Point well taken...we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before
in many ways. I have studied the divinity of Christ in seminary for myself
and have come down on the "yes" side and do think it's a rather crucial
element. (obvious from my comments, I'm sure) Would you agree?
VDC
At 04:24 PM 8/22/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>In a response to James Stark, Vince Calhoun asked.
>
> > Isn't
> > there adequate evidence from scripture that Jesus was God and that we are
> > called to worship Him?
>
>Interesting question, especially in light of the fact that it took the
>early Christian community several centuries to take a definitive stand on
>precisely this question. For more of the story, see Richard E.
>Rubenstein's book, When Jesus Became God (Harcourt, 1999). From the back
>jacket:
>
>"After almost three hundred years of persecution, Christianity made an
>astonishing breakthrough in 324, when Constantine the Great became the
>emperor of Rome. No longer fearing for their own survival, Christians
>turned to the question of how to define what beliefs identified a "true"
>Christian. Led by two charismatic priests‹Arius who preached that Jesus,
>though uniquely holy, is less than God, and Athanasius who argued that
>Jesus is God himself in human form‹the debate over Jesus' degree of
>divinity escalated from heated argument to violence and bloodshed."
>
>Like many episodes in the history of the institutional Christian church,
>this is a sobering story. What may seem so "obvious" to some today is
>itself the product of human history, complete with all of the shortcomings
>of human behavior. The Christian church is a thoroughly human institution.
>Its historical decisions ought not be considered beyond question.
>
>Howard Van Till
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Vince D. Calhoun, MA, MS, PhD Candidate (UMBC), Research Engineer
WORK: Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Psychiatric Neuro-Imaging
600 N. Wolfe St., Meyer 3-166, Baltimore, MD 21287-7362
VOICE: (410) 955-7861, FAX: (410) 614-3676
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"An author [or researcher] should never conceive himself as bringing into
existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and
solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of
eternal Beauty and Wisdom...And always, of every idea and of every
method the Christian will ask not, 'Is it mine?' but 'Is it good?", CS Lewis
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