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TimothyH
Guest
Those who receive the Eucharist are incorporated into Christ’s body. Those who cooperate with grace become partakers in the divine nature. (cf 2 Peter 1:4).
-Tim-
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BarryI
Guest
Yes , you are right. However that was John writing but not quoting Jesus as he spoke of being the Son later. And He himself praising God and saying he is greater than I
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PeaceInChrist
Guest
John 5: 17-18, But Jesus answered them, “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.
For this reason the Jews tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.
John 10: 30, “The Father and I are one.”
John 14: 9, Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
How about these quotes from Jesus? What is equal to God, but God? How is the Father one with something less than Him? How can we see the Father perfectly in an inferior creature?
Would you care to answer these claims by Christ, if He were not claiming to be God? I am interested in how you reconcile this, seeing that the Trinity was written of by the Church Fathers since the 100’s, and is even directly in the Bible (baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
And you still have yet to answer several other posts, as well as the exclamation by Thomas: ‘My Lord and my God.’ If Thomas had taken the Lord’s name in vain (which is not suggested by the text), why wouldn’t Jesus have rebuked him? And we don’t see the Lord’s name taken in vain anywhere else in the NT, do we?
I do hope you’ll give an honest answer or at least engage in these questions. I look forward to dialogue with you
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Tomdstone
Guest
Well, first of all, the gospel of John has a somewhat different flavor to it than the other 3 gospels. Secondly, I don’t want to annoy anyone here, but Catholics I know use OMG all the time. And it is not just Catholic laypeople. For example, if you look at the novels of the Roman Catholic priest, reverend Father Andrew Greeley, you would find that he uses the words g and gd in many places. Yes, in some places he uses a small letter g, but does it really make a difference? And please correct me if I am wrong, but if this is wrong for a Roman Catholic priest to write such public blasphemy, then why don’t the Roman Catholic hierarchy or his superiors say something in public about his novels and his use of g and gd?John 5: 17-18, But Jesus answered them, “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.
For this reason the Jews tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.
John 10: 30, “The Father and I are one.”
John 14: 9, Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
How about these quotes from Jesus? What is equal to God, but God? How is the Father one with something less than Him? How can we see the Father perfectly in an inferior creature?
Would you care to answer these claims by Christ, if He were not claiming to be God? I am interested in how you reconcile this, seeing that the Trinity was written of by the Church Fathers since the 100’s, and is even directly in the Bible (baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
And you still have yet to answer several other posts, as well as the exclamation by Thomas: ‘My Lord and my God.’ If Thomas had taken the Lord’s name in vain (which is not suggested by the text), why wouldn’t Jesus have rebuked him? And we don’t see the Lord’s name taken in vain anywhere else in the NT, do we?
I do hope you’ll give an honest answer or at least engage in these questions. I look forward to dialogue with you
P
PeaceInChrist
Guest
Interesting. Then what use is the Gospel of John if his claims are spurious? And if John is spurious, then why is Scripture to be trusted at all? I would say if any of it is spurious or questionable, then the entirety would have to be discarded, at least as inerrant or the written word of God. Do you have any basis for discarding John’s Gospel and the claims Jesus makes in it?
Also, what of the Trinitarian baptism formula used in Matthew?
That is neither here nor there, my friend. If every Catholic in the world used the Lord’s name in vain, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church itself (the collective teaching office of bishops and the pope known as the ‘magisterium’) would never teach that it were acceptable.
Now, the point was that nowhere in Scripture is the Lord’s name used in vain. Nowhere. Ever. Jesus (who we can hopefully both agree is the focal point of the Gospels) does not correct or rebuke Thomas for his utterance. We all know Jesus corrects His disciples often, and so why would He not rebuke Thomas for disobeying the Decalogue? Simple: because Thomas was not disobeying the Decalogue. He was proclaiming that Jesus was both his Lord and his God.
Again, as with many other posts, you have failed to address the issues adequately. I am beginning to believe that you have no desire to actually learn, but rather argue, in which case I am inclined to move from responding/praying, to simply praying.
May the Lord bring you into the fullness of His Truth and Love
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AmbroseSJ
Guest
God does not lie. Jesus Christ is the true Son of God. But you do not understand the meaning of those words. You have read the words of Scripture but you do not understand those words. You have created a doctrine of your own from those words that you have misunderstood.
