Pre Existence of Christ prior to the Incarnation

Your assessment is the problem, not the gold which you were given.

Literal preexistence -> trinitarians, binitarians, most unitarians.

You’re in with the in-crowd.

Ideal preexistence -> few unitarians.

I’m out with the in-crowd.

We all believe in preexistence. We don’t all believe in literal preexistence.
do you want to take the TEST and see if what 101G say is Gold? ....... (smile) yes or No

101G.
 
Rev 1:5-8
5 And from Jesus Christ, Who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto Him That loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood,
6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

7 Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen.


What Jesus said about Himself...

8
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, Which is, and Which was, and Which is to come, the Almighty.
KJV


Jesus speaking to the blind Pharisees...

John 8:56-58
56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day: and he saw it, and was glad.

57 Then said the Jews unto Him, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?"

58
Jesus said unto them, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am."
KJV
 
I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment.

Then post your personal information and how everyone can contact you directly.

I've ran forums for many years. Doxing is real. Forums have a duty to keep their members anonymous. It is the only way to protect free speech. Otherwise, people will be targeted.
 
Then post your personal information and how everyone can contact you directly.

I don't need to tear down a straw man.

My position is not that everyone has to post that, so why criticize what is not my position?

It's misrepresenation and a red herring fallacy.

I've ran forums for many years. Doxing is real. Forums have a duty to keep their members anonymous. It is the only way to protect free speech. Otherwise, people will be targeted.

We are talking about hidden moderators using multiple accounts.

Please stop straw manning my position, thanks.
 
I don't need to tear down a straw man.

My position is not that everyone has to post that, so why criticize what is not my position?

It's misrepresenation and a red herring fallacy.



We are talking about hidden moderators using multiple accounts.

Please stop straw manning my position, thanks.

No. It is not. Moderators should have the ability to freely participate just like every member. The only REAL information reality to recognition is actually tying an ID to a real person. A real identity. I'm contrasting the only relative position. You may not have considered the ramifications of your request. I have. Many many times. I've lost friends over my choices in such. I have never allowed anyone to target one another. Never.

This conversation is about moderators being targeted. That is what it is about. Most forums don't even allow such conversations because of this very fact.
 
No. It is not. Moderators should have the ability to freely participate just like every member.

I NEVER disagreed with.

EVER.

So you stubbornly stick your head in the sand, don't listen to a word I say, and CONTINUE to STRAW MAN me.

Not a nice thing to do, nor a Christian thing to do.

Please stop.
 
I NEVER disagreed with.

EVER.

So you stubbornly stick your head in the sand, don't listen to a word I say, and CONTINUE to STRAW MAN me.

Not a nice thing to do, nor a Christian thing to do.

Please stop.

Explain your comments about "police" in agreeance to moderation? I'll listen. Maybe I misunderstood. I apologize for offending you.
 
Why is this even being discussed again its ridiculous. This forum is the most liberal non-condescending moderation out there. There is no dogmatism, lording over people or any such thing that happens here. Just let the moderators moderate.

If you guys want me to me one and wear that under civic let me know but I hate policing things. I leave that job with the Administrator and Predestined.

We may add more as we grow and if dizerner, matthias or praisyesha ends up being a moderator they can have one i=under their name.

Or like other forums they can be moderator 1, 2, 3 , 4, 5, etc...........

There is no perfect forum and you cannot please all of the people all of the time, its like finding the perfect church- as soon as you walk in then there goes the "perfect " church down the drain. :)
 
William Barclay, a trinitarian, offers some good insights on what’s going on behind the scene of John 8:56-59 for our consideration.*

”All the previous lightening flashes pale into insignificance before the blaze of this passage. When Jesus said to the Jews that Abraham rejoiced to see his day, he was talking language that they could understand. The Jews had many beliefs about Abraham which would enable them to see what Jesus was implying. There were altogether five different ways in which they would interpret this passage.

(a) Abraham was living in Paradise and able to see what was happening on earth. Jesus used that idea in the Parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:22-31). That is the simplest way to interpret this saying.

(b) But that is not the correct interpretation. Jesus said Abraham rejoiced to see my day, the past tense. The Jews interpreted many passages of scripture in a way that explains this. …

(c) Some of the Rabbis held that in Genesis 5:8-21 Abraham was given a vision of the whole future of the nation of Israel and therefore had a vision beforehand of the time when the Messiah would come.

