burning bush; surely the Almighty would not condescend to speak one-on-one to humans, it was reasoned. By the time of the Rabbis in about 100 B.C.E. this kind of thinking had calcified. Midrash, Jewish commentary on Scripture, told the reader to interpret the stories in such a way as shown above. This was not done because the religious teachers wanted to change Scripture; they never changed the words of Scripture, they just wrote about how to interpret it for the Jewish community. This was done, rather, to help all the Jewish people avoid idolatry, thus making sure God would not scatter His people to the far corners of the world as He had done once before. Though this move was well intentioned on the part of the religious teachers and leaders, it removed the personal contact God had with people (except through prophets who were viewed as more holy than anyone and regarded with a mysterious mysticism that bordered on perceived divinity), discarded things such as God doing miracles for people and instead God sending angels to do miracles because God surely would not communicate directly with sinful human beings, and caused the people to exalt the examples and stories of the Scriptural prophets from humble, human messengers of God (as appears in the Scriptures) to superhuman mythic figures and heroes who were somehow above the daily humanness of everyone else.

Now here is where I answer your question. In the 1st century after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, this idea of Jesus being divine (in the sense of being God) because He did these things was picked up primarily by the Gentile believers, especially those not coming from the synagogue but rather from Hellenistic religions. These religions had retained this special quality of the gods doing miraculous things for people, thus proving that they were truly gods (however, I should point out that Hellenistic religions also kept their gods at a distance, so much so that they seemed to not even like people; at least the idea was still retained within Judaism that God truly loved and cared for people, even though He could not talk to them directly because of their sins).

Many of the Gentile Christians in the 1st century probably saw Jesus as God by looking at the Gospel stories through the religious environments in which they were raised. However, as these believers were continually taught the faith, it appears something must have changed; many scholars have expected that New Testament Gentile believers who saw Jesus as God would come out of the closet and say Jesus is God (not equal to but is in actuality the God of Israel, the Ancient of Days) by the beginning of the 2nd century (100 C.E.). However, as we know from history, they did not; in fact Christians, most of whom were not Jews but Gentiles after 100 C.E. were very hesitent to say that Jesus is God even up to the first quarter of the 4th century. While they felt comfortable calling Jesus the Son of God (since that was in the Gospels), they pretty much left the term open to interpretation. But as these Christians thought about Jesus' divinity throughout the 2nd and 3rd centuries, more and more of them were becoming convinced that God was to be viewed more in a trinitarian monotheistic vision. To Jews during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Christians were viewed as weird monotheists--while they held some peculiar views about the Messiah, particularly in terms of Jesus of Nazareth, these followers of the Way were pretty much monotheists who held to the monotheistic view that Judaism did.

However, Christian leaders finally decided in the early 320's C.E. to come out and make a statement claiming Jesus to be God, and not just "Son of God." This statement of belief was met with a lot of resistance, especially in the East in modern-day Turkey, Palestine, and Iraq/Iran in the fertile soil of what would later produce the Greek Orthodox Church. In fact, Christians did not take the idea of Jesus as God to be a normative part of Christian belief until about 100-150 years after the Council of Nicea (C.E. 325). Christians still struggle with it today.

It's a little difficult to understand in this little response, so if I've confused you, by all means tell me and I'll try to sort things out. But I would like to point out that a lot of the phraseology in the Nicene Creed, regardless of whether the composers of it knew this, to prove the Godship of Jesus is taken directly from much of Apocalyptic Jewish literature dated between 200-50 B.C.E. So that's kind of interesting:) Did this... um... answer your question?

Did this...um...answer your question?


I understand you to say that those viewing the miracles that Jesus performed
Saw it as evidence that he was God because of they were influenced by Greek mythology in which such persons were viewed as gods. So there was no contradiction since they didn't share the Jewish viewpoint. Right?

In a sense, yes and no. Initially there was no contradiction in the minds of the Gentile believers who came from the Greek mythological background and from the mystery cults of the 1st century. However, there were probably many Gentiles who were connected to the synagogue who helped to bring something of a Jewish influence to the conception of Jesus (these Gentiles knew how to see the world through both Jewish and Greek eyes).

But the funny thing about Christianity is that it has always retained facets of Judaism, especially in how it viewed the world and interpreted it; even today Christianity sees the world not through Gentile eyes (though many of us are Gentile, to be sure) but through Jewish eyes. We don't know how much like Judaism Christianity looked in the first four or five decades (even centuries) after Jesus, but it was probably a lot because it was seen as just another sect within Judaism by both the Jews and the Romans.

I can't speak for the Gentile Christians 50 years before 100 C.E. (just because we don't have anything from or on them), but by the time we open the chapter of the Early Church in the year 100 C.E. and on, you would expect the Church to be using a lot of philosophy (probably in the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition) to prove that Jesus is God because most of the Church Fathers and leaders were Gentiles, not Jews. Ironically, they did use philosophy, but not to prove that Jesus is God, and they used it differently than we would expect. The Church Fathers were incredibly rooted in the Old Testament Scriptures, and amazingly, looked at the world through a Jewish viewpoint. I don't exactly know how or why, but my best guess would be Christianity itself. It is true that Gentiles took over the leadership and direction of Christianity after New Testament times, but Christianity is an ancient Near Eastern religion; there's only so much of it you can change before it ceases being Christianity.

So while the Gentiles had their own viewpoint and way of looking at the world, at Jesus, and at God in general, they also understood that the world, Jesus, and God would only make sense in Christianity if they were seen through the eyes of the Christian viewpoint, which was very Jewish. Okay, I think I did better with this one:)

So while the Gentiles had their own viewpoint and way of looking at the world, at Jesus, and at God in general, they also understood that the world, Jesus, and God would only make sense in Christianity if they were seen through the eyes of the Christian viewpoint, which was very Jewish. Okay, I think I did better with this one

Thanks for the very informative response!

Question:

So if the Jewish influence predominated so strongly among the eary church fathers how is it that eventually Jesus was viewed as God himself? How is it that the Nicene Council was attended by so many that chose to believe Jesus to be God?

Around 1,000 bishops, laity, theologians, and other Christian leaders were invited to the Council of Nicea, but only a number between 300 and 400 showed up. Some did not have the money to travel that far and did not want to burden their congregations in order to go; others thought it would be something of a joke to go because the Council was seen by them primarily as a fight between Christians over something undefined in Scripture.

Most of those who went to the council were from the Greek East (Asia Minor, Palestine, and the Middle East); the minority were those from the Latin West (modern-day Western Europe). So basically, only those who went to the council could go to the council. HOWEVER, most of those who attended the Council were against seeing Jesus as God Himself. Everyone there believed Jesus to be divine; the difference was in how each one interpreted that divinity. Most, by this time, saw Jesus as truly God, but only as God's Son, not as equal to the Father. By Jesus' resurrection, He became the Son of God (this is known as adoptionist Christology--Jesus was just a man, but when He was resurrected He was made divine and therefore God, yet only the Son).

When Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria claimed that Jesus had always existed as the Son of God, that Jesus was pre-existent with the Father and had no beginning, and was equal to the Father in essence (i.e. being God), he knew that he was going against the main thought of the day. He had read the writings of those who had gone before him, and he decided he would voice their opinions, of which he was persuaded were true, and come out boldly and tell the Church this form of Christology was more Biblical and more logical to the person and work of Jesus Christ. (The issue wasn't as clear-cut as Athanasius thought, but he was on to something. The writings of the major Church Fathers from the 2nd and 3rd centuries are actually split half-and half; a large portion believed in adoptionist Christology, while another large portion believed what Athanasius believed.) In Athanasius' time, what would later be called Arianism (adoptionist Christology) was deemed orthodox and this belief in the full-fledged, pre-existent Godship of Jesus was seen as either heterodox (different thinking from the Christian norm) or totally heretical. So those who believed Jesus to be equal to the Father were far outnumbered.

But how did Christians come to believe Jesus was God Himself? Well, the wording of the Nicene Creed is actually very vague when it comes to the nature of how much Jesus is God. It points out that Jesus was "begotten before all worlds" (an indication of when Jesus became God to the 4th century Christians), purposefully worded this way so that those who believed Jesus was created THEN designated as Son of God and those who believed Jesus was with God before time began could agree on the same Creed. Another phrase about Jesus' divinity is "being of one substance with the Father", which at first appears to us statement that Jesus is the same being as the Father. But that's not how they saw it.