The Doctrine I believe is taught by the Church, founded by Jesus Christ, and headed by Jesus Christ. Those doctrines are revelations of God. His Church is Divine. It is not a church created (recently) by men who then created doctrines based on the misunderstanding of words in Scripture.
Without the Church of Jesus Christ, the words of Sacred Scripture are just words to be misunderstood by men creating their own doctrines.
J
JohnR77
Guest
Dear Barryl,
If Jesus is not God, then your religion CANNOT save.
defendingthebride.com/ma4/prayer.html#ant
**The God-Man and the Anti-Christ **
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**Now we focus more deeply on the original section when the Savior was promised. There are many beautiful truths that will be included in this section. Our Savior was promised in Genesis 3:15, but this verse also foretells of a certain battle mentioned earlier between Satan and our Savior. **
**Jesus is the Christ which means the Anointed One. He came as the God-Man to redeem all mankind and to establish the New Covenant by which we can be saved. The Second Person of the Trinity shed His most precious blood for the redemption of our sins.It is precisely because He is both God and Man that His sacrifice won for us both forgiveness for our sins and the grace to be adopted into God’s family so that we might attain the beatific vision of being with God in heaven. Because He is the God-Man his Sacrifice has infinite value. However, we also read about the Anti-Christ. Satan works through the antichrist in an attempt to confuse many about who Jesus Christ really is.
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**2 John 7
“Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh; such is the deceitful one and the antichrist.” Cf. 1 John 4:2-3**So, we see this great battle taking shape between Satan and Jesus. Satan knows that he cannot destroy God. Besides that would be self defeating for Satan, because Satan is entirely dependant on God for his existence. Satan continues to exist because God wills it to be so. If God stopped doing that Satan would return to that which he was before God created him, that is nothing. So Satan cannot attack God directly, but he can attack God’s plan for our salvation.
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**Heresies and Heretics in the early Church
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**Scripture tells us that the antichrist will attempt to confuse people about who Jesus is. He is truly God who came in the flesh and took on a human nature when He became Man. - He is One Person, One Divine Being, who has two natures, human and Divine, that are united together in the Hypostatic Union. **
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**In confronting the errors of the antichrist the early Church had to contend with and refute several early heresies. Some denied that Jesus was truly God. They claimed that He was created, or that He was a man who “became a God,” etc.****Other heresies denied that Jesus truly became Man. Some of these heresies denied that He was really tempted. Other heresies denied that He truly suffered and died. For example, see Apollinarianism, and Docetism. And there was one especially dangerous heresy called Nestorianism.
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**The Nestorian heresy denied that Jesus was one Person, who was both God and Man. Nestorius claimed that the man Jesus Christ was not God. Nestorians believed that Jesus was only the vessel in whom God dwelt. Nestorius taught that the human and divine natures in Jesus were totally separate persons occupying the same body and not united in the same one person of Jesus. For example, Nestorius taught that it was Jesus, the man, who suffered and died on the cross and not Jesus, God. **
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**This heresy was an attack against the very person of who Jesus is. And it is precisely because Jesus is both God and Man that His sacrifice has bridged the gap between God and man and won for us the grace to be forgiven and to be enabled to go to heaven. So, this heresy is really frontal attack on the mystery by which we are saved.
J
JohnR77
Guest
Part 2
**Theotokos
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**Although there were numerous attempts to stop this heresy it continued to spread and the Church had to deal with it in a forceful and convincing manner. The Church of course never embraced these errors, but she did have to find ways of clearly stating the truth and sort out heresy from the true orthodox beliefs that were passed down by the Apostles. **
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**In fact this teaching of Mary being the mother of God can be traced back to Sacred Scripture. Consider Elizabeth’s greeting to Mary when Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and said in Luke 1:43 that Mary is “the mother of my Lord.” And combine that with the Apostle Thomas’s acclamation that Jesus is “My Lord and my God!” in John 20:28. Therefore, Mary is the mother of God. **
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**So my prayer will show how God defeated the deceptions of the antichrist. God accomplished this through the Church by declaring Mary as Theotokos, the Mother of God, and thereby, defeating those early heresies that denied who Jesus really is. If those heresies had been true they would have undermined the whole theology of our salvation.
