Are there credible witnesses to the resurrection?

doubtingmerle · Jan 19, 2017

Ed1wolf said:
No, actually he did quote from the gospels from your own link: "He quotes from the New Testament gospels twice (4:14, 5:9),[4] and is in general agreement with the New Testament presentation of salvation-history." So that disproves your thesis. But the writer of this epistle is not known, he plainly cannot be the biblical Barnabas that traveled with Paul due to the late date.

Huh? If that is not a quote from Luke then I don't know what is. It reflects a quote from a gospel far more than your examples of Ignatius and Matthew below.

As an educated leader of the early church, it is very rational to assume that he knew one or more of the gospels and most likely had access to at least one or more copies of the gospels. And your link may confirm that though some of them are a stretch.

First, you have shown nowhere where any of these writers verifies the name of a gospel writer before 180 AD. All you have is Papias, who mentions a book by Matthew and Mark, but doesn't give enough information for me to know what books he is talking about. (And no, you need not write back and say you think he gave enough information. I already know you think that.) So I don't really know who wrote the gospels.

Second, the best we have as far as quotes of the gospels in the early second century are short one-liners that are close to what the gospels say that Jesus said, and may be intended as quotes of the gospels. Or they can simply show a shared heritage of sayings attributed to Jesus. These sayings could come from word of mouth, from one of the many books about Jesus that Luke 1:1 refers to, from early versions of some of the many books that later Christian authors talk about, from Q, from the same people that spread your resurrection "hymn", etc. A few one-line moral teachings that are close to the Jesus of Matthew do not verify that the stories as recorded in the four gospels were widely known at that time. The content of early books like Clement, Barnabas, and the Shepherd rely more on the Old Testament for filling in the details of Jesus's life than they rely on the four gospels. See "Crossing the Threshold of History: Jesus in the Apostolic Fathers" .

anonymous person · Jan 19, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
OK, so you admit that you are closed minded. Sad, that.

For the record, I am open to what you have to say.

Well, since I am open minded, I would not like to go through the rest of my life wrong. Can you tell me how you know that you are right and I am wrong?

Sad that.

Are you not ever wrong? When someone is closed minded and wrong, then he stays wrong forever. Wouldn't it be better for you to be open minded?

Well, quite simply, Jesus is alive.

That aside, if I explain how I am using the phrase "close minded", it may clear things up.

If someone were to tell me that the sum of 2 and 2 were 5, I would not be open to accepting that. I would be close minded when it came to his claim and would be quite content with being labeled as close minded if he so desired to label me as such.

There are many things I am not open to. I am not open to being told that the external world is not real. I am not open to being told that the fundamental laws of logic are illogical, or that there exists such a thing as a married bachelor.

Now that I lay here in bed in my pajamas, I can literally come up with a whole bunch of things I am close minded about.

Being persuaded that a proposition is true because you have good reason to be is not a bad thing.

When you tell me about these theories of yours regarding the whereabouts of Jesus, and I reject them, I am rejecting them because they are not true the same way I would reject what you were saying if you were to say that 2 and 2 were 5.

I am not open to being shown that 2 and 2 is 5 because it's 4, not 5.

I am not open to being shown that Jesus never really died, or that the disciples stole His body, or that it was cast into a common grave. None of those are true because He is alive. If He is alive, it cannot be the case that His disciples stole His body, or that it is decomposed somewhere over in Jerusalem.

We should not squander our time for it is the stuff life is made of.

I hope this helps.

doubtingmerle · Jan 19, 2017

anonymous person said:
Well, quite simply, Jesus is alive.

You are reasoning in a circle, yes? Do you have any other reasons for thinking he is alive, other than reasoning in a circle and saying you know he is alive because he is alive?

That aside, if I explain how I am using the phrase "close minded", it may clear things up.

If someone were to tell me that the sum of 2 and 2 were 5, I would not be open to accepting that. I would be close minded when it came to his claim and would be quite content with being labeled as close minded if he so desired to label me as such.

Being closed to something that could not possibly be otherwise is one thing. Being closed to something that could possibly be different than what you think is quite another thing. I do not see how you can look at the sparse evidence we have about Jesus and say you could not possibly be wrong.

There are many things I am not open to. I am not open to being told that the external world is not real.

May I ask you how you know the external world is real? All your knowledge comes from your senses. Is it not possible your senses are deceiving you?

I admit the possibility that the external world is not real is so unlikely, we need not waste another second thinking about it. But we cannot be absolutely certain that it is real. Perhaps our senses are deceiving us.

Being persuaded that a proposition is true because you have good reason to be is not a bad thing.

Believing something for good reason is good, yes. But refusing to accept the possibility that one might misunderstand is not good, in my view.

When you tell me about these theories of yours regarding the whereabouts of Jesus, and I reject them, I am rejecting them because they are not true the same way I would reject what you were saying if you were to say that 2 and 2 were 5.

And yet all your confidence is based on Paul, who doesn't even clearly testify to a bodily resurrection, and the four gospels, which were written significantly later by unknown writers who do not identify themselves or name their sources. Further, these books contradict each other. Yet based on this, you know that they are correct even when claiming something as unlikely as a resurrection?

I am not open to being shown that Jesus never really died,

Why not? Josephus reports a man who survived crucifixion. Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story: Probability of Survival vs. Miracle - Assessing the Odds .

If you know nothing about a man other than that he was crucified, what are the odds he survived? 1 in 10,000?

If you know nothing about a man other than that he was crucified and died, what are the odds that he rose bodily from the dead 3 days later? 1 in 1,000,000,000,000?

or that the disciples stole His body,

Or maybe they were mistaken about where the body was. Or maybe Joseph of Arimathea did it on his own. Or maybe the legend grew up later.

or that it was cast into a common grave.

Why not? That is what the Roman's always did with the bodies. How do you know the gospel story did not come later?

We should not squander our time for it is the stuff life is made of.

