~David D.G.

Trouble is, if you say Jesus could possibly be wrong, then that means you have to think about what Jesus says, and that you have both the right and the duty to question practices (like persecuting gays) that Christians advocate based on Jesus’ ideas.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that Jesus said nothing whatsoever advocating the persecution of gays. As I recall, the only applicable verses of this type appear in Leviticus (and, perhaps, in the epistles of Paul). Is there some verse in which Jesus allegedly condemns homosexuals?

~David D.G.

And this would, in fact, be a heresy. Because it would suggest that his god nature and his man nature are separate from one another. That’s an old Gnostic heresy. The “orthodox” position is that Jesus was both fully human and fully God at the same time because God-can-do-things-like-that-you-can’t-possibly-understand-the-power-of-God-shut-up-it-just-works-that-way-that’s-why. So if Jesus’s “God nature” was infallible then Jesus had to be infallible because you can’t separate his God nature from his human nature – he’s both simultaneously.

Just about every explanation for the Trinity (and by extension then, the incarnation) beyond “just accept it and don’t think about it” ends up with the person trying to come up with an explanation wandering off into heresy. It turns out I was taught three different heretical views of the Trinity in my Catholic Religious Education classes as a child. Why? Because the Trinity is inherently non-understandable. You aren’t supposed to understand it, you’re just supposed to believe in it. It’s a dogma, not an explanation.

I understand what you’re saying, and I don’t really disagree, but in the context of Geisler and Turek’s argument about how anti-accommodationist Jesus was supposed to be, it’s interesting to note that it’s difficult to reconcile accurate biological fact with Jesus’ remarks about the true source of sin without proposing the very same sort of accommodationism that G&T reject.

It does seem to me that if I were a clever and omnsicient God, and I knew my Gospel were someday going to be criticized based on accurate biological fact, I might forestall such criticisms by correcting the cultural misconceptions, instead of building my doctrine of sin on a foundation that was not going to stand the test of time. After all, all truth is My truth, and the truth about My design for My greatest creature is worth at least as much as the truth about where his flaws come from, eh?

I don’t want to argue for the inerrancy or infallibility of scriptures. I myself believe that they are only as good as their human authors.

I did, though, want to take issue with your concept that Jesus believed that the physical heart organ was responsible for thought and speech.

My reading of the passages you quote appear to me to be metaphorical or idiomatic. We often speak of the heart as simply a reference to our emotional side. And when we screw up, it is often an ego-related emotional driver that is the culprit. This appears to me to be that to which Jesus alludes when he speaks in these passages.

From this perspective, I believe what Jesus is saying has great value and insight.

Man, does that ring a bell!

Merry Christmas, you holiday stealer you! (LOL)