Pure Goodness

Originally posted by sonship
There is no cause for you to boast that I somehow suddenly now agree with you.

Well one moment nobody comes close to JC the next you say there are similar teachings.

The fact is his moral teachings were nothing new.

He had nothing new to say on morality.

His legacy is just a whim of historical chance.

Originally posted by sonship
How will finding some logical weakness with the New Testament plan of salvation remove the stains upon one's conscience for moral failures committed ?

I don't understand this question. 😕

Originally posted by wolfgang59

Well one moment nobody comes close to JC the next you say there are similar teachings.

Where the contradiction?

The new part you will reject because it involves the supernatural.
Is there another teacher that said He would come to make an abode within his or her followers ?

I don't think so.
So you put up a filter - Nothing supernatural.

Okay, all the people who came before Jesus Christ, may indeed spoken something reminiscent. You have the burden to prove that to me.

An important question is "Did they live it or simply teach it?"
IE. " Do as I say not as I do. "

I think what Jesus taught He lived quite splendidly.
The lack of distance between what He spoke and what He lived was new.
Was He the first to say that we should love out enemies ?
Probably He was not.

Being tortured by them, the burden is on you to demonstrate someone else said something like "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing."

That's [i]your[/b] homework to put up another example with a claim "See? So and So did the same thing." That burden is on you wolfgang59.
So get out of troll mode and get busy.

His legacy is just a whim of historical chance.

No it is not a whim. It is substantive, unique in His impact.
It is not just because some bored people had nothing else to do but muse on the novelty of a Jewish carpenter.

Who would you submit was also taken by force to be a king, and declined?

Who would you submit did as much to cause the equality of women with men to be recognized?

Who would you submit did as much to show you could not simultaneously serve God and serve greedy mammon?

Who would you submit was more powerful in non-violence?
Martin Luther King was a Baptist minister quite AFTER the life of Jesus as an example.

By the way, people you mention after Jesus, probably had Jesus as their inspiring example.

Who would you submit taught as effectively against religious hypocrisy, play acting with a facade ?

Names?
Specifics?
We've heard you little few words of criticism. Now's the time to present your research as to WHO you believe overshadows Jesus Christ in the area of ethical teaching and leading by example.

The fact is his moral teachings were nothing new.

He had nothing new to say on morality.

His legacy is just a whim of historical chance.

This is arrogance. All who lived before you were naive about Jesus. And only you are clear eyed about Jesus ?

Sheer arrogance that no one has a proper perspective on the contribution of this Person but you and your few atheist cheer leaders. Sad.

Originally posted by sonship

Well one moment nobody comes close to JC the next you say there are similar teachings.

Where the contradiction?
...
Is there another teacher that said He would come to make an abode within his or her followers ?

I don't know .. probably.

But I fail to see what that has to do with teaching morality.

Originally posted by bbarr
That's a nice example, but not all all debts are of that form. Suppose A owes a debt of gratitude or owes an apology to B. If a third person, C, expresses gratitude or apologizes to B on A's behalf, it doesn't discharge A's debt to B. Sometimes a debt can only be discharged by sincerely feeling a certain way, or by coming to see things in a certain way. Th ...[text shortened]... at's why I'm skeptical of the very notion that Jesus could have taken all our sins upon himself.

Good point. Like you say, a "debt of gratitude" can only be paid by the person so indebted.

So it probably boils down to what the debts (or sins) are. Paul says that without the law there can be no sin, so the tribes in darkest Africa and the Amazon who never had the law, never sinned. And thus need no forgiveness?

Sonship will say that Romans 1 says that the person without the law will be judged without the law, but by the natural law. But that opens up an entirely new can of worms.

Originally posted by sonship

"And if anyone was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire."

Are you proposing that perhaps God knows now that NO ONE, but NO ONE will suffer that fate, but He just tells us anyway for some reason?

Firstly, you have probably correctly labelled me as a Universalist, whatever else that may mean. I believe God is bigger than Christian doctrine, amd even the Bible.

So I do not believe that every word in the Bible is individually and literally inspired, but written by the authors to the best of their knowledge and ability at the time.

Therefore ( because of all the logical inconsistencies and moral acrobatics that have to be performed by defenders of eternal hellfire on these very threads) I do not believe in the Lake of Fire as per your reference.

At a Bible Study meeting last night this issue came up again. The Apologist proclaimed God's Goodness and Willingness by quoting the verse "it is God's will that all men should be saved", whereupon I responded: But apparently not many will, not so?

A: Sadly, that seems to be the case.
Me: So God in the end does Not get what he wants?
A: That seems to be the case.
Me: Poor God! So he really messed up in creating the universe, it didn't turn out to be what he intended!

I am a Project Manager, and I can do better than that...

Originally posted by sonship
You don't have any moral lapses which have nothing to do with my Christian faith?

Every single one of my moral lapses has nothing to do with your Christian faith.

Originally posted by sonship

Being tortured by them, the burden is on you to demonstrate
someone else said something like "Father, forgive them for
they do not know what they are doing."

A man talking to an imaginary supernatural being is neither a moral act
nor is it teaching morality. It is an example of the Golden Rule but as
you have conceded that was promoted much, much earlier than JC.

Originally posted by CalJust

Firstly, you have probably correctly labelled me as a Universalist, whatever else that may mean. I believe God is bigger than Christian doctrine, amd even the Bible.

This is essentially what I meant when I wrote previously that with me there are some "unknowns" and I expect some surprises.

You have expressed the same thing I wrote.
Having said that, I don't think that means what is revealed is the Scripture is negated.

We just don't fully know how God will bring it all together.

So I do not believe that every word in the Bible is individually and literally inspired, but written by the authors to the best of their knowledge and ability at the time.

How do you guard against merely taking what you agree with as OK and what you do not agree with as "faulty" ? Doesn't such an attitude leave much room for you arbitrarily deciding when the erroneous part was written in, based upon your personal bias?


Now Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and spliced away any and all things that he didn't like. So you are not alone in your "conditional inspiration" attitude. But you are going to have difficulty when the someone else argues that there is no "Son of God" in any unique sense in the New Testament.

Or with similar reasoning, it is argued that all passages about Christ dying and being raised from the dead are uninspired and faulty. But things like "the golden rule" are the truly inspired passages.

But with your original comment - I already said that I find indications that we are not exhaustively given all details. I don't think I will utilize those mysteries to claim that other quite clear revelations are negated.