OK, but why squander a life on a story before making sure the story is true?

anonymous person · Jan 19, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
You are reasoning in a circle, yes? Do you have any other reasons for thinking he is alive, other than reasoning in a circle and saying you know he is alive because he is alive?

Being closed to something that could not possibly be otherwise is one thing. Being closed to something that could possibly be different than what you think is quite another thing. I do not see how you can look at the sparse evidence we have about Jesus and say you could not possibly be wrong.
May I ask you how you know the external world is real? All your knowledge comes from your senses. Is it not possible your senses are deceiving you?

I admit the possibility that the external world is not real is so unlikely, we need not waste another second thinking about it. But we cannot be absolutely certain that it is real. Perhaps our senses are deceiving us.

Believing something for good reason is good, yes. But refusing to accept the possibility that one might misunderstand is not good, in my view.

And yet all your confidence is based on Paul, who doesn't even clearly testify to a bodily resurrection, and the four gospels, which were written significantly later by unknown writers who do not identify themselves or name their sources. Further, these books contradict each other. Yet based on this, you know that they are correct even when claiming something as unlikely as a resurrection?

Why not? Josephus reports a man who survived crucifixion. Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story: Probability of Survival vs. Miracle - Assessing the Odds .

If you know nothing about a man other than that he was crucified, what are the odds he survived? 1 in 10,000?

If you know nothing about a man other than that he was crucified and died, what are the odds that he rose bodily from the dead 3 days later? 1 in 1,000,000,000,000?

Or maybe they were mistaken about where the body was. Or maybe Joseph of Arimathea did it on his own. Or maybe the legend grew up later.

Why not? That is what the Roman's always did with the bodies. How do you know the gospel story did not come later?

OK, but why squander a life on a story before making sure the story is true?

I don't think you have really been listening to what I have been saying.

I don't claim to know Jesus is alive because Paul said He is or because His biographers said He is or because the early church fathers said He is.

Sure I may appeal to what they say in an attempt to demonstrate to YOU that YOU have good reason to believe He is, but my knowing Jesus is alive is not based on those things. My knowledge that Jesus is alive comes from the immediate and personal ever present witness of the Holy Spirit. There are people out there that have never even read Paul's letters who know Christ is alive, for example.

Ed1wolf · Jan 19, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Correct. Luke 3:22 in all the earliest manuscripts says "This day I have begotten you". I had mistakenly said "adopted" in some earlier posts. "Begotten" is correct.

Evidence that all the earliest manuscripts of Luke say begotten? But even if true, since Mark and Matthew are older than Luke and do not say begotten that most likely means that in this rare case the earliest manuscripts of Luke are incorrect/miscopied and therefore some scribe edited/corrected it.

dm: But my point is still valid. The original version had this verse about Jesus being begotten at baptism. In the late 2nd century or 3rd century, when there was a big controversy with those who taught that Jesus was an ordinary man that became God's son at baptism, this verse was changed to the modern reading. It seems obvious why people changed it. In the varied opinions that existed in apostolic time, this was not an issue. But as beliefs gelled around "Orthodox Belief", this verse was a problem, and got changed. This is just one example of the editing that was done.

You say Mark and Matthew would then have differed with Luke. Exactly! That is my point. The early church had different opinions about doctrines, that eventually gelled around "orthodoxy".

No, see my explanation above.

dm: We have gone over this many times.

I am not talking about how Paul thought the gospel originated.
I am not talking about how Paul thought the gospel originated.
I am not talking about how Paul thought the gospel originated.

I am talking about how Paul says he got the gospel.
I am talking about how Paul says he got the gospel.
I am talking about how Paul says he got the gospel.

You have been told that over a dozen times on this thread. Do you need me to repeat that a few more times for your benefit?

Please, please acknowledge that I am talking about how Paul says he got the gospel. Once you acknowledge that, your paragraph above is meaningless.

Once again Galatians 1 says that Paul did not receive his gospel from men, and was not taught his gospel from men.This makes it unlikely that, in I Cor 15, where he declares his gospel, that he would repeat verbatim a creed that he was taught from men.

In I Cor 15 he says he is declaring the gospel that he received. Since Galatians tells us specifically that he received his gospel from God, not from men, it makes no sense to then say the gospel he received was in the form of a creed that he received from men.

You do not need to agree with me, but I would love to have you understand me. We have gone over this over and over, and you don't even seem to get the basics of what I am trying to say. Do you need me to repeat it a few more times for your benefit? Would it help if I used a bigger font?

I understand what you are saying but you failed to understand that there is more to the gospel than either the ancient creed or what Paul learned from Christ on the road to Damascus, that is my point. Paul was supplementing the testimony of the earlier creed with what he learned from Christ.

dm: That's odd, because you wrote a significant response to my claim that Papias said he did not think anything found in books about Jesus would be more valuable to him compared to what he was getting from a living person. The problem is that he was writing in 130 AD, so his "living and abiding witness" was most likely second hand from the apostles. And yes, I know that you disagree, and think that Papias's book speaks of his getting information from John the apostle (and you really don't need to write again to tell me that again, because I already acknowledge that you say that). It makes no sense to me that Papias--commonly thought to have written around 130 AD--would call John the apostle a living and abiding witness. And the only real source we have for Papias, the 4th century church historian Eusebius, agrees with me.

Anyway, Papias writing in 130 AD says he prefers his "living and abiding" witness, whoever that is, to anything written in gospels, so he is hardly giving a ringing endorsement of the gospels.

And though Papias says a book was written by Mark, he says nothing to indicate he is referring to the book we now call Mark. He gives no quotes. His description of Mark does not even seem to match Mark. And your latest response to that is that he is not describing Mark, but Peter's preaching. If your response is correct, than Papias neither quotes the book, nor gives any significant description of the book, so it is hard to know what book he is referring to.

Since there was no other significant Mark in the early church other than John Mark, concluding that it is "our" Mark is nevertheless the most rational conclusion. Especially given the date of our Mark.

dm: I disagree. Acts 22:9 says, "And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me. I think "heard not the voice" means "heard not the voice".

