QuakerInfo.com Forum

[Spyridon]

Christology too oftens neglects the Holy Spirit. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, anointed by the Spirit at his baptism, and worked miracles through the power of the Spirit. The Shepherd of Hermas, deemed authoritative by the early church, speaks of Jesus as divine in the sense that he incarnates the Holy Spirit.

[Spyridon]

This sermon explains what I have been saying:

May 31, 2009 Pentecost Sermon
Marcus Borg
http://www.trinity-episcopal.org/08TrinitySite/sections/worship/worship-files/Sermon%20Archives/May%202009/5-31-09%20Sermon%20Marcus%20Borg.pdf

[Spyridon]

This is very interesting:

[CelticNorth]

It has always been argued that Jesus of Nazareth incarnated the holy spirit,by Christians, but as Arius argued, also, and pointed out in John 14:28 and Proverbs 8:22, Jesus himself states that "God is greater than I", and that he was "created" by God. Arius, and Arianism, seemed to have run afoul of messianic expectations of a god flesh redeemer being superimposed over God himself as a solution to perceived human failures, which God, through free will, gave humans the tool needed for their salvation.

[Kiahanie]

Yup. Some of the early Christians took the Hebrew idea of "Messiah" and turned it into a hybrid of Greek demigod and pre-existing Logos. I wonder what Jesus would have said about that.

For that matter, I wonder what Gamaliel would have said.
_________________
"There is a field out beyond right and wrong. I'll meet you there." --Jellaludin Rumi

[Shay]

[Kiahanie]

Now that you mention it, I do wonder.
_________________
"There is a field out beyond right and wrong. I'll meet you there." --Jellaludin Rumi

[CelticNorth]

I believe it was Henry David Theroux, who stated, " the world is merely a canvas upon which we project our dreams". I have always liked Aranius and his use of Jesus's own words to point out that Jesus himself claimed he was lesser than God. Like a lot of other early "heretics", I imagine he was either bannished into some remote corner of the Roman Empire; or killed. Arminius and "Free Will" advocates, perhaps for the first time, gave mankind what he truely needed most: the responsibility himself to choose good over evil, to endure the consequences and burden on his own shoulders- with his own flesh.

[kevin roberts]

henry david thoreau was an ass. he should have stayed with the pencil factory

i have no problem equating the logos with the christ with jesus of nazareth. it makes a great deal of ordinary sense to me, in ways that thoreau was too intelligent to understand

[CelticNorth]

Now, now Friend Kevin; we can at least give kudos to Thoreau for his stance against slavery- and the War with Mexico. We are not to far off the mark with attributing to his being one of the first true naturalists and envoinrnmentalists; it would John Muir to make us fully aware of what Thoreau began with Waldon Pond. Creation, as we experience it, does not happen haphazardly, but follows certain laws and principles. Together these laws and principles compromise the Intelligence on which the Universe is based, and this Logos, or Intelligence, was seen in Hellenistic cosmology as the first emanation from the transcendent "God". It was held within this view that the laws and principles most allied to the nature of the Logos were in harmony and numerically consistant. The same way a seed contains the harmonic and unfolding blueprint of its destiny, the Logos was seen as part of this creation of unity and design. It is a very naturalistic view of the cosmos and universe, one which does not require use to belive that the creation of the universe was drawn up by a God of unknown origin, or that humanity evolved from a random collision of atoms. This pattern of creation resides in all of us as a manifestation of the Logos, of God, and does not require of us to embrace concepts such as war, special dispesation, sin or eternal life in a conjured heavely paradise.

[Anthony]

[CelticNorth]

However we percieve or construct the idea of the Logos, God, or Divine Providence, Carl Sagan has pointed out that no matter what defense or arguments we use to prove or disprove a intellignet design in the creation of the universe, the only "conceiveable scientific discovery that could challenge it would be a infinitely old universe"- i.e., a universe with a infinte existence neither created or ending. From whence began the beginning ? Only God knows.

[Shay]

I'll bite-

Did I miss something where we know (empirically, rationally, or (however redundant) scientifically) where everything that we know of, not just the universe as we know it now, but the rules of natural law... are there?

I may be missing something, and I know we have some folks here who will tell me if I'm wrong, but is there anything that tells us without a doubt that the formation of the cosmos and wibbly-wobbly time stuff is incompatible with a beginning force?

And by 'force," I am okay with the Big Bang being it- for anyone reading along who may wonder. I think the Divine is the source of all that scientific awesomeness like evolution and quantum physics and...yeesh, all the science, ever.

[CelticNorth]

If my memory serves me well on this one, it was Plato who indroduced many of these concepts into Western thought, wherein the Hellenistic thought "I am the alpha and the omega;, I am the first and the last" entered our conscienceness through the New Testament and became a major foundation stone for a montheisic creator diety. It is also in Biblical literature that a anthropomorphized divinty is alleged to have created the universe out of a conscious act, or thought, as a "voice" announcing creation emanting from the heavens. I have always imagined, in a Freudian kind of way, it is rather ingenious to have a devine and benevolent anthropomorphized Father figure attributed to our creation, in that it gives us solutions for some very deep and primordial unconscious needs of the human psyche for uncondtional love and authority outside one's self and ego.

[Kiahanie]