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Originally Posted by asaris
Look, either Jesus claimed to be God or he didn't.
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True enough...
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But all of those people who knew him best, his close friends and followers, all believe that he did.
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Not true. I don't read that message in Mark or Paul...and i'm not alone in that reading, either. Luke and Matthew are debatable...i only see an outright claim to divnity in John. The other epistles are basically silent on the matter, AFAIK...
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What you claim to be disagreement between the gospels, I claim is just a later gospel filling out what was left unsaid in an earlier gospel.
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Which is why reading John back on to Mark or Paul is problematic. Why prioritize John like that? Why not read John through the lens of Mark? What justifies your choice in making that call? John was nearly cut from the cannon on several occasions. What makes it *the* authority now?
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Yes, I'm quoting from I Cor 15 (or whereever that is), but as far as I call tell, Christ's rising from the dead is generally adduced in the epistles as evidence for his divinity.
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Check the tenses on the verbs. Egeiro in Mark and Paul is usually indicating that he was raised. Passive voice hides the actor, and it indicates, IMO, that God is doing the raising, not Jesus.
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I AM going to stick to my guns and say that anyone who does not believe in the divinity of Christ is not a Christian. Christians have believed in his divinity from the very beginning -- what makes you so much smarter than these people to say "No, sorry, we've been mistaken for 2000 years"?
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Well, i'm quite sorry to hear that from you. But, honestly...it was a big fight back then...The writings of the Patriarchs make it clear that divinity and the nature of Christ/Jesus was a major point of contention. You're mistaken to claim that this has been the uniform belief of all Christians through all time. The reason why there is a creed to state this is that not everyone was toeing the line in the first place. Boundaries like that indicate that there was *already* an outside.
I'm not smarter...and for what it's worth, i happen to be a trinitarian. but your argument does not reflect the bredth and tension with in the Christianities of history or the present.