Questions Christians can provide no good answer for

[Major Nikon]

Is Jesus really a god?

Most Christians don't even know that the concept of the Holy Trinity is merely a religious doctrine invented by the early Catholic Church as a marketing tool. The only support for it in the bible is John 5: 7–8, which most biblical historians believe is a forgery inserted sometime around the 5th century. Some biblical translations omit it entirely or insert a footnote questioning its validity. Even the Catholic church admits its authenticity is debatable.

Is Jesus the messiah?

Unlike the claim of Jesus actually being god, there is at least some biblical claims made to whether or not Jesus was the messiah. In essence, Christianity is a sect of Judaism and early Christians went to great extents to establish the street cred of Jesus by claiming he was the messiah. It's pretty safe to assume that without this claim, there would be no Christianity today. Jesus kinda-sorta makes this claim himself when asked about it. In order to claim to be the messiah, you need to prove ancestral lineage to King David. The problem is this claim has all sorts of problems. Not the least of which is that ancestral line of succession was known to have been broken during the time of Jesus making any messianic claims impossible. Despite this, the bible goes to great lengths to establish that ancestral line in two different chapters which happen to be contradictory. Christians attempt to explain this blatant error by saying one is the lineage of Mary and the other from Joseph. This claim really creates more problems than it solves. For one thing people at the time had no real concept of human reproduction science. They believed sperm was a seed planted in the womb of the mother which is why people at the time had no interest in tracing maternal lineage. Not to mention Jesus was supposedly the son of god and conceived by immaculate conception, right? So why even bother tracing the lineage of his alleged step-father?

Would Jesus advocate for the worship of himself as a god?

The answer is probably not. Jesus was first and foremost a Jewish Rabbi who kinda-sorta claimed to be the messiah. Even if you assume his dubious messianic claims are genuine, Jews do not worship the messiah as such would be strictly prohibited by their idolatry laws.

Feel free to add your own questions Christians can't seem to answer.

[PJMcK]

1. Very good questions

Here are two bible questions no one seems able to explain.

The first chapter of Genesis tells the familiar story of creation. The second chapter, however, tells a different and contradictory creation story. So, which is correct?

If the creative god behind the whole story is omniscient, then why didn't it know that its creation was flawed? By this evidence, this god is not all that smart.

On an off-topic note, have you ever read "Lamb" by Christopher Moore? It's a fantasy of what happened to Jesus during the decades between his preaching at the temple and the beginning of his ministry. It's hysterically funny and insightful.

[Major Nikon]

16. There's all sorts of contradictions in the bible

The most notable is why are there two books which are vastly different? Was the first version so flawed that it so badly needed a version 2.0? If so, doesn't that mean god is subject to fuck ups?

[guillaumeb]

2. Here is one for you:

Where did the matter come from that was conveniently lying around when the Big Bang happened?

Silly premise.

[MineralMan]

4. Off topic for this thread.

I see you have not addressed the original question. Can you? Will you?

Not all Christians, by the way, are trinitarians. Some denominations do not believe that part of Christian dogma. What of them?

This thread is not about cosmology.

[guillaumeb]

6. Ah yes, the off-topic response.

Except, of course, when you go off-topic.

[procon]

10. Definitely did not appear by spooky magical means, so lets expect scientific

studies to provide actual knowledge that leads to a more realistic theory.

[guillaumeb]

17. Good luck in this belief.

[procon]

23. Pulling a quote from an epic fantasy movie; "Luck is not a factor."

Neither is an unquantifiable "belief".

[bitterross]

25. Totally Agree. We are better than that now at explaining things

In the past the masses looked to the leaders to explain everything. So they did. Even when it meant making up some supernatural explanation. Those were good enough for our ignorant ancestors.

Those explanations have, generally, not weathered very well. We know so much more about how the universe works today than people did 2000 years ago. If we survive for another 2000 years (which is questionable) we will know so much more than we know now.

Why we still cling to supernatural beliefs rather than spending time to unlock the amazing realities of the science of our universe confounds me.

[Major Nikon]

29. Spooky magical means are really no different when you think about it

I mean both are just "theory" right?

[procon]

40. Um, no. nt

[Major Nikon]

12. Easy answer

God miracled it into creation.

Throughout recorded history this has been the standard answer for all things which have yet to be fully explained through empirical methods. It conveniently explains all sorts of things like why the earth is flat and why the sun comes up in the morning.

[bitterross]

22. Simple answer, the multiverse.

We're getting much closer to being able to prove that there is a single universe as we like to imagine it. Stephen Hawking's last paper is about how to prove that there are multiple universes. So, perhaps the matter for this universe was part of other multiverses that were expanding and collapsing and came to be the one we know.