Athanasius and his supporters wanted to use the phrase "being of the SAME substance with the Father." The adoptionist bishops, who were sympathetic to Arius and his Christology didn't like using the term "same substance", so they made a compromise and said "one substance." Thus, the adoptionist Christians could interpret that to mean "being of a similar kind of substance, thus being God, but not the same substance as the Father, thus not being the exact same as the Father"; likewise, Athanasius' side could interpret it to mean "being of the exact same substance as the Father, even though He is the Son, thus being equal to the Father in every respect but not being the Father." Are you confused yet, because it took me a few months in class until I finally started to understand each side's line of thinking.

In the end, the Nicene Creed resulted in something unsatisfactory for both sides. The adoptionist Christians felt like they had gotten swindled, and Athanasius and his supporters (which seemed to only be half of the bishops of Alexandria, one or two from Palestine and the Middle East, and the Bishop of Rome) felt like the Creed had not gone far enough to directly state "Jesus is God." But the Creed ended up the way it did for two reasons: 1)Athanasius was loud and obnoxious (as were his followers), and they kept putting their view before the assembly; 2)Constantine called for a quick decision, and then proceeded to say he liked Athanasius' point of view (Constantine liked the idea of a God coming down to earth as a man to save humans). So, the matter was temporarily settled. But that's why Christianity kept having so many meetings over the next 150-200 years about the divinity of Jesus.

Now, to answer your question, there are two main reasons Christians had started to view Jesus as God Himself. The first deals with simply seeing Jesus as divine in the sense of being God and not an angel. Paul Tillich, in his book "A History of Christian Thought", expresses it well (I think it's p. 50): "The christological issue for the Early Church was in salvation--who is doing the saving?" The Early Church Fathers were well versed in what is known today as the Old Testament Scriptures; they also knew the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the main Gospels circulating among all the churches. As they read those Gospel accounts and read what Jesus said and did, all of them, to a greater or lesser degree, started getting a nagging idea that Jesus was more than just a man or God's Cosmic Messiah.

They found a surprising similarity in what God did in the Old Testament for the salvation of His people and what Jesus did for the salvation of other people in the Gospels (saving people from demon possession, leprosy, death, etc.). They found the way Jesus beat death by His resurrection very much like the glorious theophanies in the Old Testament when God revealed Himself to Israel for who He really was. And Paul's and John's letters and Gospel added to the thinking that Jesus was more than just a man or even an apocalyptic angel sent from God. Only God did these kinds of things in the Old Testament, so they started to think that maybe it was God who had done these things again in the time of the Apostles. But Jesus had always referred to God as "Father" or "Dad", and He had prayed to Him too. So this is where a trinitarian-monotheism started to develop: more than one personage within God, but still only one God.

Now we fast forward to the second reason. After the Nicene Creed, things changed. Before, the party of Athanasius and the party of Arius were trying to prove that they were right under the guise that they were doing the Church a favor. No one had ever thought about these issues as deeply or as long as either of these two men did, so many initially just watched and weighed the both men's arguments. But after a while they saw that they had to take sides, which caused this theological situation to become embroiled with TONS of emotion on both sides. Ironically however, things died down as the years passed. As people grew older and finally died on each side, more and more emotion/theological baggage was laid to rest in the sands of time. The newer generations, being raised around this issue (thus getting to hear about both sides), were being swayed more and more with Athanasius' view. Finally, after about 150-200 years, the new Church leaders could make a definitive statement about Jesus being God without upsetting too many feathers (it still took, I believe, another 200-300 years for the idea of Jesus being God pre-existently to become normative of orthodoxy for both the West and the East). Once this was in place, it was natural to see Jesus as God Himself. If Jesus is equal to the Father in every respect, then even though He is the Son of God, He is, technically, also the Father.

Basically, the Early Church Fathers wanted to make sure their salvation was secure. The question of Christology was asked because the overwhelming impression was that only God could save all humanity to this magnitude; no one, not even a divinized human, could accomplish this. Therefore, Jesus must be God. Those after the Nicene Creed took this thought up, embraced it, and simply ran with it to its obvious theological end (since it was now firmly in place rather than accepted by only some, however large that some was).

Did this answer the question, or have I confused you?

Sorry, my bad. Your two questions were great, but there's so much history behind both and they're both really involved. But still, it's my bad. :D

Did this answer the question, or have I confused you?

Sorry, my bad. Your two questions were great, but there's so much history behind both and they're both really involved. But still, it's my bad. :D

No confusion at all. It answers the question very well. Thanks.

But there is still one point which is baffling.
God worked his miracles through the prophets and they were never considered God, why would Jesus miracles alone be seen as a justification to view him as God? Jesus healed and resurrected, the prophet Elijah did so as well. Jesus prophesied. So did the prophets. Jesus claimed to represent God. So did the prophets. Jesus spoke in God's name. So did the prophets. Jesus ascended and so did Elijah.


BTW
I read also about the Eastern Emperor Theodesious and how he had been instrumental in forcing the last remnants of Arianism in the West among the Germanic tribes which had toppled the Western Roman Empire to accept the Athaneisian Trinitarian view via military action.

About Jesus' miracles, etc. I actually don't know; I never looked into it. But that's an interesting question; if I have time in the near future, I'll look into it:) However, I have an idea. The Old Testament Scriptures always had the Prophets doing miracles by the power of God; either the text directly says that God told this prophet or that prophet to do this miracle, or the text has a prophet praying to God, God answering the prayer, and working a miracle on behalf of the prophet. Either way, the Old Testament Scriptures made sure to present God as the direct source of the miracles. But not so in the New Testament. The main Gospels that the Church Fathers dealt with and knew (though they each knew one or two others on average than just these) were the Gospels we have in our New Testament today, and these Gospels were seen as the most authoritative works on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

In the Synoptic Gospels, we don't find any part of the text in any of the Gospels presenting the formula for miracles in the same way as the Old Testament did; rather, they just say that Jesus did this or that miracle. Also, we find John kind of instituting a God-Prophet formula, but not in the same way as the Old Testament Scriptures. John claims that every miracle Jesus did was inextricably connected to God, but in the sense of glorification, not source of power; John either says, "Jesus did this to demonstrate His power", usually for the sake of those attempting to believe in Him, or "Jesus did this to bring glory to God." But John is even more pointed in presenting the miracles as coming from Jesus, and not from God through Jesus. That probably left many of the Church Fathers with the impression that it was Jesus doing the miracles by His own power, and not the higher power of the God of Israel. And if that's so, they thought, He must be God in some sense because only God is the true Source of miracles and things supernatural.

But like I said, I don't really know; if what I have said is accurate, this might be only one of MANY things that contributed to this kind of thinking. I do know this, though: by the time of 100 B.C.E. and onwards (so well into the entire 1st century, both contemporaneous and after the time of Jesus) the Jewish interpretation of miracles, the power of God, and prophets and what they potentially meant for Israel and the world had drastically changed from the times of 700-500 B.C.E. I don't know exactly how it changed (historically), and I'm only familiar with two or three of the basic ways it was different (as I showed earlier). That's really more of an Intertestamental specialty (I haven't quite gotten there in my studies yet, but I will). Oh, and Elijah was never resurrected (according to the text); he was taken to heaven without seeing death:)

As for Theodosius, you're right; he did use military might. He saw himself as one of a long line of kings/ceasars who came from the line of Constantine the Great. Just as Constantine used the sword to bring people to Christ, so too Theodosius felt justified in doing this as well. After all, he reasoned, it's love for "heathen" souls and their salvation that drives him to force them to come under the banner of the Church.

:)
Hello Everyone,

Acts 7:59 says: “They went on casting stones at Stephen as he made appeal and said: ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’” Those words have raised questions in the mind of some, since the Bible says that Jehovah is the “Hearer of Prayer.” Psalm 65:2 Did Stephen really pray to Jesus? Would this indicate that Jesus is the same as God Almighty?

