Rg Fuller Resurrection

including the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Christ” ( Moran 191 ). This made

In this paper, I will be discussing the views on Christianity’s Doctrine of Resurrection. I will use the methods of philosophy and theology for my discussion. To begin, an explanation of the doctrine itself will be presented. This will be followed by an objection to the doctrine as stated by Trenton Merricks. To contrast Merricks’ view, the ideas of Stephen T. Davis on this doctrine will be presented. From here, the views of Augustine and Aquinas will be discussed. To conclude, I will summarize my findings and present my assessment of the various views explored.

She uses the letters of Paul, in conjunction with the Gospels, to further address the issue of Jesus’ crucifixion. Fredriksen reviews a wide variety of topics from Paul’s letters, including the coming of the Kingdom, “The Twelve,” observance of Jewish law, and Jesus’ identity as “Christ.” She connects this compilation of this information with the Gospels and other sources to see what matches or changes over time. In general, multiple attestations of the same information, as well as anything that stands out as particularly dissimilar to the Christian or Jewish traditions, likely serves as the most reliable and historical

Fee completes his writings with his own conclusion: “The Spirit must be reinstated into the Trinity, where he has never been excluded in our creeds and liturgies, but has been practically excluded from the experienced life of the church.” Moreover, he argues that the very nature of the Triune God, as being three yet one, must become the character of the church both in its oneness and in its function, by the very application of the Spirit’s threefold work of the Trinity. Without this experience, the witness of the churches to the Resurrection today will remain generally ineffective in comparison with the witness of the early Christians, though they lived in a culture very similar to ours. As the title of Fee’s book emphasizes, we are meant to find God’s Spirit empowering for us in the present era while at the same time awaiting the consummation of Christ’s final return.

This pamphlet provides an inaccurate depiction of Christianity when compared to the New Testament because, by omitting the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, it characterizes Christianity as the tool to prevent eternal hell rather than exemplify God’s love for humans. This mischaracterization evident through the consequences of Jesus’ Resurrection had on society’s human nature to sin. According to Paul, Jesus’s resurrection shows that, as human sin was crucified with Jesus through the connection of Baptism, humans are now able to follow a path of righteousness because He overcame death (Romans 6:10-13). The resurrection is important to highlight, because it is the reason why humans are able to seek salvation in the first place. Without recognizing

In the first section, “The Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts: A Challenge in methodology”, Stronstad discusses the theological

The controversial figure of St Paul is credited with writing thirteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament; thus making him one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age and in the development of the early Christian faith. Paul’s letters are some of the earliest Christian documents discovered dating to approximately 50 AD, whereas the scholarly consensus for the dating of the gospels is between 70 AD and 90 AD. Therefore, Paul’s thirteen letters reveal the earliest teachings about Jesus and the Christian faith; in particular Paul’s letter to the Romans expresses the fullest statement of how salvation in Christ is achieved (Wansbrough, 2011, P247). Thus, this essay will primarily focus on Romans and the extent it concurs with the Gospel according to Luke. In doing this, the essay will also analyse whether Paul’s letters rely on the narrative of Luke’s gospel. The overall message Paul preaches in his thirteen letters is we can be saved through Jesus’ actions, but only if we follow his teachings. However, the argument is can this message be fully understood by Christians without Luke’s gospel? Additionally, this paper will attempt to show how Paul’s preaching has altered or remained the same throughout time.

The same argument can be applied to other areas of traditional apologetics. Consider for a moment the important issues related to the resurrection of Christ. While the historical and biblical aspects are imperative in validating the authenticity of the event, one must never ignore how that miraculous event transforms the individual expressions of a Christian’s daily life.

