Is Truth Relative...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Conscience
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Kindest Regards, Conscience!
The thing you miss is that there is really NONE good. Not Buddaha, not Ghandi (whom I love), not anyone, but God! All sinners need a Savior - someone to pay the price for the crimes they've commited. I know...I know, its kinda hard to imagine someone who we think is "good" not going to Heaven, but the fact is, ALL have sinned, and come short to the glory of God.
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No, I haven't missed it, at all. I am not good, certainly not by your standards. But I like to think I try really hard to live a good and decent life as Jesus taught. I make mistakes, and I learn from them. Some men are good as men go. Not good compared to God, I will grant you that. Compared to other men, some men are good, and some men are not as good.

I'll explain later, Gotta go.
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Since you like old girl friends so much...

I would love to hear your explanation, right after you answer the other questions I asked: (How do I know you, a fallible human, are not telling an untruth? Do I take you at your word? I've been burned before, what makes your version so special? Why should I trust my most precious possession, my eternal soul, to you and your teaching?)
 
Kindest Regards, luna!
lunamoth said:
Hi Juantoo3, yes, that was what we were alluding to, lightheartedly. (at least I was being lighthearted :) ). *Higher* math. :)
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OK, that explains why I didn't catch on too quick. Higher math, ugggh, it's all greek to me! :)
 
Didymus.. Christians believe that the OT is God preparing the world for Jesus Christ.. your arguments have been heard by Christians from many people.. Nothing you say is original and if you cant see the messianic prophecies in the OT then Im sorry.. If you cant see Christ as the Messiah again, Im sorry.
 
Faithfulservant said:
If the bible is the written word of God.. and the gospel of thomas is not in the bible for some reason or another (having faith that Gods will exceeds mans).. therefore it must not be the words of God.. anyways you can read it and see the contradictions in it to know for yourself.

Why are you baiting Conscience with this? I find it a bit tedious to keep reading the same question when its plain to see that he does not know how to answer the question.. maybe he just feels that way without knowing the why of it. Cant you accept that?

This is not a battleground of wits and knowledge.. This is a open forum to discuss our beliefs in what should be respect and tolerance.
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With all due respect, Conscience is peppering the forum with post after offensive post goading anyone who doesn't hold his views into an apologetics debate. Since he seemed to want an apologetics debate, I'll give him one. I can already tell he's woefully ill-prepared for one, which is why he clammed up when the debate really started. I can accept that he feels the way he feels or believes what he believes. But he is clearly here to troll for controversy and proselytize. I'm not interested in digging through topic after topic of vacuous, judgmental proselytizing to find an interesting conversation about Christianity.

And I agree about respect and tolerance. I think he's been warned at least a half a dozen times now by four different moderators on this forum.

I'm just giving him what he wants.
 
Quahom1 said:
The only thing that can be proven is that the Gospel of Thomas, as well as the other Aprocypha were not accepted into the 66 books that have been combined into one called the Holy Bible.

Are they scripture? In the purest sense of the word...yes (they were allegedly written by the people (witnesses to God's hand at work), of the same general time period.
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Exactly.
 
juantoo3 said:
Kindest Regards, pathless!



Forgive my ignorance. Where is this from? I do not recall anything like it in the Bible.
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It's a paraphrase of a passage from the Gospel of Thomas, verse 22:

Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, "These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom."

They said to him, "Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?"

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom."
 
With regard to the notion that "a young woman" shall conceive is too mundane to be regarded as a "sign", such an argument necessarily considers Is. 7:14 out of its context. The one oft-cited line regarding a young woman coceiving a child is just the beginning of a long list of specific (though often obscure) signs of which this is only the beginning. Indeed, in context, it is apparent that the young woman giving birth to a child is NOT the sign, but all the things that happen afterwards are the sign, none of which appear to have anything to do with Jesus:


14Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin [al'mah, "maiden" or "young woman"] shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.


15Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.

16For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.

17The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria.

18And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

19And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes.

20In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard.

21And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep;

22And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land.

23And it shall come to pass in that day, that every place shall be, where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, it shall even be for briers and thorns.

24With arrows and with bows shall men come thither; because all the land shall become briers and thorns. 25And on all hills that shall be digged with the mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns: but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle.


More imporantly, if God intended it as an amazing prophecy it would have said a virgin shall conceive using the Hebrew word that unequivocally means "virgin" - bet'ulah. Absent that, it's simply too vague to be considered a prophecy, especially when considered in its context, which has nothing to do with the messiah.
 
The Bible is the true word of God. In Matthew 1:21-23, it says that Mary giving birth to Jesus IS the fulfillment of the prophecy given in Issiah.

Our opinions dont matter. God has already spoken on the issue!
 
It is inevitable that such conversations will go nowhere, because some of us are operating from a perspective that uses the Bible in its historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts, and believe it is not inerrant, while others believe it is inerrant and refuse to look at its contexts and the history of the church. We end up talking past one another, so it really is a bit pointless. No one in either "camp" seems interested in changing their own views, which is because each has found truth in his/her own views.

Personally, I think in terms of salvation it is irrelevant. In terms of accuracy it is highly relevant, but if someone doesn't care about accuracy... :confused: the whole conversation doesn't much matter to them.

