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Topic subjectin a nutshell...
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=22&topic_id=31135&mesg_id=31154
31154, in a nutshell...
Posted by LadySoulflower, Tue Aug-23-05 03:19 PM
On the Names of God:
Christianity was not started with the intention of being a "new religion". They saw themselves just as Jewish as those who did not believe Christ. Of course, over time, the separation became more & more evident & here we are today. Christians believe we're serving "the God of Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob" just as the Jews do. The difference is that we believe that the Law has been fulfilled, while the Jews do not. So there's no need to create a new name.

On the Trinity:
Don't forget John 1 (the book of John, not John's letters). Pay special attention to vs. 1 & 14.

On the stupidity:
And yes, Christianity is absolutely ludicrous. That's exactly why it takes faith to follow Christ. It ain't supposed to make sense, God told us back in Isaiah 55:9.

On the purpose (sorry, no "ity"):
Adam & Eve were created to be God's friends, but they betrayed Him when they ate the forbidden fruit. This betrayal caused a great chasm between man & God. God gave the Torah to the Jews pretty much to really drive home the point of how much man has messed up. There are over 200 laws in the Torah, there's no way anybody could uphold them all the time, hence the need for atonement.

On Jesus' deity:
Since it's impossible for any human to restore the relationship between man & God, there had to be another way. God is too holy for any human to be in His presence, so He had to get creative. It would be against His very essence to renig on the Law He'd established, so a human had to fulfill the law. Of course, we realized already, this was impossible. Enter Jesus. God wants us all to be His friends, so He came down in the flesh to fulfill the law. Being fully man AND fully God, Jesus came down & did everything God required in Torah & became the everlasting sacrifice. So yes, Jesus, according to Christianity, is God. However, since He is also the only man to fulfill the law, we must go through Him to get to God. Think of Jesus as a "man-God continuum", for lack of a better phrase.

I would ask if this clarifies things, but it may very well not. It makes no logical sense to our minds whatsoever. If you wanna know why we follow it, all I can say is experience. It takes just as much faith not to believe Christ as it does to believe Him, so why not?

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"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love." -I John 4:18 (NASB)