Question for non-literalist folks: When does literal biblical history begin?

[gluadys]

Very far fetched. There are many more instances of omniscince. The woman at the well, the disciple he was under the tree, his own death, Judas' betrayal, the donkey and colt, Peter's denial, the destruction of the temple, the knowledge that the woman who anointed him would be told about in the generations to come, John 8:58 Before Abraham was I am, etc etc.

I think there's a very stong case for His omniscience.

None of these is a water-tight case for omniscience.

In the case of the woman who anointed him, this is not prescience, it is commmand. For he said she anointed him for his burial. So whenever the story of Jesus' death and burial would be told, her story is to be told as part of it.

The donkey and colt does not require omniscience--only pre-arrangement with the donkey's owner. When he sent his disciples ahead to get it, he also gives them the code word agreed on with the owner. "The Master has need of it."

Peter's denial requires knowledge of Peter's character. The destruction of the temple requires no more omniscience than Jeremiah had when he proclaimed the destruction of the first temple.

Some suggest (and even the NT era document recently discovered) that Judas' betrayal was also pre-arranged. Alternatively, it requires no more than a knowledge of Judas' character.

And in all these situations, we simply don't have the full story. We have only what the disciples and others observed. We don't know how much or how little Jesus already knew about Philip or Nathanael or the woman at the well beforehand or from what sources. In short, we don't know that Jesus was really doing a cold reading of these people.

My reply to that was well, Jesus, being God would have known if Adam was real or not.

Not if he did not exercise omniscience. Could he be truly human and also omniscient? IMHO, the answer is "no".

 

[gluadys]

Because you're making an assumption that is not given in the bible. The other limits you listed have a biblical basis, however, there is no biblical basis for NOT being omniscient (if you can provide this then that would be great) there is in fact plenty of evidence (half the letters written in red) that He was omniscient.

The evidence looks good when you are presupposing omniscience. It is easy to find something when you are looking for it. But you need to look not only for evidence against, but for possible alternate interpretations of the evidence for. If the incident could be explained just as well without resort to omniscience, then it is not really evidence for omniscience.

Arty implied something that would be a hearesy and I implied something else that would be a hearesy.

Yes, Arty correctly implied that to see Jesus as only God (and the incarnation as a pretence of being human) is heresy. And you correctly stated that to see Jesus as only human is likewise heresy.

The problem as I saw it was that you reacted to arty's reference to Jesus being "really human", as if he had said "only human".

His only difference was that He was free from sin? Nothing else?

As far as I can see.

Jesus knew of things to come

So did the OT prophets. Does that make them omniscient and incarnations of deity?

He knew who He was

His Father and the Holy Spirit revealed this to him at his baptism and possibly on other occasions not recorded in scripture. It does not require omniscience.

He had authority to heal

So did Elisha in the OTwhen he healed Naaman. So did Peter and other apostles. Both Elisha and Peter also raised the dead. Were they omniscient? Were they anything other than human?

and control His physical environment

A matter of faith, not omniscience or divine power. Jesus explicitly tells his disciples that with faith they could do such miracles too.


What you are doing is consistently underrating what is humanly possible. Because you assume certain things are beyond the capacities of humans, when you see Jesus doing them, you assume it is evidence of his divinity. But what Jesus is doing is showing us what humans are capable of.

The only reason we do not commonly see humans doing such things is, according to Jesus, that we lack faith in God to answer our prayers. When we exercise the faith in God that Jesus did, then like Elisha,we can heal the sick and raise the dead, like Jeremiah and other prophets we can look into the future and tell what is to come, like Peter we can make the lame walk and like Elijah cause the rain to cease and to come again at his call.

Jesus could do all of these things in the same way the OT prophets could, and so could his disciples. In short, he could do all these things as a human being without calling on his divinity.

and you expect that He spoke of men in Genesis as if they were real men, not because they WERE real men, but because He'd read about them and didn't know any better because he didn't have the research capability that we have in this day and age?

What could Jesus, as a human, research other than the rabbinical tradition?

