I’m wondering if anybody here knows how Christians would contend with the following propositions/argument:

-A God who knows itself is higher than a God who doesn’t
-Knowing or understanding something requires knowing what contrasts
-Knowing contrast requires separation which necessitates locality of being rather than non locality of being
-Locality of being necessitates embodiment
-Therefore, an embodied God is higher than a disembodied God

-Christian understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice is that of an embodied God sacrificed to a disembodied God
-A higher being does not make sacrifices to, or get sacrificed to, a lower being

This seems like gobbledygook to me: "Knowing contrast requires separation which necessitates locality of being rather than non locality of being"

What do you mean? I understand that positive numbers "contrast" negative ones. But why do I need a physical body to understand this?

Would you agree that experiential ‘knowing’, at an embodied, phenomenological level is a deeper level of knowing than mathematical understanding? You might not agree with that I realize.

What was the sacrifice anyway?

The idea is that in order to elevate oneself a proper sacrifice must be made. The initial way Christianity has interpreted the event is that Jesus sacrificed himself for the salvation of his followers. Of course, human understanding of sacrifice has evolved and as a result many now reject this belief. An alternate interpretation can be that part of Jesus’ motivation for sacrificing himself was to speed up this evolution in the understanding of what proper sacrifice means.

When you say "sacrificed himself" what exactly did he sacrifice? His life? His human shell?

If this is accepted, then the sacrifice is embodiment.

Can't Jesus get a new body anytime he wants?

What value is there in a game without rules? If a game has value to you, then you’ll respect the rules. Keep going, this is fun. I’m sure you’ll trap me eventually.

Not really, if anything the opposite. Besides, Youre speculating about omniscient brings, and I see no reason why they would need to be embodied to understand contrasts

Well, you wouldn’t identify yourself as a Christian afaik. The idea that the human story and the God story are related is a Biblical theme. Humans speculating, or even having insights, about God is pretty central.

The bold is the statement that I'm most comfortable with as truth. Jesus is "very God of very God and very man of very man" and He died on the cross to pay the penalty of sin for all who believe. Is everything else a proposition? If the other statements are fact, where are they from?

Are you saying that God the Father would be less Godly if He hasn't been embodied?

Also, God is omnipresent, doesn't that go against your proposition of "Locality of being necessitates embodiment"?

God is also omniscient and His ways are above our ways.

Christ Jesus washed the feet of his disciples as he came as a servant for all. A meditative process within Buddhism and western practices has the plant bowing to the mineral for if the mineral didn't exist the plant could not thrive. Likewise the animal bows to the plant and the human being bows to the animal,plant and mineral. this is a devotional process, not a particularly intellectual one.

Yes, the higher being is of course "higher" but he comprehends that in the example of the plant that the plant will have progressed even further than the human for the plant is the most perfect at the present but the human will in the future progress farther and be the noble embodiment of the divine. The human in his passions, desires and all that will drive him down will become perfected within the future , the future of Christ.

Would you say that God is fully present in all aspects of his omnipresence? How about the proposition that God’s potential is omnipresent. Wouldn’t that be more accurate from a human perspective than saying God is omnipresent? For example, the idea that sin separates from God. I am saying the process of potentiality to actuality requires a separation from being fully omnipresent. The purpose of potentiality to actuality is contrast, etc (see propositions above).

The fundamental question: Does a fully actualized, omnipresent God lack anything? I say what is lacking is contrast, which provides for a deeper level of knowing - an experiential knowing rather than simply an omniscience. I am taking it further by saying a fully actualized, embodied God is higher than a fully actualized, disembodied God.

Mainly, the point is to challenge the idea of a disembodied God being the ideal, the highest form of being. I believe there are natural consequences to that belief such as the notion that “Heaven”, or our highest moral aim, exists in a disembodied state of being. It’s also a challenge to the conventional understanding of The Resurrection. If an embodied, divine state is higher than a disembodied, divine state, then the death that precedes The Resurrection must be something different. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a raising but a lowering.

