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[Millionaire]

When did Jesus become God, exactly? Was he born a God? When John baptized him? When he was resurrected? When, exactly did Jesus become God? (part of god) (one third of god) Do you Christians even agree on when?

I was having a discussion with two Christian friends of mine today and even they couldn't agree so it got me thinking. Do YOU guys agree on when? Or is it just another denomination divide thing?

I personally don't believe that he was ever a god. Maybe a wise man like the Jews believe. Just one of many. Sounds like John the Baptist may have even been more popular. And speaking of John, he actually met and baptized Jesus and saw the dove (heard gods voice?) and yet even HE didn't know for sure that Jesus was the ONE. (He had to send someone to ask him) Very strange considering that he met and baptized him. (And the whole god/dove thing and all)

So, my question stands. When did Jesus become God?

[jimwalton]

He always was God. I'm surprised your Christian friends didn't know that.

John 1.1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Philippians 2.6: Jesus did not consider equality with God as something that had to be attained.

Hebrews 1.3: Jesus is the exact representation of God's being

John 10.30: "I and the Father are one."

Colossians 1.15-20 also speak to his eternal divinity.

Even those around Jesus knew what he was claiming: John 5.18: "...but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God."

[Eric the Great]

Assuming you take Jesus to have been a physical person, would his physical presence not be a refutation of the assumption that you plug "Immaterial" in as a trait of God? You could can say he is "immaterial sometimes and material other times", but you can't give "Immaterial" as a trait for him without a qualifier. And if you provide a qualifier, it seems it's reasonable to ask: "Why can't he be detected through naturalistic means?"

The OT has physical manifestations of God (leading the Jews out of Egypt, and the burning bush, at least). This suggests (if true), that in some way he can interact with the material world. If so, these interactions should be detectable somehow in a way that we can verify. Every day people claim God "intervenes" in their life (forgetting for the moment how that might alter a 'Divine Plan'). However, if he intervenes in any concrete way (he moves a boulder a foot to the left, he mind controls someone to slow down enough so a person isn't hit, or mind controls someone to go down one street or another), then somewhere some physical changes should be detectable. Even changes in neural-electrical activity is detectable. If God can interject in the natural world, it should be detectable. If it cannot ever be detectable, then he doesn't exist (or at least if he does exist, couldn't "intervene").

This also leads to questions on his other characteristics. "Spaceless" and "Timeless". Well, he wasn't spaceless or timeless when he interacts, so he's only those things when he's not "in space" and "In time" and "material". So, why are these traits used to describe who God is when they don't? When Jesus walked the Earth, nobody looking at him would say he was spaceless, or timeless or immaterial. He never claimed it in any of the scripture I read. Sure in John (written decades after he died), he equates himself with Yahweh ("I am"), but not in the Synoptics, and most importantly, not in the first-written Gospel: Mark. He doesn't even claim that he's omniscient (which is good, since if so, it would negate his own free will).

[jimwalton]

You're right about many things, and I'm glad to discuss this with you.

> Assuming that you take jesus to have been a physical person

There is even a small amount of historical evidence to a physical Jesus outside of the Bible. Tacitus, considered to be a reliable Roman historian (AD 56-117), mentions him in his Annals, XV.44 (probably written around 110. Josephus mentions him in Antiquities 18.33. Suetonius also mentions Jesus. So also Pliny the Younger, Lucian of Samosata, and Thallus, along with others. The James Ossuary, while hotly debated, is another possible mention. So much so, that virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed.

> Immaterial

A qualifier is fair. He is immaterial, but appeared in the flesh in the incarnation of Jesus while still being immaterial in the person of the Father.

> "Why can't he be detected through naturalistic means?"

He was. Both the Bible and secular historical sources verify that Jesus had a physical body, detectable through naturalistic means.

> This suggests (if true), that in some way he can interact with the material world.

True. And those interactions were detectable. People saw the pillar of cloud and of fire. they saw the Reed Sea part. These physical changes in our natural world were observable, though no lasting record of them persists, just like last week's clouds and last month's rainbow. Definitely detectable.

> "Spaceless" and "Timeless"

We know from Einstein's theory of relativity that space and time are not the entities we always imagined them to be. Have you seen "Interstellar" with Matthew McConaughey? While fanciful, at the end of the movie he messes with the space-time continuum without really being a part of it. It's possibly true to Einstein's theory, but at least lets us know that space-time interactions are not necessarily as concrete as we perceive them, and the thought of God being outside of time but acting within it is not a stretch. Add to that the theories embedded in Quantum Mechanics, and it's not really much of a stretch at all. God can easily be outside of time but act within it without being subject to it.

> nobody looking at him would say he was spaceless, or timeless or immaterial.

He hinted at it when he said, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8.58). The implication is that he belongs to a different order of being.

> written decades after he died

Another meaningless toss-off. You imply that we couldn't meaningfully write about Ronald Reagan's or Bill Clinton's presidency because decades have passed.

> he equates himself with Yahweh ("I am"), but not in the Synoptics, and most importantly, not in the first-written Gospel: Mark.