That only makes sense if you take it out of context and ignore Acts 9:7. Taking things out of context is starting to be your trademark.

dm: But even if they all heard a voice, that does not prove that a corpse came to life and that the larynx of that former corpse was making the sound of that voice.

I didn't say it proves it, but it is the most rational conclusion as I demonstrated earlier.

doubtingmerle · Jan 20, 2017

anonymous person said:
My knowledge that Jesus is alive comes from the immediate and personal ever present witness of the Holy Spirit. There are people out there that have never even read Paul's letters who know Christ is alive, for example.

OK, a man died 2000 years ago, and you know he is alive because of the witness of the Holy Spirit. How do you know that you are properly understanding the Holy Spirit? How do you know he is really telling you that Jesus rose from the dead? And finally, even if the Holy Spirit is telling you this, how do you know that the Holy Spirit is telling you the truth?

Do you understand that there are a lot of conflicting views within Christianity, each of which claim they are backed up by the Holy Spirit? How can that be? Is the Holy Spirit behind both sides of every conflict?

doubtingmerle · Jan 20, 2017

Ed1wolf said:
Evidence that all the earliest manuscripts of Luke say begotten? But even if true, since Mark and Matthew are older than Luke and do not say begotten that most likely means that in this rare case the earliest manuscripts of Luke are incorrect/miscopied and therefore some scribe edited/corrected it.

The question is whether the early writers disagreed. I gave Luke 3:22 as one example. The earliest version of this verse agree with those who think Jesus was a man that was adopted at baptism. You say it does not mean he was adopted, else Luke would differ with Matthew and Mark. That is the very point in question! Did the earliest writers disagree? You cannot merely assume the point in question.

Let's turn to Justin Martyr as a source. Justin, writing in the middle of the second century, quotes "Memoirs of the Apostles". His quotes from the memoirs are close to the four gospels, but not exact. Some think he is referring to a different book literally called the Memoirs. Some think he is quoting from earlier copies of the gospels. You, however, ignore all evidence, and insist somehow that Justin was quoting something close to the modern gospels. Ok, let's look at what Justin says the voice said at the baptism of Jesus:

but then the Holy Ghost, and for man's sake, as I formerly stated, lighted on Him in the form of a dove, and there came at the same instant from the heavens a voice, which was uttered also by David when he spoke, personating Christ, what the Father would say to Him: 'Thou art My Son: this day have I begotten Thee;' [the Father] saying that His generation would take place for men, at the time when they would become acquainted with Him: 'Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten thee.' "[Source: Dialog with Trypho 88]

So twice we have Justin saying the voice said the same thing that I am telling you the earliest Greek manuscripts say in Luke 3:22. Ok, maybe he was paraphrasing or had a slip. Read on:

when [Jesus] went up from the river Jordan, at the time when the voice spake to Him, 'Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten Thee,' is recorded in the memoirs of the apostles [Dialog with Trypho 103]

Justin, when quoting the Old Testament is meticulous in giving exact quotes and telling us the correct name of the book he is quoting. And yet this is what he says repeatedly he is reading in "The Memoirs of the Apostles".

So I cannot see how you can be arguing both that Justin was correctly quoting one of the four gospels, and also that none of the four gospels said what Justin says here.

I understand what you are saying but you failed to understand that there is more to the gospel than either the ancient creed or what Paul learned from Christ on the road to Damascus, that is my point. Paul was supplementing the testimony of the earlier creed with what he learned from Christ.

No, you did not understand what I said.

Paul said he got the gospel from Christ, not from men.
Paul said he got the gospel from Christ, not from men.

Please repeat back those words to me. Please acknowledge that I am saying those words. Those. Words. It is fine for you to disagree with me, but it is absolutely wrong for you to refuse to acknowledge that I am saying what I am saying.

Paul is not saying he got his gospel creed from men and supplemented it with things he got from revelation. He is saying he got his gospel from revelation.

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.Gal 1:11-12

It would be inconsistent for Paul to say,

I did not receive the gospel from men. I now declare the gospel I received as a creed from men, that Christ died...

That is what Paul would be saying in your interpretation. That makes no sense to me, or to many other scholars.

Please, please, please, please, please! We have been over this dozens of times, and you refuse to acknowledge I am saying what I am saying. What does that benefit you to act like this?

Since there was no other significant Mark in the early church other than John Mark, concluding that it is "our" Mark is nevertheless the most rational conclusion. Especially given the date of our Mark.

Huh? This has nothing to do with the paragraph you quoted.

The point is that I don't think we know what book Papias was referring to when he said Mark wrote a book. Again, we have been over this dozens of times. Why must I explain these things over and over to you?

That only makes sense if you take it out of context and ignore Acts 9:7. Taking things out of context is starting to be your trademark.

How do you know the book of Acts does not contradict itself? It is generally believed it went through several compilations and edits. The final editor may not have noticed that a chapter at the beginning contradicted one at the end. Acts 22 says they did not hear a voice. Acts 9 says they did. That is a clear contradiction. We cannot say they do not contradict, since, if they did, then they would be contradicting. That is illogical.

I didn't say it proves it, but it is the most rational conclusion as I demonstrated earlier.

OK, if that is what it takes for you. Resurrections from the dead are extremely rare, if they happen at all. It seems to me unreasonable, that if one thinks he is hearing a voice from heaven that claims to be a person that had died, to conclude that therefore that voice must be coming from a human larynx, and that therefore the body including the larynx came out of the grave and is now alive in heaven. That is not enough evidence for me. (And besides, I don't think Acts is accurate history.)

Back to the voice at the baptism: If all voices from the heavens come from a human larynx, do you think this voice came from a larynx? If not, why could not the voice in Acts have come from a spirit also?

anonymous person · Jan 20, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
How do you know that you are properly understanding the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit is a person. So what you are asking is, "how do I know this person?"