Several years ago, I too “lost the historical Jesus as a credible human being” (p. 8) after reading Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code. Although I have recovered from that momentary crisis, I have developed a “hermeneutic of suspicion” (p. 18) in that I do not appraise value to events in the bible as factual, but I find truths within the texts. I appreciate Borg’s separation of the pre- and post-Easter Jesus while exploring a sense of the historical Jesus (p. 7). However, both are unclear at best due to the formation of the sacred texts. The oral traditions circulating prior to the written forms cannot be reclaimed, at least not entirely. As oral traditions were collected, the written forms artistically combined these traditions to create the Christian

“Christian theology developed in the very act of responding to pagan objections” remarks Gonzalez (63). As the church grew the practice of theology resulted in many interpretations and threatened traditions held about the nature of God. Gnosticism made inroads claiming that Christ was a messenger who carried gnosis so that humanity could return to its spiritual origins (72). It viewed the physical world as evil so the form of Jesus’ body was open to interpretation consistent with the thought that it wasn’t physical like the bodies of other people and couldn’t die so it also could not rise again. Some held that life in the world should discipline our bodies while others held that the human spirit was inviolable and life in the body should be unrestrained. This duality of physical and spiritual also gave rise to Marcionism.

There are four main arguments used to deny the historical reality of the Resurrection. In this essay, I will explain why they are not supported by the facts of the matter

Objection 1: The Synoptic Gospels were written approximately thirty years after the death of Jesus, suggesting that there were still people alive who may have witnessed the events written about. The witnesses, if need be, would be able to denounce those who wrote falsely about the events. In addition to denouncing, they could correct the person’s information leading their cumulative story to be the most correct version of the story and event possible.

The most rebutted aspect of the work done by the scholars was their idiosyncrasy to equate “unverifiable” with “unauthentic.” Most scholars who study the elements attribute to the life of Jesus stand on common ground when it comes to the realization that many of the sayings and deeds associated to Jesus in the Gospels lack sufficient evidence to establish authenticity. However, to many scholars insufficient evidence means an element cannot be verified, and therefore should not be deemed as historical. In contrast, the Jesus Seminar went beyond this scope and maintained that Jesus did not say or did not do things that cannot be authenticated by evidence. For example, it is widely accepted that there is very little evidence to support whether or not Jesus was born from his virgin mother, Mary. As a result, this element of his life has just been something that one would believe on the foundation of religious faith rather than historical science. However, the Jesus Seminar applied a post-Enlightenment historical scientific view to this element in order to determine authenticity. Under this assessment, they determined not only what is confirmable but what also is scientifically possible. Therefore, the scholars deemed the virgin birth as non-historical, concluding that Jesus had been conceived through normal sexual intercourse between a male and female because it fit the paradigm known today. This stance held by the Jesus Seminar “turn[s] a corner in the traditional understanding of the relationship that faith and philosophy bear to science and history” (Powell, 115). For this reason, I reject the integrity of their work. I believe faith and philosophy should be kept separate of science and history, unless the two aim to support one another. Rescinding concepts of faith simply because they do fall within current scientific boundaries is illegitimate. The major flaw of the Jesus Seminar is their

Early Christian writers face the question of whether the human body is a good thing or a bad thing. Confessions of St. Augustine and St. Paul’s Epistles use the word, ‘flesh,’ to either depict the human body, man’s immaterial nature, or the nature of sin. The flesh is the obvious difference between the Lord and humans; thus, it describes the sinful nature that humans possess. Both St. Augustine and St. Paul describe the human body as something that can be contaminated; however, St. Paul distinguishes a difference between the spiritual body and the natural, physical body which is the flesh, “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians

The word "gospel" is a translation of the Greek word "euangelion" which means "good news. The first three books in the New Testament (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) are often referred to as the Synoptic Gospels (from Greek synoptikos, "seen together") They bear greater similarity to each other than any of the other gospels in the New Testament. Along with these similarities come some differences among the gospels, suggesting that each gospel was written for a specific audience and for a specific purpose. This paper will examine the resurrection of Jesus, while identifying the significant differences between Mark, Matthew and Luke. This paper will also analyze the differences to suggest the prominent theological perspective each gospel author