Mark makes the claim himself in the very first verse: "The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God." And then he proceeds, with one stroke after another, to give evidence to Jesus' deity:

- the declaration of John the Baptist (1.7-8)
- the declaration by God the Father (1.11)
- his power over the demons (1.24-25)
- His power over disease (1.34)
- His power over sin (2.5), and the authority to forgive sins (2.7)

...climaxing in Peter's confession in 8.29 and the centurion's statement in 15.39. Mark's whole Gospel is oriented to the declaration that Jesus is God.

> He doesn't even claim that he's omniscient (which is good, since if so, it would negate his own free will).

You're right that he doesn't say it outright, but he shows it in his prophecies (Mark 9.31; 13.2ff.).

Omniscience doesn't negate free will. Free will is a function of our knowledge, not a contradiction to it, even when pushed to the edges with all-knowledge. Free will stems from self-direction, which comes from self-awareness. In the other direction, we are self-aware, and therefore we are self-directed, and therefore we exercise free will. Omniscience in no sense negates free will. You falsely assume that God's omniscience and foreknowledge take away Jesus' ability to act otherwise, but your mistake lies in that it was by self-direction and free will that the plans were laid out to begin with, and Jesus is following the plan that he himself laid down with his own free will. It's no different than me making a shopping list, and then going to the store and filling it. Have a negated my free will? Of course not. I have both exercised it and fulfilled it. I created a plan, and followed it to the T.

[Eric the Great]

> There is even a small amount of historical evidence to a physical Jesus outside of the Bible.

I'm not claiming Jesus wasn't a real person. I'm open to either him being a real person or a myth. It doesn't matter to me either way. However, to your claim: There are zero contemporaneous accounts of Jesus. All come after his death. This does not at all suggest he never existed, but it does make historical verification more difficult.

> He is immaterial, but appeared in the flesh in the incarnation of Jesus while still being immaterial in the person of the Father.

So, they are the same person or not? Is he God in the Old Testament? God wasn't immaterial when he was the cloud leading the Jews out of Egypt. Are you saying that was Jesus and not Yahweh?

> Both the Bible and secular historical sources verify that Jesus had a physical body, detectable through naturalistic means.

Sorry. I wasn't clear. God the Father. God, now. If he's everywhere and affects everything and does intervene in the lives of followers (only?), then why can he not be detected? Why can nobody detect God now? Why only a few thousand years ago inside oral tales passed down father to son?

> the thought of God being outside of time but acting within it is not a stretch.

I don't have a problem with the concept of fluctuating time. However, at any point you exist, you exist at that point in time. That is, wherever your physical body is, you exist in that physical body not just at that physical place, but at that point in time.

> God can easily be outside of time but act within it without being subject to it.

"Easily"? How does an entity be outside of time and act within it without being subject to it? It seems you're just trying to say there are rules of existence (physics?) set up by God that he doesn't have to operate under. Even if this were possible, any alteration in the fundamental physics of how this universe works would destroy it. The structure, the bones, are what determines how the universe interacts with itself. If you insert something from outside of it, you introduce a variable that results in a different set of physics, and thus a different universe. That other universe is not guaranteed to exist, as a result. A growing group of cosmologists believe that the math behind their cosmology points to multiple universes. Some even think it could be an almost infinite number. Among them, they say we should count ourselves lucky. We're here to converse now because we were lucky enough to be in one of the few universes that can support life. While the benefitial result of that is that we're alive and can argue about it, it also means that the "fine tuning" argument has at least enough legs to it to be used by some believers (though, generally not cosmologists), to be "proof" of God. However, the other side or this "fine tuning" is that any variables added in that change any of the physics (which something supernatural would do), holds the potential of tipping the balance to complete chaos and destruction.

> Another meaningless toss-off. You imply that we couldn't meaningfully write about Ronald Reagan's or Bill Clinton's presidency because decades have passed.

We have videos of them in action. We have school transcripts of them. We have letters written by them personally, and people living at the time that knew him personally writing at the time both are still alive (in the case of Clinton). But let's not stop there. Let's go to a favorite of many people: Abraham Lincoln. He personally wrote letters that he affixed his signature to. We have bills signed into law with his signature. We have debate transcripts, personal and professional correspondences between him and others. We have photographs of him.

Let's take Jesus by comparison, so you have my point. Did Jesus write anything himself that we can use? No. Did any of this Apostles? Uncertain (tradition says so), but looking like not. The closest we have to anybody that met him was Paul, who still never saw him. He says he met Peter and James. That's as close anybody that wrote anything down got to Jesus. There are no court records of a trial with Pilate. Pilate never mentioned anything to anyone else that left a mention of a Jesus or anything to do with the movement. Not a single one of the 5,000 that he gave the fish and bread to every wrote anything or asked a scribe to. Same with the 500 that saw him Ascend. Not one. What about all of Jerusalem? They were eager to lay palm leaves at his entrance to signify a fulfillment of prophecy, was there to witness the trial, execution, and rising from the dead... but not a single citizen of the city mentioned anything to anybody at any point in their entire lives? Was it so common for people to rise from the dead and claim to be the son of God? And if this were a miraculous event, surely friends and family from neighboring cities and farms would be told? Or even casually mentioned? And yet not a single surviving scrap from anybody? There's menu's and club house rules surviving, but not a single mention from anybody contemporaneous that can corroborate ANY of it? Well, there was Philo of Alexandria. He was there at that time, and knew Pilate well. In fact he bankrolled Herod's ventures earlier. He wrote extensively and was interested in local customs and religion. Not a single whisper anywhere in any of his works. Now, this does not say that Jesus didn't exist, but that such a profound lack of anything from someone that knew him or saw him, or even heard of him at any point (until decades later)? It hurts an argument that claims historicity as a basis.