I personally feel that Stephen was praying to God Almighty. Please allow me to explain why I feel this way:
The King James Version says that Stephen was “calling upon God.” Understandably, then, many draw the conclusion reached by Bible commentator Matthew Henry, who said: “Stephen here prays to Christ, and so must we.” However, that viewpoint is erroneous. Why?
Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament makes this honest admission: “The word God is not in the original, and should not have been in the translation. It is in none of the ancient [manuscripts] or versions.” How did the word “God” come to be inserted into that verse? Scholar Abiel Abbot Livermore called this “an instance of the sectarian biases of the translators.” Most modern translations, therefore, eliminate this spurious reference to God.
Nevertheless, many versions do say that Stephen “prayed” to Jesus. And the footnote in the New World Translation shows that the term “made appeal” can also mean “invocation; prayer.” Would that not indicate that Jesus is Almighty God? No. Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words explains that in this setting, the original Greek word, e•pi•ka•le´o, means: “To call upon, invoke; . . . to appeal to an authority.” Paul used this same word when he declared: “I appeal to Caesar!” Acts 25:11 Appropriately, then, The New English Bible says that Stephen “called out” to Jesus.
What prompted Stephen to make such an appeal? According to Acts 7:55, 56, Stephen, “being full of holy spirit, gazed into heaven and caught sight of God’s glory and of Jesus standing at God’s right hand.” Normally, Stephen would have addressed his requests to Jehovah in the name of Jesus. But seeing the resurrected Jesus in vision, Stephen apparently felt free to appeal to him directly, saying: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Stephen knew that Jesus had been given authority to raise the dead. John 5:27-29 He therefore asked Jesus to safeguard his spirit, or life force, until the day when Jesus would raise him to immortal life in the heavens.

But this is just my humble opinion! What is your opinion on Acts 7:59?


Does Stephen’s exclamation at Acts 7:59 indicate that prayers should be directed to Jesus?

Take care,
Hope12


Jesus told his followers to pray to the Father.

Jesus is the Son, he is not the Father.

Stephen saw Jesus in vision as he was being stoned, and he was standing at the right hand of God - the Majesty on High.

There is nothing in the Bible other than the forged passage in 1 John 5.7 that supports any view other than that the father and the Son are separate individuals each with his own will and being.



M:)

Actually, it's not as contradictory as it first appears. The reason why Judaism by the time of Jesus had said there could be divine beings that were not God was to make sure that they kept a strict montheism intact (strict in the sense of conceiving of a "one God" religion in the human conception of what one means--only one thing or person that literally takes up time and space). Before the Babylonian exile, there appears to have been a thinking (that originated in Babylon/Sumer but was widespread in the ancient Middle East by about 1000 B.C.E) that there could be a multitude of divine personages, all of which could be equally gods. At the zenith of its political and pre-captivity theological formation, Israel seems to have thought of God as the divinity of Israel (He was powerful within the Israelite realm), but wasn't as powerful outside of it (this is reflected in archaeological findings from that time period and from the Psalms). Though YHWH was Israel's God, they understood that other nations had their all-powerful deity. And they thought that surely God alone was to be worshiped, but that He must, like the other pagan gods, have an entourage or something. On many Israeli tombs from 1000 B.C.E., even down to 700 B.C.E., we find inscribed on sepulchres: "To YHWH and His Asherah", which was a female Canaanite goddess that usually attended the most powerful deity in that region.

After the Babylonian captivity (around 500 B.C.E., give or take a few decades), the Jewish religious and political leaders decided to avoid any kind of idolatry. Having been raised in Babylon, away from Israel, they were told the stories about how Israel angered God by worshiping idols and other foreign gods; in God's wrath, He gave His people over to the Gentiles to teach them to stop worshiping other gods and to worship only Him. Wanting to make sure a dispersion never happened again, the leaders started to take ultra-conservative views on the one-ness of God. Before Babylon came and destroyed Israel, the people seemed to think of God's oneness (if they thought of it at all) in terms of "only", to only worship YHWH; if you worshiped YHWH's Asherah, you were seen as really worshiping YHWH, not His companion. After the destruction at the hands of Babylon, God's oneness was seen more in terms of "one", as in the number one; there is only one (1) God that we worship.

After 500 B.C.E., the tendency was to re-read Scripture; instead of reading that God personally spoke to Moses in a burning bush, it was read that God gave His words to an angel, who in turn spoke them to Moses in a burning bush; surely the Almighty would not condescend to speak one-on-one to humans, it was reasoned. By the time of the Rabbis in about 100 B.C.E., this kind of thinking had calcified. Midrash, Jewish commentary on Scripture, told the reader to interpret the stories in such a way as shown above. This was not done because the religious teachers wanted to change Scripture; they never changed the words of Scripture, they just wrote about how to interpret it for the Jewish community. This was done, rather, to help all the Jewish people avoid idolatry, thus making sure God would not scatter His people to the far corners of the world as He had done once before. Though this move was well intentioned on the part of the religious teachers and leaders, it removed the personal contact God had with people (except through prophets who were viewed as more holy than anyone and regarded with a mysterious mysticism that bordered on perceived divinity), discarded things such as God doing miracles for people and instead God sending angels to do miracles because God surely would not communicate directly with sinful human beings, and caused the people to exalt the examples and stories of the Scriptural prophets from humble, human messengers of God (as appears in the Scriptures) to superhuman mythic figures and heroes who were somehow above the daily humanness of everyone else.

Now here is where I answer your question. In the 1st century after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, this idea of Jesus being divine (in the sense of being God) because He did these things was picked up primarily by the Gentile believers, especially those not coming from the synagogue but rather from Hellenistic religions. These religions had retained this special quality of the gods doing miraculous things for people, thus proving that they were truly gods (however, I should point out that Hellenistic religions also kept their gods at a distance, so much so that they seemed to not even like people; at least the idea was still retained within Judaism that God truly loved and cared for people, even though He could not talk to them directly because of their sins).

Many of the Gentile Christians in the 1st century probably saw Jesus as God by looking at the Gospel stories through the religious environments in which they were raised. However, as these believers were continually taught the faith, it appears something must have changed; many scholars have expected that New Testament Gentile believers who saw Jesus as God would come out of the closet and say Jesus is God (not equal to but is in actuality the God of Israel, the Ancient of Days) by the beginning of the 2nd century (100 C.E.). However, as we know from history, they did not; in fact Christians, most of whom were not Jews but Gentiles after 100 C.E., were very hesitent to say that Jesus is God even up to the first quarter of the 4th century. While they felt comfortable calling Jesus the Son of God (since that was in the Gospels), they pretty much left the term open to interpretation. But as these Christians thought about Jesus' divinity throughout the 2nd and 3rd centuries, more and more of them were becoming convinced that God was to be viewed more in a trinitarian monotheistic vision. To Jews during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Christians were viewed as weird monotheists--while they held some peculiar views about the Messiah, particularly in terms of Jesus of Nazareth, these followers of the Way were pretty much monotheists who held to the monotheistic view that Judaism did.

However, Christian leaders finally decided in the early 320's C.E. to come out and make a statement claiming Jesus to be God, and not just "Son of God." This statement of belief was met with a lot of resistence, especially in the East in modern-day Turkey, Palestine, and Iraq/Iran in the fertile soil of what would later produce the Greek Orthodox Church. In fact, Christians did not take the idea of Jesus as God to be a normative part of Christian belief until about 100-150 years after the Council of Nicea (C.E. 325). Christians still struggle with it today.

It's a little difficult to understand in this little response, so if I've confused you, by all means tell me and I'll try to sort things out. But I would like to point out that a lot of the phraseology in the Nicene Creed, regardless of whether or not the composers of it knew this, to prove the Godship of Jesus is taken directly from much of Apocalyptic Jewish literature dated between 200-50 B.C.E. So that's kind of interesting:) Did this...um...answer your question?


Monotheism in the Old Testament is introduced and is not supported from its earliest passages which were openly pluralistic. In spite of efforts by later rabbis and scribed to expunge both polytheism and anthropmorphism the Old Testament remains full of references that cannot be understood in any other way that as plural as in 'elohim', and anthropomorphic, although it is more accurate to say that man is theomorphic as described in Genesis 1-3..

If you are convinced that the wording of the Nikean Creed is from Jewish Apocalyptic, I would like to see how you arrive at that conlcusion by putting forward the words and references for each. That would be of great interest.

M:)

Monotheism in the Old Testament is introduced and is not supported from its earliest passages which were openly pluralistic. In spite of efforts by later rabbis and scribed to expunge both polytheism and anthropmorphism the Old Testament remains full of references that cannot be understood in any other way that as plural as in 'elohim', and anthropomorphic, although it is more accurate to say that man is theomorphic as described in Genesis 1-3..

If you are convinced that the wording of the Nikean Creed is from Jewish Apocalyptic, I would like to see how you arrive at that conlcusion by putting forward the words and references for each. That would be of great interest.

M:)


Yeah, I know; at most, the earlierest texts of the Old Testament Scriptures support henotheism (I think I said that right), the idea that there might be many other gods, but they don't matter to us; we only worship this god/these gods.

