Why I Believe

[lester1/2jr]

"Of the Gospel writers, Matthew and John were there in Jerusalem"

mathew and John weren't written by Mathew or John. They were written in a different language, several decades later.

"The main opposition from the Jews was early on, "

anti semetism grew with Christianity's popularity, if the apocrypha is proof of anything its that

" There had to be a cathartic, transforming experience there."

there were predictions of a messiah well back into the OT and particularly toward the end of it. Jesus was the guy who said "it starts now" .

"Even Roman soldiers came to him at least once.  So you're making a snobbish assumption there that flies in the face of the primary sources."

read the last section of Mark.  in the end they all,  including God, abandoned him . thats the point:  unrequited heroism. He died for his beliefs

[Paquita]

It always warms my heart to see intelligent people that have beliefs.  I don't like to discredit anyone's belief system (or lack thereof) so long as it's not hurting anyone.  I'm always disappointed when I find that someone I admire or who is known for their intelligence is a fervent atheist, like there's a checklist in order to be an intellectual and atheism is at the top of it.  I know there are many great minds that also have faith, but I feel like I hear about so many that don't or don't own up to it for fear of being labeled a fool by their peers.

One of my favorite, I don't know, "faith" stories I guess, is Peter Steele from Type O Negative.  For most of his life he claimed to be an atheist until a few years before his untimely passing when he kind of just threw it all and owned up to believing in God.  He even said he enjoyed going to church to argue with the clergy about all the things he thought they were getting wrong. He was always a bit of a sleaze which I find even more endearing for some reason.

I am comfortable with not knowing everything.  I like mysteries.  I'd rather be a fool for believing something than a fool for believing nothing.

[indianasmith]

"Of the Gospel writers, Matthew and John were there in Jerusalem"

mathew and John weren't written by Mathew or John. They were written in a different language, several decades later.

First of all, that is an unprovable assertion invented by modern scholars.  The evidence for traditional authorship is far more convincing, IMO, than any other.  I firmly believe that if the Gospels were not the founding documents of Christianity, NO ONE would dispute their authorship.  Yes, they wrote in Greek.  Why should that be surprising?   There were numerous Greek cities around the Sea of Galilee, Greek was the universal trade language of the Roman Empire, and Jews had lived under Greek rule for two centuries before the Romans took over.  If they wanted their message to get out beyond their own people in Judea, it only made sense they wrote in Greek.  The language of the NT poses no bar to traditional authorship at all.

"The main opposition from the Jews was early on, "

anti semetism grew with Christianity's popularity, if the apocrypha is proof of anything its that
The New Testament Apocrypha postdates the New Testament documents by over a hundred years, on average.

" There had to be a cathartic, transforming experience there."

there were predictions of a messiah well back into the OT and particularly toward the end of it. Jesus was the guy who said "it starts now" .

Yet His disciples preached His resurrection from Day One, they fervently believed it, and many of them died for it. Either they were consciously lying, or else they genuinely believed in it.   Where did that belief come from?  "Faith" is simply not an adequate answer.

"Even Roman soldiers came to him at least once.  So you're making a snobbish assumption there that flies in the face of the primary sources."

read the last section of Mark.  in the end they all,  including God, abandoned him . thats the point:  unrequited heroism. He died for his beliefs

[/The last verses of Mark tell of an empty tomb and the message of Resurrection. He died for His beliefs, but then He came back!color]

[lester1/2jr]

"The New Testament Apocrypha postdates the New Testament documents by over a hundred years, on average. "

exactly. and those documents showing growing anti semetism that was my point.

Revelation calls Jews the synagogue of Satan and that is of course in the NT

"Yet His disciples preached His resurrection from Day One, they fervently believed it, and many of them died for it. "

Justin Martyr

"We who once reveled in impurities now cling to purity; we who devoted ourselves to the arts of magic now consecrate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God; we who loved above all else the ways of acquiring riches and possessions now hand over to a community fund what we possess, and share it with every needy person; we who hated and killed one another and would not share our hearth with those of another tribe because of their [different] customs, now, after the coming of Christ, live together with them, and pray for our enemies, and try to convince those who hate us unjustly. . "


They became Christians. they lived their lives on Earth as it is in Heaven. If they did or didn't believe the resurrection prophecy or one of the man other prophecies good for them. Christians are those who emulate Christ. It was a lifestyle.

it wasn't until centuries later that the church itself even clarified who Christ was in terms of the trinity, a concept most Christians still probably don't understand


edit: re the gospels most scholars assert that they were not written by the people named. the gospels themselves don't say that they are, except for John which ouold easily be a flourish. you are of course aware of this

[indianasmith]

There we will have to agree to disagree.

I think modern scholarship on the Gospels, in many cases, is sensationalist and sloppy and driven by the desire to sell books and win grants.  Traditional authorship was asserted very early on, by people who were only a generation or two removed from the disciples, who had access to sources of information that no longer exist and testimony that is no longer extant.  Questioning that authorship really did not come into vogue until the 19th century, with the Tubingen "form critics" whose anti-supernaturalist bias drove them to question every aspect of Scripture which described miraculous events or divine intervention of any sort.  In essence, their naturalist philosophy shaped their conclusions far more than the actual evidence did.

