The pain threshold of Jesus

[_cksalmon]

It is confusing. My personal belief is that Jesus didn't become "divine" until much later versions of the Gospels in an effort to convince Greeks and Romans that he was just like the heroes they were used to believing in (Apollo, Mythra, etc.).

Hi Q--

What are these "later versions of the Gospels," and why on earth would one believe that Jewish Christians desired to convince pagans that the Jewish Messiah was conceptually indistinguishable from the pagan gods of Greece or Rome?

That seems a gross mischaracterization of the source material.

c

[_Nightlion]

Yes, Jesus seems to have been gradually promoted from messiah to deity.

Yes, yes! The difference between the Jewish "Messiah" and the Greek "Christos" (avatar). A concept lost on most Christians.

I think that the Book of Mormon demonstrates by wicked King Noah that the unwashed, uncircumcised of heart, Hebrews did not understand Messiah as well as the prophets, like Abinidi. He was killed for declaring that Christ was the Very Eternal Father.

I think further that there is good cause for considering that Christ bled from every pore on only one arm.

D&C 29: 1
1 Listen to the voice of Jesus Christ, your Redeemer, the Great A.I. Am, whose arm of mercy hath atoned for your sins;

And if The Apocalrock is a reliable witness it was in fact his left arm.

As for Christ being fully God, he was, and every wit. Mary contributed no genes to the mix. Christ was fully cloned of the Father in whose express image he was. This gives us license to consider that Jesus was therefore clean from the blood and sins of humankind and in no need of Mary's having had herself any sort of immaculate conception.

The concept that Christ carried the entire gene code of God in his flesh could open up the prospect for us to understand that his capacity for atonement was written therein for this is how God conceives his seed. As we all know that part of us that has to do with reproduction is most sensitive. In God his power to suffer for all is made possible by his very make up. And thereby no human could come close to comprehend and approach that level of infinite suffering that wrought out a perfection of all creation. As Christ is charged with delivering up the kingdom spotless to the Father at the last day.

Now please carry on as if I said nothing of substance whatsoever. Thanks

[_Quasimodo]

It is confusing. My personal belief is that Jesus didn't become "divine" until much later versions of the Gospels in an effort to convince Greeks and Romans that he was just like the heroes they were used to believing in (Apollo, Mythra, etc.).

Hi Q--

What are these "later versions of the Gospels," and why on earth would one believe that Jewish Christians desired to convince pagans that the Jewish Messiah was conceptually indistinguishable from the pagan gods of Greece or Rome?

That seems a gross mischaracterization of the source material.

c

Hi C!

I think it's well accepted by historians that none of the Gospels are contemporary with the purported authors. Hundreds of references in Google if you're interested. The earliest surviving complete copies of the gospels date to the 4th century so there is a lot of room for conjecture.

Christians have ALWAYS sought converts (even Jesus). Didn't Jesus call Peter to become a ‘fisher of men’?

If Christians hadn't looked for converts among the Romans and Greeks there would be no Christians now.

[_Quasimodo]

I think that the Book of Mormon demonstrates by wicked King Noah that the unwashed, uncircumcised of heart, Hebrews did not understand Messiah as well as the prophets, like Abinidi. He was killed for declaring that Christ was the Very Eternal Father.

I think further that there is good cause for considering that Christ bled from every pore on only one arm.

D&C 29: 1
1 Listen to the voice of Jesus Christ, your Redeemer, the Great A.I. Am, whose arm of mercy hath atoned for your sins;

And if The Apocalrock is a reliable witness it was in fact his left arm.

As for Christ being fully God, he was, and every wit. Mary contributed no genes to the mix. Christ was fully cloned of the Father in whose express image he was. This gives us license to consider that Jesus was therefore clean from the blood and sins of humankind and in no need of Mary's having had herself any sort of immaculate conception.

The concept that Christ carried the entire gene code of God in his flesh could open up the prospect for us to understand that his capacity for atonement was written therein for this is how God conceives his seed. As we all know that part of us that has to do with reproduction is most sensitive. In God his power to suffer for all is made possible by his very make up. And thereby no human could come close to comprehend and approach that level of infinite suffering that wrought out a perfection of all creation. As Christ is charged with delivering up the kingdom spotless to the Father at the last day.

Now please carry on as if I said nothing of substance whatsoever. Thanks

Sorry, Nightlion. I think I may have inadvertently "carried on as if you said nothing"

Not being a Mormon, the D&C has eluded me and so it has no reference in my understanding of religions.

I am curious about the meaning of the phrase "uncircumcised of heart". I have a medical background and I'm generally against circumcision as a pointless (and very painful) procedure.

What part of a heart would one circumcise? The pericardium?

[_huckelberry]

So here is the question: Are Christians so afraid of looking like pagans that they come up with this crazy Full Man, Full God stuff?