Adam? The fictious literary device Adam?

Yes, that's the one.

You seem to think I don't realize Jesus was fully human and I think you don't realize He was also fully God.

It's not that. You have affirmed the full humanity of Jesus and I have affirmed his full divinity. Where we differ is on what attributes are necessary for the incarnate Word to be fully divine. You think he would not be fully divine unless in his human state he also experienced divine omniscience. I beg to differ. I think that he could be limited to the knowledge of other first-century Jews and still be fully divine. I would see his divinity more in his character than in his powers.

 

[gluadys]

I believe 1 John clearly states that Jesus was there at the beginning of time and that there's no evidence that he forgot everything in order to be a real human.

Check Philippians 2:7-8

What do you think "emptied himself" means?

 

[charityagape]

The evidence looks good when you are presupposing omniscience. It is easy to find something when you are looking for it. But you need to look not only for evidence against, but for possible alternate interpretations of the evidence for. If the incident could be explained just as well without resort to omniscience, then it is not really evidence for omniscience.

And are you not presupposing that he had no more knowledge of things physical and spiritual and historical than the average educated man of his day?

Yes, Arty correctly implied that to see Jesus as only God (and the incarnation as a pretence of being human) is heresy. And you correctly stated that to see Jesus as only human is likewise heresy.

The problem as I saw it was that you reacted to arty's reference to Jesus being "really human", as if he had said "only human".

I'm sorry you saw it that way, but you saw wrong.

So did the OT prophets. Does that make them omniscient and incarnations of deity?

The power to do these things didn't come from them though, they were only human. Jesus was not only human and the ability to do these things came from the fact that He was human and God.

His Father and the Holy Spirit revealed this to him at his baptism and possibly on other occasions not recorded in scripture. It does not require omniscience.

Seems very possible He knew at age twelve.

So did Elisha in the OTwhen he healed Naaman. So did Peter and other apostles. Both Elisha and Peter also raised the dead. Were they omniscient? Were they anything other than human?

No to either. The were nothing more than human and their authority to do those things did not originate within their human nature. Jesus however was not only human. He was fully man and fully God. His authority lay in who He was, unlike all the OT prophets.

What you are doing is consistently underrating what is humanly possible. Because you assume certain things are beyond the capacities of humans, when you see Jesus doing them, you assume it is evidence of his divinity. But what Jesus is doing is showing us what humans are capable of.

Nice to know your opinion. In my opinion you are consistenly underrating God. So Jesus heals a blind man out of His human capabilities?

Now I do believe in believers praying for and healing the blind to this very day (do you, since you brought it up) however, that healing has NOTHING to do with their human capabilities. It's through Jesus that the believer has this authority not our own personal human capabilities. Jesus was not showing us was humans are capable of, He was showing us His authority (divinity) we as believers have access to that authority, but we can do nothing like that of our own power and human capability.

The only reason we do not commonly see humans doing such things is, according to Jesus, that we lack faith in God to answer our prayers. When we exercise the faith in God that Jesus did, then like Elisha,we can heal the sick and raise the dead, like Jeremiah and other prophets we can look into the future and tell what is to come, like Peter we can make the lame walk and like Elijah cause the rain to cease and to come again at his call.

However, these people didn't do any of these things of their own power, and faith .......... hmmm we might skew this already derailed thread into another dimension.

Jesus could do all of these things in the same way the OT prophets could, and so could his disciples. In short, he could do all these things as a human being without calling on his divinity.

What could Jesus, as a human, research other than the rabbinical tradition?

What could Jesus, as God, be fooled by?

It's not that. You have affirmed the full humanity of Jesus and I have affirmed his full divinity. Where we differ is on what attributes are necessary for the incarnate Word to be fully divine. You think he would not be fully divine unless in his human state he also experienced divine omniscience. I beg to differ. I think that he could be limited to the knowledge of other first-century Jews and still be fully divine. I would see his divinity more in his character than in his powers.

I never said He COULDN'T be devine, I just doubt that he was as limited in his knowledge as you think He was.........