> Jesus Christ, the Son of God

Yes, as the son of God.. not God. The trinity is part of a tradition. It's not set out in the Synoptics. It's not until John that it's claimed that the Father and the Son are the same entity.

The declaration of John the Baptist (1.7-8)
The Holy Spirit. Jesus will baptize in the name of the Holy Spirit. He doesn't say, "In Gods name" or "In his own name".
his power over the demons (1.24-25)
Yes, it speaks to divinity, but not God. It suggest he has a power similar to God, but wouldn't a Son of God? Would you expect someone claiming to be the son of the supreme God to be impotent? And.. you take a "man with an unclean spirit" to be a demon? And, you believe in demons?
His power over disease (1.34)

If he wished to really impress by helping against diseases, he would have instructed people to wash their hands, or boil water, or not to dump fecal matter in the streets. It would have been even more impressive if he had divulged some medical fact that wasn't previously known, marking him as knowing something others at the time didn't. The cure to Cancer would have been a good example.

> Mark's whole Gospel is oriented to the declaration that Jesus is God.

I disagree. It's about showing how he's divine, not how he is the same entity as God.

> he shows it in his prophecies

I'm sorry but I take his prophecies as a structural tool of his life as an allegory. I don't honestly think the physical Jesus stood there in front of his flock historically and told them about him dying and rising from the dead. I take this as artistic license by the writer. I think there's a seed of truth in the stories, but that they were not to be taken as literal history. They were part of a larger narrative, the beginning of a tradition that would blossom into the Christian faith. That's why the different Gospels don't always agree. They're being written for different audiences. For instance, John's narrative includes the tradition of allowing the populace to allow a prison to go free. That wasn't written for a Jewish audience because a Jewish audience would know immediately that such a tradition never existed and wouldn't make sense in the story. He also says "the Jews" many times, overtly blames the Jews for Jesus death, and obviously himself didn't know any particulars about Jewish jurisprudence. At the trial, the writer of John claims that the Sanhedrin had no ability under Jewish law to kill a man (John 18:31), but that's not the case at all. In fact, God told Moses it was allowable. In fact, it makes sense that they do else why would the Sadducee's and Pharisees continually try to trap him? The Romans had political affairs under control, but generally allowed local religions to their domains as long as it didn't interfere with Roman affairs.

> Omniscience doesn't negate free will

If you know what you're going to do at any point (in the future, even), then you cannot change that decision. You have no free will to change your mind. if you can, you don't have omniscience. And if he did have omniscience, then he couldn't blame the Eden mess on humans. And what's the point of free will if God removes it from you at will? (Pharoah). Besides, modern science is showing that free will is a neurological illusion. Our brains physically make decisions based on previous experiences before we consciously know it. There's experiments that prove it. Conclusively.

> Jesus is following the plan that he himself laid down with his free will.

Then why "My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?"?

[jimwalton]

> However, to your claim: There are zero contemporaneous accounts of Jesus

I never claimed anything about him was written during his lifetime, including the Gospels themselves. You've never mentioned this before.

> they are the same person or not?

So it's the Trinity you struggle with. The Trinity is the belief that God is one essence, but three persons—not just that he reveals himself differently (a heresy known as Sabellianism), but that he is actually three separate entities (we use the word "persons" as the descriptor) while being a unity.

Claunch explains, "The explanation comes in the distinction between the principle of divine action and the subject of divine action. The principle of all divine action is the one undivided divine essence. The subject of divine action is either Father, Son, or Holy Spirit. The Son is the unique divine subject of the assumption of human nature. The Father is the unique subject of the act of sending the Son. However, the principle of this divine act is the one undivided divine essence. That is, the Father sends the Son according to his power (and wisdom, will, etc.). The power of the Father is identically the same power possessed by the Son and the Spirit. The subject of the act of sending is the Father alone, and the principle of the act of sending is the one essence of the whole Trinity. The act of sending is, therefore, simultaneously a work of the entire Trinity (with respect to the principle of the action) and a work of the Father alone (with respect to the subject of the action). The same logic could be applied to the assuming of the human nature."

Sheldon Vanauken explained it in an interesting way: Suppose I write a book, and I put myself in it. The character "me" says what I would say and does what I would do. It's ME in the book. He's exactly as I am. Now, is the character in the book different from the me outside of the book? Of course he is. But is it me? Of course it is. He's all me, but he's all a separate character at the same time. I can easily be both the author and a character without compromising either.

> If he's everywhere and affects everything and does intervene in the lives of followers (only?), then why can he not be detected?

