No one knows the Father except the Son

[Wootah]

Just for reference:

http://biblehub.com/matthew/11-27.htm

http://biblehub.com/luke/10-22.htm

Matthew 11:27 New International Version (NIV)
27 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

How can just a man put himself in such a position between you and God?

[Wootah]

Is it possible we can get back to the topic?

Talk about Buddha and sufis and charlatans in another thread.

Thus topic assumes the Bible and asks how anyone that thinks Jesus is not God is OK with Jesus saying the verse i quoted.

[Overcomer]

steveb1 wrote:

Those physical resurrection stories are only secondary accretions to an earlier non-material resurrection, of the kind Paul received.

Paul never saw a bodily Jesus. He heard a voice and saw a light, which is why he never described Jesus as a body, and on the contrary said "the Lord is a spirit" and that Jesus "became a vivifying spirit".
And even if the physical resurrection stories are historical, Jesus's "risen body" is not any kind of material flesh as it is known to anyone - because it passes through solid objects, appears and vanishes at will, and ascends to heaven on a cloud. Not really a body at all. Which fact perfectly illustrates and supports both Paul's and John's notion that "the flesh avails nothing".

"You misunderstand the Trinity." There is no Trinity, so the misunderstanding must be yours. Philippians does not say that Jesus was God, but merely that he was in "the form" of God, and then he took the "form" or "likeness" of a human, and then he took the "form" of a servant. "Form". Not the original reality, but a kind of copy.

Paul, like John, believed in a pre-existent heavenly Christ who was God's primordial agent and assisting angel, but who was not God. For all NT writers, only the Father is God, and that is why no NT prayer addresses Jesus as God. NT prayer always addresses God "through" Jesus, or "in" Jesus, or "in Jesus's name".

"There is nothing in that passage from Acts 21 that suggests the Jews he met with believed that following the Law of Moses was necessary for salvation."

Of course it does, just as does their keeping to the Torah, circumcision, kosher, and most importantly, the Temple, into which they sent Paul to perform a Nazirite Vow, which involved an animal sacrifice. If they thought Jesus's death had invalidated Judaism and the Temple/priesthood, they, like Paul, would have rejected it and preached against their native Judaism. But they didn't.

"I'm not sure where you got the idea that Jesus' disciples rejected Paul's "idea of atoning death". Peter wrote..."

As explained, I got it from Acts 21:20ff, which text rebukes and punishes Paul for preaching Torah-invalidation to his congregations, telling him of the many thousands of Christian Jews who, after Jesus's supposedly atoning death/i], were still zealous for the Law. Their zealousness for the Law would have been an impossibility if they thought that Jesus's sacrifice had replaced the Law, the Temple, and the customs.

Re: Your Peter citation. Peter did not write either of the "Petrine" Epistles, which are late documents written by anonymous writers "in Peter's name", but not by Peter himself. That Peter wrote those Epistles or that John was an eyewitness who wrote the Fourth Gospel is an antiquated fundamentalist view.

"Matthew recorded Jesus saying that he had come to give his life as a ransom in Matt. 20:28. And Mark reiterated it in Mark 10:45"

And that is because those two Gospel authors heavily borrowed from Pauline soteriology. They adopted and adapted Paul's Crossianity and inserted it into their purported "biographies" of Jesus. They did the same with Paul's Eucharist/Lord's Supper.

But even then, theirs is not a consistent view throughout the New Testament. For example, Luke's Gospel, and especially its Passion Narrative, makes no reference whatsoever to Paul's notion that Jesus's death was an atoning sacrifice. Luke knows nothing about Paul's Crossianity. So the Pauline atoning death theory is not even consistent throughout the NT.

"How does Buddha save? Does he remove the sins of humankind? Does he give people right-standing with God?"

Well, of course, you could have simply Googled basic Buddhist themes and you would have already known how the Buddhas save. Just a suggestion - if you're going to proselytize for Jesus, it's a good idea to know the religions that you are at the same time proselytizing against.

But since you asked:

1 In Buddhism, there is no God to worship, and no sin from which we must be saved. Buddha does not forgive non-existent sin; nor does he put people in right standing before a non-existent deity. Instead, the Buddha leads us not from sin, but from avidya, which means ignorance of our own Buddha Nature. The Buddha does not place us before God, but escorts us into the Dharma and into Enlightenment/Bodhi.

2 Buddha saves through his enlightening activity in the world, and by his Dharma teaching, which leads to the eternal life of Enlightenment, Bodhi, Samadhi, and Nirvana. None of which requires a God, a Son, a Holy Spirit, a sacred inspired book, miracles, or an "atoning" death.

"Buddha is a dead man."

As explained, Buddha is a living, transcendent being.

"Christ is the living God"

Christ is a heavenly being who has no body, and is God's "son", not God Himself.

"and, because of that,"

Sorry, but there is no "that".

"nobody has to spend eternity separated from God if they don't want to."

That was never an exigency to begin with. Just as there is no creator deity, no sin and no hell, an eternity spent in perdition is an impossibility. If people really want eternal life free of a bloody crucifixion, a punishing deity, and a fleshly resurrection, they can access the Buddha and his Dharma - as well as any number of spiritually transformative alternatives and "Paths".

