Jesus

[OrphanPip]

One should be careful in lumping together perspectives on the historicity of the empty tomb. Most scholars writing about it are Christian apologists. Many of those who are not, but do accept elements of the Markan account, reject the resurrection story and have alternate explanations for the historicity of the narrative.

[spencer]

get what you're saying, but there's one problem with that. If you get to pick and choose what you like and don't like as truth, then you don't have a relationship.

To have a relationship with someone means that the other person has the ability to contradict you. Boyfriends/girlfriends can tell you when you're wrong about something….so to have a relationship with God there has to be some way for Him to contradict what you want or what you're doing.

If you just pick and choose what's real or true, then you can never have a relationship with God.

It's not picking and choosing. It's exploring and discovering. I let my instincts tell me what I'm connecting with. I don't choose what I connect with, I just feel it. I don't decide what I believe in, I discover it.

I agree with you almost 100%, the exception is Christianity. Here's what I mean, if it turns out that Buddha never existed, it doesn't really change the teachings of Buddism. However Christianity teaches that Jesus was real and the entire Christian teaching of salvation by grace is absolutely dependent on that claim being true. If Jesus wasn't real, grace can't exist.

Christianity teaches that because God really did enter into human history and bear the sins of those that would come to believe in Him, we can get a "get out of jail free card." If Jesus wasn't real, or if He wasn't God, or if He didn't die on the cross….then the penalty for sin hasn't been paid, you have to earn your salvation just like the other world religions and the Christian teaching of grace would be nonsensical.

But that doesn't prove anything to be real and that's my point. I don't see the purpose in proving anything to be right or wrong when the whole point is to have faith. I don't need to be concerned with proving my beliefs as real or not because I have faith. So I don't need the proof.

[ReasonableJeff]

But just for the sake of argument let's say "only one religion" (and ignoring the many variants each religion has) can be true, how do you know yours is the only correct one when so many others believe just as strongly that theirs is the only correct one and frequently will gives reasons very much like your own?

In regard to your reference to the elephant parable. It always ends with someone who has the ultimate perspective (a seeing person or a king or buddha) informing the ones with limited perspectives (blind, etc) about the true reality. Without an ultimate, superior perspective we would have no way to distinguish true reality.

Ironically these fables give us excellent reason to believe that there really is a king, or person with the ultimate perspective who has spoken to mankind and has given us the transcendent perspective we need to know the truth. Jesus Christ is a radical figure in the history of the great religious traditions in that he is the only leader who claimed to be the one eternal God in human flesh. He knows the beginning from the end and knows the deepest religious yearnings of all people. He said definitively that there is only one God and only one source of salvation: Jesus Christ Himself. Moreover (and this is very important), Jesus did not leave us with “blind faith” as the only means to know that His claims are true. Rather, He established the truth of His claims objectively through His glorious resurrection from the dead—the central miracle of human history.

[Kiid]

Would be nice if Christians would forget about first world problems and focus on the third world problems. Imagine how many people could be feed clothed and have shouter?

[ReasonableJeff]

But I don't think that's the SPIRIT of the passage you quoted.

Hello LateBloomer,

I'm not sure that I follow you. Here's the passage again.

1 Corinthians 15:13, 17-19 (ESV) — 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

How would you interpret it, and how am I misinterpreting the spirit of it?

[ReasonableJeff]

Considering religion is mearly an embodiment of faith and a belief of powers outside ourselves that encourage morality and give believers a sense of purpose.

Actually the Bible teaches that you can't be moral. That if you try to be moral it will either end in pride or despair.

If you try to be a perfect moral person and you succeed, you end up falling into pride and looking down on those that aren't able to perform as you have. It tends to produce cold, begrudging obedience that lacks any love and is quick to become bitter when unthanked.

If you try to be a perfect moral person and fail you will eventually conclude that it’s not even possible to live that way. You begin to compromise your morals…but you notice that other people seem like they are able to pull it off...so you fake it. Even though you know you can’t live up to the standards you make it seem as if you are so that others will think that you are a “good” person. This just ends in despair; your whole morality is reduced to a sort of play that you act out and changes depending on who’s around at the time.

Jesus offers a third option. If you try to be moral, you will fail….but there is a person who was perfectly moral. He didn't fail. Jesus, although perfect, was punished as if he was the most immoral person so that we, though guilty, can be treated as innocent.

Because of Jesus taking the penalty, in full, for us, there is no more penalty…even though we continually mess up, God can see us like we've never made a mistake and like we've always obeyed.

Jesus, the only one who lead a life deserving of God's love, lost it so that we could gain it. He was cast out so that we could be brought in.

The third option is to be seen as righteous, not because we are, but because Jesus was and we are in Him.

[LateBloomer]

Hello LateBloomer,

I'm not sure that I follow you. Here's the passage again.

1 Corinthians 15:13, 17-19 (ESV) — 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

How would you interpret it, and how am I misinterpreting the spirit of it?

Gotta run, so real quick!

Some of us are DEAD (line 13) even though we're physically alive.
In the same way some of us are ASLEEP (line 18) but physically awake.