Yes, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples to provide an ethical example to imitate, but that’s not the only reason. In the Gospel of John (NIV), he says, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” This has more than one meaning, but one way to interpret it is that he is saying you can’t be like me if you feel unworthy of having your feet washed by me.

People usually interpret the New Testament through the perspective of ‘what does this say about Jesus’ but it’s more useful to view it as ‘what is Jesus trying to teach humanity’.

I suspect most Christians wouldn't emphasize whom or how Jesus sacrificed himself, but rather what he sacrificed himself for.

The former requires a debate on the nature of God, a question so contended in Christianity that it has even lead to schisms that would later play a part in enormous wars. The latter isn't very contended, most (if not almost all) would agree that Jesus sacrificed himself for humans.

I can take issue with the idea of schisms that caused enormous wars and refer you to the idea of "ecumenical councils" to which the Christian churches attempted to clarify the Christ Being and other issues of the Divine.

Of course, there were other issues of discipline and such but you can read the reference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenical_council

There was a warlike activity over Europe at the time of the reformation and can be clarified here :

http://libertymagazine.org/article/t...rs-of-religion

I'd offer that these "wars" were not in the nature of antipathy as to the the characteristics of the Divine but more a matter of political hegemony and especially the loss of hegemony by the Papacy . The political states became independent and so we have the European nations with their respective leaderships.

The Roman Empire from approximately 600 BCE to the 15th century and passed while the Christ Being, within the hearts of all men, works to bring the individual man to fruition . This Christ Being , a Cosmic Being to which the churches have attempted to comprehend in the past and will continue on this course as Christianity is only barely comprehended into our age.

This is the Christ Impulse of cosmic origin who brings men into their origins, past and future, of the Cosmic Human.

I see religion getting divided between cultural and individual. The cultural religion is organized religion that is uniform, tribal, top down. It’s the Nicaean council. Cultural progress is a select few heroic individuals pushing forward for the entire group. The cultural religious narrative during the time of Jesus was a Messiah Warrior-King figure that would lead the group out of oppression.

Individual religion is emergent and focused on morality. During the time of Jesus, the idea of sacrifice was largely the main moral struggle. That is where he focused a lot of his teaching (picking up your cross, turning the other cheek, forgiveness). It was a transition away from externalizations of sacrifice to an internalization. Of course, this was all engulfed into a new cultural religious narrative about Jesus being the sacrificial lamb.

There is a void of individual religion/morality that would (perhaps) allow people to move beyond the cultural religious narratives without getting stuck in nihilism. How practical would this be in reality, I’m not sure. However, I feel confident that this transition from externalizing to internalizing sacrifice is where we left off in Western, Christian societies, and the point where everything would have to be picked back up.

Sounds like you're talking about Gnosticism which came about and was condemned by the apostles even as the NT was being written. You're on the one hand denying the authority of scripture while on the other hand wanting to maintain a form of godliness by using Christian archetypes in a blasphemous way. There is no secret knowledge that leads to God, the gospel itself really couldn't be any more simple than it is. But thanks for using a dozen words laypeople don't know the meaning of, I'm sure your reward in Heaven will be great.

As a Christian this is always something that bothered me. It's not really dying for our sins if he's only dead for 3 days.

And of course I'm far from the first person to have an issue with this, so people came up with the substitutionary atonement theory, the reconciliation theory, gods wrath theory, the redemption theory, etc.

Which of course will go over most heads in this forum, because everyone here knows that Christianity is just a stupid bronze age religion that does more harm than good and is for stupid dumb dumbs. No need to know about the details of the theology, just that it's for stupid dumdums and anyone defending it is just another stupid dumdum.

Sounds like you still need to be saved buddy. The good news is it's not too late.

lol wtf are you talking about?


I'm gonna just start calling church burch because that sparkles with me like so hard and you know i like rly feel like its right! wht do yo think of my burch theory???

I'm not quite sure of the "burch theory" but I can say that the Gospels, which you advocate and deny esoteric exegesis are in fact the creations of an esoteric comprehension which has gradually been lost in the materialistic milieu.

