Eastern VS Western Thinking

redleghunter said:

Again you have to hold this alternative view because to take Jesus at face value completely refutes your entire hypothesis.

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Missed this in my previous.
Taking Jesus at face value here invites a paradox.
No matter which view you take, Jesus cannot have both been dead in the grave as a sinner, paying the penalty for all the sin of the world, and in Paradise with the thief, unless we assume His ability to move between time frames which is what my position presupposes.

Anguspure said:

I find it strange that on the one hand you attempt to free Him from the rules of Logic, that stand fixed and immutable, and yet you wish to bind him within space time which He has demonstrated in His resurrection body that He is entirely free to move within at His will.

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God is immutable. He is not subject to man's logic.

He is not constrained to His own creation, time being His creation. However, we should not go beyond how God has revealed Himself. He did not reveal the Logos as coming in the Flesh until the Incarnation. That's part of the progressive revelation I spoke of many times.

Anguspure said:

Missed this in my previous.
Taking Jesus at face value here invites a paradox.
No matter which view you take, Jesus cannot have both been dead in the grave as a sinner, paying the penalty for all the sin of the world, and in Paradise with the thief, unless we assume His ability to move between time frames which is what my position presupposes.

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Again the question is why not? Your contention is a soul or inner man cannot be separated from a body. So you have to conclude with the above based on a baseless presupposition.

What is revealed is Jesus's body was in the grave 3 days and He was in Paradise the very same day of His death with the repentant criminal. Do the math.

Body in the grave, inner man of Jesus in Paradise. The fact this completely refutes your position is why you have to bring up time/space machinations to obscure what is clearly revealed.

LittleLambofJesus said:

That reminds me of the event of Jesus walking on the water and the reaction of the Disciples when they saw Him
[probably would have been my reaction].

Matt 14:
25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.
26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost/apparition/fantasma<5326>” they said,
and cried out in fear. [Mark 6:49]

Transliteration: phantasma
Short Definition: an apparition, ghost, spirit
Definition: an apparition, ghost, spirit, phantom.

.........................

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Yeah, it just means an appearing. It was something that they or thought they saw that they didn't recognize. This idea of a ghost is not a Biblical concept. The idea of a ghost necessitates that a person can live apart from the body and this idea is not taught in Scripture.

SolomonVII said:

But when it comes what shaped Islam, the sources were not just Arabic epistemology.
I would suspect too, that as polytheistic Arabs adopted the strict monotheism of the Hebrew sources that shaped their new religion, Islam did end up shaping Arabic epistemology too. There is always that kind of dialectic relationship between a people and their culture.

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I was never talking about Islam or what shaped it.

Anguspure said:

Missed this in my previous.
Taking Jesus at face value here invites a paradox.
No matter which view you take, Jesus cannot have both been dead in the grave as a sinner, paying the penalty for all the sin of the world, and in Paradise with the thief, unless we assume His ability to move between time frames which is what my position presupposes.

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What is your concept of "the grave?"-- Hades, specifically, as used in the New Testament?

RDKirk said:

I was never talking about Islam or what shaped it.

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See Post 88 and 85.

SolomonVII said:

See Post 88 and 85.

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I was never talking about Islam or what shaped it.

RDKirk said:

I was never talking about Islam or what shaped it.

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Oh, apologies. it must have been that other RDKirk.

RDKirk said:

What is your concept of "the grave?"-- Hades, specifically, as used in the New Testament?

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The grave is where people are dead.
I currently hold that when a person dies they really do die in every sense, that afterlife is something that is given by God, through Christ Jesus when He resurrects us life or to judgment as the case may be.
Further to this I also consider that the 2nd death (Hell) is also exactly what is suggested by the word death and that those who are destroyed by the 2nd death are destroyed completely and forever.
I deny that hell is merely eternal life in an alternative place.

redleghunter said:

Again the question is why not? Your contention is a soul or inner man cannot be separated from a body. So you have to conclude with the above based on a baseless presupposition.