(d) Some of the Rabbis took Genesis 17:17, which tells how Abraham laughed when he heard that a son would be born to him, not as a laugh of unbelief, but as a laugh of sheer joy that from him the Messiah would come.

(e) Some of the Rabbis had a fanciful interpretation of Genesis 24:1. There the Revised Standard Version has it that Abraham was ‘well advanced in years.’ The margin of the Authorised Version tells us that the Hebrew literally means that Abraham ‘‘had gone into days.’ Some of the Rabbis held that to mean that in a vision given by God Abraham had entered into the days which lay ahead, and had seen the whole history of the people and the coming of the Messiah.

From all this we clearly see that the Jews did believe that somehow Abraham, while he was still alive, had a vision of the history of Israel and the coming of the Messiah. He was really saying: ‘I am the Messiah Abraham saw in his vision.’ …

To us these ideas are strange; to a Jew they were quite normal, for he believed that Abraham had already seen the day when the Messiah would come.

The Jews, although they new better, chose to take this literally. …”

(The Gospel of John, Revised Edition, Vol 2, pp. 34,35,36)

* Commentaries should never be used as an appeal to authority. That’s the mistake that my freshmen students often made when first beginning their advanced education.

Commentaries aren’t an appeal to authority. Commentaries are an appeal to the mind of the reader. Read commentaries. Read them thoughtfully. Read them critically.
 
Thoughtfully and critically evaluate what is written, no matter who writes it. If persuaded that what is written is true then accept it. If persuaded that what is written is false then reject it. My freshmen students learned this lesson quickly in the classroom, as I learned it in the classroom before them.
 
Thoughtfully and critically evaluate what is written, no matter who writes it. If persuaded that what is written is true then accept it. If persuaded that what is written is false then reject it. My freshmen students learned this lesson quickly in the classroom, as I learned it in the classroom before them.
I do its called the Bible which is all truth.
 
The history of what the Jews believed about Abraham in the 1st century is extremely valuable to know. If the information provided about that history of Jewish belief is false then reject it. If the information provided about that history of Jewish belief is true then accept it.

You don’t know if what you read about the history of Jewish belief in a source is true or not? Then use multiple sources to help you decide. However many sources you read, read them all thoughtfully and critically.

You see who the author is - be it a Protestant, a Catholic, a Jew, a Muslim, an Atheist, an Agnostic, etc. - and you reject what they wrote about the history of Jewish belief out of hand, simply because of that? That’s the habit of the biased. That’s not the habit of a person who is really interested in knowing the truth.
 
I like @Matthias's idea that Jesus only existed before being conceived in the mind of his God.

Ideal preexistence comes to us from Judaism. Literal preexistence comes to us from paganism.

The majority of Christianity has gone with literal preexistence. A minority within Christianity remained with ideal preexistence.
 
I like @Matthias's idea that Jesus only existed before being conceived in the mind of his God.
Well that contradicts the clear teaching about His pre existence below.


John 1:15
15
John bore witness of Him, and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.'"

John 1:30
"This is He on behalf of whom I said, 'After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.'

John the Baptist was 6 months older than Jesus Christ. So it is impossible for Christ to be before him unless Jesus pre existed.
 
Well that contradicts the clear teaching about His pre existence below.
Not one little bit does it contradict "clear" teaching that you insist being interpretted based on your literal eisegeisis. Jeremiah 1:5 applies to the ideal pre-existence of Jesus if it applies to anyone.


“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Jeremiah 1:5

Ideal preexistence comes to us from Judaism. Literal preexistence comes to us from paganism.

The majority of Christianity has gone with literal preexistence. A minority within Christianity remained with ideal preexistence.
To say existence existed before existence came to be is a bit of a violation of basic axioms. However, to say the details of Creation existed in the mind of the Creator is not merely possible or plausible but certain.
 
Not one little bit does it contradict "clear" teaching that you insist being interpretted based on your literal eisegeisis. Jeremiah 1:5 applies to the ideal pre-existence of Jesus if it applies to anyone.


“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Jeremiah 1:5


To say existence existed before existence came to be is a bit of a violation of basic axioms. However, to say the details of Creation existed in the mind of the Creator is not merely possible or plausible but certain.
Try sticking with the text in John with the words of the Baptist. The fact is he said Jesus existed before he was born and was born 6 months before Jesus. Those are the facts from the text in John 1. You are reading your presuppositions into the text, ie which is eisegesis

hope this helps !!!
 
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