62 And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”* * Mark was huddled in the corner under a bunch of rabbi robes taking careful dictation during this event. I find this passage clearly fiction. The meeting with Pilate falls into a same category.
"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. —John 14:16-17 "All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." —John 14:25-26
"The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether it be Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink." —1 Corinthians 12:12-13 "Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come." —2 Corinthians 1:21-22
You conclude that Jesus was a sinner because everyone else baptized by John the Baptist was a sinner. You conclude that Jesus confessed his sins and repented prior to being baptized, "just like everyone else." You ignore the fact that John the Baptist singled out one person who was different than anyone else! And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." —Mark 1:6-8 John the Baptist said that a specific person "will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." Jesus was that person. Only God can baptize with the Holy Spirit. Jesus was God. Jesus is God. Human beings baptize with water. Human beings baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ baptizes with the Holy Spirit. "Christian baptism, which has the form of a ceremonial washing (like John's pre-Christian) baptism, is a sign from God that signifies inward cleansing and remission of sins, Spirit-wrought regeneration and new life, and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit as God's seal testifying and guaranteeing that one will be kept safe in Christ forever." —Concise Theology, J. I. Packer Paul wrote that God "saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life" (Titus 3:4). And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." —Mark 1:6-8 "But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life." —Titus 3:4
The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels examined by the Rules of Evidence by Simon Greenleaf S.30 The great truths which the apostles declared were that Christ had risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in him, could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, not only under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling terrors that can be presented to the mind of man. Their master had recently perished as a malefactor, by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were against the teachings of his disciples. Propagating their new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, opposition, revilings, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments, and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured undismayed, nay rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unblenching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted, and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melencholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not actually Jesus risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated for them to discover and disavow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony of a good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or the life to come. S.47 There are other internal marks of truths in the narratives of the evangelists, which, however, need here be only alluded to, as they have been treated with great fullness and force by able writers, whose works are familiar to all. Among these may be mentioned the nakedness of the narratives; the absence of all parade by the writers about their own integrity, of all anxiety to be believed, or to impress others with a good opinion of themselves or their cause, of all the marks of wonder, or of desire to excite astonishment at the greatness of the events they record, and of all appearance of design to exalt their master. On the contrary, there is apparently the most perfect indifference on their part whether they are believed or not; or rather, the evident consciousness that they are recording events well known to all in their country and times, and undoubtedly to be believed, like any other matter of public history, by readers in all other countries and ages. Their simplicity and artlessness, also, should not pass unnoticed, in readily stating even those things most disparaging to themselves. Their want of faith in their master, their dullness of apprehension of his teachings, their strifes for preeminence, their desertion of the Lord in his hour of extreme peril; these and many other incidents tending directly to their own dishonor are nevertheless set down with all the directness and sincerity of truth, as men writing under the deepest sense of responsibility to God.
There are a lot of things that tend to lend credibility to the resurrection. Here are a few I've recently come upon: 1. Christ's death finds its way into 10 extra-Biblical historical sources including the Talmud and some historical work by Tacitus. 2. There is an easy way to disprove it...drag his body from the freaking tomb through the streets. The Romans and the Temple Authority had every ability in the world to do this, and there's not a single account of it. I'm thinking that might have put some stunted growth on a faith that believed so heavily in the resurrection. 3. Every historical account we have says that the Romans and Temple Authorites never questioned the empty tomb...they merely sought to explain it away by saying, "his believers dragged the body away while the Roman guards were sleeping." Interesting, but tombs had pretty heavy stones over them...and it would be real difficult to sleep through that...and then if you slept through it, it would be real difficult to call yourself an eyewitness to their dragging of the body away. We can say, "there is no truth." Que est veritas. But these aren't theological pie in the sky things here...these are factual assertions. They either happened or they didn't. Jesus Christ was either crucified, dead and buried, and came back to life...or he didn't. What I ate for lunch yesterday isn't up for debate. I know what I had...those who ate with me know what I had. That may get muddied up over many years....and someone later may say, "no...he didn't even eat lunch that day!"...but it is still a question of fact...not of interpretation. The interpretation comes when we seek to draw conclusions from those facts.