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The penalty for sin is death. To suggest that a part of a man continues to live after so called "death" is to make the one who wrote this a liar and means that Christ died for nothing (for if He would be dying to give life to something that cannot be killed).

What is revealed is Jesus's body was in the grave 3 days and He was in Paradise the very same day of His death with the repentant criminal. Do the math.

Body in the grave, inner man of Jesus in Paradise. The fact this completely refutes your position is why you have to bring up time/space machinations to obscure what is clearly revealed.

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Remembering that Jesus Christ when He died for us became sin for us and suffered the penalty for sin on our behalf; in your view does the inner man of a sinner go to paradise when he dies?

SolomonVII said:

I think the more important difference between the Greek and Hebrew world views does not revolve around the nature of the soul, but around the idea that the Greeks believed in logic and rationality and the power of the human mind as a tool that was capable of revealing truth to thinking man.

Jerusalem is more about truth as revelation from God. It is a 'thing is true because the Bible tells me so', or 'the prophets tell me so'; and the prophets are those defined as those who have had the Spirit of the Living God poured out into them.

Jerusalem introduces us to the personal God involved in personal relationships with his people, and with love is derived the understanding that morality comes from God. Love needs no reason; it is all about connection and relationship, give and take, and sharing.
The Socratic method of deriving the morality of a thing is quite a different affair. If a thing is deemed to be good and moral, it ought to be able to be demonstrated according to the laws of logic and natural reasoning.

Christianity, through Paul's Hellenic training, and through John's understanding of the Revealed Word of God, Jesus, as the Greek Logos, melds the two world views into Christianity.

Hence, when Paul says there is no longer Greek nor Jew in Jesus, he really means it. East is East and West is West, and the twain meets in Christ.

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Actually, Aristotle wasn't the problem. Plato was:

Christoplatonism | What He Is Teaching Me

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Why are people resistant to the idea that Heaven could be physical?

Alcorn suggests that we, as Christians, have been influenced by those before us who took on a set of views called christoplatonism. This is basically just a big word that combines the two people who molded the view – Christ, and the Greek philosopher Plato. Alcorn says that “Plato…believed that material things, including the human body and the earth, are evil, while immaterial things such as the soul and Heaven are good.” So while Christ has influenced us by giving us a way to access Heaven and by showing us that Heaven is good, Plato has influenced us by convincing us that anything physical is bad, therefore we believe that if want to access Heaven, it must not be physical. Unfortunately, this isn’t Biblical, and worse, it causes us to reject the idea of a bodily resurrection when Christ returns, or to reject the idea that the New Earth will be a physical place with physical characteristics.

Evidence that the Present Heaven Could Be Physical
Earth complements Heaven. Hebrews 8:5, when speaking of the High Priest, says “They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: ‘See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’ ” (emphasis added). This suggests that earth is a copy/shadow of what is in Heaven – that the characteristics of earth are derived from a Heavenly source. And Romans 1:20 says “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” This says that God’s qualities are made evident through His creation – earth and everything in it. If earth’s characteristics are derived from both Heaven’s characteristics and God’s characteristics, we should think of earth as complementary to Heaven instead of opposite to Heaven. And if earth is physical, then it is completely possible that Heaven is also physical.

Present Heaven Described as Paradise.
At the end of Luke 23, as Jesus is dying, one of the thieves hanging on the cross next to him says “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (v. 42), to which Jesus replies “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (v. 43). This word translated into paradise is the Greek word paradeisos, which Strong’s concordance says is based off a Persian word which means “a grand enclosure or preserve, hunting ground, park, shady and well watered…” Another similar sounding place is mentioned in Genesis 2 – the garden of Eden. Verses 8-9 say “Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” We know that after Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden, it was not destroyed. Genesis 3:23-24 says “So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” And Revelation 2:7 tells us “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” So we know that the tree of life still exists – it was a physical object that existed in the Garden of Eden at the beginning of time, it still exists today, and it will someday be located on the New Earth, in the New Jerusalem (see Revelation 22:2). If the tree of life was in Eden back then, we can assume it still is – therefore the Garden of Eden is likely still around (probably in the present Heaven), and could be the paradise that Jesus spoke of in Luke 23. What is most relevant about all this is that the Garden of Eden was a physical place when Adam and Even lived there, and it probably still is. Therefore, if it currently resides in the present Heaven (and will someday reside in the New Heaven/Earth), they are most likely physical places as well.

Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com

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TIME: Why, then, have we misread those verses?

Wright: It has, originally, to do with the translation of Jewish ideas into Greek. The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally. But Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies. The church at its best has always come back toward the Hebrew view, but there have been times when the Greek view was very influential.

TIME: Can you give some historical examples?

Wright: Two obvious ones are Dante's great poetry, which sets up a Heaven, Purgatory and Hell immediately after death, and Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine chapel, which portrays heaven and hell as equal and opposite last destinations. Both had enormous influence on Western culture, so much so that many Christians think that is Christianity.

TIME: But it's not.

Wright: Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven. They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we have a job to do.

redleghunter said:

God is immutable. He is not subject to man's logic.

He is not constrained to His own creation, time being His creation. However, we should not go beyond how God has revealed Himself. He did not reveal the Logos as coming in the Flesh until the Incarnation. That's part of the progressive revelation I spoke of many times.

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No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. Was John wrong?

But here I see that you wish to free God from the rules of logic, rules that come from the nature of who He Is, just as surely as He is Love, the denial of which undermines the very foundation of rational thought. I guess He is free in this respect but it is not His nature.

Yet you have difficulty with the idea that He manipulates time to His own ends when that is something that even mankind is learning to do and not terribly difficult at that: Einstein's "Time Dilation" Prediction Verified

Part of the progressive revelation to mankind is what creation itself reveals to us. God gave us rational minds precisely for this reason so that we can observe and appraise what creation itself tell us about our Creator

At a time when people reading thier own pagan interpretation into the text of the Bible regarded the Earth as flat, it was revealed to us that the Earth is a spheroid and so our thinking in respect of our view of the Scriptures was modified to reflect a revealed reality, that in fact more closely reflected what the authors of the Bible were writing anyway.

When we appraise in creation, the truth of what the authors of Genesis and Hebrews wrote, that what is seen was not made out of what was visible, that our faith in God was not misplaced.

And so now we also have a revelation from creation of the nature of space time that, if applied to our understanding of the Bible, clears up a number of apparant paradoxes and contradictions.

If it is written that God perambulated with Adam in the garden then clearly we have there a description of God with us. If we say that Yehoshua Ben YHWH is indeed who we claim He is, the very image of God, then we have a revelation here of the same person at an apparant earlier time (from our frame of reference).

To deny logic is self refuting. If we can no longer think rationally about things in the light of all that has been revealed then we may as well give up thinking at all, and certainly there will be little to discuss.

Anguspure said:

The penalty for sin is death. To suggest that a part of a man continues to live after so called "death" is to make the one who wrote this a liar and means that Christ died for nothing (for if He would be dying to give life to something that cannot be killed).

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Ok I get it. Your theology denies the inner person does not go on to be present with the Lord even though Jesus and Paul say so.

You have not refuted Jesus and Paul and I'm not going to keep posting the clear teachings of both God the Son and the apostle Paul.

Anguspure said:

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. Was John wrong?

But here I see that you wish to free God from the rules of logic, rules that come from the nature of who He Is, just as surely as He is Love, the denial of which undermines the very foundation of rational thought. I guess He is free in this respect but it is not His nature.