Even in the Bible, there were eras where God was easily detectable (by naturalistic means) and long times when he was not (sometimes hundreds and thousands of years). But we have the record of when He was detectable to remind us. C.S. Lewis even put that concept in the Chronicles of Narnia, when the children thought they had only been away from Narnia for a short time, but when the returned, 1300 years had passed in Narnia, and belief had waned. God made himself readily visible only at two major times in history: the Exodus and Jesus. Other than that it's spotty, even by his own record in the Bible.

> We have videos of them in action.

Well, it's easy enough to go back to Abraham Lincoln, if you like, to avoid your "video" thing. We can still even reliably investigate Abe's life, even without video, as you mentioned. We don't have any of Jesus' letters, but we do of those who knew him. You and others toss those out, saying they don't count because they can't be verified by your standards of scientific inquiry, but there are many evidences that they were written by eyewitnesses, and two by the apostles themselves.

Do we have ANY of the court records of Pilate?

Records of the feeding of the 5,000. Remember that the common folk couldn't afford parchment. Written records were for a different purpose in their culture, mostly legal documents. Remember, it was an era of transition from oral to written culture, just as ours is an era of transition from paper to digital.

> Not a single whisper anywhere in any of his works. Now, this does not say that Jesus didn't exist, but that such a profound lack of anything from someone that knew him or saw him, or even heard of him at any point (until decades later)? It hurts an argument that claims historicity as a basis.

I agree. I really do.

> Yes, as the son of God.. not God. The trinity is part of a tradition. It's not set out in the Synoptics. It's not until John that it's claimed that the Father and the Son are the same entity.

The Synoptics point out that Jesus had the divine name (Son of Man, from Daniel 7; King of Israel [Lk. 22.30]), and they attribute to him the divine powers of electing to salvation, judging at the end of time, and forgiving sins. They also speak of his pre-existence. Jesus himself spoke of his divinity (and the Trinity) in Mk. 12.36-37.

> Jesus will baptize in the name of the Holy Spirit.

Sorry, that's not what he says in Mark 1.7. "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

> If he wished to really impress by helping against diseases, he would have instructed people to wash their hands, or boil water, or not to dump fecal matter in the streets. It would have been even more impressive if he had divulged some medical fact that wasn't previously known, marking him as knowing something others at the time didn't. The cure to Cancer would have been a good example.

Nice try. Remember the laws of ancient Israel: ritual washing before eating, no pork, cook food thoroughly, don't touch dead things, drain the blood out of animals before you eat them—all great principles of hygiene. But those things don't take care of lameness, blindness, deafness, and death. Jesus was healing diseases far from "Oh, I forgot to wash my hands. Drat."

> I don't honestly think the physical Jesus stood there in front of his flock historically and told them about him dying and rising from the dead. I take this as artistic license by the writer.

You're entitled to your opinion, as long as you recognize it's exactly that. The historical record we have in the Gospels begs to differ.

> I think there's a seed of truth in the stories, but that they were not to be taken as literal history. They were part of a larger narrative, the beginning of a tradition that would blossom into the Christian faith. That's why the different Gospels don't always agree.

I disagree. They were meant to be taken as literal history, but they all are coming from a different perspective, just as might happen if several people wrote about "What is America like?" They were written for different audiences, but they were meant to be taken as literal history.

> John 18.31

It was Rome that apparently did not permit Jewish courts to exercise the death penalty, except in the case of a Gentile intruding into the inner court of the temple. Executions not authorized by the Romans were illegal.

> If you know what you're going to do at any point (in the future, even), then you cannot change that decision.

Foreknowledge and a plan, and even omniscience, don't preclude free will and the changing of one's mind. Read Jeremiah 18.1-12 for a primer. Also Jonah 3 & 4.

Omniscience has no bearing on free will. First of all, the ability to reason is grounded in free will. Reasoning involves deciding if something is true or credible by equating it to the reality to which it refers, then comparing it with competing ideas, and choosing which idea best fits reality. Without free will and the legitimate ability to choose, the role of reason itself in any intellectual discipline is suspect—there is no mechanism for evaluating information and deciding on plausibility. Without free will, then, science itself is an illusion, all conversations are meaningless, and our thoughts are unreliable. Our lives are irredeemably incoherent.

We study our natural world (the sciences) as if self-awareness, self-direction, and reason are real. We can evaluate that there are realities outside of ourselves that we can observe and draw true conclusions about. The notion of truth takes us beyond mere biological determinism, which is only concerned with survival (food, flight, fight, and reproduction). We act as if we honestly believe that we can ask "what if..." questions, assess the possibilities, make authentic decisions, and conclude truth. All of these are evidences of free will, reason, and objective truth, all of which show that we live and function as if these things are real, reliable, and even have a facet to them that could be considered "true."

Second, if free will didn’t exist, we couldn’t know it, because I can't evaluate possibilities or draw conclusions. I couldn't think my way out of a paper bag let alone ascertain free will. Without free will, we couldn't know anything. Knowledge is justified true belief. We decide if a belief is true by comparing it to the reality to which it refers, comparing it with competing ideas, and choosing which idea best fits reality. This requires some level of free will. If you don't believe in free will, then you don't believe in the validity of reasoning, and all arguments to the contrary are self-defeating.