**
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**Because God is infinitely holy no mere man could redeem the price of sins committed against God. A mere man cannot give to God anything that God has not already given to him. There is one exception being that he can offer up his sufferings. And even those sufferings only have value to the extent that God unites them to the suffering of His Son and applies to the human being’s sufferings those graces that were won by Jesus Christ.
**
** Note that Jesus is a Divine Person. Person is defined as a being, therefore Jesus is a Divine Being. He has both a Divine Nature and a Human Nature. He is One Person who has Two Natures. He is not a Human Being.]
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**Even if a human being lived a perfect life without sinning and offered that up to God, even that would not be capable of redeeming a single sin against God. Because God is infinite sins against Him are of infinite proportions and they require a redemption that is of infinite value.
**
It is only because the Person Jesus, who is both God and Man, sacrificed His most precious blood that the gap between God and Man has been bridged. That is why those heresies that denied that the One Person Jesus was (and IS) both truly God and truly Man were so dangerous. They were a denial of this central mystery by which we are saved. Therefore, the declaration that Mary is Theotokos, the Mother of God, which clearly points to Jesus being both God and Man, is a decisive blow against the errors of the Anti-Christ.
Look at the argument PeaceInChrist is making. The singular form of “name” indicates the Three Persons are One God.
Matthew 28:19
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”
John
**Theotokos
**
**Although there were numerous attempts to stop this heresy it continued to spread and the Church had to deal with it in a forceful and convincing manner. The Church of course never embraced these errors, but she did have to find ways of clearly stating the truth and sort out heresy from the true orthodox beliefs that were passed down by the Apostles. **
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**So, an Ecumenical Council was convened in 431 AD at Ephesus. To clarify that the one Person Jesus Christ is both truly God and Man the Church declared Mary as “Theotokos” which means the “one who bears or gives birth to God” or to put it simply, Mary is the “Mother of God.” Simply stated this title, Theotokos, means two things; that Mary is Jesus Mother and that Jesus is God. Declaring Mary’s Son as God demonstrated that Jesus is truly Divine, and by pointing out that He took on a Mother when He became incarnate in her womb showed that He, at that point became truly Man, taking on a human nature. **
**This teaching was not new. It can be found in the writings of St. Ignatius. Ignatius of Antioch was the third bishop of that city. Peter was the first Bishop. Ignatius had heard the preaching of St. John the Apostle. And it was John who at Christ’s command had taken Mary into his care, John 19:26-27. Ignatius was martyred for his faith around 110 AD. Ignatius wrote, “For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God's plan …”**In fact this teaching of Mary being the mother of God can be traced back to Sacred Scripture. Consider Elizabeth’s greeting to Mary when Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and said in Luke 1:43 that Mary is “the mother of my Lord.” And combine that with the Apostle Thomas’s acclamation that Jesus is “My Lord and my God!” in John 20:28. Therefore, Mary is the mother of God. **
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**Of course that does not mean that Mary preceded Jesus in existence. She is not the maternal origin of God. She did not give Him His divinity. Such thoughts would not honor Mary as only the truth does. Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, has always existed from all eternity. He is begotten, not made. Whereas, Mary did not come into existence until about the year 15 or 16 or so BC. At Ephesus the Church was declaring that the Person she conceived, carried in her womb, and gave birth to is clearly one Person who is both Man and God.**So my prayer will show how God defeated the deceptions of the antichrist. God accomplished this through the Church by declaring Mary as Theotokos, the Mother of God, and thereby, defeating those early heresies that denied who Jesus really is. If those heresies had been true they would have undermined the whole theology of our salvation.
**
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**The evil of a particular sin is not only measured by the degree of the offense but also by the degree of holiness of the one who has been offended. For example, if a person insults the name of his boss that would be wrong, but if he insults the Holy Name of God that would be an infinitely worse sin because the One who is offended is infinitely more holy. And there is a special name for that type of sin. It is called Blaspheme.**Because God is infinitely holy no mere man could redeem the price of sins committed against God. A mere man cannot give to God anything that God has not already given to him. There is one exception being that he can offer up his sufferings. And even those sufferings only have value to the extent that God unites them to the suffering of His Son and applies to the human being’s sufferings those graces that were won by Jesus Christ.
**
** Note that Jesus is a Divine Person. Person is defined as a being, therefore Jesus is a Divine Being. He has both a Divine Nature and a Human Nature. He is One Person who has Two Natures. He is not a Human Being.]