This is a very good question. There is no one answer really. I would venture to say that my relationship with Jesus is akin to my relationship with my good friend Cary. Over time, we have bonded and have been privileged to get to know one another by communicating with each other, one mind to another, in love, opening up ourselves to share with one another, those sentiments and thoughts we hold dearly. Kindred spirits choosing through love, to pursue each other with the aim of getting to know one another in an ever increasing way.

Relationships can be cultivated. The more we put into them, the more we get out of them.

Jesus always initiates this. He came to me just like Cary came to me one day when I was in prison and he was smiling. I remember vividly the first encounter. I was a stranger to him, having never met him before, and yet he acted towards me as if he had known me all my life. I could tell there was something delifghtfully peculiar about him, strange even, but in a good way.

I responded to him by telling him a bit about myself and we soon hit it off.

That was close to ten years ago and since, our bond has only become stronger. I rarely see him in person, he lives in a different state than I do. We rarely even talk on the phone. We text from time to time and yet I am closer to him now in spirit than I was when I visited him to watch the Clemson and Ohio State game (his zeal for Clemson has persuaded me to become a fan. Go Tigers!)

Likewise but not analogously, so is my relationship with Christ. I talk with Him and He with me. Our bond is growing stronger the more I get to know Him. He has that affect on me.

Another reason I know Christ is alive is because of the work He is working in me. This work began with a regeneration that occurred in January of 2006. It was my second birth. My first birth occurred in February of 1985.

Over and above all of this, my relationship with Christ is different from any other than I have in that it is spiritual. I am prevented by the limitations of the language we are communicating in to express the ins and outs of this spiritual and indeed most blessed of states. Knowledge of such things are given to them whom God chooses to reveal it.

Suffice it to say, I have lived in both realms and speak from the experience I have accumulated from years of walking and living in the spirit, imperfectly though the walk has been, and this enables me to compare and contrast the one with the other.

It is for these reasons and more that I can make the claims about the resurrection or the bible or about God that I make. Spiritual things are discerned by the spirit and I would say the same thing to you that was said to Nicodemus, "you cannot see these things or understand them unless you are born again."

doubtingmerle said:
How do you know he is really telling you that Jesus rose from the dead?

Your error lies in the assumption that the knowledge I appeal to was derived from a second hand source, as if I claim to know something because someone told me about that something.

That is not the case. If someone were living in your house, eating with you morning noon and night, sleeping in the bed with you, watching tv with you, performing chores with you and talking with you about your life and how they loved being a part of it and this was going on for over ten years, and you told me all this and I then asked you, "well how do you know that this person is really alive?" you would rightly think I had gone mad!

You would probably ask me if I had really been listening to you or if I had zoned out and was thinking about how awesome a game the Clemson and Alabama rematch was!

doubtingmerle said:
And finally, even if the Holy Spirit is telling you this, how do you know that the Holy Spirit is telling you the truth?

He has proven Himself trustworthy.

doubtingmerle said:
Do you understand that there are a lot of conflicting views within Christianity, each of which claim they are backed up by the Holy Spirit? How can that be? Is the Holy Spirit behind both sides of every conflict?

Present one of these sets of conflicting claims and I will let you know.

doubtingmerle · Jan 20, 2017

anonymous person said:
The Holy Spirit is a person. So what you are asking is, "how do I know this person?"

This is a very good question. There is no one answer really. I would venture to say that my relationship with Jesus is akin to my relationship with my good friend Cary.

Wait. You claimed it was the Holy Spirit teaching you. When I asked you how you knew you were understanding the Spirit, you switch to Jesus. Are you going to ignore the question about the Holy Spirit?

Likewise but not analogously, so is my relationship with Christ. I talk with Him and He with me. Our bond is growing stronger the more I get to know Him. He has that affect on me.

Wait, Ed's Jesus consists of a risen physical body that speaks through his larynx. Is that what your Jesus is? You instead seem to be describing a spirit inside you, not the physical, larynx-using Jesus of Ed.

If your Jesus is a spirit inside you, why did the body need to disappear when the spirit rose? Couldn't it be that the body just stayed in the grave, and the spirit come out to talk to you? Wouldn't you be getting the same experience you describe if that was the case?

Another reason I know Christ is alive is because of the work He is working in me. This work began with a regeneration that occurred in January of 2006. It was my second birth. My first birth occurred in February of 1985.

That's odd. For I have experienced a tremendous regeneration in my life when adopting Humanism. If having a good experience proves you are right, have I proven I am right?

That is not the case. If someone were living in your house, eating with you morning noon and night, sleeping in the bed with you, watching tv with you, performing chores with you and talking with you about your life and how they loved being a part of it and this was going on for over ten years, and you told me all this and I then asked you, "well how do you know that this person is really alive?" you would rightly think I had gone mad!

OK, but your Jesus does not have a physical body that lives in your house, sleeps in your bed, and performs chores. He is a spirit that you think lives inside you, yes? Can you not see that, when all you claim to have is a spirit inside of you, that this is much different from living with a physical person every day.

If a man claims to have an imaginary friend inside him--other than Jesus--and talks to that imaginary friend, do you consider that a sign of good mental health?

He has proven Himself trustworthy.

OK, but he is just a spirit inside of you that you think creates thoughts in your mind, yes? How do you know which thoughts are your own and which come from the spirit of Jesus within you?

Let me guess. If you hear something you think is Jesus, and it turns out to be bad advice, you will immediately say that is not Jesus. Such a spirit can never be falsified. That is hardly evidence that you have this spirit that is never wrong.

Present one of these sets of conflicting claims and I will let you know.

Some people claim the Holy Spirit is leading them to speak in tongues. Some people claim the Holy Spirit is leading them to preach that the spirit never leads anybody to speak in tongues today. Who is hearing the spirit?

Some think the spirit is leading them to say all wars are wrong. Some think the spirit is leading them to say some wars are right. Who is hearing the spirit?

I was in a church where some prayed and felt the Lord leading them to start a ministry. Others prayed and felt the Lord was leading them to destroy that ministry that was leading people the wrong way. Who was hearing the spirit?

anonymous person · Jan 20, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Wait. You claimed it was the Holy Spirit teaching you.