Third, without free will, the characteristics that most make us human are impossible: love, forgiveness, grace, mercy, and kindness, to name a few. If I have no choice but to love you, it's not love at all. Love requires the will to choose; it's only love if freely given. If the only reason I forgive you is because I have no other alternative, then I have not forgiven you at all, but only followed an irresistible force. Without free will, I am a determined animal, perhaps even robotic, but I am not human.

Fourth, without free will there is no such thing as justice. I can neither find nor enforce justice in a court of law if there is no self-direction, either on the criminal's part (he can't be held accountable if he was determined to do it) or on the judge's part (he can't make a rational decision if there is no such thing).

One cannot have free will without self-direction, and one cannot have self-direction without self-awareness, and one cannot have self-awareness without consciousness. The evidences are convincing that we have all these things. I have consciousness, therefore I am self-aware, and therefore I am self-directed. Both reason and experience tell us these things are so. Everything about humanity and reason point to the necessity of free will.

Now let's deal with the question of God's omniscience. That God knows everything has no impact on my freedom to choose. Knowledge has nothing to do with causality. No matter what I know, it doesn't make you do anything. Suppose I know you love chocolate, and I know every time we go for ice cream you pick chocolate. My knowledge has nothing to do with your choices, and doesn't cause you to do anything. It doesn't even matter what I know or how much I know. My knowledge, or anybody's knowledge, does not and cannot have any effect on your behavior. Knowledge doesn't cause anything outside of its own entity. It doesn't matter whether it's trivial or substantial, because knowledge can only make an effect in someone or something else if it is linked with a power (a causal mechanism) to create an effect. Knowledge by itself is impotent as a causal mechanism in another entity. No matter how much I know, you can never say that my knowing something caused (forced) you to do something. Knowledge just doesn't work that way.

But suppose I'm twice as smart as I am in real life (wouldn't that be nice). How does that affect you? It doesn't. Suppose I'm ten times as smart. How does that affect you? It doesn't. Suppose I'm omniscient. How that affect you? It still doesn't. Knowledge is passive, not causal. Just because I know something is going to happen doesn't mean I caused it to happen. Knowledge, even omniscience, by itself is impotent as a causal mechanism in another entity. It must be teamed with some kind of power (force) to cause anything.

> My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

We are left to interpret it, since the Bible doesn't explain why he said it. There are credible explanations:

1. He says it to illustrate the depth of his suffering. The Bible says he was dying for the sins of the world: Isa. 53.4-5, 12; 1 Pet. 2.24; 2 Cor. 5.21.

2. He was ontologically divided from God the Father. While the Father and the Son are of one essence, they are two different persons, and God's "separation" from him shows the judgment of sin.

3. By quoting the first line of Ps. 22 it signifies that God is abandoning him (subjecting him) into the hands of his enemies: death and hell. Legally and theologically speaking he has removed the covenantal blessings from Jesus and is casting him away as an object of his wrath (2 Cor. 5.21; Gal. 3.13).

4. It points us to the explanation of his cry and his death, God is holy (Ps. 22.3), and to a prophecy of his death (Ps. 22.6, 7, 8, 12-17).

[Eric the Great]

> The Trinity is the belief that God is one essence, but three persons—not just that he reveals himself differently, but that he is actually three separate entities (we use the word "persons" as the descriptor) while being a unity.

This is exactly how Hindu's talk about their pantheon. All are aspects of Brahma. And yet, we talk about that as a polytheistic religion, but not Christianity.

> "The principle of all divine action is the one undivided divine essence."

Explain this to me please. This doesn't sound 'right' to me. All action done by one divine essence? But you have 3 essences, no? When he follows it with: "The subject of divine action is either Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.", it suggests to me that "God" is one of these at a time but never more than one at a time. Even if this were true (how is that knowable?), then why does Jesus say "My God, My God, Why did you forsake me?". Did he forsake himself? If he's one at a time, he could only look to another aspect of himself there at that cross, to save himself. Does he have multiple personalities and is asking another (either Yahweh or the Holy Spirit), more empowered/capable personality to assert itself? However, that is undermined by his next statement: "The power of the Father is identically the same power possessed by the Son and the Spirit. " - Seems there's some sort of contradiction here. I think it hurts his explanation.

> I can easily be both the author and a character without compromising either.

I admit that I really like this cute explanation. It does show imagination. However, it doesn't really get around the problem because the subject of a book may be a mirror of the author, but they are not the same. They only resemble each other.

Let me explain what I mean. Let us suppose you woke up one morning you answered a knock on the door and suited men were there, and they revealed you are not who you think you are, but an advanced government biomechanical human, and that your brain is a copy of another person before they died. So, all the memories you have growing up, flirting with girls, getting a job, getting drunk, etc. are not your memories, they are the memories of that other person (a la 'Bladerunner'). Are you that other person, or are you, you? Now... What if you're the other person whose brain is gone? If you're laying down on that table and they tell you they're emptying your "essence" into a biomechanical human and will live on... did you, or was it just a semblance of you? The other you certainly had no clue. All your memories. Making the same decisions as you. Same life. A sense of self. This is the problem with the author and subject argument.