What I don't understand is why proving all the prophecies, miracles, etc. are true is important to people. Maybe I'm just dense as to how most people are thinking, but my faith has virtually nothing to do with the proposed reality of these miracles or prophecies/signs. I don't believe in Jesus and his teachings because he is said to be born of a virgin, or supposedly cured insane people (driving out demons), or even because he allegedly had a bodily resurrection. I believe in Jesus because his teachings were sound and truthful, and because he showed godliness in his actions. I guess I just don't need the Bible to be inerrant for my faith to continue. I don't see all the miracles as the foundation of my faith. If archaeologists unequivocally found Jesus' body tomorrow and it was known he wasn't bodily resurrected, it would make absolutely no difference in my faith in him or God. All the miracles, whether they happened or not, have deep symbolic significance. It doesn't really make much of a difference to me if Jesus was the fulfillment of OT prophecy. I mean, my own ancestors' (the Celts) druids prophesied the coming of Jesus and Christianity, but I don't base my beliefs on the fulfillment of those, either.

I'm not saying one way of thinking is better than the other, but that they are profoundly different. For some of us, thinking about these "signs" as symbols with deeper meaning and not as literal events (or as both) does not rock the boat of our faith.

In the words of Saint Robert Bellarmine:
The school of Christ is the school of love. In the last day, when the general examination takes place. . . Love will be the whole syllabus.

I truly don't think we will have a long essay and multiple choice exam asking if we think the whole earth was flooded and then repopulated with only Noah and his family, or if creation literally happened in six days, or if Jesus was born of a virgin or a young woman and if these fulfilled OT prophecies. In my experience, it's a lot simpler than that. Love is, indeed, the whole syllabus.
 
Faithfulservant said:
pfft.. ok then


3/3 = 1

Smartypants :p
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I don't think fractions capture the real flavor of it. Talking about Jesus as only 1/3 of "God" would seem to contradict some formulations of the dogma. From the Catholic Encyclopedia (www.newadvent.com):

The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion -- the truth that in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another. Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God." In this Trinity of Persons the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent. This, the Church teaches, is the revelation regarding God's nature which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to deliver to the world: and which she proposes to man as the foundation of her whole dogmatic system.
 
Path of One. I agree with your opinion of this matter. We all believe what we believe and this probably won't change with debate. What we all have in common is that we believe in Jesus and what he did and stood for. Some believe he was God others that he was filled with God's spirit. Regardless we all revere him. So far noone has thrown any dirt at him. The only dirt being thrown is at others interpretations of scripture. These debates are fine with me. Actually I enjoy them, they force me to crystallize my beliefs and opinions. On this forum I can't throw a topic out there idley without having to back it up. I think we are all talking about the same wall here, only some are arguing its height while others are arguing its color.
 
path_of_one said:
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I truly don't think we will have a long essay and multiple choice exam asking if we think the whole earth was flooded and then repopulated with only Noah and his family, or if creation literally happened in six days, or if Jesus was born of a virgin or a young woman and if these fulfilled OT prophecies. In my experience, it's a lot simpler than that. Love is, indeed, the whole syllabus.
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Good words here path-of-one. In my own walk the most important words are "Keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God."

Reading Karen Armstrong's The History of God and The Battle for God, and also recently The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg has given me some insight into why such a hard line gets drawn between people who identify themselves as literal Bible believers and those who view the Bible historically, metaphorically and sacramentally. Sadly the chasm that divides these two parts of the Boby of Christ is deep and few bridges are found these days, although my hope is that this does not need to be the case.

The emergence of both views is rooted in the drastic changes in Western thinking that occurred during the Enlightenment. The advent of scientific method and scientific thinking has made us into literal thinkers and for many the Truth is associated with what can be factually proven in the material realm. Thus, any questioning of the factuality of anything in the Bible seems like an attack on its Truth. Others, obvious from this forum, do not see it the same way, and find the Truth in the Bible is in its More-Than-Literal events and teachings. Of course, all this is just my understanding of things today.

peace,
lunamoth
 
didymus said:
The only dirt being thrown is at others interpretations of scripture. These debates are fine with me. Actually I enjoy them, they force me to crystallize my beliefs and opinions.
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Yep, the reason I'm here too. I always love a good debate, and I also can gain insight from others' interpretations.

I guess what I was trying to say is that even though we all have different ideas, and these are highly unlikely to be resolved, we all have faith. :)
 
Conscience said:
Or, is Truth Absolute? If a person's truth conflicts and contradicts with another person's truth, how can both be truth?
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as far as understanding the truth behind subjective human beliefs, i think we're facing something that's more or less impossible to untangle from a perspective that's either not human, not objective, or both.

i put my faith in what i find works from moment to moment. i put my faith in the power of love, hard work, and positive change, and go from there.
 
Truth is subjective. Facts are objective. Thoughts are reflective, and action is observed and judged.


v/r

Q
 
2 years ago I would have loved that, agreeded with it (even though I dont get it), and repeated it to others. Back then, my goal was to sound like a fortune cookie. Now, people say that Im brained wash, because I only adhear to what the Bible says. And, the Bible is very clear on the subject of truth. According to the Bible, there's no gray lines on this issue. But, thats the Bible, not everyone believes in it.
 
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