Who was Heli?

Nope, your comments distort what I have actually claimed. In a nutshell, I have claimed that The inner “spirit of Jesus” (Phillippians 1:19) is the moral consciousness rising in humans manifest as virtues. His presence in us brings order to our lives, peace to our souls, and hope for the future (ie., eternal future). That would qualify him/her as a Savior too, according to Hebrew scriptures.

“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (2 cor 13:5)

“the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Gal 5:22)

I got my eye on you, now. (Gotta watch my back.) :cautious:
That's why I tagged you to keep me straight.
 
C S Lewis on the Trinity (from Mere Christianity) • "God is a Being which contains three Persons while remaining one Being….The First Person is called the Father and the Second the Son. We say the First begets or produces the Second; we call it begetting, not making, because what He produces is of the same kind as Himself…. The Son exists because the Father exists: but there was never a time before the Father produced the Son….(He is always), so to speak, streaming forth from the Father, like light from a lamp… or thoughts from a mind. He is the self-expression of the Father – what the Father has to say. And there was never a time when He was not saying it….Much the most important thing to know is that it is a relationship of love. The Father delights in the Son; the Son looks up to His Father….What the Christians mean by the statement "God is love" (1John 4:8) ... is that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else….In Christianity God is not a static thing… but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance" (pages 172-175). • The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person. I know this is almost inconceivable, but look at thus. You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the ‘spirit’ of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk about it's ‘spirit’ because the individual members, when they are together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not have if they were apart. It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence. Of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person. But that is just one of the differences between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and the Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God…. This third Person is called, in technical language, the Holy Ghost or the ‘spirit’ of God. Do not be worried or surprised if you find it (or Him) rather vaguer or more shadowy in your mind than the other two. I think there is a reason why that must be so. In the Christian life you are not usually looking at Him. He is always acting through you. If you think of the Father as something ‘out there’, in front of you, and of the Son as someone standing at your side, helping you to pray, trying to turn you into another son, then you have to think of the third Person as something inside you, or behind you. Perhaps some people might find it easier to begin with the third Person and work backwards: God is love, and that love works through men – especially through the whole community of Christians. But this spirit of love, from all eternity, is a love going on between the Father and the Son” (Pages 175–176). • Spiritual (relational) Formation implications: As the Holy Spirit catches us up into “Their dance”, it makes sense that the way we relate to each other begins to approximate the way “They” relate: - “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). - Being filled w the Spirit as the prerequisite for Christian marital and family = relational life (Ephesians 5:18 - 6:9). - “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:1-3). - “I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and even as You loved me."(John 17:23)
Paragraphs would have been nice.
 
C S Lewis on the Trinity (from Mere Christianity) • "God is a Being which contains three Persons while remaining one Being….The First Person is called the Father and the Second the Son. We say the First begets or produces the Second; we call it begetting, not making, because what He produces is of the same kind as Himself…. The Son exists because the Father exists: but there was never a time before the Father produced the Son….(He is always), so to speak, streaming forth from the Father, like light from a lamp… or thoughts from a mind. He is the self-expression of the Father – what the Father has to say. And there was never a time when He was not saying it….
I read Mere Christianity but skipped the part on the Trinity.
Do you agree with the bolded part? I've never heard it put that way although Tertullian has expressed something similar in Against Praexas.
Much the most important thing to know is that it is a relationship of love. The Father delights in the Son; the Son looks up to His Father….What the Christians mean by the statement "God is love" (1John 4:8) ... is that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else….In Christianity God is not a static thing… but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance" (pages 172-175). •
This must be where Greg Boyd took the dance as an expression of perichoresis.
The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person. I know this is almost inconceivable, but look at thus. You know that among human beings, when they get together in a family, or a club, or a trade union, people talk about the ‘spirit’ of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk about it's ‘spirit’ because the individual members, when they are together, do really develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not have if they were apart. It is as if a sort of communal personality came into existence. Of course, it is not a real person: it is only rather like a person. But that is just one of the differences between God and us. What grows out of the joint life of the Father and the Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God…. This third Person is called, in technical language, the Holy Ghost or the ‘spirit’ of God.
From my perspective there is no eternal Son. God became Father and Son at the incarnation. Before the incarnation it was only God who is a spirit, the eternal Spirit. Spirit is "what type of being" he is. The Son existed as God before the incarnation. There was no dancing. No love fest going on prior to the incarnation. God created because he was alone. Why would God create beings with a free will who could disobey him, reject him. mock him, if God was a trinity living in a happy, loving relationship as three distinct, social persons?
Do not be worried or surprised if you find it (or Him) rather vaguer or more shadowy in your mind than the other two. I think there is a reason why that must be so. In the Christian life you are not usually looking at Him. He is always acting through you. If you think of the Father as something ‘out there’, in front of you, and of the Son as someone standing at your side, helping you to pray, trying to turn you into another son, then you have to think of the third Person as something inside you, or behind you. Perhaps some people might find it easier to begin with the third Person and work backwards:

