The Presumptuousness of Atheism

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There is no reason to make the analogy there and not, say, with Mary except that you have a predetermined position about the issue. In fact, with Mary it makes more sense.
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Show me where Mary discribed herself in similar terms – being the house of God.
Why was not the teaching of the destruction and raising of the temple not refered to Mary’s body rather than the body of Jesus?


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Whose life was in the temple of the physical body of the man Jesus?

The life of God, of course. Just like the life of God was in the Disciples (as I quoted above)
and just like it is in you, me and everyone.
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You have a point worth exploring. But first let me ask you – do you envision everyone who is born naturally as having the life of God?
If you do and that is what you mean by “everyone” then why does Paul say that the fallen people are ”alienated from the life of God?” (Eph. 4:18)

And why is the authority to become ”children of God” only attributed to ”as many as received Him?” (John 1:12). Shouldn’t John have written that all are children of God whether they receive Him or not?

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A vessel? Yes. A mediator? Yes. The mouth through which God speaks? Yes. The Biblical authors agree with this. That He was God, the Biblical authors do not say (though you are wise to use St John, because, as the latest Gospel to be written, his theology is definitely
advancing to that point).
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These things do take some time to discuss. But Isaiah is a biblical writer for sure. And Isaiah 9:6 says that the child born will be called The Mighty God. Isaiah 9:6 says that the Son given shall be called the Eternal Father.

Now if you don’t want to call the child Jesus the Mighty God, that is your business. If you don’t want to call the Son given the Eternal Father, that is your choice. But here is a biblical writer saying that the child is the Mighty God.

How many Mighty God’s are there in the Bible. The Son given is the Eterna Father. There is only one divine eternal Father in the Bible, the Father of the Triune God.

Plus the Fact the the Word is obviously Christ in John’s gospel. And John says that the Word was God.

But these short posts cannot cover some aspects which should be discussed to form a more well rounded picture of everything the Bible says about this Wonderful Person.

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Wait a second. That's not what Jesus said. He said no one can take it out of Jesus's hand because God, the Father, gave Him that authority. God gave Himself something? That's nonsense.
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I think Eternal Life means life without limitation. So I think God can do things which are wonderful and mysterious including come in the flesh as a man the Son under the authority of the Father.

We are told to believe. And the testimony is compelling even though His words are mysterious and profound.


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Jesus says that He and the Father are one because the Father acts through Him, just like He calls His Disciples to do (refer to St John 14:20, again -- ...I am in my Father and you are in me and
I am in you).

You cannot equivocate on this issue -- either the Disciples are God because Jesus (as God) is in them, or the saying that God is in someone isn't equivalence.
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My utterance may not be the best here.

But the Bible ends with a marriage. God marries something that matches Him. He would not marry something not like Him.

God produces a counterpart. He is the Head of this relationship. He is the Godhead of this relationship. The New Jerusalem is the God – Body of this relationship.

Christ is God by way of incarnation and resurrection. He is the Husband of this marriage. His people, His Body, which is also the habitation of God in spirit (Eph. 2:22) become God in life and nature by way of salvation. The two match one another and form a universal and divine romantic couple for eternity.

We, the saved believers, need the transformation, sanctification, conformation, and glorification to become the corporate expression of God. You are suspicious that I err in saying the disciples are God because you view them as they are, still in the process of salvation. But when this process is completed we become the romantic other of God. He is the Head God and we become His Body God.

Put in other terms, God dispenses Himself and mingles Himself with His redeemed and transformed elect to constutute them Mrs God. He is Mr God.

You vastly underestimate the extent of so great a salvation there is in Christ. Did you think salvation was simply to be forgiven and go to a merry place called heaven? The Bible ends with a marriage. Two of LIKE nature must marry. As Eve came out of Adam and was brought back to him to be one flesh – so New Jerusalem comes out of God to be brought back to Him to be mingled and united with Him.

So the disciples are in the process of being constituted God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead as the Source of the relationship.

This is profound matters which are not adaquately expounded in short posts as we are limited to here. I’ll cut this response here. But why do you think the New Testamen speaks of born of God?

What does a child who is born of man grow up to be? A man, of course. What does a city of people who are born of God grow up to be? They grow up in the divine life to be God – the corporate expression of God whose life has been imparted into them.

I would add these caveats:

The disciples never become an object of worship.
The disciples never become omniscient.
The disciples never become omnipresent.
The disciples never become omnipotent.
The disciples do not become Creators of universes.

But salvation dispenses the life of God into man so that He becomes the corporate counterpart of God – Mrs. God – the Bride of Christ. God became man so that man might become God in life and in nature but not in His Godhead.

The indwelling of God in the disciples does not make them the Godhead. But Christ is the Godhead become a man expressed as the Son under the authority of the Father.

Originally posted by vistesd
Well, this is the most interesting Christological debate I’ve seen on here. Keeping myself strictly within that framework—

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On a strictly sola scriptura basis, it can be argued either way. Neither the various non-Chalcedonians nor the Chalcedonians were dummies—but they weren’t sola scripturists, either. Although, an “ontological reality”:

http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/theosis_purpose.html

I will be concise this round, as I can.

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I covered this above. You can see God in all sorts of thing (or at least, I hope you do). I see God in the majesty of a thunderstorm, or in the gentleness of a cat's purr, or in the wonder of the music
of Bach. That doesn't make these things God. Jesus was stating that He was a reflection of the Father and that Philip should have known -- and intimately -- the Father through that reflection.
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I understand what you are saying. I even agree with you to an extent. But I think you need to decide whether you are going to take the Apostle John's prologue as true or erroneous.