I described Jesus' body as a glorified body. Yes, he could go through walls. But he also ate and could be touched and felt so he isn't just some spiritual entity. This is significant because it means that we, as followers of Christ, will experience the same kind of resurrection, having bodies that are glorified. That's the key word -- glorified.

There are a thousand verses that speak to the reality of the Trinity. If you want to make me believe that there is no Trinity, then you are going to have to refute each and every one.

https://irr.org/biblical-basis-of-doctrine-of-trinity

Just saying that there is no Trinity doesn't make it so.

As for the passage in Philippians 2, the Greek word for "nature" or "form" refers to the ontology of Jesus Christ. That means it states clearly that Jesus is God. Check out a Greek dictionary to see this.

I explained why Paul went through the ritual bath and it did NOT necessarily involve animal sacrifice as you claim. Consider this:

"It should be noted in passing that ceremonial “purification� did not necessarily involve atonement for personal sin. A Jewish woman had to be “purified� following the birth of a child (cf. Lev. 12:1ff; Lk. 2:22), even though the act of bearing a child is not sinful. Paul’s act of “purification,� therefore, need not suggest that he was seeking personal forgiveness by means of an animal sacrifice. Clearly that was not Paul’s purpose in this temple ritual." See here:

https://www.christiancourier.com/articl ... ple-ritual

Paul would never have sacrificed animals for any kind of atonement. And if you read that entire chapter you can see that the Jews who spoke to him made NO claim that animals had to be sacrificed. In fact, they praised Paul for bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles -- and the gospel of Jesus Christ was that he gave his life as a ransom for many in atonement for the sins of humankind. That has been understood for 2,000 years.

As to the authorship of the epistles I quoted, the style differs between 1 and 2 Peter, but bear in mind that sometimes an amanuensis was used and that could account for the difference. See here:

https://bible.org/article/authorship-second-peter

And it has been accepted that John wrote the books I attributed to him since the days of the early church fathers. There is both internal and external evidence for his authorship. And Matthew and Mark wrote the gospels that bear their names. Only recently have they been questioned, not because of any new historical evidence, but because it suits skeptics to try to discredit them and that's one of the methods they have chosen. So just saying that they didn't write what they wrote doesn't make it so. You would have to provide evidence against their authorship. See An Introduction to the New Testament by D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo that outlines the external and internal evidence for the authorship of all the books of the New Testament.

And where is your evidence that Buddha exists as a living, transcendent being? Has anybody seen him the way that hundreds saw Jesus following his resurrection?

And you didn't answer any of my questions about whether Buddha can save or empower people to overcome sin. Basically, you have given me your opinions, but I don't see anything to back them up.

Bottom line: Only Jesus saves. Buddha can't and, therefore, doesn't. So why waste time on him?

Sorry, Wootah. I just had to respond. I will bow out of this thread and leave it to you from here on.

[steveb1]

[Replying to post 22 by Overcomer]

"Just saying that there is no Trinity doesn't make it so."

Just saying that Jesus is God doesn't make it so - especially when the biblical Jesus denied that he was God.

[steveb1]

Is it possible we can get back to the topic?

Talk about Buddha and sufis and charlatans in another thread.

Thus topic assumes the Bible and asks how anyone that thinks Jesus is not God is OK with Jesus saying the verse i quoted.

Care to name any charlatans I ever mentioned?

As for the Sufi, he, like Jesus, was emptied out and then filled with God.

[steveb1]

[Replying to post 22 by Overcomer]

"And where is your evidence that Buddha exists as a living, transcendent being?"

Where is yours that Jesus is a living, transcendent being?

Ah. I thought so.

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 24 by steveb1]

All sufis are charlatans holding India back obviously.

[steveb1]

[Replying to post 24 by steveb1]

All sufis are charlatans holding India back obviously.

To the same degree that all Christians are charlatans holding the world back obviously.

As of now, I am joyfully hanging up on you.

[Elijah John]

Elijah John wrote:

In many ways it seems that Jesus was indeed, a misunderstood mystic.

Or a misunderstood Saviour, God Incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity.

A lot of people got Jesus wrong as we see in Matthew 16:

13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?�

14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.�

15 “But what about you?� he asked. “Who do you say I am?�

16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.�

17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.� 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Do you honestly believe that Peter saw Jesus as "God the Son" the second person of a Trinity?

"Son" of God" does not = "God". Nor does "Son of God" = "God the Son". I think you are taking the phrase "Son of God" much too literally, and removing the phrase from it's Jewish context.

[Elijah John]

Because Jesus was unaware of the Buddha and other enlightened sages, naturally and obviously, he could only make his divine union claims of himself.

I don't see you addressing his whole quote.

Claiming "Divine union" or "union with the Divine" is the langauge of mystics. It is not a claim that the person is God.

"Filled with God" is another way to say it. In the Judeo-Christian context, "filled with the Holy Spirit".

I see Jesus as a man filled with the Holy Spirit. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, etc. But that does not make him "God"

He, like we are called to be, was a vessel.

[marco]

All sufis are charlatans holding India back obviously.

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