I don't know if we can actually say that the rabbis and scribes attempted to expunge any anthropomorphic or polytheistic references from Scripture. The rabbis were the ones who interpreted Scripture; so while they may have said, "This text really means this, not what it actually says", they really weren't involved in changing the words of the texts themselves (though they were responsible for producing a lot of the Targums and Midrash on Scripture--which are really fun to read!). The scribes actually had a better chance of changing the wording of the texts, since it was their job to know intimate details of halakha and haggada and to produce copies of the Scriptures for priests and synagogues, etc. I can maybe see a few scribes changing the words during the Intertestamental Period (just because you never know), but not many; by around 400 B.C.E. the scribes had respect for the Scriptures, even if they didn't necessarily like what they had to say (they viewed the Scriptures almost as holy and divine as God Himself).

Actually, what I said was that phrases (i.e. phraseology) came from Apocalyptic Jewish literature, not the creed itself; the creed is most likely from a familiar baptismal creed used in Ceasaria by Eusebius (I'd also like to make a correction here: it seems that the literature would be not from 200-50 B.C.E. but rather B.C.E. 200 to 200 C.E.). The Church Fathers were also very familiar with both Apocalyptic Jewish and Christian literature, and even quoted it sometimes in their sermons or works. Apocalyptic Jewish literature heavily influenced Apocalyptic Christian literature and Christian thinking in general.

The phrases "begotten from the Father before the worlds", "light from light", "begotten, not made" are the closest things we have to direct quotations from those Jewish texts; I believe they come from the Wisdom of Solomon. Some (I believe) are not word-for-word quotes, but rather idea-for-idea quotes (it is very rare in Patristic writings for one to find exact quotes made, since there were always a few slightly different versions of many writings floating around and it was rare in that age to make an exact replication of the quote used--kind of makes it fun to look for sources, doesn't it?) From a cursory look at the line of thought from 100 C.E. to 300 C.E. it appears that the Christian communities appropriated Apocalyptic Jewish concepts, ideas, and words into their vocabularies to help articulate to themselves what they believed, etc. So that is why I said the Nicene Creed owes a lot of the terminology to Jewish thinking. It is very difficult, in actuallity, to pinpoint exactly which book these ideas are coming from, because there are many books that convey the same ideas. (I once did a project on that--seeing the Apocalyptic Jewish influences on Early Christian literature and trying to figure out where it's coming from; I think on average I had about 2 or 3 sources for each theological idea.)

But the Creed itself is Christian; it is basically a baptismal confession made normative for the Church Universal, and not just a single church. Did this answer your question?:)

Oh, and Elijah was never resurrected (according to the text); he was taken to heaven without seeing death:)

As for Theodosius, you're right; he did use military might. He saw himself as one of a long line of kings/ceasars who came from the line of Constantine the Great. Just as Constantine used the sword to bring people to Christ, so too Theodosius felt justified in doing this as well. After all, he reasoned, it's love for "heathen" souls and their salvation that drives him to force them to come under the banner of the Church.

Theodosius considered the Germanic tribes heretical because they
Disagreed with him in reference to Jesus. Imagine if he hadn't interfered in their worship. That would have changed the present scenario quite a bit.


John 3:13. No man hath ascended up to heaven.

About Elijah, I don't believe that he died on that occasion. But neither do I believe that his ascension was into the spirit realm or heaven itself. Why? Because further on he is mentioned as being alive and well; and having sent a written message to the king.


Excerpt:

By Garner Ted Armstrong

No MAN has ascended to the heaven of God's throne! ELIJAH was taken up, by a miracle, into the AIR, and was transported safely away to some other location. Years later Elijah was taken to a place of security, a letter was received by Jehoram, the new king in Jerusalem.

Notice! "And there came a writing to him from Elijah the prophet, saying, 'Thus saith the Eternal God of David thy father, "Because thou hast not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat thy father, nor in the ways of Asa king of Judah.. . " ' " (II Chronicles 21:12-15). Then followed a description of the horrible fate that Elijah, who was STILL ALIVE, described would occur to Jehoram!

http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/Elijah-Heaven.htm


About Jesus:

Jesus prayed before performing miracles. If indeed the power was from himself then prayer for assistance would have been unnecessary.

Jesus prayed before healing the crowds.. .

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (NIV) Mark 1:35

Jesus prayed before He fed over 5,000 people.. .

Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. (NIV) Mark 6:41

Jesus prayed before healing the man who was deaf and mute.. .

He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!"). (NIV) Mark 7:34

Jesus prayed before bringing the dead back to life.. .

So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me." 43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" (NIV) John 11:41-43

http://www.mostmerciful.com/notgod--1-7.htm


Here is another issue that puzzles me about Jesus being seen as God himself.
It necessitates that we call the Israelites misguided, confused, misinformed, duped for centuries while at the same time admitting that their prophets were inspired of God and conveyed accurate knowledge recorded for mankind's benefit.

BTW

The magic practicing priests performed the same miracles Moses was performing up to a point. Also, Jesus tells us that there would be those claiming to be his followers who would perform miracles and yet they would be evil. So all miraculous works are not necessarily of God.

For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible. (Mat 24:24)

Theodosius: Ironically, it was the religious influence of what would later be known as the Greek Orthodox Church (which Theodosius was a member of) who converted the Germanic tribes to convert to Arian Christianity in the first place.

Elijah: When you look at II Chr. 21:12-15 and II Kgs. 2:1-12, you will notice the two texts are written by two different authors (primarily given away by the way each text tells the story). Many scholars think II Kings is much older than II Chronicles, so the writer of Chronicles could have gotten things wrong; or he could have known of a story about Elijah and Jehoram that the author of Kings didn't know about; or the story about Elijah in II Kings was made up. Whatever the point, we don't really know which is true (though most Jews and Christians have thought the II Chr. Story happened first and the II Kgs story is the end of Elijah's ministry/existence on earth). When you look at the stories side-by-side, there are many major differences in each story, most notably the chronology. II Kings has Ahaziah being king of Judah, then his brother Jehoram; but II Chronicles has Jehoram becoming king of Judah, then killing his brothers, one of which is Ahaziah. Now, who was king first? Was Ahaziah actually a king, ever? So your story about Elijah is as good as anyone elses'.

About what Jesus said about no one ever going up to see God, like a lot of what the Old and New Testaments say, we don't exactly know what Jesus is getting at. I mean, we get His point (He is the only one who can truly reveal what God is like because He's the only one who has seen Him), but Jesus could have been exaggerating for the sake of emphasis (Moses saw God's back WHILE being alive on earth, and seeing God's back still counts as seeing God). Basically, when it comes to the "facts" of who's seen God, we don't really know what Jesus was talking about.

Jesus: There's a difference between Jesus praying to God on a regular basis and Jesus praying to God before He did miracles in order to do them. We find Jesus praying to God before doing a miracle only once--the raising of Lazarus that you pointed out. But He didn't ask for power; like I said previously, Jesus thanked God for always listening to Him and He pointed out in His prayer He was only praying right then for the sake of those listening to the prayer, not for His own sake. As for Jesus praying to God all the time, it's really no different than Caesar (who claimed to be god on earth) praying to the god Jupiter, or, when there was a king, the king of Israel praying to God, even though one of his titles was "son of God" (this at first doesn't seem like people saw the king as divine, and they didn't, but they viewed the king as being on intimate grounds with God all the time because of his position, as if the king of Israel and God played poker every night and sat up watching T.V. kind of thing).

The issue that puzzles you: Why do you think so? This is something of a fallacy. It is basically implied then that humanity is not allowed to mature, progress, or broaden their thinking; they either need to know everything now (or be able to grasp it all at once) or not know anything at all. (I realize you did not say that, nor do you probably think that, but that is the logical progression of your argument.)

So let me ask you a question? Lets suppose for the moment that you believe in the Trinity (I don't know if you do): do you think you have a handle on It? Do you think you totally and completely understand the idea of the Trinity in all its multifacted concepts and components? Because I don't, and most Christians are still wrestling with this theological idea even to this day. I think God reveals things at the pace humans in general can take them (and I think their environment has something to do with it, too); otherwise, we wouldn't accept them because they didn't make sense to us and looked kind of stupid. So maybe the Trinity idea is what could be called "progressive revelation"--still real for all time, but only recently revealed because it was the right time to introduce it or (doubtful) we were ready for it:)

Hope this helped ya':D

Obviously we have to different views about the Bible.
So all we will do based on those two different assumptions is disagree.
So I'll spare you and myself the exercise in futility and end the discussion.
But thanks for your responses.

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the Devil; for God was with Him. (Acts 10:38)

BTW
I am not a Trinitarian

Others were ressurected before Jesus. Moses, and other prophets also performed miracles, one even ressurected the dead as did the Apostle Paul. The prophets also had foreknowledge. So why isn't this divinity criterion applicable to them as well?


