Jesus as Savior

Debate Room
1

A friend believes in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God, and that he is saved thereby. I asked him on what basis he holds these beliefs, and he gave me the following explanation. Thoughts?

His comment:

I’m going to do my best to tell the story as I understand it. Sometime in the era of Sumeria, there was a belief in a Devine counsel that had a patron diety that oversaw each country of the Levant and Mesopotamia. Nations understood who their god was and believed that each God only ruled over their area.

Sometime between 3500-3100 BC the city of UR saw a massive flood that devastated the city. In this city was a man represented as Abraham in the Bible. After the flood destroyed the city he led his family northwest and settled them foothills and mountains of the land around Jerusalem where they accepted Yahweh, the God of that territory. This later became Judea.

Separately, sometime around 1,800 - 1,500 bc a group of people, likely the Hyksos dynasty, fled Southern Egypt to northern Egypt and settled in the foothills and mountains around Samaria, to become Israel.

For hundreds of years, the Israelites and Judeans slowly brought people from the larger urban areas of Canaan into their folds to worship Yahweh and likely his consort Ashera. As they grew stronger, the land of Canaan largely became worshippers of Yahweh. These two civilizations slowly grew in strength until Israel was conquered by Assyria and the remnants of that religion fled south to Judea and brought many of their stories with them.

Then the Babylonians conquered Judea and destroyed the main center of worship in Judea and took a lot of the Jews as captives back to Babylon.

During this exile, the first philosophers of the religion began developing and formulating the theology behind their religion and eventually took this back with them to Jerusalem where the temple was rebuilt. With the temple rebuilt, the priestly leaders began compiling and crafting their origin stories into one set of stories. During this process, the priestly leaders filled in gaps and embellished stories to have the land protected by a supreme God. This helped them standardize and document their beliefs, which helped them grow again, until the successors to Alexander the Great conquered Canaan. The Macabees came and over threw Antiochus and then led a second round of redacting and editing of the scriptures.

Then Jesus came to deliver people from the round and round meyham of worldly conquerors to provide them another way forward as God’s son.

Now, that is essentially the same story we have at a high level, that is supported by the facts as we have them, and it doesn’t change Jesus’ role in my salvation or the world’s salvation one iota.

2

I don’t really follow. He’s stating a non-inerrantist, non-literalist understanding of the Bible. Possibly even non-inspired, since he is saying it’s just the evolution of human beliefs in various gods. Since he’s not claiming divine inspiration or a miraculously conveyed divine document, or even a sort of Heilsgeschichte (holy history) really, I don’t see how that speaks to his claim that Jesus is divine or at least descended from the divine, and there is something he needs to be saved from that Jesus is necessary for. It just sounds like a Gish Gallop of somewhat accurate historic facts that he hopes will impress you. Really a variation on an argumentum ad populum.

I would ignore the historical patter and ask him what objective proof he can offer that there is a God in the first place, how the theological concept of “sin” is demonstrable, etc. It always comes back to evidence for his claims. He claims there’s a God who has a Son who will save him (presumably from sin or from punishment for sin or from death or hell or the human condition or whatever). So he needs to provide evidence for his extraordinary claim with its extraordinary implications, not just a lot of hand-waving at the historical provenance of his particular understanding of his particular faith.

After all, I could go on a similarly stem-winding description of the origins of authoritarianism generally or Naziism in particular, or of homeopathy, or of alchemy, and that would in no way be proof of those things or would argue for me adopting them for myself.

3

I don’t think your friend knows what the word fact means. Every claim made about the biblical character Jesus in the canonical gospel myths is unevidenced anonymous hearsay, written decades after the facts they purport to describe.

One could believe just about anything if one sets the bar this low for evidence, which is ironic as many Christians do believe all manner of nonsense.

7 Likes
4

Jesus is a atheist now and he resides on the planet of the Eternals.

5

image
image313×237 25.3 KB

A scientist one day went to a meeting with his esteemed colleagues, pulled out a beautiful, gold pocket-watch and said, “The most amazing thing happened this morning while walking here. This exquisitely-made watch suddenly fell out of the sky, perfectly formed and keeping perfect time. It’s amazing!!

“You’re crazy!!” cried his colleagues. “That didn’t just fall out of the sky! It was made by a master watchmaker.”

“Well, that’s no crazier than your believing all of this around us happened by accident or coincidence,” he replied.

6

Well, that does it! That’s the single most convincing argument ever posted here!

Not.

4 Likes
7

Romans 13:1

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

8

:rofl:

A variation of Paley’s watchmaker fallacy, using a false dichotomy , and ending in a straw man, priceless. It even contains a false equivalence, as we have sufficient objective evidence that watches are designed, we have none that natural things are, that’s precisely why watches don’t drop from the sky or occur randomly in nature.