Also, I'm going to open a thread in GT and discuss this more fully with a wider range of participants, you're welcome to come along if you like..

 

[ChetSinger]

As to his degree of omniscience, I can't say. But he did at least have pre-human memories of heaven, demonstrated by his statment "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven".

 

[artybloke]

I'm sorry you saw it that way, but you saw wrong.

No she didn't. To call Jesus omniscient, to me is to deny the incarnation. To say that Jesus isn't really and fully human in all aspects. What isn't assumed cannot be redeemed.

As to his degree of omniscience, I can't say. But he did at least have pre-human memories of heaven, demonstrated by his statment "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven".

Oh wow! Jesus can use a metaphor! Gosh!

 

[gluadys]

And are you not presupposing that he had no more knowledge of things physical and spiritual and historical than the average educated man of his day?

No, I am just remarking on a commonplace fact of psychology. It is always easy to find "evidence" of what one already pre-supposes to be true. And to overlook or discount evidence that counters that pre-supposition.

I'm sorry you saw it that way, but you saw wrong.

I don't think so, but I won't argue the point further.

The power to do these things didn't come from them though, they were only human. Jesus was not only human and the ability to do these things came from the fact that He was human and God.

I never said the power came from them. It came through them. But the power of God coming through them did not make them more than human. Why would it make Jesus more than human? Why can't Jesus, as a human, access the power of God to heal and work miracles, on the same basis as any other human?

Seems very possible He knew at age twelve.

Do you even read what I say?

His Father and the Holy Spirit revealed this to him at his baptism and possibly on other occasions not recorded in scripture​

Age 12 or age 30, it still does not require omniscience.

No to either. The were nothing more than human and their authority to do those things did not originate within their human nature. Jesus however was not only human. He was fully man and fully God. His authority lay in who He was, unlike all the OT prophets.

Jesus explicitly denies that he speaks or acts on his own authority. Like the prophets, he receives his authority from the Father and says so plainly.

So what makes his healings and his raising of the dead any different from that of other human beings who did the same thing? How does this show that he has to be omniscient?

Nice to know your opinion. In my opinion you are consistenly underrating God. So Jesus heals a blind man out of His human capabilities?

No more than Elisha did. But we don't claim divine attributes for Elisha because, by the power of God, he healed leprosy and worked other miracles. So why claim that Jesus' healings came from a different source than Elisha's. How are they evidence of divinity in Jesus when they were not evidence of divinity in Elisha?

Now I do believe in believers praying for and healing the blind to this very day (do you, since you brought it up) however, that healing has NOTHING to do with their human capabilities.

Sure, I have no problem with that. The idea that the power to work miracles was limited to the early church makes no sense to me.

But if Jesus appeared among us today and prayed and healed the blind and the sick, what would he be doing differently than other human faith healers? Why would his miracles be evidence of divinity when theirs are not?

It's through Jesus that the believer has this authority not our own personal human capabilities. Jesus was not showing us was humans are capable of, He was showing us His authority (divinity) we as believers have access to that authority, but we can do nothing like that of our own power and human capability.

It was never my claim that humans work miracles from their own capacity. As for the rest you are plainly contradicting Jesus' own words to his disciples as well as the examples in and outside of scripture where ordinary human beings have worked such miracles. Not from their own human capacity, but by opening themselves in faith to let the power of God work through them.

This is why Jesus says it is lack of faith that prevents most humans from doing the works he did. What Jesus showed us is what humans can do when they act in the strength of faith that the human Jesus did.

However, these people didn't do any of these things of their own power, and faith .......... hmmm we might skew this already derailed thread into another dimension.

That was never my claim, so we no longer need to pursue this red herring.

What could Jesus, as God, be fooled by?

You are evading the question.

I never said He COULDN'T be devine, I just doubt that he was as limited in his knowledge as you think He was.........

So you are conceding that Jesus could be less than omniscient and still be divine? This is the important point.

No need to quibble on the extent of his less than omniscient knowledge since we have no way to explore this question. We might both be surprised at what Jesus knew, and at what he did not know.