Correct.

doubtingmerle said:
When I asked you how you knew you were understanding the Spirit, you switch to Jesus. Are you going to ignore the question about the Holy Spirit?

No. I answered it.

doubtingmerle said:
Wait, Ed's Jesus consists of a risen physical body that speaks through his larynx. Is that what your Jesus is?

Yes, Jesus has a glorified body of flesh and bone, i.e. a physical body. Yes, He sometimes speaks through me with the breath He gives me and the larynx He fearfully and wonderfully made for me.

doubtingmerle said:
You instead seem to be describing a spirit inside you, not the physical, larynx-using Jesus of Ed.

Well the Holy Spirit is a spirit. Kind of goes without saying doesn't it?

Christ is risen and seated at the right hand of the Father from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

doubtingmerle said:
If your Jesus is a spirit inside you, why did the body need to disappear when the spirit rose?

God the Son was raised on the third day and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He had to be raised for it is not possible that death could contain Him.

The Spirit was sent by The Son on the day of Pentecost after The Son had been glorified and The Holy Spirit indwells every son whom God receives.

doubtingmerle said:
Couldn't it be that the body just stayed in the grave, and the spirit come out to talk to you? Wouldn't you be getting the same experience you describe if that was the case?

The Holy Spirit could not be sent until Christ had been raised and ascended, so the answer to your question is no.

doubtingmerle said:
That's odd. For I have experienced a tremendous regeneration in my life when adopting Humanism. If having a good experience proves you are right, have I proven I am right?

Only God can regenerate a human spirit. Since you deny God exists, then you are necessarily equivocating when using the term regeneration when applying it to yourself.

doubtingmerle said:
Ok, but your Jesus does not have a physical body that lives in your house, sleeps in your bed, and performs chores.

My God is omnipresent. He is transcendent over the universe yet immanent within it.

doubtingmerle said:
He is a spirit that you think lives inside you, yes?

God is a spirit, and them that worship Him must do so in spirit and in truth.

doubtingmerle said:
Can you not see that, when all you claim to have is a spirit inside of you, that this is much different from living with a physical person every day.

All physical persons are spiritual persons essentially and primarily, being that they are God's image bearers. I do see why it would be much different to you though. I stated as much already. Spiritual things are discerned by the spirit.

doubtingmerle said:
If a man claims to have an imaginary friend inside him--other than Jesus--and talks to that imaginary friend, do you consider that a sign of good mental health?

No. I consider him to be in need of evaluation by a health care professional.

doubtingmerle said:
Ok, but he is just a spirit inside of you that you think creates thoughts in your mind, yes?

No.

doubtingmerle said:
How do you know which thoughts are your own and which come from the spirit of Jesus within you?

Primarily by checking them against the scriptures.

doubtingmerle said:
Let me guess. If you hear something you think is Jesus, and it turns out to be bad advice, you will immediately say that is not Jesus. Such a spirit can never be falsified. That is hardly evidence that you have this spirit that is never wrong.

I never said it was.

doubtingmerle said:
Some people claim the Holy Spirit is leading them to speak in tongues.

Which He does.

doubtingmerle said:
Some people claim the Holy Spirit is leading them to preach that the spirit never leads anybody to speak in tongues today. Who is hearing the spirit?

It may be that neither is hearing from the Holy Spirit. Without more background information and specific details, I cannot say with any confidence. Who are these people specifically? Do you know their names?

doubtingmerle said:
Some think the spirit is leading them to say all wars are wrong.

Who are these people? Do you know their names?

doubtingmerle said:
Some think the spirit is leading them to say some wars are right. Who is hearing the spirit?

Without more information, I cannot say.

doubtingmerle said:
I was in a church where some prayed and felt the Lord leading them to start a ministry. Others prayed and felt the Lord was leading them to destroy that ministry that was leading people the wrong way. Who was hearing the spirit?

They both could not have been hearing the Holy Spirit. That much is clear. Without more background information I cannot say.

Ed1wolf · Jan 21, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Ed1Wolf,

I believe the story of the resurrection grew with time. Look at the surviving record. Paul makes no mention of an empty grave, missing corpse, or people interacting with an ex-corpse. His Jesus lives inside of people, and seems to be more of a spirit. The original Mark adds a stranger at the tomb saying Jesus would be seen in Galilee, but makes no mention of the disciples actually seeing inside the empty tomb or seeing Jesus. The later extension of Mark and other gospels add to this story. In addition, there may have been many other edits to the story before we got it.

I dealt with all of this earlier so will not rehash it here. There is no evidence of any other significant edits to the story as I stated earlier.

↑

ed: No, most of the early orthodox Christians were either jews or had the same moral views as early jews, they believed in moral absolutes regarding truth. They wanted the most accurate copies possible of scripture and recording of events.

dm: Greeks and Romans were also honest, and believed in morals, too. And sometimes Christians do not behave morally. Please don't try to claim that you have a monopoly on morality. You don't.

I am not saying that individuals were not, but scientific studies have shown that generally devout Christians and Jews are more law abiding than other people.

dm: Do you have any evidence that the people who copied the gospels before 150 AD thought these books were scripture and should not be edited? We do not even know who had custody of them in that time frame, or what their attitudes were toward those books.

We know from II Peter 3:16 and Revelation 22:18-19 that any book written by an apostle or his associate was considered scripture. And both of those books were written before 100 AD. And any changes made to them were a sin.

ed: They believed if they lied or tweaked scripture they were going to go to hell and probably even be punished in the here and now, therefore there is much less of chance that any major editing occurred.

dm: Wait, Matthew believed if he changed Mark he would go to hell? And yet he took 90% of the verses of Mark, made some changes to them, and then added significant content to make his book.

Did Matthew think he would go to hell for that?

No, he made no major changes to affect the gospel message.

ed: In addition, in the earliest manuscripts we do have there is no evidence of any major editing.

dm: We have nothing but a few scraps of the gospels before 150 AD, so this is in no way relevant to the topic at hand.

