or at least choose how you respond to the answer
I believe He was/is real, yes, and fulfilled the Messianic prophesies.
The religions of Abrahamism are based on the willing Human Sacrifice of a Father, of his Son, to God. Christianity is the ‘inversion’ of that Demand and Obligation. Rather than God asking or demanding it of Abraham, God essentially proves to Mankind: “I’ll lead by example, I’ll do it myself”. Christ therein, is the realization of that promise.
The Moral of the Story? The most demanding Sacrifice humanity can possibly give, is that of a Father and his Son. There is a lesson of attachment and Love. Why should any Father offer his Son, to any Ideal, to any Goal, to any political party, to any nation, to any Pharoah, to any Tyrant???
To what Ideals do all men serve, or ought to serve? That is the lesson of Christianity and the Abrahamic faiths.
A big problem with that is that Jesus fulfilled messianic prophecies paradoxically, which is why he was rejected by most Jews in his own time and subsequently.
Christ is ancient Greek translation for the word Messiah. Those who were expecting a literal messiah to come and drive out the Romans and reign as king over the nations on earth as prophesied in the Hebrew scriptures were disappointed by Jesus.
What do you make of Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God? What do you make of verses like John 3:16?
He corrected a lot of their false expectations ahead of his death before he demonstrated he is the synthesis resolving their antitheses before they ever erred.
Jesus didn’t literally fulfill the prophecies predicting that the Messiah would conquer the nations and set up his kingdom on earth. That’s why He has to come back a second time according to the New Testament. Skeptics call this cognitive dissonance. When the believers expectations are disappointed, they reframe them.
And the Jews were not expecting the Son of David to be crucified. Even Jesus‘s disciples didn’t understand it. Therefore , as Paul said, the crucifixion was a stumbling block to the Jews.
Well, there are different ways of handling that, but I wouldn’t call them essentials.
The original point of the OP was that you can do that but you don’t really know and that such belief requires a leap of faith. And, I agree, that if one is simply basing one’s assent to the God proposition on a text or ecclesiastical authority, that a leap is required.
If you believe in the trinity than Jesus was God too. So it would also be God sacrificing God and God sacrificing himself. So,
The God the Father sacrificing God the Son.
God sacrificing God
God sacrificing Himself
All boil down to the same thing.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says he was laying down his own life and no one could take it from him (John 10:18). So Jesus, was in this sense not only the sacrifice, but the sacrificer, i.e. the priest.
Now the paradox here is that God is eternal and immortal, so if Jesus is God, he can’t die. So, in the early days of emergent Christianity battles were fought over how to understand this.
It’s interesting that even on a website (catholic.com) claiming to give catholic answers, a guy, Tim Staples, falls into the “Docetic” heresy of denying that Jesus was truly human attempting to answer this question:
”.This question is particularly interesting because when we normal humans die—and by “normal,” I mean all of us that are not God!—our “person” ceases to exist, strictly speaking. Why? Because, by definition, a human person is constituted as a body-soul composite. Without both, you do not have a person. This is why we refer to the “souls” in Purgatory, for example, and not the “persons” in purgatory. They are “souls,” and not persons, properly speaking, because they do not possess bodies. This is also why Scripture refers to the souls in heaven as “the spirits of just men made perfect” (see Heb. 12:22-24), or as “the souls of the martyrs” (Rev. 6:9). Until the resurrection of the body, the “spirits” and “souls” are not fully “persons.”
**”Well, in the case of Jesus Christ, he is not a human person.**
He is a divine person. Thus, it is impossible for his “person” to cease to be. Thus, you will notice the Catechism referring to Christ’s body still being joined to the divine Person, even in death:
“It is not, however, our belief that the body of Christ alone was interred. The above words [referring to the Creed stating that Christ “was buried”] propose, as the principal object of our belief, that God was buried; as according to the rule of Catholic faith we also say with the strictest truth that God died, and that God was born of a virgin. For as the Divinity was never separated from his body which was laid in the sepulcher, we truly confess that God was buried.”
Contrary to Tim Staples’ statement on catholic.com, Jesus was a human person according to catholic orthodoxy. The Confession of Chalcedon provides a clear statement on the two natures of Christ, human and divine:[39]
We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; (ἐν δύο φύσεσιν ἀσυγχύτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀχωρίστως – in duabus naturis inconfuse, immutabiliter, indivise, inseparabiliter) the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person (prosopon) and one Subsistence (hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God (μονογενῆ Θεόν), the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.
It’s always safer on questions of the Trinity and Christology to admit that they are mysteries beyond human comprehension. Otherwise you can accidentally hit the heresy button.
Resurrection. Jesus died as human. Jesus didn’t stay dead because he is God. We’re not gonna stay dead because he is God.
Good night. I’m going to sleep forever.
Christ said His Father (European/Aryan) was/is God, and Jews’ father, the Jewish tribes, are “of the Devil”. It doesn’t get clearer than that. Christians and Jews have different, distinct patrilineal sources. Different Gods.
As with Eternal Life, Christianity is a synthesis of many Græco-Roman philosophies and ideologies, into Judaic Talmudism and Messianism. A synthesis between Master and Slave moralities, particularly, that a Master ought to exemplify the demands of his morality, upon his slaves: Justice and Ethics.
A Master ought to lead by example.
Therefore, God enacted the morality that He pressed upon Abraham. Christ is ‘God made Flesh’, the realization of Messianic prophesies, whom ancient Jews and Israelites (their ancestors) rejected. And it was their CHOICE to do so. They had every opportunity to accept Christ – to this day.
In terms of pure rationality, it’s more of a short step up a staircase, than a “leap”. The logic is all spelled out pretty clearly.
I don’t really believe in anything Supernatural. The ‘immortality’ of the analogy, is that God sacrificed His only begotten Son, such that Human sin could be Forgiven. That was the paradigm shift of Ancient Ethics and Morality into a new Era. It moved Humanity forward into the Semiotic Age.
I don’t believe Resurrection or actually living forever, as a body, is the point. That’s where the Masses get caught up in fairy tales and superstitions, Mysticism. That appeals to the children and women, and cowards who fear Death. The masses huddle around Churches and Christ, in this regard, hoping to Cure all ailments. That’s only a lesser extension of the point of Christianity. Surely, Christ does want to ‘Heal’ the world of Sin, Pain, Suffering, Slavery. But for Humanity to take moral responsibility out of their own hands… is Antithetical of Christian morality.
It’s the exact-opposite of the lesson, the morality.
Nope. Strike one. He most certainly did not. Strike one. Two more episodes of blatant bull-honkey and I’m blocking you. To continue…
Ug. Strike two.
Absolutely false, but counts under the first two.
If you believe the Monotheistic God of Abrahamism is Jewish, then that’s your prerogative. It doesn’t mean you’re right or true though.
No… it’s the only eternal synthesis… preceding all of the above… whose truth is the foreshadowing of our ability to grasp it.
By the way, how was it possible for Christ to synthesize Hellenic philosophies and ideologies into religion, without explaining male Paternalism as the Trinity: God the Father, Christ the Son, Mother the Holy Spirit… the Mother who is claimed to be Jewish?
True power/value sets free… from constant revaluation of ends-in-themselves.
A person is one who values/powers.
To devalue others (in order that self comes out on top), is to devalue one’s own personhood—become less of a person (one who values/powers)… and is to instead become an antiperson (one who devalues/disempowers).
Gtfo with that Nazi bullshit.
Read the actual Bible… just once. I beg you.
God is not Jewish… sorry to rain on your Protestant parade.
I know it hurts.
EDIT: God the Father, specifically.