Also, I'm going to open a thread in GT and discuss this more fully with a wider range of participants, you're welcome to come along if you like..

I will respectfully decline. I have no time to wander through several forums. This and the creo/evo board take more time than I have already.

 

[gluadys]

As to his degree of omniscience, I can't say. But he did at least have pre-human memories of heaven, demonstrated by his statment "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven".

I don't follow your logic. How does this remark show memories of heaven? Could it not be a present vision of heaven?

 

[ChetSinger]

I don't follow your logic. How does this remark show memories of heaven? Could it not be a present vision of heaven?

The falling of Satan from heaven was an event in the distant past. And he was in heaven with the Father when it happened. So I take it as pre-incarnation memory. I suppose you could believe that he had been shown a vision of the past.


Looking back, it seems this discussion of omniscience began because of a poster's comment that Jesus could have ignorantly thought that Old Testament figures were historical when they weren't. Omniscient or not, I can't see Jesus being in error about such a thing.


Here's a general question for anyone who wants to answer it: if Moses and Elijah weren't actual people, who was Jesus speaking with during the transfiguration?

 

[gluadys]

The falling of Satan from heaven was an event in the distant past.

I don't think that is a settled testimony of scripture. According to the book of Job, Satan has access to heaven in the present, and according to the Revelation of John, Satan will be put out of heaven in the future.

I don't know of any clear-cut statement that Satan was exiled from heaven in the distant past, but even if there is, we still have the statements pertaining to the present and future.

I expect Jesus was using the phrase as a common way to refer to any defeat of Satan. Or that he saw the victory of the disciples on their mission as contributing to the defeat of Satan whenever it occurs.

 

[shernren]

The falling of Satan from heaven was an event in the distant past. And he was in heaven with the Father when it happened. So I take it as pre-incarnation memory. I suppose you could believe that he had been shown a vision of the past.

That's not entirely obvious from the passage - I've always thought that it referred to how Jesus, seeing His disciples triumph over the forces of evil, experienced a foretaste of how He would lead His church to defeat Satan. And that "Satan falling from heaven" was therefore something not in the past, but which all but began at that moment and lasts until Jesus returns in triumph. It need not be something placed in the past which Jesus could only have remembered from pre-Incarnation.

 

[shernren]

Here's a general question for anyone who wants to answer it: if Moses and Elijah weren't actual people, who was Jesus speaking with during the transfiguration?

Are you sure there are any TEs who don't believe that Moses and Elijah were actual people?

 

[ChetSinger]

Are you sure there are any TEs who don't believe that Moses and Elijah were actual people?

Let's find out.

 

[charityagape]

I think most TEs believe Moses and Elijah were real, they were quite a while after Abraham, much less Adam.

 

[shernren]

http://www.christianforums.com/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=7145

That does it for Moses. And the data is quite clear that the later on in Biblical chronology the character is placed, the more TEs believe that the person is historical, so that I'm quite sure extrapolation from the data will give a vanishingly small proportion of TEs who do not believe that Elijah was not a historical person.

 

[ChetSinger]

Cool, thanks for the link.

 

[artybloke]

The falling of Satan from heaven was an event in the distant past.

I think you're reading medieval notions into the Bible here, frankly. As others have pointed out, there's no idea that Satan fell from heaven in the distant past anywhere else in Scripture. "Satan" as a biblical concept is, in any case, a much more complex idea than the devil in red of medieval and popular imagination.

And he could as equally have been refering to his own defeat of Satan in the desert temptation, again using pictorial language.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

This is something I've become curious about.

For you brothers and sisters who don't believe that the beginning of Genesis is literal history: when do you think that biblical history actually becomes literal?

Is it Noah, or Abraham, or Moses, or David, or Daniel, or <insert name here>? And can you describe how you've come to this belief?

When lifespans start being measured in decades, not centuries.

Note, I do not rule out any story from Adam and Eve on as having a basis in historical events, but frankly I think it is more important to figure out what God is trying to communicate.