"Within the one Being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." - James R. White, The Forgotten Trinity I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who said he was a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God, but you must not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
I agree with Lewis that we are really limited to only three possibilities although JV's given a fairly decent arguement for "other." For those of you who love C. S. Lewis, you may be interested in the attending the following event at Strange Land Books On Saturday night, Feb 28th, Dr. Louis Markos of HBU will be speaking from his book Lewis Agonistes. Dr. Markos is a dynamic and much-admired speaker and teacher. Strangeland Books is a not-for-profit bookstore run by some friends of ours. It is in Ecclesia's building at 2115 Taft in Montrose, "a wonderful venue with a coffee bar, music stage and art gallery."
I love Lewis, but have always had issues with this contention, which is premised on certain assumptions about linear interpretation, moral equivication and a supposition of intent.
you rock!!! did you go to the opening ceremonies event for the Taft Arts Center last night?? i am friends with Chris Seay...the guy who started Ecclesia...we went to college together.
Lewis just says that if the Gospels say what they say, they leave you little choice. i think the Sanhedrin agreed with him. Honestly...if he equates himself with God...and he's not telling the truth...then he's no better than Wacky Waco Boy. Again...it assumes that he made those statements, but I think Lewis goes in to long stretches of explaining why he finds the Gospels to be reliable documents.
i'm not sure it does. maybe i've overlooked that??? personally, i could care less what he looked like. doesn't really concern me.
The reason I ask is because people always say it says some place in the Bible that Jesus has skin of bronze (or some dark metal) and hair of wool. If somebody can tell me the place in the book that says this I will continue and if not then I will not.
just did a search for wool at biblegateway.com....the only thing that came up was a line from Revelation that said at the 2nd coming his hair was "white as wool." under bronze it says that Jesus at the 2nd coming has "eyes like blazing fire and feet like burnished bronze."
It doesn't. Isaiah 53:2b has the following description: "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." My guess would be that He didn't stand out from others so He probably looked like anyone else in that area.
ok...why is that so important?? why is the inclusion of that the determining factor in whether or not you continue the conversation? just trying to understand.
i don't know for sure..but i'm guessing similar to what we would refer to as middle eastern?? i don't know if that's correct or not. clearly he wasn't anglo.
My guess would be that they looked fairly similar to Middle Eastern people today. Generally, olive/dark skin. Wide range of hair color, eye color and skin color. People from that region or very familiar with it can usually pinpoint where someone is from better. As MM pointed out, there is the Revelations description of Jesus but it looks to me as though this is a description of Christ glorified and not a description of what Jesus looked like on earth. MM, I heard about the Taft street event but didn't make it.
Mrs. Valdez -- I didn't get to go either. I was at a fundraiser for CareNet Pregnancy Centers. They're doing it again tonight at the Taft Arts Center at 7 p.m. Again, i can't go because today's my son's birthday.
The Discovery Channel did a good show on this acouple of years ago: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030414/jesus.html
Well because I'm starting with the simplest thing, appearance. People have arguments all the time about the race of Jesus. In most churches you find the blond, long haired white version of Jesus and this is accepted by most Christians but not everybody. So if we cannot all agree on what he exactly looked like then there's no way people will ever agree on who he is/was. It effect, it's pointless to ask I guess. I'm Agnostic MadMax, so I question pretty much everything about the Bible and any religion I'm told about because it helps me understand the faiths better in a way. It helps me gain more knowledge of things too, like in your above statement you have shown me how some people have mistconstrued the text of the book to take on meanings they want which is no different than most religious radicals.
Strangely, that was the other event I almost went to but didn't. Was it Carol Everett who was speaking?