" No one has EVER seen God; [my emphasis] The only begotten Son , who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him." (John 1:18)

John is exceedingly bold here to discount all of the Old Testament seeings of God as not the real thing. They do not count anymore.

God is declared in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is God defined, God declared, God manifested to this closest disciple of Jesus.

It seems that the thrust of your comments is that John has misunderstood the Master's life and words. Your charge of "a priori" assumption is really a charge that John surrounded the testimony of Jesus with erroneous comments, distorting Christ's teaching.

I don't regard the Gospel of John as apocraphal. Though some books not included in the New Testament canon I would regard as uninspired and apocraphal.

The Word was God and became flesh. He declared God whom no one has ever seen. The subsequent conversations and signs were selected and submitted by John that we might believe.


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So it is paradoxical. But we should receive all the statements of Jesus and not try to nullify one group of sayings with another class of sayings. Taken all together Christ is God incarnate as a man. The Father and the Son are distinct but they are not separate.

Indeed, it is. The conclusion that the authors of the Gospels and St Paul didn't think that Jesus was God is the only non-paradoxical one, because even St John constantly divides Jesus as the
commanded and the Father as the Commander, having Jesus's doing the will of God as per Divine
Dictate.
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This is why some of us like to use the word mingled. Which word is biblical from the typology in Leviticus in the meal offering.

Christ is the mingling of God and man. Two or more things which are mingled are combined in such a way that in the conbination the components are still distinquishable. In the Person of Jesus Christ we discern Man and we also discern God.

He is the mingling of divinity and humanity.

He is also the mingling of the Creator with the creature. What can we say about this but that it is a paradox. For flesh and blood are items of God's creation without dispute. Even Man himself is an item of God's creation. God created man.

So He is the Creator united with the creature in one Person.

In His resurrection, that part of Him which was of creation He brought into God. This is really not easy to utter. We have been exploring these things for many many years. But He was incarnated the Only Begotten Son of God. And in resurrection He arose the Firstborn Son of God.

First, as to be followed by many. So He joins the eternal God with the created man.

I hear what you are saying that His utterances about His relationship with us do not make us the exact status as Himself. I agree to an extent. But theosis, divinization, and deification have been the doctrines taught to express exactly what salvation means to the believers.

Vestesd's post brought out some good points. Athanasius, I think, expressed the revelation of the Bible well.

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I have every reason to believe that the disciple John was clear about what Jesus taught. He was a sent apostle whose words Jesus expected us to receive. And John opens His gospel that the Word was with God and was God. The Word that was God became flesh. That would mean that God became a man.

Why do you think that St John wrote it? Nothing in the Gospel would force you to draw that conclusion.
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I cannot say that for sure. I don't have the experience of reading the gospel of John without the Apostle's comments. Do you?

I may not insist that a person understand the incarnation as clearly as John did in order to have a vital relationship with Jesus. But when chapters 14 through 17 are examined without John's prologue the exceedingly profound interweaving of the man Jesus with the Spirit of Reality and the Father is seen.

John's prologue helps us to understand the profound relationship of the Son, the Father, and the Spirit of Reality, the Another Comforter Who is to come to the disciples.

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Indeed, according to this gospel, the 'Beloved Disciple' was present at the Crucifixion, yet in 19:35 says 'An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; he knows that he is speaking the truth...' That doesn't make sense; if St John were the writer, he would have no need of eyewitnesses for this particular event. Indeed, the only reason the writer would have need of an eyewitness is because he wasn't present at the event.
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I think he is speaking of himself in the third person. That's all.

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Indeed, the first time the Gospel gets attributed to St John was by St Irenaeus in the second century.

Do you think St Thomas wrote the Gospel attributed to him? I'm sure you don't.
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I never read it. And I am no expert on apocraphal books. I barely have time to digest the unsearchable riches in the New Testament canon.

Maybe someday I'll read it. But when you stop to think about it it is typical that if something so authentic as a gospel from God were to be written, of course many would try to jump on the bandwagon and exploit the matter.

So we have a plethora of other writings and foreries claiming to be this disciple's gospel or that disciple's gospel.

The work of sorting out the truly authoritative and inspired books from the galaxy of religious liturature was done by others. I am glad they were led by the Spirit in the to recognize the inspired books.

That is not to say that Enoch, Macabees, the gospel of Thomas, etc don't have anything interesting or insightful in them.

Why do I need the gospel of Thomas ? I barely have enough time to explore the bottomless mine of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And when Jesus seminar type critics people start refering to this and that other apocraphal gospel, given their destructive ideas, I am in no rush to read what they recommend.

When I touched Jesus I touched God. There is no confusion about that in my mind whatsoever. God became real to me when I opened my heart to receive Jesus. I didn't know John's gospel at that time. I only know that to touch Jesus was indeed to touch very God.


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So, why you would give weight to an attribution given over 50 years after the gospel was written
(and over 100 after Jesus's death)?
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The impact of the Man's life was cataclysmic. You are not talking about a trip to Disneyland. You are talking about having walked with Jesus of Nazareth.

In fifty years you could still remember what you were doing when say 9/11 became known to you?

In fifty years can you remember where you were when you heard Kennedy was shot (assuming that you are American).

The impact of Christ's words and life was not dulled in fifty years to John. And for those years were they not repeating and repeating those sayings and accounts. They just decided as they grew old "We really ought to write these things down in case generations pass before Christ returns."

It doesn't mean that he went off and for fifty years forgot about it all and was preoccupied with other thnigs.

I end here.