Another thought.... God is real to me. He's experential. I know Him. We can argue that I'm deluding myself...that I'm talking to my own sub-concious...but I've seen evidence of Him. I've seen the power of prayer in ridiculous ways. I've seen people transformed. I've seen things happen that can't be explained. And I live among a creation. At some point this can't be merely about debate. At some point, if you're even remotely serious about this discussion, you must be left with the possiblity that there is a God. And then, if there is, what the implications of that might be. And then, what the implications might be if the Christian God is true. If He truly exists. There was a group of alcoholics and families of alcoholics in Pennsylvania going through group counseling. Their leader said, "listen...we've heard about this prayer stuff. i know most of you don't believe in that garbage. but some people clearly do...i know people who do and they claim it works...so maybe we should just give it a try and see what happens. see if any difference is made if we sincerely pray, even with some doubt or disbelief. But let's be honest with each other if it works" the changes in the people were amazing....one lady said she had been trying to get her husband to stop drinking for 25 years, with little effort from him at all...she attended these counseling sessions entirely on her own, completely alone. she began to pray and within a week the man said, "listen...i've got to get help..." and he did and has been sober since. And there were countless other stories about this group that had been bounded together for years around this disease only to find it unlocked. My point is...the God I believe in seeks relationship. I backed away from this website for a little while, in large part because I felt myself becoming a God arguer instead of a God worshipper....instead of a disciple, i was like a lawyer. And there is absolutely a place for that. Apologetics are important. But that's not the measure of my faith. And it's not the measure of the God I know. I sincerely, sincerely, sincerely hope that those of you who don't know Him will someday. Not so I can say, "see, I was right...I told you so...nah nah nah nah!!!" But because I've seen what He's done in my life....and I've seen what He's done in the lives of others I know. And it's so real to me.
KB7, can you give me a Reader's Digest's summary in your own words of what this article means and how it applies to our discussion?
In other words, you can only use Mark to argue your point (as you pointed out to KB7 several times), unless it points to the deity of Jesus. Then you can't use Mark either. Are you saying that something can't possibly be true unless it was recorded by an eyewitness? Clearly, you don't. Otherwise, you wouldn't have posted this: http://bbs2.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76479 Can David Corn accurately write about things he didn't witness first hand, but Mark can't? Your use of old critical scholarship is interesting. You act as though the critical scholars wrote "gospel," evidently feeling comfortable stating their conclusions (like "Paul did not write Titus") without giving reasons for this belief. "It can't be true because I don't believe it." That's pretty much the extent of the proof you offered. If you want to aruge points, that's great. In fact, it can be helpful. But I see no value in merely stating conclusions. That's all you did in the post above.
In other words, you can only use Mark to argue your point (as you pointed out to KB7 several times), unless it points to the deity of Jesus. Then you can't use Mark either. I believe that any arguments made on what we see written in any of the Gospels is skating on very thin ice. We do not know the textual history on any of these documents well enough to know how many authors contributed to each and when. Besides the question of autheticity, much of what is seen in Mark is clearly literature. (I would like to go into that in more detail in another post, but can do so here if you like.) Conversations Jesus had outside of the witness of any of his followers can not be trusted on face value to be historical. If one chooses to believe these conversations actually happened ver batum, one must concede that this is a belief statement. (I do not mean this pejoratively.) The reason that I am using quotes from Mark in this post, even though I find them apocryphal, is to show Sane that Jesus's divinity in the NT was not cut and dried. I have tried to demonstrate that an unprejudical reading of Mark 1 and 10 shows that the author(s) of Mark did not consider Jesus divine.
Are you saying that something can't possibly be true unless it was recorded by an eyewitness? Clearly, you don't. Otherwise, you wouldn't have posted this: ... David Corn from his writings is not creating a worldwide religion and all that entails. Corn obviously is a political hack with an axe to grind; thus, I add "From The Left" to the title of that article. Corn's source material, Woodward's book, can be cross-checked to see that Corn has got his facts straight. The same can not be said about the Gospel of Mark.