**
**Even if a human being lived a perfect life without sinning and offered that up to God, even that would not be capable of redeeming a single sin against God. Because God is infinite sins against Him are of infinite proportions and they require a redemption that is of infinite value.
**
It is only because the Person Jesus, who is both God and Man, sacrificed His most precious blood that the gap between God and Man has been bridged. That is why those heresies that denied that the One Person Jesus was (and IS) both truly God and truly Man were so dangerous. They were a denial of this central mystery by which we are saved. Therefore, the declaration that Mary is Theotokos, the Mother of God, which clearly points to Jesus being both God and Man, is a decisive blow against the errors of the Anti-Christ.
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**No doubt there will be more battles in the future, but we can relish in how our glorious God has used a simple humble woman to give such a devastating blow to the evil plans of Satan.**Matthew 28:19
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”
John
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jakasaki
Guest
Do people actually believe that the “OMG” expression we use today existed 2000 years ago…!!!
Wha’st next… “whatever”…
Wha’st next… “whatever”…
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BarryI
Guest
He was not claiming to be God. If God was Jesus then surely He would not have misled people into thinking He was His Son,as He so clearly stated. To think that would make God to be a deceiver, which He was not. It is plain and simple to see. Sure, youre quoting John 14:9 which Jesus clearly states that He is everything His Father taught Him to be,as He has been with God since before the foundation of the world. He is pure in thought and love just like God. That is why He told the apostles,if you have seen me(the way I act, the compassion I show, the tolerance I give, the love within me etc…)then you have seen the Father. Yes , it is really that simple. God even told Moses, no one can see the face of God. However we see him through Jesus’ works ,and actions,and teachings. That, my friend is what Jesus meant, and the disciples couldn’t get it.John 5: 17-18, But Jesus answered them, “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.
For this reason the Jews tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.
John 10: 30, “The Father and I are one.”
John 14: 9, Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
How about these quotes from Jesus? What is equal to God, but God? How is the Father one with something less than Him? How can we see the Father perfectly in an inferior creature?
Would you care to answer these claims by Christ, if He were not claiming to be God? I am interested in how you reconcile this, seeing that the Trinity was written of by the Church Fathers since the 100’s, and is even directly in the Bible (baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
And you still have yet to answer several other posts, as well as the exclamation by Thomas: ‘My Lord and my God.’ If Thomas had taken the Lord’s name in vain (which is not suggested by the text), why wouldn’t Jesus have rebuked him? And we don’t see the Lord’s name taken in vain anywhere else in the NT, do we?
I do hope you’ll give an honest answer or at least engage in these questions. I look forward to dialogue with you
D
davidv
Guest
Does this make it right?
Just maybe the sanctioning, if any, should be a private matter?
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zz912
Guest
Sorry, but the NT is rife with claims that Jesus was divine, was equal with God. All the parsing in the world cannot escape it. Here are a few:
*Acts 20:28 Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the church of God that he acquired with his own blood.
“Simon Peter, a bond servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:1.
Isaiah 44:24 Thus says the LORD, your redeemer, who formed you from the womb: I am the LORD, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, I spread out the earth by myself
Hebrews 1:1-4: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.”
1 Cor. 8:6: “[Y]et for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.”
Hebrews 1:10: "He also says, “‘In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.’”
Matthew 28:16-17: “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him. . . .”*
There are MANY, MANY more.
We’ve already been through all this in this thread alone. Yes, Jesus said the Father is greater than he because this is true as Jesus has a human nature, which is less than God.
You correctly state that Jesus is the Son of God. But of what nature is a son? A human father naturally begets a human son, as a dog begets a dog. What does reason tell us? God’s Son cannot be of a lower nature than his Father. He has to be divine.
The very same Word of God you claim to believe says of Jesus:
- The Word was God (John 1:1) and became flesh (John 1:4)
- Was in the form (morphe) of God before he became man (Philippians 2:6)
- Claims the divine name I AM (ego eimi) for himself, driving the Jews to stone him (John 8:58)
- That he was Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8). Only God commanded the Sabbath regulations.
- He accepts divine worship and accepts the title of Lord and God without correcting Thomas (the “OMG expression” does not hold water because first-century Jews would never misuse God’s name that way; John 20:28).