Why is dead to be taken literally but sleep is not?

See my point?

Wish I had more time...think about it.

[ReasonableJeff]

WWJD? Would Jesus REALLY focus on spreading hate, stamping out love if they're of the same gender, abusing children into conformity and telling people how to vote, or would Jesus say it's more important to stop the sexual abuse in the church, fight rape culture first and condemn rapists more than little girls who abort a rape baby, and help runaways and people who are dying of poverty and disease than being so concerned with people in love who happen to share the same gender? And if the latter, then why do so many of them fail to get it?

Just imagine how much better the world could be if all the Christians out there hurting and oppressing and abusing right now were to HELP the world instead!

Hey Pix,

Great points! You have pointed out the major flaw with our specifies…we've all been affected by sin. Also, what you are saying is the Biblical mandate for Christians, we just are terrible about following through.

Isaiah 58:1–7 (NLT) — 1 “Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast. Shout aloud! Don’t be timid. Tell my people Israel of their sins! 2 Yet they act so pious! They come to the Temple every day and seem delighted to learn all about me. They act like a righteous nation that would never abandon the laws of its God. They ask me to take action on their behalf, pretending they want to be near me. 3 ‘We have fasted before you!’ they say. ‘Why aren’t you impressed? We have been very hard on ourselves, and you don’t even notice it!’ “I will tell you why!” I respond. “It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves. Even while you fast, you keep oppressing your workers. 4 What good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling? This kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with me. 5 You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like reeds bending in the wind. You dress in burlap and cover yourselves with ashes. Is this what you call fasting? Do you really think this will please the Lord? 6 “No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. 7 Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

[ReasonableJeff]

To be honest, my main question doesn't fall with Jesus, however mine lies with the bible itself. There is this book titled the Bible. It is full of stories and lessons. Who is to say that any of that is real. It very well could be a story book, and just that. There wasn't necessarily paper back then, stories got passed from person to person making it vulnerable to change (like the game telephone). How did all of these stories and lessons, etc come about? How were they all compiled into one book? Except for in this book no one else has seen or heard from God. How could this higher power whom no one sees speak these words within the book and tell each and every different person how to live?

DISCLAIMER: Not trying to pick a fight and start trouble. These are just my own frustrations that I feel fit the topic at hand.

Hello frvrdnld,

That is a great question. To be completely honest I am only familiar (somewhat studied) on how the New Testament was compiled/preserved…and not even as studied on that as I should be. The Old Testament I am very vague on as to how the records were kept and compiled.

I know that the Jew's themselves preserved the first five books (i believe) in the Ark of the Covenant. How the rest of the books were preserved would be an interesting study.

I am sure that there are plenty of books written on this that you could get your hands on if you are curious.

[ReasonableJeff]

Most scholars writing about it are Christian apologists. Many of those who are not, but do accept elements of the Markan account, reject the resurrection story and have alternate explanations for the historicity of the narrative.

Hello OrphanPip,

You are correct, not everyone that accepts the empty tomb accepts the resurrection as the explanation for the empty tomb. Here are some of the most popular explanations.

The Conspiracy Hypothesis
The disciples stole the body and lied about His resurrection appearances, thus faking the resurrection.

While this was a popular theory in the eighteenth century by European deists, today however, it has been completely given up by modern scholarship.

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright sums it up like this, "if you're a first-century*Jew, and your favorite Messiah got himself crucified, then you've basically got two choices:*Either*you go home or else you get yourself a new Messiah. But the idea of stealing Jesus' corpse and saying that God had raised him from the dead is hardly one that would have entered the minds of the disciples."

The only place you really read about this theory anymore is in the popular, sensationalist press or Internet fantasies.

The Apparent Death Hypothesis

Jesus was not completely dead when He was taken dow from the cross. He revived in the tomb and escaped to convince His disciples He had risen from the dead.

Today this hypothesis has also been almost completely given up.

How would the appearance of a half-dead man desperately in need of medical attention have elicited in the*disciples*the conclusion that He was the risen Lord and conqueror of death? How would you explain the origin of the disciples belief in Jesus' resurrection, since seeing Him again would lead them to conclude merely that He hadn't died? They would not have concluded (upon seeing Him in this state) that He had gloriously risen from the dead.

The Resurrection Hypothesis

God raised Jesus from the grave.

While this at face value may seem to be the least probable explanation, if God exists, this hypothesis seems quite probable especially given the life that Jesus lived and the claims that He made.

This theory requires only one new supposition: that God exists. Surely its rival hypotheses require many new suppositions. For example, the conspiracy hypothesis requires us to suppose that the moral character of the disciples was defective, which is certainly not implied by already existing knowledge; the apparent death hypothesis requires the supposition that the centurion's lance thrust into Jesus' side was just a superficial poke or is an unhistorical detail in the narrative, which again goes beyond existing knowledge; moreover, for the person who already believes in god, the resurrection hypothesis doesn't even introduce a new supposition.

The Conclusion

If we are able to give up a prejudice against miracles, it seems to me that the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation of the facts.