Teach the Controversy: Question Belief!
Why Do Christians Not Do What God Taught as Jesus?
Abstract
Christians are asked to have faith in the tenets of Christianity, but what are those tenets, and should Christians have faith in them when they are not what their incarnated God taught, or are contrary. In other words, is it right and fair that believers in Christianity should believe what they are told, as opposed to what the Christian God, Jesus, says himself in the bible?
Brevity is not the soul of preachers.
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, July 30, 1999
September 2004
What did Jesus teach?
Christians are asked to have faith in the tenets of Christianity, but what are those tenets, and should Christians have faith in them when they are not what their incarnated God taught, or are contrary. In other words, is it right and fair that believers in Christianity should believe what they are told, as opposed to what the Christian God, Jesus, says himself in the bible? Should faith be abstract or based on coherent evidence. Though faith might be admirable, can it be demanded with no adequate reason, and should it be kept even when the reasons for it prove to be inadequate?
In the brief accounts of the ministry of Jesus in the gospels, he is shown arguing with his opponents often, trying to persuade them of his viewpoint. He did not dismiss them because they had no faith. Yet many of the arguments used by the incarnated God of the Christians they reject as being inappropriate for modern life. Other arguments that Christians believe do not appear in the son of God’s reasoning. Where did Jesus teach the Trinity, or that he was the physical son of God, or that people were born with original sin that required the sacrifice of God as an atonement. If these were important elements of Christianity, then surely he must have taught that they were.
- Where are the biblical citations that show Jesus teaching the concept of a Trinity?
- Where does Jesus tell his followers, the Christians, that he was conceived by God and that his mother was chosen as a spotless virgin, even though she was betrothed to a man.
- Why do Christians think that Jesus is God, and what should they think if he denies it?
Shouldn’t messages like these be clear if sent by an almighty God? What then should be concluded from the doubt in them?
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Before you go, think about this…
Constantine the Great is the emperor who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. He died in the year 335 AD. In the ninth century, the Donation of Constantine suddenly appeared. In it, Constantine, in gratitude for Pope Sylvester’s cure of Constantine’s leprosy, willed to him the entire Western Roman Empire, including Rome. Thereafter, popes used the Donation of Constantine to claim to be the secular rulers of Europe, and, through the Middle Ages, no one doubted the Donation was genuine. Carl Sagan explains:
“Lorenzo of Valla was one of the polymaths of the Italian Renaissance. A controversialist, crusty, critical, arrogant, a pedant, he was attacked by his contemporaries for sacrilege, impudence, temerity and presumption, among other imperfections. After he concluded that the Apostles’ Creed could not, on grammatical grounds, have been written by the twelve apostles, the Inquisition declared him a heretic, and only the intervention of his patron, Alfonso, King of Naples, prevented his immolation. Undeterred, in 1440, he published a treatise demonstrating that the Donation of Constantine is a crude forgery. The language in which it was written was to fourth century court Latin as Cockney was to the King’s English. Because of Lorenzo of Valla, the Roman Catholic Church no longer presses its claim to rule European nations because of the Donation of Constantine.”