- He has the authority to forgive sins, which belongs to God alone (Matthew 9:1-8)
- He commands nature by his own authority (Luke 18:22-25)
- He laid the foundations of the earth (Hebrews 1:8,10). The Letter to the Hebrews explicitly says that this is said of the Son (Hebrews 1:8). This is a direct quote of Psalm 102, where it is clearly said that God laid the foundations of the earth (Psalm 102:25).
- He takes it upon himself to raise the standard of the Law: “you have heard it said…but I say to you.” (Matthew 5:21-48)
- That he had the power to raise himself from the dead (John 2:19; John 10:17-18). The same is true of the Father (Romans 10:9) and the Spirit (Romans 8:11).
“The Father is greater than I”. Yes, he is, because Jesus, as man, is lower than the Father. He “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,** being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7).
“No one knows the day or the hour…nor the Son of Man.” Yes again. And in the same Gospels, Jesus clearly knows the hearts of men. So he does possess divine knowledge, but as man, he also needed to learn and grow (Luke 2:52). As man, he clearly didn’t know the hour, which is why he could truthfully say he didn’t know. As God, though, he would.
Jesus died. Yes, he did. And he died in his human nature, as a man. As God, he could not die, and while his soul was in sheol, he was never separated from his Godhead.**
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BarryI
Guest
No I’m sorry. I do understand fully. Once again I will state the facts. Jesus said He was the Son not the Father. He also knew man was of a simple mind and spoke to them in an easy , understandable language. He did not want to confuse anyone with these lines They were stated simple so that ALL could understand them. With the exception of the parables that were spoken for the apostles benefit only. Even then some of them the apostles had to ask Jesus to explain. But as for telling the whole world He was the Son, that needed no explaining. Jesus was the Son, and Jehovah is God. Don’t believe, look in the King James in Exodus 6:4, I believe . I think that’s it but don’t have it in front of me at the moment. Could be 6:3
Jesus is the Son. He is not the Father. That is orthodox Christian teaching.
Again, you’re using the claim the Jesus was the Son and therefore could not be God. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus is both God and the Son of God. There is only one God, but if Jesus was his Son, he had to share the nature of his Father. That nature is divine, which means Jesus is God. That is why John 1:1 emphasizes that the Logos is Theos.
The Father is God.
The Son is God (you’ve been shown Scripture that proves this many many times).
The Spirit is God.
But:
The Father is NOT the Son.
The Father is NOT the Spirit.
The Son is NOT the Spirit.
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adrift
Guest
You do not state facts because you are trying to say that only the Father is God but
The Father is God the son is God the Holy Spirity is God.
Jesus states many places He is God this is just one.
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BarryI
Guest
Once again why would God come to earth, say He is the Son of God and to pray to the Father , and then deliberately mislead people ? Can anyone answer me that, because that is what all of you are saying. I for one do not believe God would have gone through the whole dog and pony show to confuse people and to deliberately lie to them
He didn’t lie or mislead anyone. He IS the Son of God and he DID pray to the Father, because the Son is not the Father, and so he CAN pray to the Father. Jesus is fully God and fully man, so as man, he can indeed pray to the Father. His being the Son of God does not deny his being God at all.
Why would God come to earth? Simple. To become man and die for man. If Jesus were not God, his death on the cross would have been useless, because no man or any creature is capable of atoning for offenses against an infinitely good and great God. To atone for an infinite offense against God (which is what happens when you offend God), you require a sacrifice of infinite value. If Jesus were a mere man, this would be impossible, even if he were sinless because if he were just a mere creature, he would be finite. He had to be God for his sacrifice to be of any value.
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adrift
Guest
I can’t say it better.
A
AmbroseSJ
Guest
You are making several mistakes all at once.
First you are speaking as if you know exactly what God said. How? By using the Sacred Scriptures written by the Church of Christ which is now called the Catholic Church?
How do you know what you believe these Scriptures are saying is correct or accurate? Do you not see the THOUSANDS of conflicting sects and denominations all using those Scriptures to SEPARATE themselves from the others?
Your entire argument is based on your own (denomination’s) use of Scripture to separate itself from all of the other denominations.
What authority does your denomination have? The same authority all of those other denominations have? That they are guided by the Holy Spirit? (Assuming your denomination even believes in the Holy Trinity, which I doubt.) In which case you have the lowest form of authority possible; i.e. the doctrines of men.
Your beliefs seem to be based on quite a few “first principles”
First principles are unquestioned assumptions upon which everything else is based.
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