by Sea Breeze 48 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I know that a lot of historical names have claimed to be a god. But, Jesus arguably claimed to be God. Scripture says he's the Creator. Is this a somewhat unique claim? If so, how unique? I'm not really aware of anyone else claiming to be THE Almighty.
What say you?
Christ is the Old Testament manifestation of the invisible omni present god. He is the creator that stepped into the creation and became the mediator back to himself. An advocate for sinful humanity.
Weird stuff. It is all chicken and egg , if a tree falls in the forest , dust in the wind kind of shit. All discussions about it usually result in circular nonsense.
Jesus addressed the issue head on in John 10 where he pointed out to the Pharisees that if even those referred to in the Psalms (be they judges or angels) can be called “gods”, so much more can Jesus the messiah rightly be called “God’s Son”.
Jesus is also called the “firstborn of all creation” and the “beginning of the creation of God”, and he is described as the one through whom God created all things. Revelation 4 underlines this distinction when it says God is worthy to receive power and honour and glory because he is the source of creation, whereas Jesus as the lamb in Revelation 5 receives power and honour and glory because of his sacrifice for humans.
Jesus received his life from God (John 5.67) whereas God received his life from no one.
@Riley
I'm just wondering who the contenders are if a person doesn't believe in the miracles that atheists believe in, ie. , life from non-life, matter from non matter, order from chaos, information from non-intelligence, laws from lawlessness, logic from non logic, etc. These are huge miracles that defy explanation and have no basis in reality.
It just occured to me that Jesus might be the only game in town if the atheist paradigm is not acceptable. Is anyone aware of anyone else claiming to be God, as in the Creator?
@ SBF ... ok so Yahweh (Jehovah) Good point. Maybe Allah? Anyone else? Is that it?
This is nothing other than an argument from incredulity, sometimes called the divine fallacy. Sea Breeze says a proposition must be false simply because it goes against his personal beliefs, or perhaps that it's just too difficult to imagine or understand.
Much easier (and lazier) to say "God did it".
The truth is that some things really are difficult to understand, even unknown at this point - like the origin of life. It's perfectly okay to admit to not knowing something. That's just being humble in the face of the unknown. Arrogance shows itself in believers like Sea Breeze who claim to have the answers but NEVER provide the evidence.
Arrogance shows itself in believers like Sea Breeze who claim to have the answers but NEVER provide the evidence.
@nicolaou
If you want to throw in an athiest point of view as "God", I'm ok with that. Just trying to collect all the options here at first.
So far we got Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Nothing, can anyone think of any other contenders as God, the Creator etc. Is that the whole list?
Did any of the regional gods claim to be the Almighty? Thor, Odin, Zeus etc? I don't think so, but I could be wrong.
I had a Hindu show me a picture of a young boy on a magazine once and told me this was Krishna. I asked who that was. He said Krisna was God. So, should we add Krisna to the list? I think so.
Allah is not referring to a separate God than Jehovah. Allah is Arabic for the word God, just like Elohim is in Hebrew.
I was listening to a Bible and History scholar today and he said the translator of Genisis got it wrong where it said In the beginning God created.....he said the word translated God was plural so should have been rendered, in the beginning Gods created....this made sense to me because later on we read , let us create man in OUR image. So there was more than one creating. Prov 8:30 speaks of a master worker with God that God possessed at the beginning of his way (Prov 8:22) I think it correct to consider Jesus a God, just as the Bible says there are many gods and many lords, but Jesus himself said he was God's Son and he didn't do anything of his own initiative, but did his Father's Will.
Jesus addressed the issue head on in John 10 where he pointed out to the Pharisees that if even those referred to in the Psalms (be they judges or angels) can be called “gods”, so much more can Jesus the messiah rightly be called “God’s Son”.
I'm on the same boat, Trinity for me is another cult, if you don't believe it you are being called names and expected to go through mental gymnastics to be made to see what is not there. I'm a good old Arian and a pre-Nicean Christian where conversation on the subject was free albeit heated at times. I'm not going to accept a doctrine that was forced upon Christians from a pagan emperor Constantine that thought he can be a Christian theologian as well a murderer and a pagan
The impression I get is that the question is, how many of the deities that people worship (or once worshipped) specifically identified themselves as THE one true god. But the topic title gives the impression that it's a discussion about the specific role of Jesus. Is he god, or a creation of the actual god?
I don't know how many gods claimed to be the almighty, the god of gods, the top dog, etc. I'm going to assume that, for any gods that did not make this claim explicitly, the followers will feel that it is not a relevant criteria. How do we determine the value of such a statement? What reason would we have to give that claim any particular merit? How explicit does the phrasing need to be?
And also, I think we would need to reconcile the question of Jesus's divinity as described in the Bible. His claim to be the one true god doesn't carry weight if it is determined that he is a creation of a different god. After two thousand years, that issue does not appear to be resolved. If Jesus isn't the one true god, how do we interpret the passages where he might have insinuated this? If he claimed it, how do we account for the inaccuracy of the claim?