Yet you have difficulty with the idea that He manipulates time to His own ends when that is something that even mankind is learning to do and not terribly difficult at that: Einstein's "Time Dilation" Prediction Verified

Part of the progressive revelation to mankind is what creation itself reveals to us. God gave us rational minds precisely for this reason so that we can observe and appraise what creation itself tell us about our Creator

At a time when people reading thier own pagan interpretation into the text of the Bible regarded the Earth as flat, it was revealed to us that the Earth is a spheroid and so our thinking in respect of our view of the Scriptures was modified to reflect a revealed reality, that in fact more closely reflected what the authors of the Bible were writing anyway.

When we appraise in creation, the truth of what the authors of Genesis and Hebrews wrote, that what is seen was not made out of what was visible, that our faith in God was not misplaced.

And so now we also have a revelation from creation of the nature of space time that, if applied to our understanding of the Bible, clears up a number of apparant paradoxes and contradictions.

If it is written that God perambulated with Adam in the garden then clearly we have there a description of God with us. If we say that Yehoshua Ben YHWH is indeed who we claim He is, the very image of God, then we have a revelation here of the same person at an apparant earlier time (from our frame of reference).

To deny logic is self refuting. If we can no longer think rationally about things in the light of all that has been revealed then we may as well give up thinking at all, and certainly there will be little to discuss.

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Don't know what the above has to do with what I posted.

Again, it's obvious you are operating out of a sunk presupposition the inner person cannot leave the grave.

Jesus and Paul refute this notion as I've pointed out.

Perhaps we should let others catch up and join in the conversation.

Anguspure said:

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. Was John wrong?

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Of course not.

But here I see that you wish to free God from the rules of logic, rules that come from the nature of who He Is, just as surely as He is Love, the denial of which undermines the very foundation of rational thought. I guess He is free in this respect but it is not His nature.

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God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. There is a problem, the natural mind rejects the things of God:

Yet you have difficulty with the idea that He manipulates time to His own ends when that is something that even mankind is learning to do and not terribly difficult at that: Einstein's "Time Dilation" Prediction Verified

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God doesn't have to manipulate anything, the creation is subject to the Creator. God does inexplicable things we call miracles but to him it is perfectly natural to do as he pleases. Now I don't know what you think 'Time dilation' has to do with it but physics hasn't been able to solve those riddles in over a hundred years so I doubt will figure it out in the thread.

Part of the progressive revelation to mankind is what creation itself reveals to us. God gave us rational minds precisely for this reason so that we can observe and appraise what creation itself tell us about our Creator

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Yes, creation does speak to us of God's divine attributes and eternal nature, leaving us without excuse (Rom. 1:18-20). That doesn't mean our natural mind reflects perfectly the mind of God, as a matter of fact, because of sin (the noetic effects of sin), we get it twisted. Your rational mind can tell you correctly that there is a God and some of his qualities, so can the witness of conscience. What it can't do for you is bring you to an understanding of the righteousness of God in Christ, that requires a special revelation from God himself.

At a time when people reading thier own pagan interpretation into the text of the Bible regarded the Earth as flat, it was revealed to us that the Earth is a spheroid and so our thinking in respect of our view of the Scriptures was modified to reflect a revealed reality, that in fact more closely reflected what the authors of the Bible were writing anyway.

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The ancient Hebrews were not that interested in astronomy or cosmology, I find virtually none in the OT and the subject matter is never mentioned in the NT.

When we appraise in creation, the truth of what the authors of Genesis and Hebrews wrote, that what is seen was not made out of what was visible, that our faith in God was not misplaced.

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Yea we walk by faith not by sight, that much is true.

And so now we also have a revelation from creation of the nature of space time that, if applied to our understanding of the Bible, clears up a number of apparant paradoxes and contradictions.

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A proper understanding of the Scriptures can clear up a lot of secular speculation, that much is true, especially with regards to the true history of man.

If it is written that God perambulated with Adam in the garden then clearly we have there a description of God with us. If we say that Yehoshua Ben YHWH is indeed who we claim He is, the very image of God, then we have a revelation here of the same person at an apparant earlier time (from our frame of reference).

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I sure hope this isn't getting into String Theory.

