Originally posted by black beetle
Oh I fail to make myself clear to you jaywill -or you ignore the basic aspects of the Christian religion! Methinks according to your religion the Human has to have established a powerful inner understanding (non-conceptual awareness) of Agape, and the sole way to achieve it is by means of Pistis. For it is impossible to use Noisis/ Mind/ Philosophy/ eva sionary activism and negative attitude. And this, in my opinion, is quite sad.
Be well
😵
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Oh I fail to make myself clear to you jaywill -or you ignore the basic aspects of the Christian religion!
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I think it is perhaps a little of both. You do fail to make yourself too clear somewhat. And I may be ignoring something that I don't know that much about regarding Buddhism.
What is basic to my faith is that Christ is a
living Person and not a religion.
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Methinks according to your religion the Human has to have established a powerful inner understanding
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Maybe. But the establishment of an inner understanding is really accomplished by Christ a living Person. Yes without this living Person I don't know how I could believe in Christ.
He is simply believable, the most believable Person I have ever known.
I don't have anymore faith than another person, in myself. I notice that spending time in His presence in the word of God does nurture faith within me. The establishing is largly due to His wonderful operation.
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(non-conceptual awareness) of Agape, and the sole way to achieve it is by means of Pistis. For it is impossible to use Noisis/ Mind/ Philosophy/ evaluation of the mind in order to conceive the existence of God,
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Believing in the existence of God I do not think requires fellowship with God. Someone who finds themselves alienated from communion with God may still believe that God exists.
Someone might see the love of God manifested just in the way she is cared for in the sunshine, the well being of blessings in nature, the relatively happiness of their human life - to feel there must be some amount of love from this God.
I do not think only people who commune with God believe that God exists. Some people who would admit that they are not on very intimate talking terms with this God somehow believe that God exists.
The subjective experience of God can be a distinct matter from the believe objectively that there is a God somewhere. And some people who are simply thankful for getting up each morning may perceive the love of God without knowing much else.
This is consistent with the Bible which says there is no excuse for a person believing in thier heart that there is no God. The universe as a creation, Paul says, testifies of God's eternal power and divine characteristics leaving all men without an excuse.
To not believe in God in the face of these evidences, Paul says, is to
"hold down the truth in unrighteousness". In other words it is a moral problem of conscience and not an intellectual one of evidence for God's existence.
None of this yet touches on what I wrote about the Trinity, so far.
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because the mind of the Human is so distorted due to the Propatorikon Amartima that s/he suffers of the delusion that her/ his false evaluation of the mind is accurate. Furthermore, it is impossible to prove logically the existence of God,
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I don't have a comment here. These seem to be some things one would have to know about Buddhist terminology to discuss.
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therefore the Christian needs not logical (philosophically accepted, that is) proves.
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Do you think Jesus requesting after His resurrection, that He be given some fish to eat, or that they handle His body, were because no logical reasons were needed to persuade them that He had actually risen from the dead?
Acts says that He presented Himself alive to His disciples with
"many irrefutable proofs" over a period of 40 days
(Acts 1:3)
" ... the apostles whom He chose; to whom also He presented Himself alive after His suffering by many irrefutable proofs, appearing to them through a period of forty days and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God." (Acts 1:2c,3)
Do you think Christ was not concerned that the layers of the foundation of His church would have no logical proof of His having been victorious over death? There are some divine abd mystical aspects of the faith in Christ. But there are also some intensely practical matters that went into the foundations of our belief.
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These attempts are pathetic.
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What I find is pathetic is the excuses that atheists give me when I ask them what they have which is better than the Son of God.
Some say "You see, you just are selfish and want to gain something". But I think this is just an excuse to cover up their poverty. They have nothing but the prideful and dubiois "enjoyment" of thier skepticism.
This is something like a empty box to me, which is wrapped up in fancy ribbons and colerful frills. Inside them, there is really nothing to offer compared to Jesus.
I am more impressed with Jesus.
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And this is the reason why the sole point that proves (not logically, of course) for the Christian the existence of God is the manifestation of Jesus the Son of God.
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There were 39 books which talked about God before the 27 of the New Testament. And the existence of God, Paul says, is not dependent upon the acknowledgement of the Son of God but in the manifestation of God's eternal power and divine characteristics manifested in the creation.
No mention explicitly of the Son of God is in this passage:
"For the invisible things of Him [God], both His eternal power and divine characteristics, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being perceived by the things made, so that they are without excuse;
Because though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or thank Him, but became vain in their reasonings, and their heart, lacking understanding, was darkened." (Rom. 1:20-22)
No explicit mention of the Son of God is there. There is not even an explicit mention of Judaism. Man is without excuse to not believe that there is a Creator God. And those who claim not to believe, Paul says, hold down the truth in unrighteousness. He does not say only those who know Jesus can believe that God exists.
So far none of this seems to related to what I wrote about the Triune God dispensing His life into man.
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And this is the reason why there would be no moral value into the belief in the existence of God if such a thing could be logically proved, because there is nothing holy within the belief that 1+1=2.
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As I wrote above for man not to believe that God exists, is a moral problem of man supressing the truth from rising up in his conscience.
This is not particularly a belief in the biblical God of Judeo / Christian tradition. Simply to not acknowlege a Creator God is a moral defect. That is what the book of Romans teaches. And the Old Testament says that it is the
fool who says in his heart that there is no God.
During the end of the great tribulation the book of Revelation says that some people will be saved just because of believing
"an eternal gospel," not of Christ redemption, but of God the Creator.
I firmly believe that
Revelation 14:6-7 indicate that apart from the Gospel of Christ the Savior, there is an
eternal gospel", an eternal good news and good proclamation that there is a Creator God.
Revelation 14:6-7 is pretty strong proof to me that some people will be saved into the next age because, they believed in the Creator God as Romans 1 seems to indicate.
I don't understand everything about this. And I believe there are some unknowns in the Bible. But I read it carefully and am guided less by tradition than simply by what it seems to speak to me.
It is not the Christian theist who needs to be pittied. The atheist is the one who should be pittied.
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So your religion is based on an irrational concept, but this is fine with me.
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1.) Christ is a living Person and not a religion
2.) Christ is not altogether not rational
3.) Christ and faith in Christ are what they are whether its fine with you or not.
I have to go on to other things now.
Thanks for your thoughts. They were dazzlingly intelligent !!