It is necessary to make the distinction between those raised from the dead, such as the widow's son, Lazarus, etc. and those who are resurrected.

Those raised from the dead continued to live out their lives until they died. That is, after they had been 'raised,' they were still mortal and subject to death, whereas those who are resurrected are raised to a new life, eternal life, everlasting life, and are immortal, which means that death has no more claim on them.

Prophets and other divinely appointed servants of God, such as apostles, performed miracles because the authority and power of God was given to them by divine commission, but Almighty God performs miracle by his own power, and the Son of God Jesus Christ acts for the Father - his God, and our God, and his Farher and our Father - by divine investiture of authority because Jesus the Son of God serves the Father. Jesus is Lord because God has made him Lord, and God is Lord because he is Lord.

'Lord' does not mean 'God' but is a title showing the Lordshiop of God and at other times the Lordship of Jesus.





M:)



.


Obviously we have to different views about the Bible.
So all we will do based on those two different assumptions is disagree.
So I'll spare you and myself the exercise in futility and end the discussion.
But thanx for your responses.

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the Devil; for God was with Him. (Acts 10:38)

BTW
I am not a Trinitarian


The Trinitarian position is inconsistent with biblical teaching. There is no passage in the Bible that declares or expresses Trinitarian teachings apart from the Johannine Comma, which is a forged interpolation.




M:)




But there is still one point which is baffling.
God worked his miracles through the prophets and they were never considered God, why would Jesus miracles alone be seen as a justification to view him as God? Jesus healed and ressurected, the prophet Elijah did so as well. Jesus prophesied. So did the prophets. Jesus claimed to represent God. So did the prophets. Jesus spoke in God's name. So did the prophets. Jesus ascended and so did Elijah.





Jesus ascended into heaven after his resurrection, and Elijah ascended before his death. The process of assumption into heaven before death is addressed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:51- 52:

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

Paul infers without elaboration that Christian disciples will be blessed not to "taste of death" but to undergo the necessary change from miortality to immortality as in the "twinkling of an eye."

This change from mortality to immortality, though almost instantaneous, is both a death and a resurrection. Thus, translated beings, as we might dascribe them, do not suffer death as we normally define it, meaning the separation of body and spirit; nor do they receive a resurrection as we ordinarily describe it, meaning that the body rises from the dust and the spirit enters again into its fleshly home. But they do pass through death and are changed from mortality to immortality, in the eternal sense, and they thus both die and are resurrected in the eternal sense.

This is why Paul wrote: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed"

Between life and death there is only the twinkling of an eye, only a breath of air in the lungs of a man, only an eternal spirit in its temple of earth's clay. The spirit steps out of the body to live in another realm, and we call it death. Jesus died of his own will and choice; his spirit laid down its temporal body of flesh and blood and chose to live in an unembodied state in the realm of the departed.

Jesus gave up the spirit or ghost and entered the paradise of God. He was as other men in that his spirit went to live in a spirit world to await the day of his resurrection, the day when the eternal spirit would be reunited with its body, thereafter to live eternally in immortal glory, having a body of flesh and bones.

When Jesus died his mortal ministry ended and his ministry among the spirits in prison began and according to the Messianic word he "proclaim[ed] liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound" (Isa. 61:1).

It was then that his work commenced "to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house" (Isa. 42:7), and it was then that he who had suffered for our sins, the Just for the unjust, having been put to death in the flesh continued to live in the spirit, "went preached unto the spirits in prison" (1 Pet. 3:18-20).


M:)

I don't know if we can actually say that the rabbis and scribes attempted to expunge any anthropomorphic or polytheistic references from Scripture.

The Pharisaic theocracy of Judea attached more importance to the ceremonial precepts of its schools than to the sacred text on which they were based. Wherever Scripture and Tradition seemed opposed, Tradition was treated as the higher authority. Pharisaism openly proclaimed this, and set itself, as the Gospel expresses it, in the chair of Moses, displacing the great lawgiver.

`It is a greater offence,' says the Mishnah, `to teach anything contrary to the voice of the Rabbis, than to contradict Scripture itself. He who speaks contrary to Scripture, "Is not lawful to wear the Tephillin" is not to be punished as a troubler. But he who says there should be five divisions in the Totaphoth' and thus teaches differently from the Rabbis, is guilty.' `He who expounds the Scriptures in opposition to the Tradition,' says R. Eleazar, `has no share in the world to come.' The mass of Rabbinical prescriptions—not the Scripture—was regarded as the basis of religion, for the Covenant of God was declared to have been made with Israel on account of the oral Law, as it is written, "After the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel." [Ex. 34:27.] The Rabbinic view is that God knew that, in after ages, Israel would be carried away among strange people, who would copy the written Law, and therefore, he gave them the oral Law, that his will might be kept secret among themselves. Those who gave themselves to the knowledge of the Traditions `saw a great light,' for God enlightened their eyes, and showed them how they ought to act in relation to lawful and unlawful things, clean and unclean, which are not told thus fully and clearly in Scripture.

It was, the Rabbis insist, good to give one's self to the reading of the Scripture, but he who reads diligently the Traditions receives a reward from God, and he who gives himself to the Commentaries on these traditions has the greatest reward of all. `The Bible was like water, the Traditions like wine, the Commentaries on them like spiced wine.' `My son,' says the Talmud, `give more heed to the words of the Rabbis than to the words of the Law.'

The foregoing show Jewish attitudes to the documents of the Hebrew Bible that is clearly inconsistent with the view that Hebrews considered them inerrant and/or infallible, but made room for their own explanation or dismissal of them if the texts and their variants disagreed or appeared to disagree with the Traditions handed down by Rabbinical scholars. This clearly sets out Rabbis as arbiters of what was correct and what was incorrect in the corpus of sacred writings, and at least tacitly provides licence for them to change whatever they believed disagreed with current theologies.

It was, in fact, a Rabbi who first criticised the books of the Bible for their inconsistencies. That others have made changes for theological purposes is evident. That soferim made singular and common errors in textual copying is plainly evident to all but the casual reader.

No less an authority than Metzger identifies the role of rabbinical hands in altering sacred documents, all of which point out that the Hebrews did not hold the opinion that the Bible was untouchable. That should make us pause and contemplate how it came to be thought of as untouchable by Christians, and whether such a view is justified on any grounds other than those that are strictly emotional.

This view is strongly opposed by such as Professor Carl L Blomberg, an evangelical Protestant, who states: “No ecclesiastical body or individual Christian can make proclamations that are on a par with the authority of scripture […] no church, pope, or anyone else has the right to add to, supersede, or contradict the written Word of God as contained in the [Old and New] testaments.”

Yet, Blomberg's attitude perfectly resembles that of the Pharisees and others living in Palestine in the early first century. They rejected Christ and his apostles on precisely the same ground, and the Samaritans rejected Isaiah employing the same argument, because for them the scriptural canon closed with the prophet Moses. How can anyone accept the addition of scripture after Moses, but reject the writings of Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul, etc? It is richly ironic that the church and its hierarchy, including the pope, whose authority in these and other matters Blomberg rejects, who established the very canon that Blomberg now finds uniquely authoritative. While Blomberg is correct in saying that no ecclesiastical body or individual can add, supersede, or contradict what is written, he should not imply that God cannot do so.