To deny logic is self refuting. If we can no longer think rationally about things in the light of all that has been revealed then we may as well give up thinking at all, and certainly there will be little to discuss.

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The nice thing about logic is it's either up or down, pass or fail, 1 or 0. The nature of the substance of your posts could be so many things, perhaps there is a step wise logic after a fashion but I don't see that you could describe it as classical logic.

redleghunter said:

Ok I get it. Your theology denies the inner person does not go on to be present with the Lord even though Jesus and Paul say so.

You have not refuted Jesus and Paul and I'm not going to keep posting the clear teachings of both God the Son and the apostle Paul.

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No, I affirm that the inner person goes on to be present with the Lord. I affirm that this happens in the context of ressurection into an integrated and complete spiritual body, that we are not found naked, rather that we put off mortaility and put on immortality.

redleghunter said:

Don't know what the above has to do with what I posted.

Again, it's obvious you are operating out of a sunk presupposition the inner person cannot leave the grave.

Jesus and Paul refute this notion as I've pointed out.

Perhaps we should let others catch up and join in the conversation.

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Was John wrong in saying that the only way in which anybody has seen the Father is by seeing the Son?

Anguspure said:

Was John wrong in saying that the only way in which anybody has seen the Father is by seeing the Son?

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No of course not, it sounds like you have been reading the Upper Room Discourse. The Apostles want to see the Father, Jesus tells them if you've seen me you have seen the Father, because I am in the Father and the Father is in me. In the same discussion he tells them he will send the Comforter who is the Holy Spirit of promise who leads us into an even fuller understanding. You can see, perceive and understand God without physically seeing God, that doesn't happen until the resurrection. You can sit down to dinner with God and not recognize him even though he is God incarnate.

mark kennedy said:

Of course not.

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So it must therefore follow that anybody who has seen and walked with God, such as Adam, must have been with the Son.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. There is a problem, the natural mind rejects the things of God:

And this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. (1 Cor. 2:1-15)​

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God doesn't have to manipulate anything, the creation is subject to the Creator. God does inexplicable things we call miracles but to him it is perfectly natural to do as he pleases. Now I don't know what you think 'Time dilation' has to do with it but physics hasn't been able to solve those riddles in over a hundred years so I doubt will figure it out in the thread.

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On the contrary God manipultates everything, all things have thier
The link shows an experiment that manipulated time and confirmed the theory.

Yes, creation does speak to us of God's divine attributes and eternal nature, leaving us without excuse (Rom. 1:18-20). That doesn't mean our natural mind reflects perfectly the mind of God, as a matter of fact, because of sin (the noetic effects of sin), we get it twisted. Your rational mind can tell you correctly that there is a God and some of his qualities, so can the witness of conscience. What it can't do for you is bring you to an understanding of the righteousness of God in Christ, that requires a special revelation from God himself.

But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. (Rom. 3:21-22)​

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I do not deny what you are affirming, but will not take up flawed pagan theologies to explain apparant paradox when Creation itself tells me a different story.
Dualism and unconditional immortality of the human soul are good examples of the twisted mind of man that does not understand the things of God.

The ancient Hebrews were not that interested in astronomy or cosmology, I find virtually none in the OT and the subject matter is never mentioned in the NT.

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Nevertheless the author of Genesis very accurately describes creation and how it occurs. Other OT authors also make comments about the nature of the universe that have only begun to make sense in the light of new revelations about cosmology.

Yea we walk by faith not by sight, that much is true.

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...and faith is strengthened when we later find that what we trusted in is in fact a accurate and true.

I sure hope this isn't getting into String Theory.

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Just a simple observation that God has the ability to place himself and reveal himself at any point of time and space He chooses, and is not bound to the limitations of our physical universe. If God wishes that His image be first revealed by birth in 1st century Israel and then chooses that His image walks in the garden of Eden with Adam then there is nothing to stop Him from doing so.

If our perception of time makes that seem a little bit confusing, that is not Gods problem really.