> there were eras where God was easily detectable (by naturalistic means) and long times when he was not (sometimes hundreds and thousands of years).

Let's say you're right. People certainly think God is all around and affects them. However, how can this be detected outside subjective experiences?

> God made himself readily visible only at two major times in history: the Exodus and Jesus.

And this is part of the problem. He wants a relationship with us, right? We need to believe in him. A lot hinges on it. Why make it so difficult to know? He gave us brains to discern and interpret reality. Why is our skepticism so much less for religion? If God wanted to be detected (including to Atheists and Hindus and Buddhists, etc.), he should do so in unequivocal ways so we could make smart, informed decisions. Does he prefer gullible people?

> but there are many evidences they were written by eyewitnesses, and two by the apostles themselves.

Almost all participating experts in the field of biblical criticism are Christians (for obvious reasons). These experts studying the physical scripts conclude the authors are unknown and that none of the Gospel authors were likely eyewitnesses. Ministers/Pastors not familiar with the research claim they're the Apostles and eyewitnesses.

> Do we have ANY of the court records of Pilate?

That is correct. I do not at all deny that. It could be that they are just 'lost in time'. However, when the first Christian communities were sprouting up just a few decades later (and over the next few centuries), extensive efforts were made to find any and all documents to document and prove the story. Part of this effort included destroying documents that should have information but didn't. I can't claim this is the case with the court records. When he was recalled to Rome, he never mentioned anything related to Jesus to anybody, or wrote any letters/notes relating to it.

> Remember that the common folk couldn't afford parchment. Written records were for a different purpose in their culture, mostly legal documents.

Before I learned more, I thought this too. However, this is what scribes were hired for, and they were hired for some of the most mundane things imaginable. Look up epigraphic databases for examples. There's thousands of examples of things like yes, treaties, but the vast majority is not. If you wanted to put up a menu outside of your restaurant, you hired a scribe. If you want to write down the rules to your bath house, you hired a scribe to write them down. if you decided you wanted to put a sign outside your house proclaiming your excitement over winning a contest, you'd hire a scribe. Those are real examples I found, and hundreds more. Even the lowly soldier casually contracted scribes to write letters back home. Of the thousands of examples, neither Jesus nor any of the story related to him has a word about it. That doesn't prove anything, but it is suggestive.

> The Synoptics point out that Jesus had the divine name

Yes. I do not deny that at all. However, the trinity itself was not inferred. Yes, the explain he's divine (but as the Son of God, wouldn't he be?), but nothing saying he was the same entity as God.

> Sorry, that's not what he says in Mark 1.7. "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

I paraphrased. I had not looked it up. This still does not indicate he's baptizing himself, or that it's a part of himself on any level.

> Remember the laws of ancient Israel: ritual washing before eating

Good point. Still, what about Cancer? Wouldn't it be a wonderful finding if he revealed something that nobody could have known before he came along?

> You're entitled to your opinion, as long as you recognize it's exactly that. The historical record we have in the Gospels begs to differ.

Right. It is my opinion. However, the record in the Gospels are a narrative. They aren't an historically-verified series of events. It could be that everything happened exactly as they said, but that's unknown. Forgetting for the moment that the oldest actual fragment is P52 (from John), even the earliest-written copy of Mark differs from the modern version accepted by Christians (as you know). There's several versions of many of the manuscripts. So, which is historically accurate?

They are all coming from a different perspective,

Right. That is a current trend in apologetics you guys like to call 'harmonization'. I think it's not very supportable. I'm willing to debate that, but that would be a whole set of separate posts involving much.

> Rome that apparently did not permit Jewish courts to exercise the death penalty...

Honestly? I need to look that up and verify. I understood that as not the case, but it could be. I'll concede this point to you. I love it. If I'm wrong about something, I definitely want to know, so I'm corrected.

> the legitimate ability to choose, the role of reason itself is suspect—there is no mechanism for evaluating information and deciding on plausibility

Decision-making is mechanical; based on prior experience and learning. Your brain collective makes the decisions and your consciousness follows it like an echo. Free will is an illusion perpetrated by your neurons on your sense of consciousness.

> one cannot have self-direction without self-awareness

Self-awareness is just consciousness. Who you are as a person is housed within your physical brain, which is comprised of millions of neurons. Given external data, they make reactive decisions as a collective, and your sense of "You" comes about as a result of this 'hive-mind'. There is no one single neuron that comprises "You". A sense of you is an emergent property resulting from the 'hive collective' (to continue with the Star Trek analogy).

> That God knows everything has no impact on my freedom to choose.

True, but that was not my contention. It's that if he knows a future decision, when he gets to the point of that decision, he cannot make any other decision. And, if he is timeless this means there are an infinite number of decisions, and if you have foreknowledge of all of them, you have no control to change any (not even a single one), and the notion of free will for him is meaningless as a result.

> Knowledge has nothing to do with causality.

