They're probably all in hell. In the 1960's, if I tried to walk into the nuclear Nike-Hercules missile launching site here in San Rafael, I would be arrested. If I walk there now, I would get a nice view of the local golf driving range. Does that mean that people that walked there in the 1950's now get clear records and recompense for being put in jail? No. Rules change.
you're misstating the case. you were correct about the woman caught in adultery, that the Pharisees were not aiming to stone her, but here you are off the mark. the biblical account clearly states that Peter stepped out of the boat, began to walk on the water toward Jesus, then sank. it says why he sank. Peter proved that walking on water is possible for mere mortals. the specific circumstances were unusual. but recall that "Peter said to Him, 'Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water'." (Matt 14:28 NASB) when Jesus told Peter to come to him, that made it clear to Peter that it would be possible for him to walk on the water. Peter let himself be distracted.
he was human in the strictest sense. he was God in the strictest sense. the problem here is that we have no point of reference. we expect things to adhere to commonly held notions of what is reasonable and logical. that doesn't apply here. i can fully understand how that stacks the deck, but Jesus was uniquely God and Man. Hebrews describes Jesus as the author and perfecter of (our) faith. the kind of faith that would allow us to walk on water and live sinless lives is complete faith. walking on water would require complete faith from a short period of time -- a few seconds. to live sinless lives, we would have to exercise the same kind of faith from the time we became conscious of right and wrong till we died, physically. that has happened only once. Jesus knew that he would have to live a life that was perfect. he knew that he would suffer an excruciating death and bear all the punishment for all the sin from the beginning of "time". he knew that he would be separated from the Father for a period. he knew that the future of Man depended completely on his faith. he knew that he would be human and subject to every temptation known to Man. he knew that the only force that he could count on was trusting that His Father would keep His promise. his human nature had to be dealt with. he could not let his human nature rule his choices. we have an analogous situation: we are a new creation when we receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. our old nature is crucified with Christ, and we are born again "in newness of life". we have the choice whether to regard that "old man" dead to sin and the "new man" alive to Christ. that is our immediate choice as we walk through this world. we have the same temptations and the choice whether to let the old man rule or the new man. if they believed God ( cf: Abraham ) it was accounted to them as righteousness. the Book of Revelations talks about those saints who died before the rapture of the Church. they will be resurrected when Jesus appears again. right now they are in the "old heaven". there will be a new heaven and new earth sometime in the future.
i think he probably had two y chromosomes. and they came from where all such chromosomes come from. God created them.
But Christ knew that God was real, for a fact, without any doubt. If Christ knew that God was real, He knew that God was purely good and that God's plan was perfect. He didn't have to take any of that on faith. I'm sure there are many humans who could make better choices if they knew for certain all the things that Christ knew for certain. To say that we have the same temptations and make the same choice may be technically true, but it's not really accurate.
This is something that I've always struggled with. It's related to my problems understanding the so-called "sacrifice" of Jesus on the cross. I mean, yeah, he had a pretty bad day or two but in the end Pops (unlike Abraham but don't get me started on that sadistic little tale) knew his son was going to heaven and, supposedly, so did his son. The only depiction of Jesus that ever rang true with me was the story in The Last Temptation of Christ. It depicted Jesus gradually becoming aware of his nature and his fate. And he was definitely human - he was frequently weak, frightened and confused. And it was the choice he made - to go ahead and die on the cross rather than live a happy long life making babies with Mary M - that gave the whole exercise its meaning. He didn't follow a script; rather, he made a choice. A sacrifice. But, the Church HATED that movie because it showed Jesus having sex with MM. It didn't matter that the sex wasn't real - that it was part of vision from Satan designed to tempt Jesus down from the cross. It was still borderline heresy. I boycotted Blockbuster Video for years and years because they wouldn't stock that movie.
it isn't just about knowing that God is real or knowing that God is good. it's partly about never taking matters into your own hands. whether you accept the fact of Adam and Eve and the "apple", look at the dynamics: they had been hanging around with God in the garden, chats and stuff. they were told that nothing they wanted/needed would be withheld. the proscription was eating the forbidden fruit. so why did they eat? because the payoff for eating would to me on the same footing as God, to have a particular kind of awareness that they believed was worth having, even tho' they had been warned. and the appeal made by the serpent was that they didn't need to believe ( trust the truthfulness of ) God. in fact, it was to their disadvantage to do so. that is the crux of sin in a nutshell. don't believe that God has told you the truth. take matters into your own hands. you know what's best for yourself, anyway, don't you? it's not about making better choices. it's about divesting yourself of the option of any choice but the best choice ( what God's will is ) in every case. Jesus said that his food was to do the will of the Father. what truly sustained him was doing what he had been sent to do. how did he know what that was? the Father told him. so he did it. you and i don't do what we discover to be the best thing on many, many occasions. we don't for various reasons. i can't speak for you, but my guess is that you don't believe it's the best at the time. it turns out that you were wrong -- as i have been wrong and so discovered -- but we cannot deny that it occurred to us that we might be wrong to do what we did. we ignored something that we considered to be possibly true. i don't know whether this is a modern or post-modern world, but i do believe that people want to know what's true and that Truth is knowable and restricted. Truth isn't what someone says it is. Truth is what it is. it isn't relative and it isn't subjective. it's Truth. Capital Tee. Jesus said of himself: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life". that's the Truth. he lived that Truth, but only by believing what his (our) Father promised.
1. The fall had to happen in order for us to be here. No fall, no people. Period. Therefore, sin is part of God's supposed plan. 2. Truth is not knoweable. Facts are. Your truth is no better than mine or anyone elses. 3. What's the best choice? Are you living it? What if I thought your best choice was completely different that what you're currently choosing? How would you know I was wrong?
Demosthenes appears to be questioning, as I do, your earlier contention that Jesus somehow had faith. Many people I know interpret faith to mean belief in the absence of knowledge; Jesus knowing His own divinity and of the Father would seem to preclude faith. You answered her with a discourse on sin and truth.
the force that overcomes sin is faith. in order to avoid the normal temptations that everyone experiences, Jesus had to exercise faith. he was only able to do what the Father told him to do. he was perfectly able to do those things as long as he believed that they were what the Father was telling him. he had to stay "connected" to the Father, not let his focus stray from what he understood to be his "commission" in order to do those things. the Bible says that anything that isn't "of faith" is sin. Jesus didn't sin. consequently, he exercised faith. that's one part. the second part is that The Son put aside his position "at the right hand" of the Father in order to become Jesus. Jesus is the name of a person. Christ is a title, the Greek term that is the equivalent of Messiah, or savior. The Son was always the Savior. but until he became Jesus, an actual savior was more of an abstraction than a concrete reality. in putting aside his position, The Son believed that he would have that position restored to him. Jesus, the man, believed that his humanity would not be a barrier to his returning to his state of divinity with the Father. when he said "Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?" he was articulating the idea that he was separated from the Father for the first time. he experienced physical death as a human. the God part of him still existed as part of the Eternal Deity, of course, but Jesus, the human, died.
The BS that is the immaculate conception of Mary is less problematic than Jesus' faith (or Jesus' lack thereof, manifested in his questioning why he had been forsaken, why he at least considered the temptations, i.e. Satan would've known it was pointless anyway, Jesus' baptism), and should be filed under the "problems when formulating Doctrine from loose mythology" category.
the Big Soccer that is the immaculate conception??? it was a big soccer, dontcha think? knocked 'em sumunaguns right flat.
Who's kingdom of God? Yours? Oh yeah, without the Fall, no babies because they'd still be living in bliss in the garden of Eden. See how ridiculous this shit starts to sound when you really think about it.