I will add a further voice to this discussion, that of Professor Emanuel Tov, a noted authority on the text of the Hebrew Scriptures (Tov 'Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible,' Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992):

~ All of the textual witnesses of the OT differ from each other to a greater or lesser extent.
~ There does not exist any one edition of the OT that agrees in all its details with another.
~ Most of the texts – ancient and modern – which have been transmitted from one generation to the next have been corrupted in one way or another.
~ A second phenomenon pertains to corrections and changes inserted in the biblical text … Such tampering with the text is evidenced in all textual witnesses.
~ therefore, paradoxically, the soferim (scribes) and Masoretes carefully preserved a text that was already corrupted.
~ One of the postulates of biblical research is that the text preserved in the various representatives (manuscripts, editions) of what is commonly called the Masoretic Text, does not reflect the 'original text' of the biblical books in many details.
~ These [parallel sources [from Kings, Isaiah, Psalms, Samuel, etc.] are based on ancient texts which already differed from each other before they were incorporated into the biblical books, and which underwent changes after they were transmitted from one generation to the next as part of the biblical books.
~ Septuagint is a Jewish translation which was made mainly in Alexandria. Its Hebrew sources different greatly from the other textual witnesses (Masoretic, Targums, Samaritan, Vulgate, and many of the Qumran texts) … Moreover, LXX (Septuagint) is important as a source for early exegesis, and this translation also forms the basis for many elements in the NT.
~ The importance of LXX is that it reflects a greater variety of important variants than all the other translations put together.
~ Textual recensions bear recognizable textual characteristics such as an expansionistic, abbreviating, harmonizing, Judaizing, or Christianizing tendency.
~ The theory of the division of the biblical witnesses into three recensions [Masoretic, LXX, and Samaritan] cannot be maintained …to such an extent that one can almost speak of an unlimited number of texts.
~ The question of the original text of the biblical books cannot be resolved unequivocally, since there is no solid evidence to help us decide in either direction.
~ We still have no knowledge of copies of biblical books that were written in the first stage of their textual transmissions, nor even of texts which are close to that time. … Since the centuries preceding the extant evidence presumably were marked by great textual fluidity, everything that is said about the pristine state of the biblical text must necessarily remain hypothetical.
~ Masoretic is but one witness of the biblical texts, and its original form was far from identical with the original text of the Bible as a whole.
~ As a rule [concepts of the nature of the original biblical text] are formulated as 'beliefs,' that is, a scholar [or Rabbi], as it were, believes, or does not believe, in a single original text, and such views are almost always dogmatic.
~ During textual transmission many complicated changes occurred making it now almost impossible for us to reconstruct the original form of the text.
~ Many of the pervasive changes in the biblical text, pertaining to whole sentences, sections, and books, should not be ascribed to copyists [scribes], but to earlier generations of editors who allowed themselves such massive changes in the formative stage of the biblical literature.

For example:

1. The LXX and Q versions of Jeremiah are one sixth shorter than the Masoretic, and the order of the verses has been changed which can change the whole meaning.
2. The LXX version of Joshua is between 4 and 5% shorter than the Masoretic text.
3. The story of David and Goliath is 44% shorter in the LXX.
4. The chronological information in genesis 5, 5, and 11 is quite different between the Samaritan Pentateuch, the LXX, and the Masoretic traditions.
5. The eleventh chapter of 1 Samuel is much longer in the Qumran version than in the Masoretic.

It is not that the Masoretic text triumphed over the other texts, but rather that those who fostered it probably survived the destruction of the Second Temple, which were the Rabbinic schools that were derived from Pharisees. Thus, while we can agree that we have a fairly well preserved textual tradition of the Masoretes, their tradition preserved only ONE version of the OT, which is the one accepted and edited by Rabbis following the second century of the Common Era, AFTER the completion of the NT.

Concluded in the next posting due to length - please look, upwards it is above this part. ^

M:)

To Credo - continuation of the firs part posted under+:~


Given all the textual differences manifest in the S, LXX, Q, and other pre-second century CE textual traditions, it seems impossible to claim that the Masoretic version represents the original text of the Hebrew Bible dating six or seven centuries earlier. This supports the position that the biblical texts have been significantly changed, both inadvertently and intentionally.

Bruce M Metzger ('A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament' – Stuttgart, United Bible Societies, 1975) says that the “Western text of Acts is nearly 10% longer than the form which is commonly regarded to be the original text of the book.” He also notes, “ … of the approximately five thousand Greek manuscripts of all or part of the New testament that are known today, no two agree exactly in all particulars.”

Vaganay and Ampoux's “An Introduction to New Testament Criticism” (2nd Edn. Cambridge University Press, 1991) says, “In AD 179 the secular writer Celsus stated in polemic against the Christians: 'Some believers.. . Have changed the original text of the Gospels three or four times, Or even more, with the intention of thus being able to destroy the arguments of their critics (Cited in Origen, Contra Celsium, SC, 132, 2. Significantly, Origen does not deny the existence of those changes.

In fact, Origen wrote: “It is an obvious fact today [third Century CE] that there is much diversity among the manuscripts, due either to carelessness of the scribes, or to the perverse audacity of some people in correcting the text, or again to the fact that there are those who add or delete as they please, setting themselves up as correctors.”

In his 'Matthaeum,' Origen declared: “It is therefore not possible to reconstitute with certainty the earliest text, even though there is no doubt about its having existed in written form from an early date, without a preparatory oral stage.”

He goes further in the same work: “In the period following AD 135, the recensions proliferated with a resultant textual diversity which reached a peak before 200. […] Thus between the years 150 and 250, the text of the first recensions acquired a host of new readings. They were a mixture of accidental carelessness, deliberate scribal corrections, involuntary mistakes, a translator's conscious departure from literalness, a reviser's more systematic alteration, and, not least, contamination caused by harmonising to an extent which varied in strength from place to place. All these things contributed to diversification of the text, to giving it, if one may out it, a little of the local colour of each country.”

The text of the New Testament that can be reconstructed by textual criticism, in common with the Masoretic Old Testament, is only one of many versions which existed in the third Christian cwentury. Except for a few fragments we do not know and cannot reconstruct the text of the first century.

Bart D Ehrman (The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Oxford University, 1993) says: “My thesis can be stated simply: scribes occasionally altered the words of their sacred text to make them more patently orthodox and to prevent their misuse by Christians who espoused aberrant views.

A case in point where a Christian scribe interfered with the sacred and supposedly untoucahble text is the verse at 1 John 5:7, which is the only mention in the Bible of anything remotely approaching a Trinitarian view of the Godhead.

A stunning example of deliberate textual alteration effected to move away from an anthropomorphic view of God to a non-anthropomorphic view driven by theological necessity is the tiqqúuné sóperim of the Masoretic Deuteronomy 32:8, that says that God divided the earth in some fashion according to the “sons of Israel.” But 4Q Deuteronomy and LXX 848, 10c, have “sons of God.” This variant Tov and others feel is “probably its original wording.”

Talk of a canon is still premature, because 'canon' means a standard, a rule, but there is no universally accepted canon among Christians.

Protestant, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox have more or less the same canon of scripture, with the notable exception of the Apocrypha, that the Catholics hold to , but which the Protestants abandoned after holding onto it for a long time. It could be that this is only because the imperial church of the fourth century expelled by government edict force of arms those who wanted to include other books or exclude some already chosen for inclusion. However, the similarities in the NT canon represent three branches of a single tradition of canonicity rather than three separate denominations of Christianity.

The real issue concerns some of the eastern branches of Christianity:

[ ] The Syriac Pesh-itta lacks 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and the Apocalypse of John.
[ ] Armenians include 3 Corinthians and did not include the Apocalypse until the end of the twelfth century..
[ ] The Coptic church includes two epistles of Clement.
[ ] The Ethiopian church diverges most widely, adding the Sinodos, Clement, the Book of the Covenant, and the Didascalia.

Of phrases borrowed for use in NT monographs, Nestlé Aland's editors provide hundreds of allusions and quotations in an appendix, including references to 3 Esdras, 4 Esdras, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, Tobias, Judith, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Baruch, The Epistle of Jeremiah, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon from the deuterocanonical or apocryphal works of Baruch, the Assumption of Moses, and six of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, all of which are found among the Old Testament pseudepigrapha. Perhaps it is most important to point out that Jude 1:14-15 is a quotation of 1 Enoch 1:9.

While it is arguable that the citation of these Jewish works could indicate that the borrowers considered them to be canonical, there was no evidence of any idea of a canon among the NT writers, and they freely cite several pagan sources. Perhaps in light of these revelations the rigid canon should be abandoned.

I hope you find this of interest.

M:)



.

I understand some points such as who the spirits in prison were, and what Jesus said to them differently. We also see things differently on how long the heavenly resurrection has been available, and what is meant by bondage and liberation. We also diverge on what a soul is.


I look forward to the time when no such disagreements will exist as promised by the scriptures.


Isaiah 11:9
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

Habakkuk 2:14
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

NIV

Well I guess understand on some points such as who the spirits in prison were, and what Jesus said to them differently. For example we also disagree about how long the heavenly ressurection has been available, and what is meant by bondage and liberation from it. We also diverge on what a soul is. I look forward to the time when no such disagreements will exist as promised by the scriptures.

For example..



M:)

For example ...... ?



M:)

Thanks for pointing out the error.
I originally said: "for example" and provided no example.
I corrected the grammar.