I think of the Spirit as God working in me, through me and all around me because that is where and how I feel his presence.

• Spiritual (relational) Formation implications: As the Holy Spirit catches us up into “Their dance”, it makes sense that the way we relate to each other begins to approximate the way “They” relate: - “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). - Being filled w the Spirit as the prerequisite for Christian marital and family = relational life (Ephesians 5:18 - 6:9). - “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:1-3). - “I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and even as You loved me."(John 17:23)
Amen!

I understand the doctrine of the Trinity. I like that Lewis tries to explain the trinity in a way a non-academic can understand. I don't think this is a salvational issue. Do you?
 
I read Mere Christianity but skipped the part on the Trinity.
Do you agree with the bolded part?

Yes, I do.

I've never heard it put that way although Tertullian has expressed something similar in Against Praexas.

This must be where Greg Boyd took the dance as an expression of perichoresis.

From my perspective there is no eternal Son. God became Father and Son at the incarnation.

God's fatherhood is mentioned in the OT, but only insofar as Israel is mentioned as His son.

Before the incarnation it was only God who is a spirit, the eternal Spirit. Spirit is "what type of being" he is. The Son existed as God before the incarnation. There was no dancing. No love fest going on prior to the incarnation. God created because he was alone. Why would God create beings with a free will who could disobey him, reject him. mock him, if God was a trinity living in a happy, loving relationship as three distinct, social persons?


I think of the Spirit as God working in me, through me and all around me because that is where and how I feel his presence.


Amen!

I understand the doctrine of the Trinity. I like that Lewis tries to explain the trinity in a way a non-academic can understand. I don't think this is a salvational issue. Do you?

Gosh, no. I don't think salvation is conditional to giving mere mental assent to any doctrine. And I've never been that comfortable at saying I believe in the Trinity, though I do, in the sense that I believe in the divinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and I believe that the Son is Christ and Jesus is the Christ, the Word of God, the Incarnate God. I think there's a good reason we don't find the word "trinity" in scripture. It lends itself to seeing God as an abstraction, whereas He is a Living God Who can be known as such.
 
Gosh, no. I don't think salvation is conditional to giving mere mental assent to any doctrine. And I've never been that comfortable at saying I believe in the Trinity, though I do, in the sense that I believe in the divinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and I believe that the Son is Christ and Jesus is the Christ, the Word of God, the Incarnate God. I think there's a good reason we don't find the word "trinity" in scripture. It lends itself to seeing God as an abstraction, whereas He is a Living God Who can be known as such.
Just curious, when you pray, who do you pray to?

I think you would enjoy this article...maybe.

 
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Just curious, when you pray, who do you pray to?

Our Father in heaven, always recognizing Jesus at His right hand and thus occasionally addressing Him too.

I think you would enjoy this article...maybe.


Thanks, I'll read it during time outs or halftimes of the many football games I am watching tonight. Or any lulls in the action.
 
I'm not a trinitarian.
Sorry, I just assumed, and should not.

Or both
My understanding of the resurrection is when the resurrection takes place (1 Thess 4:16-18, 1 Cor 15:50-52) will be all be changed. This includes both good and evil men. Paul goes into depth about the resurrection in. 1 Cor15.
Jesus' resurrection was a change in his natural body.
I read it as replacing it.

Paul didn't see Jesus in his original material body but with his changed, resurrected spiritual body that never dies.
Agreed. Quite different to what the gospels describe.

I think we will be resurrected into spiritual bodies and those who are alive at the resurrection will have their natural bodies changed to spiritual bodies.
That is what Paul describes.

Those who are alive will have had their material bodies changed or transformed to spiritual bodies.
What is your point?
That the spiritual body is different to the original. Jesus could leave his original body like a discarded coat, as he was resurrected in a different body.