I don't claim to understand the physics but the concept certainly makes a lot more sense than some magical sky-daddy willed it all into existence. And, by the way, created us in his image. Which is a pretty suspect concept in the first place. The concept that a being who could actually will all this into existence just happens to look like the bipedal, insignificant, little animals that are humans on an insignificant plant in a vastly larger, enormous universe with billions and billions of galaxies and planets.

It's really very narcissistic of us little piss-ant humans, bigly on a Trumpian scale, to actually believe the mythology in the Bible about creation.

Just because we cannot fully answer a question does not mean we have to make up a supernatural claim about it. It just means we need to look a little harder and a little longer. The same way real science has always been done.

[trotsky]

46. That right there.

Just because we cannot fully answer a question does not mean we have to make up a supernatural claim about it.

Or insist that said claim is not only an explanation, but must be *disproved* before it can be rejected.

[trotsky]

45. So you can't answer the question.

Thanks for confirming.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. As I understand it, the Council of Nicaea had to come up with an explanation

for how Jesus could be divine and still not be an actual separate God because they were maintaining the doctrine that there was only one God. If Jesus were also deemed a god they'd be polytheists, which they insisted they were not. So they came up with the doctrine of the Trinity according to which there was only one God but with three aspects (father, son, holy spirit). I don't get it either, but there it is.

[MineralMan]

5. Yes. It's a later addition to the dogma.

It's not part of all Christian denominations' doctrine, either. It's an interesting thing to examine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. There are some interesting and peculiar "heresies" in that list.

There were the dualist Cathars, which were pretty much exterminated in the early 1300s. And currently there are the Mormons, whose theology/cosmology is especially weird.

[MineralMan]

13. I simply accept people's declarations of Christianity

Their differences from other Christians are irrelevant to me, frankly.

[marylandblue]

8. It's a mystery

[trotsky]

47. You forgot to capitalize the M. n/t

[yallerdawg]

7. Matthew 28:19. "Any questions?"

[edhopper]

21. Yes

How did they arrive that those are all one thing and not three?

And what exactly is the Holy Spirit that is seperate from God?

[Mariana]

41. That reads like they are three completely separate entities. nt.

[Pope George Ringo II]

11. Which parts of christian mythology are to be taken literally, and why?

[Major Nikon]

14. For some the answer is all of it

Which is why in 2018, you still have public schools teaching Noah was 900 years old.

[Pope George Ringo II]

18. Some would

But I'd suggest that they certainly can't provide a good reason they do so. Half the fun is watching them try to explain why their mythology is wrong on rabbit biology, or astronomy, or history, or...

[Major Nikon]

26. There's all sorts of standard answers

The most popular used to be..."God works in mysterious ways"

The idea being that we as mere humans can never begin to understand god's will, which makes you wonder why they spend so much time dictating god's will to everyone else.

[Pope George Ringo II]

27. They indeed do that, some quite locally

But "I'm too stupid and too lazy to sort it out therefore gawddidit" has never been a good answer, which I understood to be what was being asked of them.

[Glorfindel]

15. John 5: 7 - 8 does not mention the Holy Trinity

John Chapter 5, verses 7 and 8 King James Version (KJV)

"7 The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

8 Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk."

[Pope George Ringo II]

19. Literalist.

[Major Nikon]

20. ...

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+5%3A7-8&version=KJV

[Glorfindel]

24. I see. You meant "1 John" and not "John"

If you're going to discuss dogma with Christians, you should know the difference. "The First Epistle of John, often referred to as First John and written 1 John." The Gospel According to St. John is usually referred to as just "John." Trust me in this...I've been arguing scripture with Christians of various denominations for many years. Make a mistake like that at the beginning, and nothing you say will be taken seriously thereafter.

[Major Nikon]

28. I think most are going to assume the reference comes from the canon given the context

Anyone who would want to pick such nits can be safely written off as obtuse themselves.

[Iggo]

42. But is it a clip or a magazine?

[MaryMagdaline]

30. Marcus Borg makes the case that Jesus never said he was the Messiah

The Messianic Christ came from one of the Jesus-followers after his death. I believe Jesus was a gnostic. The first 3 gospels are probably closer to his teachings, sans birth myth, a myth not so surprising given the birth mythology/ born of a virgin stories already out there. (Also, even with non-Divinities (Lincoln, Washington) it's hard to resist the born-in-a-log cabin, never-told-a-lie myths of those we love and revere))

As for Son of God, that was a term used in the Middle East for holy men, great charismatic men. Throwing Middle East mythology into Greek and Roman mythology, we get a mixed, not so authentic view of Christ. Jewish prophet is most authentic and certainly the most inspirational to me.

Don't get me wrong. I am a non-believer blown away by the radical insights of Jesus Christ and while I don't believe he was God or died for our sins, the power of mythology is something I don't dismiss

[Major Nikon]

31. He's not the only one

I think the best you can say is he certainly didn't dispel the notion, which would have almost certainly been an issue even during his time as there were others also making messianic claims.