[...]In the end, the Nicene Creed resulted in something unsatisfactory for both sides. The adoptionist Christians felt like they had gotten swindled, and Athanasius and his supporters (which seemed to only be half of the bishops of Alexandria, one or two from Palestine and the Middle East, and the Bishop of Rome) felt like the Creed had not gone far enough to directly state "Jesus is God." But the Creed ended up the way it did for two reasons: 1)Athanasius was loud and obnoxious (as were his followers), and they kept putting their view before the assembly; 2)Constantine called for a quick decision, and then proceeded to say he liked Athanasius' point of view (Constantine liked the idea of a God coming down to earth as a man to save humans). So, the matter was temporarily settled. But that's why Christianity kept having so many meetings over the next 150-200 years about the divinity of Jesus.
[...]
Now we fast forward to the second reason. After the Nicene Creed, things changed. Before, the party of Athanasius and the party of Arius were trying to prove that they were right under the guise that they were doing the Church a favor. No one had ever thought about these issues as deeply or as long as either of these two men did, so many initially just watched and weighed the both men's arguments.
[...]
Basically, the Early Church Fathers wanted to make sure their salvation was secure. The question of Christology was asked because the overwhelming impression was that only God could save all humanity to this magnitude; no one, not even a divinized human, could accomplish this. Therefore, Jesus must be God. Those after the Nicene Creed took this thought up, embraced it, and simply ran with it to its obvious theological end (since it was now firmly in place rather than accepted by only some, however large that some was).

The Church was divided after Nicaea into three divisions--sees corresponding to political divisions, with headquarters at capitals--Rome, Alexandria, Antioch. The whole Church covering the entire Christian world was called "the Catholic Church," and the declarations of the creed were termed orthodox. Later, after the division of the Western and Eastern Churches, the former, the Western Church, appropriated the word "Catholic," and the latter, the Eastern Church, the word "Orthodox?

The philosophy of Arianism is pagan. "Arius tried to interpret the Christian revelation in such a way as to render it acceptable to men whose whole conception of God and of life was heathen." Arianism had its birth in the fear of Sabellianism, the doctrine that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are but one person.

But the Arian heresy did not die with the decree of excommunication and banishment of Arius and his friends. Constantine himself, after the Council had finished its work, was swayed from one side to the other of the controversy.

After Constantine's death, council after council was called to try to bring harmony into the Church. But Arianism persisted through the middle ages; it revived in England in the eighteenth century, to the great disturbance of the English Church. The basic element of the heresy is found today in the doctrine that portrays Christ as a great philosopher, as the founder of a profound code of ethics, as the supremely righteous man, but denies to him divine parentage, the Sonship of God. This doctrine now finds principal support among the liberal scholars of the Protestant Churches. It drags Christianity down to the level of paganism.

The fourth century was one of those times in Roman history when the tension of divided loyalties had become so intolerable that the world was ready for any settlement that would guarantee a measure of peace, unity, and security. The exhausted age accepted the same emergency solution that had given Rome the kingship, the consuls, and the principate. The aureum aevum of Constantine that put an end to the long reign of civil discord, as that of Augustus had done three centuries before, was formally launched with all the solemn rites and theatrical properties familiar to the Romans since the days of the fabled kings. The purpose of the gorgeous displays of Diocletian and Constantine, pagan and Christian, as of all royal ritual, was to produce in the beholders a religious experience which would command loyalty--of that the poets and orators give us clear assurance.

The great scaffoldings, acres of painted canvas, firmaments of tapers and torches, fabulous displays of jewels and lavish applications of gilt paint left no one in doubt that the glory of the Lord was round about. Heaven in Our Time was not something to be worked for but something to be accepted; not a hope, but a fulfillment, a stupendous miracle.

The Christian Emperor was hailed at his coronation as "dominus noster.. . Praesens et corporalis deus" (Our Lord . . . God in the flesh among us), and Christian and pagan orators vied in proclaiming the long-awaited blessed age of the prophets and the Sibyl. Like a man distracted by the claims of a hundred creditors, who turns all his bills over to a lending agency in exchange for one simple, ruinous obligation, so the men of the fourth century lumped all their conflicting loyalties together in one single, unlimited obligation to the emperor and Romanitas.

All good things became one vague and luminous whole; whatever could command loyalty was "in the composition of a specious argument.. . Artfully confounded in one splendid and brittle mass."

Caecilius in the Octavius had charged the Christians, not with contempt of any particular doctrine or practice of the ancients, but with failing to be duly impressed by the whole magnificent agglomeration of antique civilization as a fit object of veneration and awe. To this noble composite the church in the fourth century, as if to atone for her long hesitation and former aspersions, declared passionate allegiance, sustaining the traditional heathen dogma, that Roma aeterna was immortal and impregnable, long after the canny pagans themselves had given it up! Henceforward to be a Christian and to be a Roman were one and the same thing: "ubique patria, ubique lex et religio mea," cries Orosius, ".. . Quia ad Christianos et Romanos, Romanus et Christianus accedo" (my country is everywhere, everywhere my law and religion . . . because I associate with Christians and Romans as a Roman and a Christian).

When Christian writers can tell us that the distance between Roman and barbarian is as great as that between quadrupeds and bipeds, or that the laws of barbarian nations "bear the same relation to genuine law--Roman law--as a parrot's squawk to human speech," we have come a long way from the charity of the early Christian writers, who loved, like certain earlier Greek philosophers, to mock the vain and artificial distinction between "Jew and Greek, bond and free" (Galatians 3:28).

But now the church was wholly committed--dangerously committed--to the program of the Empire: Prudentius boldly throws the challenge to the pagan world, that victory of Christian Rome over the barbarians will be sure proof of the truth of the Christian religion--one can imagine the reaction in both camps when Rome was thoroughly beaten!


M:)

But how did Christians come to believe Jesus was God Himself? Well, the wording of the Nicene Creed is actually very vague when it comes to the nature of how much Jesus is God. It points out that Jesus was "begotten before all worlds" (an indication of when Jesus became God to the 4th century Christians), purposefully worded this way so that those who believed Jesus was created THEN designated as Son of God and those who believed Jesus was with God before time began could agree on the same Creed. Another phrase about Jesus' divinity is "being of one substance with the Father", which at first appears to us as a matter of fact statement that Jesus is the same being as the Father. But that's not how they saw it.

Athanasius and his supporters wanted to use the phrase "being of the SAME substance with the Father." The adoptionist bishops, who were sympathetic to Arius and his Christology didn't like using the term "same substance", so they made a compromise and said "one substance." Thus, the adoptionist Christians could interpret that to mean "being of a similar kind of substance, thus being God, but not the same substance as the Father, thus not being the exact same as the Father"; likewise, Athanasius' side could interpret it to mean "being of the exact same substance as the Father, even though He is the Son, thus being equal to the Father in every respect but not being the Father." Are you confused yet, because it took me a few months in class until I finally started to understand each side's line of thinking.


The complete identity of the interests of the church with those of the Empire in the fourth century was a revolutionary transfer of loyalty. "The imperial cult remains," writes Alföldi, "only such forms as offend Christian sentiments are a little veiled." The Church Fathers, diligently reconstructing history in retrospect, made it appear that the church and Rome had always been one. Eusebius, taking the lead, announces that Christianity and the Pax Romana "burst upon the world together as if germinated from a single seed: the twin blessing of the universe. . . . In the same moment all error and superstition were overcome and an end put to all war and hostility among the members of the human race. One Empire was set up over all the earth and all men became brothers, having one Father--God, and one Mother--true piety."

In defense of this new one-package loyalty, philosophy and theology, riding high on the fashionable tide of Neoplatonism, were Aaron and Hur upholding the emperor's hands: "God is One," says Lactantius, "therefore there cannot be more than one ruler in this world: there are not many masters in one house, not many pilots in one ship, not many leaders in one flock or herd, not many kings in one hive, nor either can there be many suns in the sky, nor many souls in one body." These are the very terms in which the Khans of Asia have been won't to teach mankind the divinity of their single rule--the West of the fourth century and after speaks with a strong Asiatic accent.

Just as all obedient subjects are embraced in a single shining community, so all outsiders are necessarily members of a single conspiracy of evil, a pestilential congregation of vapors of such uniform defilement that none can be ever so slightly tinged with its complexion without being wholly involved in its corruption. A favorite passage with the churchmen of the period was that which declared that to err in the slightest point of the law is to break the whole law. To accept the homoiousios (of similar substance) in place of the homoousios (consubstantial) is for the enlightened Hilary not just a mistake; it is the commission of every possible crime, the consummation of all that is depraved; it hands the whole world over to the Devil. By attending a discussion of the homoiousios the emperor has anathematized the holy men of Nicaea; thereby he has cursed all who have ever approved of those men; thereby he has damned his own father and set himself up as the foe of divine religion, the enemy of the saints, and a rebel against all sacred filial obligation. Nay, he is worse than a Decius or a Nero, for they fought only Christ the Son, while he fights both the Father and the Son!