So being resurrected does not imply an empty tomb.

Everyone preaches the "jewish version". I do not know of any believer (except gnostics like @docphin5 who would claim that Jesus is not a Jew nor Jesus is not the Messiah (Christ).
The Jewish version was that Jesus was the Jewish messiah, the new king of the Jews, a man of the seed of David, appointed by god, and Jesus was raised in a spiritual body, as described in Dan 12.

The gentile version was that Jesus was born divine, the product of a virgin birth, and was raised in his original body.

Your assertions continue to be unsupported and speculative.
And yet when you ask me to support them, I do so.

The "us vs them" were Christ followers vs the Jewish leaders not the Jewish people.
But the gospel of John paints it as Jesus' followers versus all the Jews, not just the leaders.

John 2:18
The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
John 6:41
At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
John 6:52
Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

If this was written by a someone who was himself Jewish, he would not do that. The early Christians, such as Paul, still considered themselves Jews. They disagreed with other Jews, but that was all to common; the Sadducees disagreed with the Pharisees, but they both considered themselves Jews.

John was written later by someone who did not consider himself a Jew - because he was a gentile.

The Ebionites, from the link you gave me, are the Jews who's teaching Paul found to be incorrect and went to Jerusalem to meet with the leaders and apostles to discuss it. Acts 15.

The early church was frequently fighting different heresies that were trying to creep in. Many of the epistles were written in part to refute these heresies. The church leaders were in agreement and when they needed to work things out, they met together to discuss issues. Acts 15.
Jude wrote that there was a common faith.
There was a common faith because the leaders worked so hard to stamp out disagreements - or heresies.

I am not convinced the Jews in Acts 15 are the Ebionites, but it may be. There was clearly an early tension between those Jews who believed the gentiles had to be circumscribed to join the sect and those who said they did not. If you read Gal 2:11-14 it looks as though James, the leader of the early church, was in the former group, and so in disagreement with Paul. This makes me rather suspicious of Acts 15, which looks to be something of a whitewashing of what really happened.

Gal 2:11 When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?

I earlier said:
It is possible his attempts at insurrection got quietly forgotten by authors keen to sell the religion to gentiles, but I will accept that is speculation and there is no evidence to support it....
He was crucified for being the messiah, not for causing insurrection or riots against Roman rule. But it was all sedition against Rome.
The Jews were upset with the accusation that was written over Jesus' head.
Just to be clear, Jesus did not incite active sedition or an uprising against the Romans. There were not attempts at insurrection. Jesus was focused on dying for the sins of the world.
You're a chemist, correct? I find your speculations without some type of evidence uncharacteristic of someone who works in the sciences. Why is that?
The problem is that we do not know. The texts we have were all written by his supports, who were actively trying to promote Christianity to the Romans, so if Jesus did engage in insurrection, we can be pretty sure that would be erased from the record as thoroughly as those heresies. Therefore we cannot say either way. If you want to consider acknowledging that uncertainty to be "speculations" then so be.

That said, I think you are probably right. Nevertheless, he was definitely crucified for sedition; the charge sheet recorded in Mark makes that clear. Getting proclaimed messiah was reason enough for that.
 
Agreed. Quite different to what the gospels describe.

You are incorrect, as usual. The gospels say nothing that refutes Paul's depiction of a changed, resurrected spiritual body that never dies.

That the spiritual body is different to the original. Jesus could leave his original body like a discarded coat, as he was resurrected in a different body.y

Wrong. He was resurrected in a transformed body. Thus the empty tomb.

So being resurrected does not imply an empty tomb.

All four gospels tell us the tomb was empty.
 
John was written later by someone who did not consider himself a Jew - because he was a gentile.

You made that up. Do you really expect anyone, be they caroljeen, me or even another atheist to take your biased and unsupported mere declarations as factual? Why do you do that? You can't make things you want to be true, true by simply declaring them so.
 
You made that up. Do you really expect anyone, be they caroljeen, me or even another atheist to take your biased and unsupported mere declarations as factual? Why do you do that? You can't make things you want to be true, true by simply declaring them so.
He/she does it all the time. I don't think he/she is making it up but has a source. He/she should quote the source along with the arguments the source uses to support claims against the traditional church view of authorship. It's odd that the sources are not directly offered as support instead of pure speculation.
 
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