Knowledge has a lot to do with causality. Every decision you make is the result of your knowledge (as outlined). If you have a hundred choices, your brain will make a decision. If you could go back in time and lost the memory of that decision, you would make the exact same decision every single time. Conscious decisions are an illusion that your hive-mind neurons provide to you.

> quoting the first line of Ps. 22

My personal opinion (yes, just my own personal opinion), is that quoting verbatim this line from Psalms is the key to understanding the line. The rest seem like interpretations to fulfill an apologetic audience. For me the problem isn't even really the insertion of the line, per se, but what it means to the narrative (in the context of the Gospel collection as separate texts), and the problems it inserts into those narratives. I'd still like a convincing explanation for why that line is copied.

[jimwalton]

> This is exactly how Hindu's talk about their pantheon. All are aspects of Brahma. And yet, we talk about that as a polytheistic religion, but not Christianity.

It just means that Hinduism has some element of the truth in it. While truth is found in many places, some things are just true.

> Explain this to me please...All action done by one divine essence?

God is one divine essence who manifests himself as 3 persons. These Persons have different roles to play. It's not multiple personalities, like a psychotic in our culture, but 3 ways that God exists and functions in reality.

> Let me explain what I mean. Let us suppose...

You have really hit on a primary problem with epistemology. How do we really know that we know what we think we know, and how can we be sure? It's quite the philosophical conundrum, but also a real one. So often we go with presuppositions, a priori assumptions, and what makes sense to us. It's the way we "know" everything. The Trinity is to far afield from our common knowledge of everything.

> Let's say you're right. People certainly think God is all around and affects them. However, how can this be detected outside subjective experiences?

Great question. God is all around us and affecting us, but it sure ain't detectable by science. Neither are my thoughts or moods, for that matter, but they sure affect me. Objective evidence accounts for very little of what we know and how we know it.

Look at an example in 1 Samuel 3.1: "In those days the word of the Lord was rare." That didn't mean God was not at work or that he wasn't doing anything; it means that it wasn't so obvious and objective like when Jesus was around. We also know there was a long period of "silence" between the Flood and Abraham that was millennia long. There was a long period of "silence" between Malachi and Jesus — about 400 years. But even during other eras God is not obvious. Do you know that during the reign of King David God never spoke to him or gave him a vision or a dream or ANYTHING? Nothing, not even for King David. We need to observe how the Bible tells us that God operates, and not just make our own assumptions.

> Almost all participating experts in the field of biblical criticism are Christians (for obvious reasons). These experts studying the physical scripts conclude the authors are unknown and that none of the Gospel authors were likely eyewitnesses.

Yeah, I've done the direct research myself. The case for the traditional authors of the Gospels is far stronger than the case against. We can discuss this further if you like, but it's too long to detail here. We're already maxing out the limits of the forum.

> Hiring scribes

Sure, I agree that sometimes scribes were hired for the mundane, but remember also that the words and teachings of Jesus were circulating actively. The oral accounts were alive and well. And there is speculation that some of them were being written down (such as the mysterious and yet unproven "Document Q", or even possibly the logia of Matthew written in Hebrew or Aramaic. We just don't have these documents. What we have is the Gospels, yet oddly enough they are dismissed out of hand (illegitimately, in my opinion).

> However, the trinity itself was not inferred.

What about Matthew 28.19? Isn't that direct enough?

> Knowledge has a lot to do with causality

In oneself, yes, but in another, absolutely nothing.

> quoting verbatim this line from Psalms is the key to understanding the line

Alas, it is never explained to us. We are left to interpret. I agree that quoting this line (the first verse of Psalm 22) is key to its interpretation. There are at least two things of which we can be certain.

1. Psalm 22 is an account of great suffering.

2. Many of the descriptors in Ps. 22 relate to similar descriptors of Jesus' crucifixion.

[Eric the Great]

> God is all around us and affecting us, but it sure ain't detectable by science. Neither are my thoughts or moods, for that matter, but they sure affect me. Objective evidence accounts for very little of what we know and how we know it.

Thank you for your explanations above. This was actually my first point I felt a need to interject. Thoughts and moods ARE detectable via certain regions and parts of regions in the brain whose neurons fire when we experience things. Smells we smell, colors we see, the moods we experience, are all capable of being mapped in the brain.

> Sure, I agree that sometimes scribes were hired for the mundane, but

If for the mundane, why did not a single one of the thousands record a whisper or even a rumor of it anywhere, at any time, in their lives? Why did none of any of their family members or friends mention something to somebody at some point, even out-of-hand? Doesn't prove it didn't happen, but really hurts the historicity case for it.

> The case for the traditional authors of the Gospels is far stronger than the case against.

Far stronger case? Why is the consensus against it and your view in the minority? If the case is far stronger, it seems this would find support by at least the very scholars studying it that have an interest in them being from the writers traditionally assigned to them.

> there is speculation that some of them were being written down (such as the mysterious and yet unproven "Document Q", or even possibly the logia of Matthew written in Hebrew or Aramaic. We just don't have these documents. What we have is the Gospels, yet oddly enough they are dismissed out of hand (illegitimately, in my opinion).

