Posted: Apr 23, 2017 12:25 pm
Agrippina, yours may be the best argument so far. Simple. Obvious. Claiming to be the son of God does make it difficult to deny the OT.
I started this thread because I wanted to "imagine" potential arguments that christians might make in the future. As more and more holes are exposed in their holy text, the pool of biblical arguments remaining at their disposal, being insufficient, are often being shored-up by some creative mental gymnastics to adequately explain the bible. I give up trying to keep up with all of them.
So, the OP was about identifying those elements that inextricably link the OT and NT. Obviously, there are some. I think we have 3, maybe 4 that have been offered. That's not a lot. Once those elements are identified, imagine (or predict) what arguments we might anticipate to wriggle out of those elements. I'm not saying the interpretation is accurate. Just that it has to be believable by those people who are gullible enough to believe in the bible in the first place... a very low bar. This and the preceding paragraph are intended to clear up misunderstandings that occurred before your contribution to the thread, but also to explain part of my motivation for starting the OP.
That all being said, the elements linking the OT and NT can all be (through the use of mental gymnastics christians are often prone to) (re)interpreted easily enough to satisfy those with relaxed scrutiny. The son of god suggestion gave me the most trouble of all the suggestions so far. I started imagining that god would have to be defined. Is he a different mono-deity? These of course cause problems. If Jesus hoped to gain credibility by claiming to be the fulfillment of prophecy from the OT, of course he MUST accept all the baggage that comes with the OT. Deny christ is the fulfillment of OT prophecy and suddenly, he's just a mortal. These are just musings.
Could the performance of 'miracles' have been sufficient to credit Jesus with deity status? I should think so. Maybe somehow that could be used?
I started this thread because I wanted to "imagine" potential arguments that christians might make in the future. As more and more holes are exposed in their holy text, the pool of biblical arguments remaining at their disposal, being insufficient, are often being shored-up by some creative mental gymnastics to adequately explain the bible. I give up trying to keep up with all of them.
So, the OP was about identifying those elements that inextricably link the OT and NT. Obviously, there are some. I think we have 3, maybe 4 that have been offered. That's not a lot. Once those elements are identified, imagine (or predict) what arguments we might anticipate to wriggle out of those elements. I'm not saying the interpretation is accurate. Just that it has to be believable by those people who are gullible enough to believe in the bible in the first place... a very low bar. This and the preceding paragraph are intended to clear up misunderstandings that occurred before your contribution to the thread, but also to explain part of my motivation for starting the OP.
That all being said, the elements linking the OT and NT can all be (through the use of mental gymnastics christians are often prone to) (re)interpreted easily enough to satisfy those with relaxed scrutiny. The son of god suggestion gave me the most trouble of all the suggestions so far. I started imagining that god would have to be defined. Is he a different mono-deity? These of course cause problems. If Jesus hoped to gain credibility by claiming to be the fulfillment of prophecy from the OT, of course he MUST accept all the baggage that comes with the OT. Deny christ is the fulfillment of OT prophecy and suddenly, he's just a mortal. These are just musings.
Could the performance of 'miracles' have been sufficient to credit Jesus with deity status? I should think so. Maybe somehow that could be used?