This is aphoristic but as example the Mark Gospel , which was written after Golgotha is seen as the work of the "Lion Lodge" to use a term of modern times, that esoteric or occult comprehension noted in the Apocalypse of John within the Eagle, Lion, Bull and Man.

The four pictures can be appreciated as ancient mystery centers seeing Man as the expression of one, or in this case 4 different types , all in an evolutionary sense. When the ancients looked up to the stars and while seeing Man as the expression of the divine we see these four beings (spiritual )working through man, in time and place.

The Matthew gospel( Man as he progresses), the Mark Gospel ( the Lion which can be related to the juror), the Luke Gospel ( the Bull and related to divine healing- of course Luke was a doctor) and the John Gospel (Eagle or Man's spiritual thought born activity into the future ).

To be clear, Man is not and has never been an animal as the above expressions are and have been spiritual activities to which he wives within, in a time progression expressing into space; from the realm of the spaceless.

The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke were written by advanced men, or initiates of some degree, who interpreted the Christ being through their particular mystery exegesis. the gospels are not histories and men from these beginnings have looked to the gospels for their spiritual nourishment through the spiritual esoteric effects of these great leaders of mankind.

The gospel of John can be thought of as the only gospel written by a human who experienced the advent and progression of Christ Jesus in time. This gospel of John, the Eagle and the highest who points to the future was written by the "Risen Lazarus" who is now known as John, the author of this gospel, the apocalypse, and other Christian writings.

At chapter 13 of the John Gospel we have the "Risen Lazarus" and please note the change in tenor of the subsequent chapters for from then John, the new Lazarus, is writing. this is aphoristic but a good consideration.

The Churches, in the movement in time, as has the human soul(s) have become immersed within the materialistic ethos and lost sight of the spiritual and the dogma of science manifests to this soul only to the material. this is the nature of evolution, not to be denied, but there is more.

Respectively the Christ Being ,known to the ancients of all nations as the Messiah was appreciated not only in the mystery centers but among the common folk as of the highest of spiritual beings but this consciousness, an atavistic consciousness, has been lost.

The churches and folk now see and relate to Christ Jesus as an earthly Being and event but this event, the event of Golgotha was and is a spiritual event of the high in which the Being, Christ, entered into the body(s) of Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism of John, the child of Zebedee.

Jesus of Nazareth was an advanced Man who had purified himself through many lives to the highest degree and yet,was a Man for only a man could be responsible and co creator within the Christian ethos. At the Baptism the Christ Being entered into the body(s) of Jesus of Nazareth and became Christ Jesus . Previously Jesus of Nazareth had sacrificed his Ego, or spirit being of the individual man.

This Christ Being, had never entered into the earthly realm , had no karma to complete, and for 3 years walked the earth , was crucified on the Cross and at that time entered as the being of the earth, and became the Spirit of the Earth; thus "eat my flesh and drink my blood".

You and I are spirit/soul beings who work through our physical and life bodies (the earthly man asleep) and as we re spiritual beings likewise the Spirit of Christ, has the physical and life manifestation of the Earth, He is now in the hearts of all men, as guide in the overcoming of death, the work of the future.

Sorry, it goes on , and is an esoteric marvel that cannot be denied.

Knowledge of the bodies of man is in order as physical body, life or etheric body, astral body (sensory) and ego or spirit body(thinking activity). These are four separate bodies which intermesh and we have lost an appreciation of the higher bodies( non material) in the mad rush to materialism, but there is hope.....

He Sacrificed himself to the Father not to a lower being to take all the sins to the netherworld where the father can not see them as they are blocked by Jesus . He did not sacrifice himself to a lower being .

I don't really have an opinion on this thread but something that has always interested me in learning about, and practising the Christian faith is how you come to the conclusion that the gospel of John was written by Lazarus. I've always held it to be John the Apostle given in part to the various written references to it being him in the text as the beloved one of jesus.

Of course there has been much conjecture as to who actually did write it but I'm interested to know what fundamentally is your reason for choosing Lazarus who you believe wrote this gospel?