"Where does the Hebrew Bible explicitly spell out that the Messiah must hang from a tree?" Isaiah - "bruised for our transgressions"
Or that the Messiah must rise from the dead? Our Lord Jesus stated Jonah was this type but it was concealed from even the apostles.
"Or the idea that God became man?" King David - I said to my Lord
"Or that there was three persons in one God?" Genesis - Let us make man in our image
"Or that during their communion feast, the followers would eat the body of their savior???" Nowhere-that's Catholic doctrine. Thought you throw me a curve, eh? ;O)
A Jewish reading of the Scripture found Christianity to be QUITE novel.
I am reminded of Gideon who God told to attack the Midianites. Gideon had a whole army at his disposal but God wanted the glory and said that He would conquer the entire Midianite army with but 300 of the weakest men and He did just that (Judges 7). The church doesn't rest on our shoulders but God's.
Wasn't Jesus refering to the Jonah STORY? Jesus can refer to a fictional charecter as well as I can refer to a comic strip charecter. Can't I say something like "Did you see how Dilbert made fun of that engineer?" Does that mean that Dilbert existed?
If you believe the Virgin Birth as a miracle than why not creation? Science can prove that a virgin can't give birth under EMPIRICAL means.
Science can only observe nature. They make the basis of their hypothesis on this datum. They cannot ABSOLUTELY tell us that something will happen, only that based on past observable data, we can infer with a high probability that a woman cannot give birth to a child without male sexual interaction. Of course, technically speaking, women CAN give birth while remaining a virgin today, through artificial means! Thus, science can only give us its conclusions on ordinary observations, and thus, cannot take into account a divine intervention. Anyone who disagrees with that has philosphical presumptions at the heart of their so-called science.
Science HAS NO PROOF that the world was formed over billions of years.
Science does have a fair amount of evidence. It has fairly good evidence that the earth is older than 6000 years. Again, this is from observation of nature. And in this case, we are proving a positively observable phenomenom, the existence of million year old rocks, not whether NO WOMAN can give birth without having sex, a negative. Logically, it is impossible to disprove a negative. All it means is that we haven't observed one such event yet. That doesn't make it impossible.
God is a God of nature but that God can also make the sun stand still, part the Red Sea and cause an iron ax head to float. People can look at a rock and believe it to be far older but they cannot duplicate it in laboratory conditions. I will say I have my own personal take on this but it is unorthodox to say the least.
Are you saying that God is "fooling" scientific study regarding the age of the world? Science dates rocks through a well-known and reasonable manner. Could it be wrong? Sure. But for us, there is a reasonable amount of information available, scientifically, to question whether God intended Genesis 1-2 to be scientifically accurate. THEOLOGICALLY, it is inerrant. Astronomically, I question it. Perhaps you are aware of the Church's high respect for scientific study that predates the Reformation. Even these men had their doubts about the "newness" of the earth. Men such as St. Augustine. They realized that nature came into being SOLELY by God - but that HOW He did it is not necessarily stated in Scriptures.
They did. They're called Christians.
Relatively few converted during the time of Paul.
bruised for our transgressions
That CAN be taken to mean the NATION of Israel OR a servant of God - but it is not necessary to take that to mean THE Messiah. Isaiah does not state that this man would be the Messiah. And very few people understood him in that manner among the Jews. Thus, the stumbling block of Deuteronomy.
Our Lord Jesus stated Jonah was this type but it was concealed from even the apostles.
So how would you expect the Jews to pick up on this if the men who followed Jesus around for three years couldn't figure it out? Read the end of Mark's Gospel. Even AFTER the resurrection, they still had "doubts"... I find this quite amazing and indicative of how Christian interpretation of the OT is a novel spin on Hebrew Scriptures - one that very few Jews admitted to.
King David - I said to my Lord
Again, this is subject to interpretation. A Jew reading his scripture does NOT have to read it that way.
Or that during their communion feast, the followers would eat the body of their savior???" Nowhere-that's Catholic doctrine. Thought you throw me a curve, eh? ;O)
Well, I wasn't trying to! I am merely relating the first ancient witnesses of Christianity, St. Ignatius, St. Justin the Martyr, and even Roman writers, such as Pliny. They all realized that Christians were doing something out of the ordinary with bread and wine. It should be quite clear that a reader of John 6, say, a Jew, would be offended by such writings, just as the first hearers. The Romans often accused Christians of being cannabalistic... Ask yourself, "why?" Why do Christians insist that they are eating the Body of their savior when pressed by the Roman interrogators? Seems like they actually believed it - your interpretation 1900 years later notwithstanding.
Not to Paul. He understood it very clearly. Not to the Bereans. They searched the scriptures.
So did the Thessalonians (who rejected Paul) whom Paul compares the Bereans to! Paul considered them more worthy because they believed Paul. I would think that Paul was able to convince the Bereans based on the power of the Spirit, not the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures. They searched the Scriptures with open hearts, perhaps heard Paul's teachings on the Suffering Servant, and, by the Spirit's indwelling, were able to overcome the obstacle that every Jew faced - that Jesus' Messiahship, according to them - had failed. The Messiah was suppposed to make things better and would free them from captivity. Jesus flaunted the commonly-held interpretation of the Law, the Romans still were in control, and Jesus was ultimately condemned to hang on a tree. AS A JEW, the Scripture is not very convincing as a tool for conversion...It is only through the Power of the Holy Spirit that Paul would be able to convince ANY Jews.
I wrote : But notice how few Jews actually buy into it!"
You responded :"This is your synergistic Arminian view rearing its ugly head. Where is the grace of God or God will have mercy on those who He will have mercy?
Ah, the old fall-back. It's all God's omniscence, His plan. When all else fails, fall back on "it's God's will". Well, doesn't this go against the idea you have that "God only died for the elect?" What was Christ's purpose of coming and teaching to the Jews who would largely ignore Him? Using your theology, wouldn't it had been more proper for God to teach the Gentiles? That He would spread His Word to those Gentiles who He had foreknowledge about?
My point was not to get into God's manners and ways. The point was that Christianity WAS an INNOVATION, one that the typical Jew would have been hard-pressed to accept, simply because their was a cognitive dissonance between Scriptures and what the Christians were claiming - a crucified Savior! WHERE in Jewish tradition do we see such an expectation? IF Isaiah's suffering servant was part of mainstream Judaism (interpreting these passages as we do today), Jesus would have certainly been more understood and accepted by other Jews. Even Peter tried to convince the Lord NOT to undergo suffering. They had no clue about any such suffering servant and the Messiah being the same person.
The church doesn't rest on our shoulders but God's.
Why do you think I am Catholic still? I'd be out the door to some easy-going Protestant fluff if I didn't believe that Christ established His Church among the people who would later be called "Catholic" by St. Ignatius less than eighty years later. I'd sure love to have a nice big thick steak today! Fasting? HA! Why bother, if I could just find a nice "health and wealth" community that bought into the "once saved - always saved" garbage. Then I could do whatever I wanted, because I had declared that God has already chosen me, no matter what I do...
I remain Catholic because I believe it has the fullness of God's revelation, not because it has the best human explanations of a book.
Regards