Bible scholars can only reach a consensus on 7 of the 13 epistles accredited to Paul. Titus is not one of them. I can provide a reference if you like.
Just want to let you know that I didn't just dissapear, am reading every single post, and very much appreciate this debate. I don't think it will ever be concluded that one of you guys is right, because both sides leave a margin for error, however, I truly admire the sheer amount of info you've gathered about a religion other than yours (right?). I just want to ask one thing though that I caught (to KB, Traj and No Worries): Wouldn't this mean that EVERYONE is the Son of God? Isn't Jesus the Son of God though? I also want to note that I feel Christianity erlies on a lot of assumptions. They may be true, but a lot of t deals with assumption.
I went to a Southern Baptist Church (conservative Protestant Christianity) while growing up. I did not belief everything they taught me then and believe less of them now. If I had to categorize myself, I'm in the Jesse Ventura wing of the Christain faith, barely acceptable to even Universal Unitarians My current interest in this topic, started a couple of years back. On whim, I looked into the King Author myth. I had previously read a England History book and seen several King Author movies. While searching the web about the King Author myth, I ran across a bunch of Jesus Myth articles too. I only read a little then before moving on. Next I got into a heated debate at work with someone over what AD stood for. This lead to another web search, proving me right btw Something I tripped over in a pro-bible web site was that from the four Gospels there were two possible birthdates for JC. At this time, I had long since given up the belief of biblical inerrancy, but it really amazed me that something so fundamental to Christianity (the birth of Jesus) could have two conflicting accounts in the Bible and still not get the Christian fundies off of the inerrancy scent. This time I pursued the Jesus myth topic a little more thoroughly. I found a great body of work supporting these theories. And some of the work was from liberal Bible scholar (Jesus Seminar) who generally concluded that there is very little history in the four Gospels. These liberal scholars still believe in Jesus; it is just that they concede very little can be known of him from the Biblical accounts. The secular scholars needless to say were even less kind to the Jesus Myth. The bulk of what is in the OT and NT came from older, pre-exisitng sources. Some of the stories appear to be passed around from India to Egypt and back, all before making its way into the OT/NT.
Sane, I'm glad to see you're still out there. Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is God. Jesus is God the Son. Christians are God's adopted children. "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father.' The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." —Romans 8:15-17 Read the following explanation by J. I. Packer. If you have any questions, I'll try to answer them. ADOPTION GOD MAKES HIS PEOPLE HIS CHILDREN "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law . . . so that we might receive adoption as children." —Galatians 4:4-5 (NRSV) Paul teaches that the gift of justification (i.e., present acceptance by God as the world's Judge) brings with it the status of sonship by adoption (i.e., permanent intimacy with God as one's heavenly Father, Gal. 3:26; 4:4-7). In Paul's world, adoption was ordinarily of young adult males of good character to become heirs and maintain the family name of the childless rich. Paul however, proclaims God's gracious adoption of persons of bad character to become "heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ" (Rom 8:17). Justification is the basic blessing, on which adoption is founded; adoption is the crowning blessing, to which justification clears the way. Adopted status belongs to all who receive Christ (John 1:12). The adopted status of believers means that in and through Christ God loves them as he loves his only-begotten Son and will share with them all the glory that is Christ's now (Rom. 8:17, 38-39). Here and now, believers are under God's fatherly care and discipline (Matt. 6:26; Heb. 12:5-11) and are directed, especially by Jesus, to live their whole lives in light of the knowledge that God is their Father in heaven. They are to pray to him as such (Matt. 6:5-13), imitate him as such (Matt. 5:44-48; 6:12, 14-15; 18:21-35; Eph. 4:32-5:2), and trust him as such (Matt. 6:25-34), thus expressing the filial instinct that the Holy Spirit has implanted in them (Rom. 8:15-17; Gal. 4:6). Adoption and regeneration accompany each other as two aspects of the salvation that Christ brings (John 1:12-13), but they are tio be distinguished. Adoption is the bestowal of a relationship, while regeneration is the transformation of our moral nature. Yet the link is evident; God wants his children, whom he loves, to bear his character, and takes action accordingly. —Concise Theology, J. I. Packer
