Offering a Different View

After molling it over a bit, there is something which was posted as a comment in my blog which I would like to respond to. But before I begin I wish to say that I am not doing this to be hostel or to bicker or any such reasons as that. I do not want my intentions mistaken. I am doing this as an intelligent evulation, and offering an alterntive point of view. This comment I will be responding is as follows.

I will comment on your statement on your reference that Jesus was a prophet, Bush has made the same mistake, Jesus was and is the Son of God, now in the Christian Bible Jesus was referred to as a prophet by His apostles etc because at that time they did not realize exactly who Jesus was ie....In Matthew 16.....When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Simon Peter said in reply, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
My point here being that while it was appropiate for many in Jesus' day to refer to Him as prophet out of ignorance simply because they "did not know Him" its not the case for us today.

Now, it is true that if one follows the Bible then yest Jesus was the Son of God, but no everyone nesciarly holds that view. So my refering to him as a prohphet was not nessciarly out of ignorance nor was it nessciarly incorrect of me to do so.

For one thing, I do not follow the Bible and I am not a Christan and do not belive in the Jedu/Christain God, with this being said, it would not be accurate for me to refer to Jesus as being the Song of God, for I do not belive in that said God, but it is prefectly conciveable for a person to belive that Jeus was a living breathing person who really walked the worth without accpeting that he was nessciarly the Son of God.

I can choose to belive that Jesus was indeed a true historical figure that acutally lived but that he was a mortal man and a leader of a new religon. No different then Sidharatha who later became known as Buddha, I can belive that there really was such a person as Sidhartha that was the founder of Buddism, without belive that he himself became a God.

Also you have to consider the views of other relgions, for example Muslims view Jesus as being a Prohet within thier relgion without seeing him as being the Son of God. And the Hindus even accept Jesus in their relgion and they belive he was an avatar to Vishnu.

2:12 PM - 7/5/2006 - post comment

I agree .....

The concept of Christ as a the Son of God came about by endorsement of the new-found Catholic Church in the 4th century. Many Christians - including the Coptics and Gnostics - viewed him as a prophet, not a god. The Muslims took their view of Christ from these areas, and thus did the same.



Looking at the bible with a historian's or archeaologist's eye, and the Epic of Gilgamesh predates the story of Noah; the Flood (according to fundamentalist dating) passed unnoticed in the Egyptian's record of years, and we are left with the conclusion that the bible is a rather corrupted version of events. As Gill Grissom famously says: "Ignore the witnesses, follow the evidence."



At the end of the day, it boils down to belief. Belief is fundamental to ourselves, belief is faith and faith can be unshakable. But to have faith in our beliefs does not give us the right to say that the beliefs of others are wrong when they disagree with us. For belief is subjective - it is pureky our own and we cannot prove it to be true for everyone. I had a long debate on the subject ona site where they constantly reiterated: "But some of us KNOW!" to which I replied "You believe you know. But that does not make you right. It just means you believe you are." From an objective point of view, my religious beliefs - and anyone elses - mean precisely nothing. They cannot be proven (at least, nobody has done it yet) and so they are no more, in the end, than an opinion. Religious belief is absolutely 100% important to any of us, and 0% important to anyone else. When you can grasp that, you can truly preach and give tolerance.

Dabbler - 3:07 AM - 7/10/2006

For though All are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them. ~The Monk

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