Waco1947 said:
D. C. Bear said:
Waco1947 said:
DC, Your claim that Christ is the Son of God because the Incarnation is a supernatural occurrence is a false premise.
Jesus is the Son of God for several reasons. One is Jesus' perfect obedience in love to His Father. Another is the Eucharist in which Jesus becomes incarnate in the wine and bread. Jesus , also, becomes incarnate in the poor, sick, imprisoned, the hungry.
I do not claim that Jesus is the Son of God because of the Incarnation. Indeed, Jesus was the Son of God before the Incarnation. False Premise - you are reading the NT back into the OT. The OT was written is a particular time and place.
Nevertheless, it is not a "false premise" to say that the following combination of statements are incompatible with rational thought:
1. There is no supernatural. (You have repeatedly made this claim).
2. Jesus, a physical person, is God in the flesh. (A necessary but not sufficient belief to be identified as a Christian).False Premise. It is not necessary claim to be a Christian. The claim of Jesus on our lives is to Love Jesus and to feed his lambs.(John 21 "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."
Both of these statements can be false, but they cannot both be true.
If you believe the first, you cannot be a Christian because you must believe the second (and more) to be a Christian and the two statement are logically incompatible. Mixing the supernatural with the natural is well...unnatural. The natural - Jesus the human as God's perfection reflection of God's love which is spiritual is logical. The commonality is love not supernatural.
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The supernatural is, by definition, unnatural. Mixing the supernatural with the natural is precisely what happened when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
I don't have to read the Old Testament to say that Jesus was the Son of God before the incarnation. This is from the New Testament.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."
So, according to the Gospel, Jesus was before the incarnation.
Jesus himself also made this claim when said in John's gospel "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am."
Additionally…
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
This is the incarnation. When the Word became flesh, it was a
supernatural event.
You throw around the term "False Premise" a lot, but you do not appear to know what the term false premise means.
The claim of Jesus on our lives to "love Him" and "feed His lambs" is legitimate only because He is the Son of God who walked the earth both as a physical man and as God Himself. Without Jesus being the Son of God, He has no claim on anything and He has no power to save anyone. As the Son of God, He has both claim and power.