Posted on 09/18/2012 11:20:37 AM PDT by Red Badger
Sorry, Charlie. The earliest doubts were NOT about his divinity. They were about his humanity. The Gnostics fullly believed in his divinity. They just couldn’t see how the divine could really be human. The Docetists, ditto. Ditto for the Sabellians and Modalists. That covers the first 200 years.
Challenges to his divinity only emerged in the 200s (Adoptionism). Belief in his divinity was there from the start, among those who believed in his Resurrection. Of course most people didn’t believe in that—they thought he was just another Jewish prophet and they WEREN’T called Christians.
Anyone who was a Christian did believe in his divinity.
The view you describe was common among 19thc Liberals. They conveniently overlooked the fact that the earliest controversies AMONG CHRISTIANS had to do with challenges to his humanity.
Inconvenient truths.
Jesus said that the foxes have holes and the birds have nests, but He didn’t have a place to lay His head. Would Jesus have had a homeless wife and children? No. That would be irresponsible and that would be a sin.
This changes nothing! i have more respect for Jesus if he could do what he did and be married! If he was married to Mary Magdaline, a widow, with a dubious past, he saved her from a life of sin. That’s something I can believe he would do. After his resurrection it was she at the empty tomb. But, there is nothing that would change a thing in his teachings, and maybe something that might explain some of the things he said. He needed to experience all of what it is to be human—that could include marriage.
You understand that I was using the word “stupid” off the cuff?
It is stoooooppppppidd for a scholar of her rank to announce this discovery while being unable or unwilling to give the provenance.
Unless she did it because she knew journolists would be too stoooooooppppppiiiiiidddddd to realize that without provenance, the piece of papyrus is useless for making any sort of claim about “what happened back then.”
Without provenance, there’s no way to know whether it comes from Gnostic circles or orthodox circles. If from Gnostic circles, then it’s ho-hum, nothing new.
Of course, she simply assumes that it is Gnostic (but didn’t bother to mention the implication of that to the journolists). Since she and her ilk have for 40 years now simply lumped Gnostic and orthodox texts together in a giant heap as equally authoritative historical sources, to her the (s)crap is momentous.
But only because she’s made that prior move (which has no historical basis, rather arises from the now discredited Bauer thesis).
So a “fourth century” scrap of papyrus that refers to Christ as married, refutes entire gospels that date to the 1st & 2nd century that do not?
My gardener's name is Jesus and he's married.
If it turns out He was married and even had kids, how would it be a negative on His ministry or Divinity? It would not shake my faith in the slightest.
Actually, early heretics were completely willing to accept Christ as completely divine, but they had a lot of trouble with the concept that He could be fully man as well. The divine was thought to be so above mankind that God would never condescend to be a man.
Variations of this gnostic heresy were the predominant alternative to orthodoxy until just before the first Council of Nicea. Then the Arian heresy with its claim that "there was a time when the Son was not" tilted away from the full divinity of Christ. That error was condemned in the Council, although it took quite some time for orthodoxy to completely triumph over Arianism.
“you don’t get to have an endowed chair at Harvard Divinity School if you are stupid.”
Actually, you do. Liberal professors are often incredibly stupid in very simple matters of how we know things, historical evidence etc. They read only the NYTimes. They have a more narrow worldview and more narrow exposure to diverse opinions and ideas than does your average auto mechanic.
I know. I’ve spent 40 years in Academia. I’ve seen more stupid than you’ll ever want to imagine.
It really makes no difference whether Jesus was married or not.
He’s still the Firstborn Son of God, and died on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins................
Define your terms, and be honest, if possible!
When Dr. Soundingbrass says that he believes that this fragment is “authentic” he can only TRUTHFULLY mean that he thinks the papyrus is very old, and comes from the period in question. And Professor Tinklingcymbal’s SAYING that this proves anything in regard to Christ’s being married merely illustrates HER perverted mindset.
IMHO, this is just one more titillating (to some) relic, either from the many apochryphal writings, “epistles”, etc., or from some individual from that era who had either looney tunes or perhaps sinister reasons for writing this kind of stuff.
And although the Coptics have a right to imbibe whatever flavor religeous elixer they can stir together; real thinking believers in Jesus Christ, God The Son, Third Person of The Holy Trinity and Savior of the world, are under no obligation to drink any of it!
It just means that he suffered a little more than we thought..........
Jesus said, “There is no marriage in Heaven.”
That’s why they call it ‘Heaven’................
Mea culpa! Second Person of The Holy Trinity. Please forgive my outrageous mistake.
Mea culpa! Second Person of The Holy Trinity. Please forgive my outrageous mistake.
Okay we’re going to have one papyrus fragment be the thing we have to believe over the thousands of other copies and larger fragments of other books?
Please. These artices are done by people who don’t believe anything in the bible at all and only want to shake the faith of others as their goal.
The earliest known copies of The Gospels are not from the 1st and 2nd centuries. They also come from the same time frame............
Try Matt 19 and “eunuchs for the kingdom”
Marriage is not essential to full humanity. There’s even a Jewish tradition of voluntary celibacy for prophets (”schools of the prophets” in the OT). That Jesus was not married is not of no significance. He was married to the Ecclesia, his Bride. Ephesians 5.
Without some people living voluntary celibacy marriage is not fully understood. Without some people being married, voluntary celibacy is not fully understood. The two are interrelated.
If the universal Christian claim that Jesus was unmarried were simply overturned, you’d have 2000 years of Christian belief proved to have been false. If the Church got all that wrong all these years, based on a scrap of papyrus whose owner won’t even reveal where he acquired it, then what else did the Church get wrong all these years?
Your casual willingness to abandon 2000 years of belief is breathtaking.
No problem, that’s not my belief anyway.............
It really makes no real difference whether he was or wasn’t married............
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