   I firmly believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by the men whose names they bear, that Paul wrote the letters attributed to him, and so on.  And there are a LOT of reputable scholars - men like Donald Guthrie, F.F. Bruce, and Michael Licona - who agree with me on that.

[lester1/2jr]

you don't offer any proof though, just ad hominems about the alleged motives of the critics, as if that had any significance.



"    Oral traditions – stories and sayings passed on largely as separate self-contained units, not in any order;
    Written collections of miracle stories, parables, sayings, etc., with oral tradition continuing alongside these;
    Written proto-gospels preceding and serving as sources for the gospels;
    Canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John composed from these sources."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels

Luke says "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled[a] among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word."

I don't see how that could be interpreted another way.

[indianasmith]

Luke was not an eyewitness to the life of Christ, admits as much, and used the accounts of Matthew and Mark in composing his narrative.  I certainly don't dispute that, but he most certainly was an eyewitness to many of the events in the Book of Acts, hence his use of "we" and "us" in several passages.

But the fact that he used Matthew and Mark is a solid and very early attestation that those authors WERE "eyewitnesses and servants of the Word."

[zelmo73]

Tacitus connects Jesus to his execution by Pontius Pilate.

Another account of Jesus appears in Annals of Imperial Rome, a first-century history of the Roman Empire written around 116 A.D. by the Roman senator and historian Tacitus. In chronicling the burning of Rome in 64 A.D., Tacitus mentions that Emperor Nero falsely blamed "the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius."

As a Roman historian, Tacitus did not have any Christian biases in his discussion of the persecution of Christians by Nero, says Ehrman. "Just about everything he says coincides—from a completely different point of view, by a Roman author disdainful of Christians and their superstition—with what the New Testament itself says: Jesus was executed by the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, for crimes against the state, and a religious movement of his followers sprang up in his wake."

"When Tacitus wrote history, if he considered the information not entirely reliable, he normally wrote some indication of that for his readers," Mykytiuk says in vouching for the historical value of the passage. "There is no such indication of potential error in the passage that mentions Christus."

https://www.history.com/news/was-jesus-real-historical-evidence

[zelmo73]

"... the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen...."

This is where I find many similarities between science and religion. Both have followers devoted to their own respective belief systems. Both have their own ideological agendas. Religion is based in absolutism in regards to faith, whereas science is based in absolutism in regards to its interpretation of facts, which are subject to change over time (see the Flat Earth theory and Earth as the Center of the Universe as a couple of examples.)

Science bases a lot of its studies on evidence of things not seen, like ultraviolet rays, radio waves, infrared light, gravity, etc. All things that cannot be seen by the naked eye without some form of man-made tool. Yet scientists that created those inventions were moved by the theories and observations of others, a lot of which could not be seen by the naked eye, instead relying on analyzations, deductions, and probability dissertations and thesis of others. Yet was it "certainty" that brought mankind to walk on the moon, or was it faith in the science, engineering, and mathematical equations of others that brought us there? True, numbers don't lie, but human mathematical error does. That was a big leap of faith to depend on the work of others to get us to the moon, after all, and if it was based on science being right all of the time, then the struggles of Apollo 13 would never have happened.

[lester1/2jr]

indiana - have you ever seen this https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Christ-Testament-Reverend/dp/1578840058


zelmo - yeah the idea that Jesus never existed is usually explained with a bunch of stuff about Zorastrians or something. even if one doesn't believe the gospels were written by the ascribed names, Paul clearly knew Peter and Peter knew Jesus.

The idea that Jesus is some kind of Robin Hood/ Ned Ludd type figure doesn't hold water

One problem with all this stuff is there is very little proof of ANYTHING outside of like Roman Emperors from this era and part of the world.

There is some leger with Pilates name on it and that Tacitus statement. relatively recently they found a coin or something with Pilates name on it. thats it, thats all history has to prove he existed outside of Christianity

[Leah]

What are yall thoughts on Megachurches? Personally I think they're a breeding ground for cults to start over smaller community churches.

[indianasmith]

I've been a small church guy my whole life.  I've pastored small churches and attended small churches and been very happy there.  I know some large churches that are doctrinally sound and conduct very effective ministries; others that are doctrinally questionable and seem to exist to enrich their pastors . . . but I've seen personality cults develop in small churches, too.

My standard line is that big churches can do some things small churches can't and vice versa.  So worship where you are spiritually fed.

[lester1/2jr]

Here in the Northeast the churches are very socially liberal, in the south they have megachurches. This is what the respective peoples like. In Europe the government runs the churches and no one goes to them

[indianasmith]

Sad, really. All those magnificent church buildings used as concert venues and tourist traps because folks don't worship anymore.

[Alex]

What countries in Europe do that? I know in the UK churches are pretty much left to their own devices and most seem to get sold off by the various churches before being converted to pubs or (surprisingly a popular choice) furniture stores. If they can't afford the upkeep on them, they either get sold off or allowed to fall to ruin.

Asking out of curiosity on which countries have stepped in to maintain their buildings.