Divinity of Jesus

So? That's not evidence they wrote it. So? 150 years AFTER you say it was written? Really? That's rather poor evidence, won't you say? They didn't know, they believed.

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I hunt for the truth

Papias is an interesting resource for you to use. He wrote so late it is difficult to see how you can claim he had any first hand knowledge. We have very little evidence of his date of birth. Probably 60-65. Eusebius put is writings at about 110 and later.As for Papias' thoughts on Matthew. I think it is very reasonable that he was referring to a different work.

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As for Matthew, he made a collection in Hebrew of the sayings and each translated as best they could

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History of the Church 3:39:15Matthew is not just a collection of "sayings". Also, it seems to be quite evident that MAtthew was written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic. I think you even may have made a comment before about the gospels being written in Greek. How does this help you?

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The fragment is a seventh-century Latin manuscript bound in an eighth or seventh century codex that came from the library of Columban's monastery at Bobbio; it contains internal cues which suggest that it is a translation from a Greek original written about 170 or as late as the fourth century.

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This is from the same link that you provided. The fragment does no confirmation at all. It is simply a list that the books that writer believed were canonical.As for the second part of your paragraph, I have no idea how you think that is relevant or adds to the strength of your argument. There is no fact there at all.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

It is the purpose of God that He dispense His Spirit and His life into man. The revelation of Christ being God and man is for the purpose that God could convey His nature and His life into man.I am speaking of the moment that imparting of the life of God into me may have begun to take place. At least it was a notable moment when God imparted this divine life into me.That is what my personal experience has to do with the Divinity of Christ."In that day you shall know that I am in My Father and you in Me and I in you." I don't think I said, my experience was proof.I think it is important for me to compare my experience to what Jesus taught.For example, John wonderfully records certain tough questions posed to Jesus and His answers, just before He was going to the cross to accomplish redemption: I can now read this and know that I am on the right track. Jesus with the Father came to me to make an abode with me. Jesus came to manifest Himself to me while the world cannot see Him.Then I read Paul's words "... the last Adam became a life giving Spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45) and now it makes sense to me. Jesus, the last Adam, has put Himself in a form in which He is available to me. He has come into my spirit as "a life giving Spirit" and I can say that I know Christ lives in me.So I know that I must be on the right track.It would be a mistake to think that the revelation of Christ's divinity is only that we may have objective knowledge of it. He incarnated, died, rose, ascended, and came to His lovers as "a life giving Spirit" that they may become "partakers of the divine nature"." ... He has granted us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature .." (2 Peter 1:4)The revelation of the Divinity of Christ is not merely that man may become onlookers, or observers, or spectators of the divine nature. It is given that we may become "partakers of the divine nature". That is participants.Perhaps God will not waste the revelation on those who do not want to become partakers of the divine nature.To borrow a popular song of my teenage years "To Know Him is the Love Him".To borrow this concept then, to know of Christ's divinity is meant to lead us to partake of Him as our spiritual life. He who has the son has the life. The soulish man thinks the things of the Spirit of God are foolishness. Nothing new there.The Gospel is veiled to those who are in the process of perishing. Nothing new there.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Paul said it best for those who have invited/allowed Jesus to be Lord of their lives: Yes, it becomes quite personal when one repents and invites Jesus to be Lord of their life.

Baily, I don't think that because "Logos" talk was more common among Greeks than Jews means that the truth conveyed by the Apostle John's utterance was not true.This universal truth John simply chose in this instance express in some vocabulary most Greek than Hebrew. It doesn't change the nature of the Father and the Son.And the mysterious coinherance of the Word and God is not at all unsimilar to the relationship found in the Old Testament of the Angel of Jehovah and God (Jehovah). The two designations were at times used in such an interchangeable way as to cause us to understand the One lived in the Other, One the Messenger was with Jehovah and WAS Jehovah. See Exodus 3:2-7,11,13,14,15,18; Genesis 22:11,12; Judges 6:11-24; Exo.14:14-19; Zechariah 3:1-4; 2:8-11. That may be true. However, that does not detract from the central theme of John's Gospel that God was incarnated in the Son of God Jesus Christ. It is just that John's introduction expresses this timeless and universal revelation in a style somewhat friendly to the Greek philosophical way of speaking. As stated above, the Logos / God matter is so utterably like the Angel of Jehovah and Jehovah God. Let us take Zechariah for example: In verse 8 both "He" and "Me" refer to "Jehovah of hosts". This means that "Jehovah of hosts" is both the Sender (vv.9,11) and the send One. Jehovah is there the Triune God. In this verse One of the three in the Godhead sent, refered to as "He", sent another of the three, refered to as "Me". The Sender is surely the Father, and the sent One is the Son (John 5:36b; 6:57a; 8:16). Both the Sender and the sent One are Jehovah.And in the New Testament both the Logos and God are God, ie. the Word was with God and the Word was God.John uses Greek style vocabulary but the revelation is too similar to the mysterious relationship between the Sender and the One sent in Zechariah."For thus says Jehovah ... He has sent Me ... and you shall know that Jehovah of hosts has sent Me."