A couple of things. First, I don't think anybody dismisses them "out of hand", there's just no copies of any of them anywhere in Hebrew/Aramaic. Doesn't mean they don't exist, but until at least one is found you can't posit as legitimate that they were first written in anything other than Greek. Two; While the oral tradition was not yet dead, it was for all intents and purposes. As soon as these oral tales were starting to be written down (about 700 BC?), it signaled the end of the oral tradition. Suggesting that you wouldn't expect these events to be written down because the oral tradition was alive and well needs to be supported somehow. When even the most mundane items found themselves recorded by scribes, an oral tradition finds little relevance.

> What about Matthew 28.19?

I can see justification for the belief it's what's inferred, but it's not saying in that verse that the three are one entity/being. It's saying "in the name x and y and z".

> Ps. 22 relate to similar descriptors of Jesus' crucifixion

I agree, but midrash is not equal to prophecy. That it's similar does not mean it's pointing to it.

[jimwalton]

> Thoughts and moods ARE detectable via certain regions and parts of regions in the brain whose neurons fire when we experience things. Smells we smell, colors we see, the moods we experience, are all capable of being mapped in the brain.

Ah, with an MRI you can tell what parts of the brain are firing, but you cannot tell me what I'm thinking.

> but really hurts the historicity case for it.

I agree. I actually don't understand why there isn't more. We all would like to see it, either pro or con, but the silence is killing us. It may all have to do with how Jesus was being perceived, and that's a tough animal to track. The Gospels relate his immense popularity, but that's in Galilee, the back-water part of Palestine, and a completely non-entity in the empire. Acts mentions 3000 saved on the Day of Pentecost, but that's in a city (Jerusalem) of 60,000 people, or about 5% of the population. To the Christians it's phenomenal (and it was); to the rest of the world, maybe a shrug of the shoulders. Jesus was a big deal to the Jewish leadership, possibly close to a nobody to Rome, and the population as a whole were tremendously fickle. Now we look back and think about all the amazing things that were happening one after the other, but it's really difficult to get a grasp on the sitz im leben.

> Why is the consensus against it and your view in the minority?

I've studied the authorship of the Gospels pretty deeply. I think there are a lot of scholars out there that are not trying to be truly objective, but are trying very hard to be deprecatory. I know it sounds funny to hear a Christian accuse others of being so bias they can't do objective research, but that's how I feel. Almost all the evidences for Gospel authorship are based on subjective arguments from internal interpretations. "Well, this person would have spoken better Greek." Seriously? We can evaluate that so accurately from 2000 years later and limited archaeological information? The testimony of the early church is no small factor, and it is unanimous in favor of the traditional authors. That has to carry at least some weight. There are so many arguments pro and con, but almost all inferred via academic speculation. Scholars work very hard to sink the credibility of the Gospels; they really do.

> If the case is far stronger, it seems this would find support by at least the very scholars studying it that have an interest in them being from the writers traditionally assigned to them.

The traditional authorship of the Gospels does find support by many scholars, evangelicals in particular, but other biblical scholars as well. Many they just don't have as many Internet links for quick reference. : )

> While the oral tradition was not yet dead, it was for all intents and purposes.

Oral tradition was still alive and well in the first century. The 1st century has been categorized as an informed controlled oral culture, in transition to a written culture. The culture was no longer a primarily oral culture, yet it was not a fully literate culture either. It was largely, or perhaps radically, oral. A premium was placed on the spoken word. Oral composition was the rule, not the exception. Memory skills were well developed, but tended to be thematic rather than verbatim. Poetry and story were used to conserve tradition rather than create it. We can only speculate on the percentage of society that could truly read (not including the specialists in reading and writing — the scribes). Guesstimates are in the 10% range, but would have been higher in Palestine because the Jews placed a culture value on reading and writing.

But society didn't really fully become a written culture until the Gutenberg press and its aftermath. Only then did writing become the standard mode of communication, enhanced by public education so that all learned to read (mostly a late-19th century phenomenon). We take this all so much for granted now, which means we're guilty of "presentism": assuming certain characteristics of our world were part of a previous era.

> I can see justification for the belief it's what's inferred, but it's not saying in that verse that the three are one entity/being

Of a certain it doesn't explicate the full doctrine of the Trinity, but what you said is that "the trinity itself was not inferred." My point is that it is inferred. In addition to that we have places like Mark 1.11-12 where the Father, Son, and Spirit are all working in conjunction, or John 14.26; 15.26 where the Father sends the Spirit in the name of the Son. And Jesus says he and the Father are one in Jn. 10.30, and he says he and the Spirit are one in Jn. 14.17-18 (He says he will send the Spirit, but then he says, "I will come to you.")

> Psalm 22

You had first raised this question to give evidence that Jesus didn't have any free will. I showed you there were a number of ways it is usually interpreted, none of which negate Jesus' free will. But now you're saying, "Well, that doesn't mean it's prophetic." I gave you four points of interpretation, and only the second half of #4 mentioned anything about prophecy. None of the Gospel writers specifically quote this as a fulfillment of prophecy, though all four of them mention elements of the crucifixion, almost in direct quote, from Psalm 22.