But what we do have after 150 AD shows significant changes being made. You agree (I think) that the ending of Mark and the story of the woman caught in adultery, for instance, were added later.

Yes the changes were made but I don't consider them significant since none of those edits change any teaching of historic Christianity.

dm: Thousands of Greek manuscripts exist, but no two manuscripts of any significant length agree on everything. If you think no changes were made, which one of those is the correct one?

Again all the differences are very minor. They all teach the same correct message.

ed: There is no real evidence that a proto-Mark and a proto-Matthew ever existed.

dm; Wait, what? How can we have a copy of Mark if nobody ever wrote a first copy of the book? That is what I mean by Proto-Mark and Proto-Matthew. We agree (I think) that the modern copies of these books are not the identical to the first copies. That is why I distinquish the first copy from the modern copy, and use the names Proto-Mark and Proto-Matthew.

Using the term proto, implies that there was never an original Mark and Matthew. There was an original Mark and Matthew, there was no proto version. We have the exact same message our versions of Mark and Matthew even with a few minor edits.

dm: Again there were many edits from proto-Matthew to modern Matthew. Also it appears that there were many edits from proto-Matthew to the similar Gospel of the Nazoreans, a book that appears to have come from the same proto-Matthew. Again, how do you know the Modern Matthew is closer to the proto-Matthew than the gospel of the Nazoreans? Just saying that it it so is not an answer. How do you know that the author of proto-Matthew (or whatever you want to call that book) was not closer in his views to the Gospel of the Nazoreans than he was to the Modern Matthew?

The original Matthew was written long before that false gospel. Therefore it is more likely to be historically accurate. God preserved the message of the original Matthew in our modern Matthew.

doubtingmerle · Jan 21, 2017

Anonymous person, did you notice that I wrote to you in a series of paragraphs? There was a reason for that. I was trying to express complex thoughts that required more than a soundbite to express. I notice that in response, you divided it up into a series of tweets, and then responded with tweets of your own that ignored my context, and waffled from your original email.

The expression of complex thought requires more than a tweet (except for complex Presidential opinions, where a tweet is adequate, apparently, but I digress.)

I won't get into your complex confusion and intermingling of the three persons of the trinity, switching at will in your writings to whichever person you wanted, without regard to the original message, or your previous sentence. Let's look at just a few of your comments.

anonymous person said:
All physical persons are spiritual persons essentially and primarily, being that they are God's image bearers. I do see why it would be much different to you though. I stated as much already. Spiritual things are discerned by the spirit.

You are missing the forest for the trees. The point is that there is a huge difference in a dialog with a person and a supposed communication with a spirit, in which the spirit's only mode of communication is by somehow causing certain thoughts to occur in your mind. How would you ever know that another being was causing thoughts in your mind? One of the amazing thing of the mind is that thoughts arrived fully formed. When I write, the sentences just come fully formed, as though out of nowhere, and I never really know where they came from. Think of all that was involved in forming the sentence above. Something had to know the meaning of every English word there, be fully conversant in English grammar and spelling, and put that together. And yet I was not aware of any of the process of looking up the meaning of all those words and alternate words I could have used in that sentence. I just started thinking on the subject, and the sentence somehow came out. The brain works like that. No one part of the brain is in charge. But somehow, all the parts of the brain make their contributions, and somehow for each sentence a given sequence arises to the fore, and the words come out.

Now I think all these sentences in this post come from me. But could some come from a spirit inside that is also producing thoughts that come up inside my mind? If so, how would I know which thoughts were caused by a spirit?

That is why I say there is a huge difference between talking to a physical person in front of you, and having a claimed spirit speak in your mind.

But I suppose you will have a field day dividing this all up into tweets and making a flippant comment to each, while bypassing the purpose of that discussion, huh?

No. I consider him to be in need of evaluation by a health care professional.

I find that very interesting. A person who imagines another spirit is inside him talking to him is in need of evaluation by a health care professional. Unless of course, that person he thinks he is hearing from is named Jesus or the Holy Spirit, then that is OK.

Sounds like special pleading to me.

Primarily by checking them against the scriptures.

You say this in response to my question, "How do you know which thoughts are your own and which come from the spirit of Jesus within you?" Aha. So you really have no way to differentiate a thought coming from the spirit or from your inner self. For I imagine that you sometimes have inner thoughts that are consistent with scripture. So when you have such thoughts, are they coming from you or from Jesus? You have given no way of knowing. In that case, how can you possibly say the Jesus or Holy Spirit inside you is a reliable source, if you never know for sure what they are saying?

When I showed you problems with relying on the gospels, you were quick to say that these were not your primary source. The Holy Spirit was. But when I question the Spirit, you are quick to say your recognition of this source isn't really reliable, and you need to look it up in the gospels.

You seem to be arguing in a circle.

It may be that neither is hearing from the Holy Spirit. Without more background information and specific details, I cannot say with any confidence.

Correct. Without more background information, you cannot know which side the Holy Spirit is on.

That seems to disqualify the Holy Spirit as a reliable source. If church A has a program, and the people pray and believe the Holy Spirit is leading them, but church B believe church A is teaching heresy, and the people in church B pray and believe the Holy Spirit is leading them to stop the false program of church A, then you have no way of knowing who is right unless you get the background information. The Holy Spirit will not give you the answer.

So why rely on the Holy Spirit as the primary source of information on whether the resurrection happened?

They both could not have been hearing the Holy Spirit. That much is clear. Without more background information I cannot say.

But both think they are hearing the Spirit, and their programs are in conflict. If one of those two sides is not hearing the Spirit correctly, but they think they are, then how can you have confidence that you are hearing the Spirit correctly?

anonymous person · Jan 21, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Anonymous person, did you notice that I wrote to you in a series of paragraphs? There was a reason for that. I was trying to express complex thoughts that required more than a soundbite to express. I notice that in response, you divided it up into a series of tweets, and then responded with tweets of your own that ignored my context, and waffled from your original email.