In tradtional thought God is an unmixed primary thing. There can be no such thing as half god. It is either 100 percent or zero percent. This is a significantly different concept of gods existence than the Mormon one where people turn into gods. If you take the Mormon concept and apply it to the words of the early councils those words become garbled.

This probably has some similarity to the bizarre Mormon idea that Jesus had to suffer a certain amount of pain for every persons sin resulting in billions of units of pain for billions of people. A truly bizzare picture.

Jesus suffering is effective because he is God not because of the number of pain units.

Sorry to be as abrupt and dogmatic as you are being.

[_Jason Bourne]

James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ: "It was not physical pain, nor mental anguish alone, that caused Him to suffer such torture as to produce an extrusion of blood from every pore; but a spiritual agony of soul such as only God was capable of experiencing."

Put your TBM hat back on and respond to my criticism.

The above is built on a misinterpretation of Biblical scripture. The Bible/KJV clearly describes sweat dropping "like blood".

Why do you think Christ was actually bleeding?

(If I don't get back to you right away, I will try to get back here later. )[/quote]

It is an LDS interpretation. I recall when I was young reading the verse I believe in Luke where it said his sweat was as it were LIKE drops of blood. Hmmmm I thought, it just is saying he was really sweating a lot. It did not say actual blood. Then I read D&C 19 that has Jesus saying he really sweat blood. So I figured that clarified it.

Without the D&C it really is not blood.

[_Jason Bourne]

Chalcedon was in 451, Nicea was in 325, with Constantinople I and Ephesus in between. It's one of the seven ecumenical councils, I don't know what you mean by initial councils.

I was really referring to Nicea.

Hey my friend, you know how in that one thread certian pet peeves bug you. Well this one bugs me too. No matter what the source. Why would a God make things about him incomprehensible to what is supposed to be his top notch creation?

If it bugs you, then you need to tell Mormons to stop doing it too. Mormons will always play the mystery card when you start asking things like, "Why did God command Joseph Smith to sleep with other men's wives?" or "Why did God tell the brethren to keep priesthood from blacks?" Sure, they might say "We don't know" or "God's ways are not our ways," but it's functionally equivalent to "It's a mystery." Personally, I can handle the greatness of God being mysterious, and it seems a bit easier to swallow than mystery surrounding Joseph Smith Jr's sex life.

I am unprejudiced in my application of this pet peeve.

By the way, my personal faith that I have left for Jesus is that he was fully God and human at the same time.

That's fine, just realize you are using the terms vastly differently than orthodox Christians are. When a Mormon says "fully God" he/she means something completely different than does an orthodox Christian.

I think my faith falls more a long the traditional historical Christian understanding of this.

By the way, I think that Mormons get into all kinds of trouble in interpreting the New Testament because they play so fast and loose with Christology.

I think this is a bit unfair. Most Mormons I know believe Jesus is fully God and Man. I think also some LDS scholars such as Ostler and Paulsen do well wrangling with such issues.

See above. In any case, Ostler is way off the reservation when it comes to mainstream Mormon beliefs

Fair enough.

[_Jason Bourne]

Most modern translations bracket Luke 22:43-44 as doubtful on a number of grounds. It doesn't command universal assent as not being original, but I think the majority of scholars see it as being not original to the text.

by the way, this is actually a fairly big problem for LDS doctrine. LDS posit that what counted was Jesus' suffering in Gethsemane along with the work on the cross and the resurrection. Luke 22:43-44 are the favorite proof text for this. If it's not original to Luke, Poof! Bye bye doctrine.

Poof. Bye bye the integrity of the New Testament. Another one that is seemingly and later addition.

[_Aristotle Smith]

I am unprejudiced in my application of this pet peeve.

Good to hear Jason, you're a class act.

[_Aristotle Smith]

Most modern translations bracket Luke 22:43-44 as doubtful on a number of grounds. It doesn't command universal assent as not being original, but I think the majority of scholars see it as being not original to the text.

by the way, this is actually a fairly big problem for LDS doctrine. LDS posit that what counted was Jesus' suffering in Gethsemane along with the work on the cross and the resurrection. Luke 22:43-44 are the favorite proof text for this. If it's not original to Luke, Poof! Bye bye doctrine.

Poof. Bye bye the integrity of the New Testament. Another one that is seemingly and later addition.

Not really. If you have a naïve assumption that God dictated the New Testament directly and that the words are preserved without error, then yes, you have a problem. As I pointed out, this passage has been bracketed as dubious for some time in modern translations and no one seems to care, except the KJV only crowd.

The bottom line is that I don't know of any Christian church which has used these verses to generate doctrine. The LDS seem to be the only church which has done this, this is why the problem is unique to the LDS church.

There are additions to the New Testament that do affect certain types of Christians. Take the longer addition to Mark, it is the sole source for the doctrine that the believers in Christ will drink poison and handle venemous snakes while remaining unharmed. There are Christians, such as Appalachian snake handlers, who take this as a major doctrinal point. This addition nukes their understanding of discipleship.