Again, the emperor who tolerates heretical groups is not just a dupe and a fool, he is a monster of iniquity, guilty of adultery, theft, and murder--and that not in a mere, crass physical sense, mind you, but in a spiritual sense, which is infinitely worse. If the emperor in question refuses to make a martyr of the churchman who flings the coarsest insults in his face, that does not soften his guilt but only deepens it--he is only being kind to be cruel, because he knows that such kindness will put his priestly assailants at a disadvantage. Yet from the festering depths of unspeakable depravity there is one thing that can save the debauched and unnatural animal--by a single act, in fact, he can redeem himself and become the holiest thing on earth, an emperor under God.

And what is the miraculous prescription? It is very simple: "Fac transitum ad nos" (Come over to us)! All virtue is comprised in the fact of membership in Our Group; all vice consists in not belonging. It can be shown by a most convenient syllogism that since God is on our side we cannot show any degree of toleration for any opposition without incurring infinite guilt. In the fourth century everybody was officiously rushing to the defense of God; but John Chrysostom's pious declaration that we must avenge insults to God while patiently bearing insults to ourselves is put in its proper rhetorical light by the assumption of Bishop Hilary that an insult to himself is an insult to God. Therein lies the great usefulness of the doctrine of guilt and innocence by association that became so popular in the fourth century: one does not need to quibble; there is no such thing as being partly wrong or merely mistaken; the painful virtue of forbearance and the labor of investigation no longer embarrass the champions of one-package loyalty.

No matter how nobly and austerely heretics may live, for Augustine they are still Antichrist--all of them, equally and indiscriminately; their virtues are really vices, their virginity carnality, their reason unreason, their patience in persecution mere insolence; any cruelty shown them is not really cruelty but kindness.

John Chrysostom goes even further: the most grossly immoral atheist is actually better off than an upright believer who slips up on one point, since though both go to hell, the atheist has at least the satisfaction of having gratified his lust on earth. Why not? Is not heresy in any degree a crime against God? And is not any crime against God an infinite sin?

The insidious thing about such immoral conclusions is that they are quite logical. The cruelty of the times, says Alföldi, "cannot fully be explained by the corruption of the age; . . . the spirit of the fourth century has its part to play. The victory of abstract ways of thinking, the universal triumph of theory, knows no half-measures; punishment, like everything else, must be a hundred per cent, but even this seems inadequate."


M:)

Hello Credo,

I enjoyed reading your comments and I thought about what you wrote but still another question comes to my mind.

If we are to pray to Jesus, why did Jesus pray to his Father? If Jesus is Almighty God. In fact Jesus himself taught his disciples how to pray at Matthew 6: 9-10, Take note:
Matthew 6:9-10 (New King James Version)
9 In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
My question is that if we should pray to Jesus, why did Jesus teach his disciples to pray to the Father heaven? If We are to pray to Jesus , Jesus was not in heaven but Jesus stated we are to pray “In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven, “ How could we pray to Jesus who was on earth at that time? Also would Jesus pray to himself at other times shown to us in the scriptures.

Please take note that I am quoting from the New King James Version of the Bible:

Also before Jesus was killed notice some of the events on that last night of his earthly life.
John 17-18:1 (New King James Version)
Notice how Jesus Prays for Himself'
1 Jesus spoke these words, lifted His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should[a] give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

Here is this scripture we are told that late in the evening, perhaps past midnight, Jesus says a memorable prayer, after which they sing songs of praise to his Father. . Then, by the light of a full moon, they make their way out of the city and across the Kidron Valley.John 17:1–18:1.

Now again “Why would Jesus pray to himself if we are to pray to him?” Also if Jesus is God Almighty as some claim, why would he pray to himself? Confusing isn't it?

Then notice when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane:
A short while later, Jesus and the apostles arrive at the garden of Gethsemane. Leaving eight of the apostles at the entrance of the garden, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John farther in among the olive trees. “My soul is deeply grieved, even to death,” he tells the three. “Stay here and keep on the watch.”—Mark 14:33, 34.
The three apostles wait while Jesus goes deeper into the garden to pray. With strong outcries and tears, he pleads: “Father, if you wish, remove this cup from me.” Immense responsibility rests on Jesus' shoulders. How distressing it is for him to think of what his Father's enemies will say when His only-begotten Son is impaled as though he were a criminal! Even more agonizing to Jesus is the thought of the reproach that would be heaped on his dear heavenly Father if he failed this excruciating test. Jesus prays so earnestly and gets into such an agony that his sweat becomes as drops of blood falling to the ground.
Notice how the scriptures word this:
Luke 22:42-44 (New King James Version)
42 saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” 43 Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. 44 And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.[

By now it is midmorning, possibly approaching noon. Jesus is taken outside Jerusalem to a place called Golgotha. Large nails are hammered through Jesus' hands and feet. Words cannot describe the agony as the weight of his body tears at the nail wounds he is lifted. A crowd gathers to observe Jesus and two criminals being impaled. Many speak abusively of Jesus. “Others he saved,” the chief priests and others mock, “himself he cannot save!” Even the soldiers and the two impaled criminals ridicule Jesus. Matthew 27:41-44.
Suddenly at midday, after Jesus has been dying, an eerie darkness of divine origin settles over the land for three hours. Perhaps it is this that moves the one evildoer to rebuke the other. Then, turning to Jesus, he begs: “Remember me when you get into your kingdom.” What amazing faith in the face of imminent death! “Truly I tell you today,” Jesus responds, “You will be with me in Paradise.”—Luke 23:39-43.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon, Jesus feels that his end is near. “I am thirsty,” he says. Then with a loud voice, he cries out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus can sense that his Father has, as it were, withdrawn protection from him to allow his integrity to be tested to the limit, and he quotes David's words. Someone puts a sponge soaked in sour wine to Jesus' lips. Having had some of the wine, Jesus gasps: “It has been accomplished!” Then he cries out, “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit,” bows his head, and expires.
John 19:28-30 (New King James Version)
28 After this, Jesus, knowing[a] that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” 29 Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. 30 So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.

Matthew 27:46 (New King James Version)
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”[a]

Luke 23:46 (New King James Version)
46 And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father, 'into Your hands I commit My spirit.'”[a] Having said this, He breathed His last.

Credo, I am asking this in sincerity because It does not make sense to me that we should pray to Jesus when Jesus himself prayed to His father in Heaven. Also for those who believe that Jesus is God Almighty, why would Jesus need to pray to someone else if he was God Almighty? Why would he pray to himself anyway? Was he talking to himself?

My understanding is that yes Jesus is given authority, but by God his father, who has delegated authority to his Son, just as a president would delegate authority to the vice president. But it is beyond my comprehension that Jesus the Son of God would pray to himself. We are to follow Jesus example and throughout the scriptures Jesus always prayed to his Father in Heaven, to his God and our God.
“We are to believe all the scriptures, how can one explain these scripture and still feel it is proper to pray to Jesus and not through Jesus?
Take care,
Hope12

I'm sorry I've been away for so long; studies, you know. Well Hope 12, I'm glad you've enjoyed what I've had to say (that's always nice to hear); thank you:) It's been fun reading your stuff too:D

To clear up anything I may have mis-said, I do not personally pray to Jesus as God. It is true that I am a Nicean Christian (a.k.a. Trinitarian), but I pray to the Father. The reason for this is because Jesus told us to pray to the Father in His name. While I believe Jesus is God, I also recognize that there is no direct reference in the New Testament to the divinity of Jesus (though there are many inferences in the NT, some of which make Arian Christians very uncomfortable because they can't get around the exegetical implications of those texts; the reality is that Trinitarians and Arians both have substantial amounts of evidence on their side, which is why we still have this, in my opinion, very good debate; we keep each other balanced). As well, your point is well taken: it doesn't make sense for Jesus to either be praying to Himself as God on earth or in heaven after His crucifixion/resurrection. So basically, I agree with you 100%; Trinitarian Christians, especially Evangelicals, often forget that though they feel it is appropriate to pray to Jesus because they see Him as God, there is no Scriptural command for it, and the only command conducive to this is Jesus' command to pray to the Father (with the implication being only the Father).

It is necessary to make the distinction between those raised from the dead, such as the widow's son, Lazarus, etc., and those who are resurrected..



My point was that those raised by Jesus from the dead continued to live out their lives until they died in the same way that the ones raised from the dead by the prophets did. So qualitatively these resurrections are no different from those performed by the prophets and can't be used as examples of unique miracles requiring Godship.