Accident and coincidence are of course two things we know are possible, unlike a deity using inexplicable magic, which we have no objective evidence is possible. You seem determined to keep parroting tired old irrational apologetics, that have been debunked countless times before.

9

[Watchmaker’s analogy]

The analogy uses the complexity (or simplicity) of a known and provably human-made object to argue that what appears as complexity in nature must also be made by a designer. This is a fallacy, in that it assumes that if X and Y shares a common characteristic (C; complexity), they must also share another (D; design). Even if X has both characterstics C and D, it doesn’t follow that Y must have characteristic D, even if it has characteristic C.

Example of a similar fallacious argument: Both seagulls and bats have frontal limbs that enable them to fly/act as wings. Seagulls are birds. Thus, bats are also birds.

1 Like
10

Not sure what relevance that Scripture has to my post. But, if God was posting, He’d post Ps. 14:1 and 53:1.

11

Interesting analogy; but, it still doesn’t deal with first cause–and where your brain cells came from, along with your ability to engage in reason, deduction, induction, etc.

1 Like
12

While I 100% agree with this reasoning, I don’t think that we have to go this far.

I believe that all we have to do is ask where the watchmaker came from. After all, if the complexity of the watch implies a watchmaker, then the watchmaker must be even more complex . . . so why don’t we need a maker of watchmakers?

We are either stuck with a double standard, or we have an infinite regression of successively more complex makers of makers of watchmakers.

Therefore, the simplest explanation is that there is no watchmaker when discussing the Universe.

Or at least this is how I see it.

13

Invoking a god-like designer also does not deal with first cause—and where the designer came from. What is your point?

1 Like
14

Because all of this is by intelligent design, not randomness; logic alone proves that it’s infinitesimally impossible for there to be such harmony, symmetry and unit without intelligent design.

15

You invoke logic to make an illogical argument.

The watchmaker argument can be refuted in many ways, and you haven’t addressed them.

Maybe you should try to read up on how logic works.

16

It points to a paradox

1 Like
17

Sounds logical to me, Kevin. But, maybe you should read up on how faith works. I encourage you to read the book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist by Frank Turek. Very interesting read indeed.

18

That’s true; but, we must always read things in their context–and this was basically telling the readers (most of whom were Jewish-Christians) not to resort to violence in an attempt to change the government.

19

I have purchased (and read) a few of Turek’s books . . . although not the one that you’ve suggested in your post.

I find myself irritated with the claim that–somehow–it takes more faith to be an atheist.

If I am to believe in God (or gods), then which one should I choose? Even if we restrict ourselves to the Abrahamic God of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, we run into several problems.

Please consider:

  1. Islam says that I burn in Hell if I become Christian.

  2. The Catholics will say that I’ll be separated from God if I become Muslim.

  3. The many, many denominations of Protestants each claim (with a very few exceptions) that all other denominations are going to hell because they aren’t Saved.

  4. Religious faith often (but not invariably) lead to violence, homophobia, sexist patriarchal norms, war, and so forth.

The picture becomes even more complicated when we include other non-Abrahamic faiths.

So where should I place my faith?

I do have faith that if I’m wrong about God’s nonexistence, that God will give me a pass into the Afterlife when I die, because I used my God-given intellect to reject religious ideas that cause so much damage, death, and hatred, as I accept (on faith) that the Creator of the Universe–if (S)He or Them exists–is reasonable.

If the Creator is unreasonable, then we’re all screwed anyway and religious faith doesn’t make a difference.

So how do I misunderstand how faith works?

QED

1 Like
20

Thanks for your response, Kevin. Your dilemma over the multiplicity of religions is understandable– especially when so many of them are saying “I’m the RIGHT ones and all others are wrong.” That’s why, to me, the Biblical view of God is the only one that really makes any sense: particularly as you deep-dive into the Word and begin to see the threads of Truth that all point to the New Testament declaration of Who Jesus is and what He came to do.

Thankfully, God’s Love for us isn’t dependent upon our mental acumen or ability to understand such ins-and-outs of the Old and new Testament teachings (from a Jewish point-of-view). That’s why we must approach it with simple, childlike Faith/Trust; otherwise, the complexities will usually leave us with many perplexities and more questions than answers.

As I’ve told many folks through the years, John 3:16 is simple enough for a child to understand, but so profound that the greatest theologians can’t even comprehend it. Again, that’s why it takes simple Faith/Trust in a God Who’s “beyond” us, but has chosen to reveal Himself throughout creation in ways that are unmistakable and irrefutable.