To call it an insult is a snotty, aristocratic scorn of an innate status. Jerk-values contrary to Yahweh. You don't really believe that.
Yes, I don't really believe it is snotty. We have got over that.
There is nothing particularly clear about 2 Pt 3:8. Atemporality is standard incomprehensible Christian jargon.
From the fact that you don't understand it does not follow it is incomprehensible. I do understand it (with some involuntary help from Mr. Einstein).
No, a logical conclusion from the notion of creator. Remember that the Creator is to our universe as an author is to the universe he »created« for his novel. An author can write a chapter where he himself acts as one figure of his novel. He can freely chose chapter, time, place, circumstance -
because He is the author. What you say about God is like: No, an author cannot do it, because he does not live in the world of his novel, but in the real world. Totally illogical.
Stop dishonestly commenting on views you are not aware of and don't understand. Lookup the monistic materialist Tertullian. Show me where he believed what you say.
Tertullian had no access to modern science, so he surely would have difficulties to understand what I said. More than three dimensions? Time being a dimension comparable to space? No real empty space (or in other words: Without matter, no space)?
I'm no expert on Tertullian, but frankly: I can't believe that he subscribed to Democritus' "only atoms and empty space" materialism.
Incorrect. That's like saying divine Fire is in all respects the same as natural fire. The truth is that the biblical authors merely needed to find enough similarities to feel justified in calling it "Fire". Such as these:
....it radiates physical Light (Ex 13:21).
....it consumes sacrifices (1 Ki 18:38)
...it has tongues of Flame (Acts 2:3).
Or like saying the divine Dove descending on Christ had to be exactly the same as a natural dove. Just not true.
Of course there are similarities. You seemed to say that these were not only similarities, but that there is no real difference. I objected to this.
I've responded to these statement probably 50 times now.
Remember that I did not read every posting from you (I don't take the time to do it when I'm flooded by too many postings). I cannot remember that you said anything that was a real argument against these statements. May be one or two points here and there.
For the millionth time, how is shame not suffering?
So is education.
You cannot reduce shame to suffering, especially not in a frame work of a culture comparable to the ancient cultures the Bible was written in. An ancient might even respond: »How is suffering not shame?«. It is (to a great deal) the influence of the biblical message that helped to change such an attitude (BTW: urbanization was another factor).
I recommend Jayson Georges:
The 3D Gospel which focuses of the different aspects of the biblical message and how they are important (or unimportant) in different types of cultures. I read the German translation.
How is that a rebuttal of my merit/suffering thesis?
It was a rebuttal of your putting words in my mouth or concepts in my mind.
To put it in another way: Your accusing me was ill-founded.
Don't put stupid words in my mouth.
I showed you the consequences of your words. Now you yourself call it stupid what you (implicitly) said.
Really? You said »An angel could have atoned for us as well«, but »So the father could have replaced the son by an angel dying on the cross« is a non-sequitur? Explain why.
I gave examples in both directions. I praise my dad for any labor/suffering he did for the family. He praises me for the same.
And a person that had a happy father has no reason to praise him? It is not only whether suffering is reason to praise (to a major degree it was the Bible that gave raise to this concept), you always argue that there is no other reason - and this is the point I reject.
If he ESTEEMS effortless behavior as worthy of superlative praise
I did not say that he does so. It is not the effortless of the behavior that is praised when God is called worthy of praise.
Your version of God is idle and esteems His inactivity above all.
Nonsense.
If God were idle or snotty, then He would never had come on earth, were He experienced suffering and so learned obedience (Heb 5:8), which implies that suffering and obedience were new to Him.
And to call creation »inactivity« just because the Creator has infinite power, berefts the notion of activity of its sense.
Deflection. Praising Him for becoming Incarnate is not the same as praising Him for things like sleeping, as an adult man. Nobody does that.
Never thought about the sleep of Jesus in the sinking boat? Never seen a reason to thank Him for that?
It's the ONLY one that I can think of.
OK, this a a limitation of your capabilities to think. I can and do think of more than that.
You're insulting Yahweh both in His atoning work AND His creative work:
Calling creation »inactivity« and therefore fancying He might have started as weak as us is no insult?
You praise the cross
only for the suffering, I praise it for suffering
plus other aspects - and this you call an insult? You're really putting things upside down.
You often criticize me out of reductionism. In my bookshelf there is a book with several articles from C.S. Lewis, it is the translation of
Screwtape proposes a toast and other pieces, and the article I recommend to you appeared (according to preface) first in
They asked for a paper. The German title is „Umwandluing”, which should be "transformation" in English (but you can never sure whether the title got translated, sometimes the title of the translation is a totally new creation).
