An honest question for Christians

[Zylka]

This has given me much logistical troubles as well. All I can say for a good portion of Christian argument, is that many believers do not consider Jesus on earth entirely "God"; the perfect creator.

[Alexander's Horse]

Jesus is what you make of him

[Wernazuma III]

Please don't turn the thread into a general Christian contradiction #X topic, for that's not what I wanted in this place and I vowed to abstain from picking on them (and it's itching under my fingernails). Maybe an own thread would do. This is only about the nature of Jesus and how Christians imagine it for themselves.

[Straybow]

Trinity confusion

Originally posted by sprucemoose3311
The Trinity is a doctrine that was written to prevent Eastern churches from becoming Heretic sects. To paraphrase the trinity doctrine: Jesus is like God but he is not God.

This is a reactionary document defending the fact that Jesus was a man at every point in his life. Some churches had begun to believe that Jesus started as human, became God to preofrom miracles, then the God part of him left as he died on the cross... heresy

Got that backwards. In the Trinity the substance of Christ was God (homoousion), in opposition to the "like God but not God" (homoiousion) of Arianism; the person of Christ was distinct yet joined fully to the Father (hypostatic union) rather than identical to the Father (hypostasis, modalism).

The whole debate was carried in the terms of an advanced form of Aristotelian accident and substance. The Catholic Encyclopedia does a pretty good job of 'splaining the debate. Homoousion is as good a place to start as any.

Modern Protestants reject the whole Aristotelian basis, seeing it as the bass-ackward way of coming to the right conclusion.

[Straybow]

Choices

Originally posted by MacTBone
What bothered me is that God deliberately adds the Tree of Knowledge in the first place. "I'm an omniscient being, so I'll put a tree here that I don't want anyone to mess with." Then, to top it off he tells Adam not to eat it. Anyone see the logic problem? That's like me putting a kid in a room with candy and telling them to eat all they want - except for the Skittles.

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is inherent to human nature. The choice of whether to trust God or make up the rules as you go is always there. Putting the Tree of Knowledge in the garden and allowing Satan to tempt them cuts to the chase.

Everything has its place. We can't trust a child to choose, so we don't give them the choice. We take the candy and put it away until after dinner. What God did was put an adult in a position where a choice had to be made.

Blaming God for the test is the same thing as making the choice to eat. Rejecting God because you don't understand the way He chose to reach man is the same as making the choice to eat. It is the same test in a different form.