The expression of complex thought requires more than a tweet (except for complex Presidential opinions, where a tweet is adequate, apparently, but I digress.)

I won't get into your complex confusion and intermingling of the three persons of the trinity, switching at will in your writings to whichever person you wanted, without regard to the original message, or your previous sentence. Let's look at just a few of your comments.

You are missing the forest for the trees. The point is that there is a huge difference in a dialog with a person and a supposed communication with a spirit, in which the spirit's only mode of communication is by somehow causing certain thoughts to occur in your mind. How would you ever know that another being was causing thoughts in your mind? One of the amazing thing of the mind is that thoughts arrived fully formed. When I write, the sentences just come fully formed, as though out of nowhere, and I never really know where they came from. Think of all that was involved in forming the sentence above. Something had to know the meaning of every English word there, be fully conversant in English grammar and spelling, and put that together. And yet I was not aware of any of the process of looking up the meaning of all those words and alternate words I could have used in that sentence. I just started thinking on the subject, and the sentence somehow came out. The brain works like that. No one part of the brain is in charge. But somehow, all the parts of the brain make their contributions, and somehow for each sentence a given sequence arises to the fore, and the words come out.

Now I think all these sentences in this post come from me. But could some come from a spirit inside that is also producing thoughts that come up inside my mind? If so, how would I know which thoughts were caused by a spirit?

That is why I say there is a huge difference between talking to a physical person in front of you, and having a claimed spirit speak in your mind.

But I suppose you will have a field day dividing this all up into tweets and making a flippant comment to each, while bypassing the purpose of that discussion, huh?

I find that very interesting. A person who imagines another spirit is inside him talking to him is in need of evaluation by a health care professional. Unless of course, that person he thinks he is hearing from is named Jesus or the Holy Spirit, then that is OK.

Sounds like special pleading to me.

You say this in response to my question, "How do you know which thoughts are your own and which come from the spirit of Jesus within you?" Aha. So you really have no way to differentiate a thought coming from the spirit or from your inner self. For I imagine that you sometimes have inner thoughts that are consistent with scripture. So when you have such thoughts, are they coming from you or from Jesus? You have given no way of knowing. In that case, how can you possibly say the Jesus or Holy Spirit inside you is a reliable source, if you never know for sure what they are saying?

When I showed you problems with relying on the gospels, you were quick to say that these were not your primary source. The Holy Spirit was. But when I question the Spirit, you are quick to say your recognition of this source isn't really reliable, and you need to look it up in the gospels.

You seem to be arguing in a circle.

Correct. Without more background information, you cannot know which side the Holy Spirit is on.

That seems to disqualify the Holy Spirit as a reliable source. If church A has a program, and the people pray and believe the Holy Spirit is leading them, but church B believe church A is teaching heresy, and the people in church B pray and believe the Holy Spirit is leading them to stop the false program of church A, then you have no way of knowing who is right unless you get the background information. The Holy Spirit will not give you the answer.

So why rely on the Holy Spirit as the primary source of information on whether the resurrection happened?

But both think they are hearing the Spirit, and their programs are in conflict. If one of those two sides is not hearing the Spirit correctly, but they think they are, then how can you have confidence that you are hearing the Spirit correctly?

Do you have a conscience?

doubtingmerle · Jan 21, 2017

anonymous person said:
Do you have a conscience?

Yes. Do you?

doubtingmerle · Jan 21, 2017

Ed1wolf said:
I dealt with all of this earlier so will not rehash it here. There is no evidence of any other significant edits to the story as I stated earlier.

But you have shown no evidence that there were no changes before 150 AD. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. And yet, with zero evidence, you proudly proclaim that you are right. Why?

The later Orthodox said a man named Marcion changed the scriptures to match his perverted beliefs. But then, when you read Marcion, he says it was the Orthodox who changed the scriptures, and all he was doing was setting it back to the original. Who was telling the truth? How can you possibly know?

It used to be that all we knew about the gnostics was what the Orthodox told us. They told us the Gnostics had perverted the scriptures. But then we found Gnostic writings at Nag Hammadi, and guess what, their writings are reasonable, and they say the Orthodox are the one who changed the scriptures. Who is telling the truth? How can you possibly know?

Or maybe everybody was changing the scriptures.

I am not saying that individuals were not, but scientific studies have shown that generally devout Christians and Jews are more law abiding than other people.

Flapdoodle. Please justify your claim that Christians and Jews are scientifically shown to be more honest.

We know from II Peter 3:16 and Revelation 22:18-19 that any book written by an apostle or his associate was considered scripture. And both of those books were written before 100 AD. And any changes made to them were a sin.

2 Peter? That is universally believed by critical scholars to be written in the second century. See 2 Peter . And lists of NT books do not include 2 Peter until late, so it was probably not even widely known until the 3rd century. That books hardly can be an authority about the views of the first century.

And the threat in Revelation against those who altered the words? That is similar to threats found in other books. That is hardly proof that the book was not altered. Rather it is proof that everybody knew books were being altered. That is why they added threats in the hopes it will discourage the rampant editing, intentional or unintentional, that was going on.

No, he made no major changes to affect the gospel message.

What I said is that Matthew made significant changes. Matthew started with Mark and made significant changes.

Using the term proto, implies that there was never an original Mark and Matthew. There was an original Mark and Matthew, there was no proto version. We have the exact same message our versions of Mark and Matthew even with a few minor edits.

Huh? "Proto" means first. So how can references to proto-Matthew (first-Matthew) mean there was no original? Hello?

Again how do you know the message is exactly the same in 150 AD as the original when you have given us zero evidence to back up your claim? How do you know what was in the original?

The original Matthew was written long before that false gospel. Therefore it is more likely to be historically accurate. God preserved the message of the original Matthew in our modern Matthew.

The original Matthew was written long before the modern Matthew also.