[MaryMagdaline]

32. Yea he was either very honest or very cautious

Heresy was certain death. Jesus was careful to take the 5th before Pilate. Pilate had to figure another way to get rid of him.

He was also careful of spies. Knowing the Pharisees were listening, he gave the "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" solution to his followers.

[Pope George Ringo II]

33. That whole execution sequence is one of the bigger historical inconsistencies in the story, though

The Romans were not exactly on a mission to crucify half their taxpayers and made you work for it at least a little. He doesn't seem to have met even the normal requirements, let alone nails instead of rope. I suppose it's always possible somebody was having a bad day and took it out on the Jesus character, but it is one of the things which makes you wonder about his existence.

[MaryMagdaline]

34. The Romans were pissed at anyone who caused a scene

Somehow, someway the Jesus movement came to their attention (here goes another crazy Jewish prophet riling up the masses, talking about another Kingdom, not Rome, off with his head).

Historically there is only a blip of a mention of his death by crucifixion. John the Baptist was a bigger deal, greater threat. Either (1) it didn't happen or (2) Jesus was just one of many (sort of the Anne Frank of his day ... more recognized in posterity but unknown to his oppressors)

As an aside, i do have to remind my Roman Catholic friends, from time to time, that crucifixion is a Latin word, not Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek or Egyptian. The Romans brought something to the Mid East and it was not civilization.

[Pope George Ringo II]

35. There's not even a blip of a historical mention of the jesus character.

We've got nothing, zip, zilch, nada for decades after the fact.

But the plain fact is that public crucifixion was generally reserved for serious crimes against the empire. One raving self-proclaimed prophet really doesn't meet the generally accepted contemporary legal requirements for being publicly tied to a cross. He's simply not the type they want to make that kind of an example of. The whole sequence with nails is just inexplicable. Individual mockery by soldiers is on the table, but the formal punishment is simply inconceivable, particularly before the First Jewish War. This story is set after the initial pacification and before the series of big rebellions. It makes no historical legal sense.

And I'd feel comfortable arguing that the Romans brought peace and stability to the Middle East for a while more than civilization the way they did to, say, Iberia. There's an argument that the Byzantines were what happened when the Greeks brought civilization to the Romans...

[MaryMagdaline]

37. Are you if the opinion that the Josephus mention of Jesus's

Death was a forgery? Seems to be the prevailing conclusion.

As for crucifixion and when and how they did it, are you saying it was so rare and only for significant enemies of Rome?

[Pope George Ringo II]

38. I tend to agree with the crowd who thinks the Josephus reference was inserted later.

Even if it weren't, he was only born about 4 years after the event in question and I don't see much point in anybody arguing over whether it's a forgery or innocent hearsay. There's just no way it's contemporary history.

I wouldn't necessarily say crucifixion was "rare" as such. The Spartacus rebellion involved a simply staggering display, for example. And it's not even the slowest death available compared to slavery in Iberian silver mines, or galley slave sentencing, and so forth. But within that caveat, it was used as a spectacle and the Romans were far too practical to waste a bad example. It seems unlikely that crucifixion, complete with nails, crown, INRI, spear, vinegar, and parade (did I remember the basics? It's been a while.) would be used for the crime of being a raving lunatic claiming to be a demigod from a backwards cult in the middle of nowhere. It's a little extreme, but imagine what it would be like if somebody told you the United States gave a shoplifter a death sentence. Sure, he can be killed while being arrested--especially if he's the wrong color--but the actual, formal legal sentence of death for shoplifting simply isn't credible.

The Romans were quicker to kill people than we are, so my example is admittedly extreme, but they were very much an orderly people with laws, customs, and traditions. Heck, the reason Latin was taught for so many years is that it is a very orderly language with some inviolable rules. Like the American death penalty (or a 20 year sentence, or whatever), crucifixion only applied to certain offenses, and being a crazy person claiming to be a demigod wasn't normally considered to be one of them. They really tried to limit it to crimes against the Empire, so I'd probably commit myself to "only for significant enemies of Rome" at least. Sure, there's the "Pilate was trying to make the local priesthood and power brokers happy by killing the heretic" angle, but even that is just trying to solve the problem that the story relies on a very unlikely chain of events.

And it bears mentioning that large parts of the bigger story are demonstrably fiction or plagiarized fiction. This is not a story which deserves the benefit of the doubt on much of anything.

[MaryMagdaline]

39. Great summary, thank you

It is possible that writers who created the story viewed Rome in the same context and therefore, added the Pilate-is-confused-by-the-locals' insistence that he waste his time crucifying this man story. To sell it to Romanized peoples as halfway believable, perhaps.

