If spirited Irish thinks I have diluted the topic then I’ll open my own thread. Of course, I’ll be copying & pasting from this thread.
I consider the denial of the Deity of Christ to be a damnable heresy. I am also showing FR that some of those who defend such heresy claim to uphold science, but they have no respect for the science behind the historicity of Jesus. They are science hypocrites at the least, damnable heretics at the most.
Spoken like a real religious believer, and thus negating any and all claims that your views have something to do with scholarship or history.
If spirited Irish thinks I have diluted the topic then I’ll open my own thread. “
Spirited: From the start, BroJoeK has been attributing thoughts and intentions to other posters that are not their own but his. That said, I do not now nor have I ever thought that you have been diluting the topic, so please carry on as you have been.
kevmo: I consider the denial of the Deity of Christ to be a damnable heresy
Kevmo’s stance is entirely scriptural:
“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
Tolkien’s masterpiece, the “Silmarillion” is the book of beginnings, the all-important Genesis account that sets the stage for all that follows in the towers trilogy.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and there was nothing made that was not made by Him.”
Just as the Genesis account opens with creation ex nihilo, so does Tolkien’s account. In the beginning was Illuvatar, the Word who was, is, and always will be.
Illuvatar ‘thought,’ then Spoke, or Sang, according to Tolkien and CS Lewis in his Magicians Nephew. As Illuvatar sings He instantaneously creates the things of His thought, thus all things are created instantaneously after their own kind.
Returning to Genesis, we are told that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. God Incarnate is Jesus Christ, God made flesh, the fulfillment and perfection of all prophecy from the very beginning with Adam and Even who received the knowledge of a coming Redeemer as well as the knowledge that the world would be destroyed two times, once by water, once by fire. Thus Jesus Christ in His office as prophet is the Angel of Prophecy who spoke to Moses in the desert, revealing to him the creation account.
Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,
“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).
Proud, willful humans deny the deity of Jesus Christ for many reasons, not the least of which is their stubborn refusal to admit their sinful condition together with their arrogant assumption that God is like them. Thus if He thinks at all, it must be like men think, an evolving process that begins with one word, then another and another, each word following another. Because of the way men must think and speak, they are comfortable with evolutionary process, thus they limit God with their inventions:, i.e.,evolutionary theories.
To reject the deity of Jesus is to reject fallen man’s dire need of our Saviour Jesus Christ, the Physician of our souls. All who deny the deity of Jesus Christ deny the Physician thus are anti-Christs who deny His prescription and assign themselves to outer darkness.
Vladimir Soloviev (1850-1900) was a brilliant Russian philosopher and theologian. In a gripping novel, “A Short Tale of the Antichrist” Soloviev offers an amazingly accurate glimpse into the mind of the super-man who will become the Antichrist as well as illustrating the real obstacle to salvation, the refusal by proud, willful men to recognize and admit to their sinful condition.
Prior to his transformation by Satan, Soloviev describes the super-man as outwardly just, but within he is full of pride and is morally reprehensible:
“.... He believes in God but loves nobody but himself. His relationship with Christ was quickly defined as one of superiority (for he will never) bow before Him like the most stupid of Christians (nor) mutter senselessly....’Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’....’I, the bright genius, the superman! No, never!” (The Wrath of God: The Days of Antichrist, Livio Fanzaga, pp. 39-40)
As the super-mans’ spiritual fall progresses, or evolves downward, instead of the former cold rational respect for Jesus Christ God Incarnate:
“.....there was born and grew in his heart, first, a kind of terror, and then a burning, choking and corroding envy and furious breath-taking hatred.” Devoured with envy of Jesus Christ he cries out “He rotted in the tomb, rotted like the lowest...” (ibid, pp. 40-41)
This is the moment the Evil One has been waiting for. He openly approaches the super-man and possesses him:
“He saw those piercing eyes and heard...a strange voice, toneless...stifled, and yet clear, metallic and absolutely soulless as though coming from a phonograph.” Satan pours out his spirit, saying, “I ask nothing of you, and I will help you for your own sake...Receive my spirit...it gives birth to you in power. At these words...the superman’s lips opened of themselves, two piercing eyes came quite close to his face, and he felt a sharp, frozen stream enter into him and fill his whole being. And at the same time he was conscious of a wonderful strength, energy, lightness and rapture.” (p. 43)
Soloviev masterfully portrays a striking contrast between the apostles of Christ and the Antichrist. The former receive the power of the living Word and are full of wisdom, virtue, truth, and courage while the latter receives the power of the devil and is full of nihilistic pride, lies, burning envy, murderous hate, blasphemy, cursing, resentment, deception, covetousness, and perversion.
The Antichrist, as described by Soloviev, suffers the same massively inflated pride and envy that transformed Lucifer into the devil. This same pride and envy animated Cain, Judas, Nimrod, the pantheist sorcerer Hegel, the occult Luciferian Illuminati who planned and instigated the bloody French Revolution, as well as Madame Blavatsky, Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Teilhard de Chardin, the West’s “God is dead” theologians, Crossan and the Jesus Seminar gnostics and too many others to be named.
In the end, Hell is the choice of proud, willful men who refuse to recognize and admit to their sinful condition. In affirmation, CS Lewis writes:
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell chose it.”
FRiend, I'd say these words prove you are a poser for pretending your arguments here have anything to do with real history.
In fact, you are simply arguing to "prove" that your own religious beliefs are orthodox, while anyone disagreeing are "damnable heretics".
Please, let me try to suggest for you a very simple way to distinguish history from religious beliefs.
If in your analysis you are considering all the data available (i.e., Crossan's work), trying to explain any discrepancies, and largely letting the data speak for itself, that is history.
If you begin with a pre-conceived idea -- i.e., "Jesus is God" -- and then mine the data for "proof texts" to support your theology, that is religious belief.
This certainly does not mean that all "history" is right and all "religious beliefs" wrong.
But it does suggest that these are different ways of understanding, each appropriate to different circumstances.