The gospel of the Ebionites, the gospel of the Nazoreans, and the gospel of Matthew all appear to be versions of the first "Matthew", which I call proto-Matthew. There were doubtless edits made to all of these. We do not know what changes were made to each before the middle of the second century, or even if the original Matthew (which I call proto-Matthew) was more like the modern Matthew than one of these books.

anonymous person · Jan 21, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Yes. Do you?

Is it an evil spirit speaking to you?

Ed1wolf · Jan 21, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
dm: And we have ancient references to Secret Mark. How do you know the book did not exist? See Secret Mark .

No, most scholars now consider it a forgery. From Wikipedia: "The revelation of the letter caused a sensation at the time, but was soon met with accusations of forgery and misrepresentation. Subsequent study, including handwriting analysis of higher quality color photographs of the document, first published in 2000, revealed more possible evidence of forgery, and led scholars such as Craig A. Evans and Emanuel Tov to conclude the work is a hoax, with Smith being the most likely perpetrator.[1] However, while an increasing number of scholars have been convinced by this view, many still maintain that the Mar Saba letter itself is genuine, and debate continues about the authenticity of the letter and the Secret Gospel it describes.[2"

ed: John is independent of Mark no editing there.

dm: Understood that John did not simply copy from Mark as Matthew and Luke did, but clearly John is dependent on Mark in some place. Also much of his resurrection story clearly comes from Luke.

Evidence?

ed: To Paul and most early jews there is no such thing as a spirit body. You were either a spirit or a body. There was not enough time for legendary development to occur.

dm: What did angels have, if not spirit bodies?

Angels are spirit beings, they do not have bodies.

dm: What did Moses see, if God is a spirit and yet Moses saw God?

God can make Himself and other spirits visible.

dm: What do you think Paul is at this time? You say he lives on in spirit until he later gets a new body made for him. But in the meantime, in heaven, does he have a spirit body? Or is it just some sort of undetectable ghost with no ability to communicate or be detected? Or does he have some sort of spirit body in heaven?

He is an undetectable spirit dwelling in undetectable heaven. He can communicate with other spiritual beings in heaven.

doubtingmerle · Jan 22, 2017

anonymous person said:
Is it an evil spirit speaking to you?

No. When I have thoughts about right and wrong, or about my social duties in this world, that is simply a part of my mind bringing those things to my attention. We can call it "conscience" if you like, or "superego" if you like, or whatever term you like. But I do not think it is a God or a devil manipulating thoughts in my mind.

doubtingmerle · Jan 22, 2017

Ed1wolf said:
No, most scholars now consider it a forgery. From Wikipedia: "The revelation of the letter caused a sensation at the time, but was soon met with accusations of forgery and misrepresentation. Subsequent study, including handwriting analysis of higher quality color photographs of the document, first published in 2000, revealed more possible evidence of forgery, and led scholars such as Craig A. Evans and Emanuel Tov to conclude the work is a hoax, with Smith being the most likely perpetrator.[1] However, while an increasing number of scholars have been convinced by this view, many still maintain that the Mar Saba letter itself is genuine, and debate continues about the authenticity of the letter and the Secret Gospel it describes.[2"

Wait. This mentions 2 scholars, that have increasing scholarly support, while debate continues. How do you get from that to "most scholars"? If a subject is met with considerable scholarly debate, then you cannot simply say that therefore you are right, and that most agree with you. Wikipedia in no way states that.

I had posted a link, and you completely ignored it. It said this about Secret Mark:

In 1958, Morton Smith found a letter of Clement of Alexandria at the Mar Saba monastary near the city of Jerusalem. The Secret Gospel of Mark is known only from the references in this letter.

Although there has been some controversy over the letter, today it is generally agreed that the letter is authentic correspondence written by Clement. In his introduction in The Complete Gospels, Stephen Patterson notes: "The handwriting can be dated to around 1750. Smith published the letter in 1973. Early discussion of it was marred by accusations of forgery and fraud, no doubt owing in part to its controversial comments. Today, however, there is almost unanimous agreement among Clementine scholars that the letter is authentic." [source]

So no, according to this, it is not true that most scholars think this is a forgery. In fact, it claims there is nearly unanimous scholarly support for Secret Mark. You had this information before you responded, and simply ignored it.

Evidence?

That John used Luke as a source? Compare Luke 24:36-41 with John 20:19-20. This story appears in none of the other gospels. In fact, this story does not really fit with the other gospels without contradiction. But John follows Luke very closely.

Now read the verses following this in Luke and John. In Luke, Jesus gives a message compatible with the theme of Luke. In John, Jesus gives a completely different message compatible with the theme of John. The messages do not overlap. It is obvious to me that neither is summarizing what Jesus said, but both are putting words into his mouth.

So it looks to me like John took the story of Luke and changed the words of Jesus to what he wanted.

Angels are spirit beings, they do not have bodies.

But you think angels can appear and look like men, and even be confused for men, yes? Why can it not be that Paul thought Jesus arose as a spirit similar to angels, that could at will appear in a form that looks so much like a man, he is confused to be a man?

God can make Himself and other spirits visible.

And a spirit Jesus could make himself visible at will (while the flesh and blood were left behind in the grave)?

He is an undetectable spirit dwelling in undetectable heaven. He can communicate with other spiritual beings in heaven.

OK, so Paul died, his body decayed, but you think he lives on as a spirit in heaven that can communicate with other spiritual beings. Since the Jesus that Paul describes seems like a spirit that can communicate with others, why can it not be that Paul thought Jesus, in his resurrected form, is much like you think Paul is in his resurrected form?

anonymous person · Jan 22, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
No. When I have thoughts about right and wrong, or about my social duties in this world, that is simply a part of my mind bringing those things to my attention. We can call it "conscience" if you like, or "superego" if you like, or whatever term you like. But I do not think it is a God or a devil manipulating thoughts in my mind.

How do you know your thoughts are simply a part of your brain working and not the thoughts put there by an evil spirit?

Are there credible witnesses to the resurrection?

I'll think about it.

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