Actually He was. The divine Word is the hand of God resting on every particle of matter:
...for tracking purposes.
...for imposing upon it so-called "forces" such as gravity, electricity, magnetism, and electro-magnetism.
This means that everything that a lamb does, God also does. That's simply how a divine Particle tracks and manages a created particle of matter.
No, you don't really believes it. If we change a sinner for the lamb (you said
a lamb, there your words were not about Jesus), this means: Whatever the sinner does, God does. Logical implication: God commits sin. No, you don't believe that.
I gave you an example of a contradiction: damage to Christ's tangible body could not have inflicted/impacted an intangible soul with any suffering.
Well, this is not compatible to what Jesus said:
Mt 26,38
Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’
I think even the dichotomy between body and soul is misleading. The terms translated as "soul" in the OT denote life, breath and so on, they do not allow to separate the soul from the body. And the NT underlines it: We do not believe in an eternal life of body-less souls, but in the resurrection »of the flesh«.
If your sentence were true, there is nothing to be gained by fasting. And every psychosomatic illness were pure imagination.
The only open question is: Was Tertullian wrong, or did he say something that is somewhat different to what you say?
(Guffaw). I almost fell out of my chair on this one. You're really trying to marginalize the role of suffering in the atonement?
No, it is to central to be marginalized. But
you marginalize the shame of the cross, making it acceptable to the »Greek« that demand logical plausibility (1.Cor 1:22-25).
Unbelievable. "Blond hair and blue eyes" is just a stand-in for "innate traits" in general.
Not in German.
And connecting Jesus to traits that are close to the "ideal race" of the Nazis, is something I do not want to swallow.
You pretend as though "honor" refutes my thesis.
It refuses the thesis that suffering is the
only reason why the cross is to be praised.
Remember, putting away all own honor is the reason why Christ was exalted to bear the most high name YHWH (Ph 2). No reason to praise Him?
That IS my thesis. The Son will be honored for laboring/suffering under the agony of temptation both before creation, during creation, and during the Incarnation.
You have no proof for suffering »before creation, during creation«. I pointed to Heb 5:8 above that shows suffering and obedience was an experience during the incarnation that was new to Christ.
Likewise you pretend that shame is not a clear example of suffering.
I also "pretend" that education is not a clear example of suffering, despite what Heb 12:5-7 says.
It is this narrow reductionism that I oppose. You cannot simply reduce everything that is related to suffering to nothing more than that.
Reminder: An infinitely powerful God cannot experience fatigue/exhaustion.
But His incarnation can.
An author cannot walk in the fantasy universe he created. No figure in his novel can harm him. But if he »incarnates« as one of the figures in his novel, this figure can walk there and experience harm from other figures in this novel.
You yourself made this argument based on Isa 40. Therefore the combination of labor/fatigue/suffering followed by rest would never apply to Him.
Therefore, your interpretation of the rest of God is wrong. There is a logical alternative to it: God
created rest for the sake of man.
My name is He
lmut.
Call "merit" an axiom if you insist,
Not merit, when will you learn not to reduce what I say to nonsense?
The axiom is: That merit is the only reason why God can be praised.
Those two people should always do what is right to the best of their ability. Now suppose they both put in equal effort. Don't they deserve equal credit/praise?
Praise for what? For the effort? For the result they achieved? For the benefit it makes to us? You always mix these different measures because you do nor apprehend the differences, or because you are unable to think all of them can be used as reason for praise.
Indeed, if the first person put in more effort than the second person, he merits the most credit/praise. He wins.
Two houses, with the same heating unit, and both units got exactly the same defect. Two plumbers (is this the correct term in English) repair these two heatings. In one house, the first comes, takes some instrument to measure some electricity, apprehends the kind of defect, exchanges the small sub-unit that got defect, and after 5 minutes, with almost no effort, everything is ok.
In the other house, the second plumber comes, but has less instruments and less learning, so he works for 36-hours, and after many trial-and-error working he understands what is to be done, drives to his storage and returns with a greater part he exchanges, which takes half an hour to exchange. But then, everything is ok.
The second one is to be praised, for he worked hard for such a long time, with so much effort that the effort of the other one can be called »nothing« compared to that. The first plumber was a lazy guy.
Only me is so stubborn to praise the first one and thus condone laziness. This is because I prefer a snotty attitude to justice and ignore what you call "math". At least according to what you said despite of any counter-argument.
EDIT: Some typo.