Thank you for the historical insight. Much to think about.

[Igel]

36. Some comments.

Not all Xians were or are trinitarian. I'm not. Otherwise, you're right. There's no question that the Trinity isn't something that you get directly from the source texts. For some, that's a problem; for others, not so much.

Note that in Tannaitic times Jewish descent was already often reckoned by the mother's line. This practice precedes even the earliest of Paul's epistles, and makes the idea of looking at the maternal line entirely contemporaneous with the time setting of the other events in the gospels. However, you still get the paternal line cited as important. That the mother contributed something is obvious to anybody who's not too caught up in pedantry: If one parent is black and the other white, the child is not necessarily going to be the spit and image of the father. In other words, the error, like in the previous paragraph, seems to be one of perception.

I have no idea what the phrase "that ancestral line of succession was known to have been broken during the time of Jesus." The line of David had been trashed long before that, and the last known descendant acknowledged as the legitimiate heir to the throne didn't sit on the throne. In fact, in short order there wasn't even much of a throne to sit on, what with the Persians and Greeks and Romans fighting over Palestine. Not all kings had to be firstborn. And not all kingly lines had to stay in power for the line to continue. Lots of heirs were killed off once out of power simply to prevent a restoration.

It's unclear that he's presented as a Jewish rabbi, either. He was called one, as a title of respect, but there's no evidence he engaged in the kind of training that a rabbi would have gone through. And while the idea of Galilee being a kind of backwater, and Nazareth being many miles from anything like a prosperous town are both quashed (except for the view that Nazareth was a kind of shithole because a specific ideological Jesus is required for an academic's psychological well being), there's still no evidence of a scholarly center there that would make him important in self-sufficient Jerusalem, already brimming over with radicals and sectarians. Some view him as a kind of Stoic itinerant preacher. You finds your box, you puts him in it.

Worship of Jesus as idolatry was gotten around deftly by saying he was God. Not a man who became a god, but the God become man and returning to being God. In other words, to some extent he cited himself; he would have known scripture, therefore, because he was behind them. There was the father, but Jesus was the actual hands-on creator. You get words to those effect attributed to Jesus, in Paul, and in later epistles. In fact, if this is the argument, *not* worshiping Jesus would be apostasy. Most Xians don't realize this is in the Nicene Creed. Somehow they think he became god, but "Jesus is my boyfriend" Christians aren't good examples to go by. They're ditzes. They are to Xianity what New-Age mysticism is to quantum physics or card-counting is to the study of probability and statistics. I can use my phone; I cannot build one or explain the math guiding its design, either the circuitry or microwave usage. At best, this kind of tangential contact with the topic may make somebody interested enough in something serious to check into it and work on an education.

So it's worth noting that a lot of people don't understand the underpinnings of what they take on faith. I know lots of people who believe in evolution--yes, that's the right word here, "believe"--but can't talk about the definition of evolution without getting it wrong, who can't talk about the evidence for it. They're dolts when it comes to the science. They saw the evidence at some time, so they believe. Or perhaps they actually understood it and now have forgotten it. Either way, belief in evolution is cheap to claim and bears social benefits, so what the hell, why not? In a different social setting, creationism is as cheap a belief with similar social benefits. I think of this kind of thing as a required group belief that's completely meaningless. "The sun revolves around the Earth" is utterly false, but you know, if 99.99% of the people I know believe that, it won't make a bit of difference in their lives. It's a throw-away belief, but one you'd better deny if you want to belong to the right group. There's no point arguing that if you take the logic out 25 steps it means they think something unphysical would happen, because they will never take the logic that far. The closest they'd come to a consequence of the Earth's rotation is the Coriolis effect when shooting a rifle, and if you take away their guns that's gone. (Even then, most people who account for the Coriolis effect don't bother worrying their beautiful minds about how it works.)

[Iggo]

43. LOL..."Jesus is my boyfriend" Christians.

Oh, man. That's funny.

[Major Nikon]

44. I'm not making the assumption that all Christians believe in the divinity of Christ

I'm just saying none of them have a good answer for it. Obviously those who don't believe it wouldn't even care to offer an answer.

As far as messianic claims go, he would have to be a descendant of David through his father's line. Allegedly Jesus' father was god which directly contradicts any messianic claim. And yes as you say, this line was broken hundreds of years before Jesus came along and they knew this during his time.

According to the bible, Jesus did have some rabbinical knowledge although he seems to also display a fair amount of ignorance of it as well. Whether or not he met the requirements of the time is anyone's guess as the bible offers little in the way of his early education.

As far as the divinity of Christ goes, the simultaneous messianic claims and claims of divinity are mutually exclusive. Jews do not worship the messiah as such would be idolatry. While there doesn't seem to be good evidence of either, those claims become even more flimsy when combined.