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"I am coming ... declares Jehovah ... and you will know that Jehovah of hosts has sent Me to you." Jehovah is with Jehovah and sent by Jehovah and is Jehovah. So says Jehovah. It is not fair to take only John's introductory passages and charge that he has "failed to represent god and any specific way". By the time you get to the end of the Gospel of John, the Word who became flesh, who was with God and was God, has quite extensively expressed God. He has expressed God as the mingling of Divinity and humanity. His disciple Thomas acknowledges that the now resurrection Jesus is his Lord and his God (John 20:28)The Logos who was with God and was God, incarnated, lived, died, and rose from the dead. In such He declared God - God in a man, and was received as Lord and God by a once skeptical Thomas. John certainly meant to convey that God has been manifested in the incarnation, life, and death of Jesus. For this reason he emphatically makes the radical statement (especially in Jewish terms) - "No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared [Him]." (John 1:14)In spite of John's obvious recognition that God appeared to Abraham, Jacob, Isaiah, and other patriarchs in the Old Testament, this manifestation of the Logos becoming flesh has superceeded all those instances. Ultimately God has been seen, been manifested in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.This not a Jewish truth or a Greek truth. This is a universal truth transcending human culture. In his prologue to the Gospel of John, the writer has simply borrowed the style from the thoughtful Greek philosophical language to express that Jesus is God / Man. Jesus is the mingling of God and man. So by saying that He is God the NT does not want to convey that because of that He is NOT man. The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.As a man like us and among us, He often spoke and acted genuinely as a typical man. And all men should be in submission to the heavenly Father.If the writer of John meant to convey that this MAN could not possibly be God He would have never written that the Logos Who was with God also WAS God.Since He became flesh and tabernacled among us as a genuine man often His utterance reflected the standing of a man. At the same time He did not discourage His disciple Thomas from recognizing that He was his Lord and God (John 20:28). Quite the contrary is true. Jesus added:"Because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." (v.29)That would included the blessedness upon such as accept that the Word was with God and that the Word was God. We believe what has been written, all things considered.Your other passages would come under the same kind of classification.
They show the MAN side of this God - man incarnation. Correct. If we are prepared to call Jesus good, we have to be prepared to call Him God.It may occur to you that when the Word became flesh He expressed not only perfect authority but also perfect submission TO authority. Correct. If we are really prepared to call Him good according to ultimate truth we have to be prepared to call Him God. There is none good but God.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I never looked at it that way before. Nice!

the man called Jesus 'good' yet he directed the man to God instead by saying "why do you call ME good?, no one is good except God"If Jesus were God, then surely he would have accepted the mans praise...instead he asked why he should be called good indicating that there was someone greater then he.If Jesus was God, then he was certainly in denial of it. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

Peg, Jesus told the man that no one was good except God.Did Jesus say that He Himself was not good ? No.Did Jesus correct the man for calling Him good ? No.Did Jesus ever say anywhere that He Himself was not good ? No.I will grant you that in this particular instance He is more standing on the ground of His humanity. You must never forget that when the New Testament teaches that Jesus Christ is God it is NOT saying that He is NOT a man.He is the union, the mingling, the incorporation, and the incarnation of God in man.Since you as a Jehovah's Witness believe that Christ is the archangle Michael, I ask you this:
Can you find me a verse which ever states that the archangle Michael lives in the Christians ? Where ?Yet I can point to many passages saying that Jesus Christ is living in the Christians and that the Father and the Holy Spirit are likewise in the believers in Christ. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

That's one way to postion the emphasis. Another place to position it is at the word 'why'. As in "WHY do you call me good? No one is good except God". The questioner is now faced with a challenge and the classic dilemma."Who do YOU say Jesus is..."- Jesus frequently didn't act in the way the average person would. Your "surely he would" is probably based on what you would expect the average person would do and so is, I think, a questionable tool to be applying in your evaluating things. Whether you think Jesus the Christ or whether you consider him Michael, the archangel.Jesus very often put an unusual spin on incoming comments/attacks/querys ending up in things being slingshot into different orbits. He wasn't a man given to arrowstraight responses to questions, now was he?- How subtle the shift in emphasis that swings things away from concluding as you do.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

you know that Jesus is also called the Prince of Peace, and yet nowhere that i know of are we told that the 'prince of peace' dwells in man.Jesus was called by many names, not only Jesus Christ. arch, means chief or principal, and there is only one archangel or chief angel mentioned in the Scriptures
First Thessalonians 4:16 talks about the archangel and his authority The LORD himself will descend from heaven with a commanding call, with an archangel’s voice and with God’s trumpet, and those who are dead in union with Christ will rise first.look at the context of 1 Thessalonians very closely:
13Moreover, brothers, we do not want YOU to be ignorant concerning those who are sleeping [in death]; that YOU may not sorrow just as the rest also do who have no hope. 14For if our faith is that Jesus died and rose again, so, too, those who have fallen asleep [in death] through Jesus God will bring with him...those who are 'dead in union will christ' will rise again because of who? Vs 14 says "through Jesus"you dont think its signifigant that the archangel and Christ are mentioned in the same sentence interchangably?. And im sure you dont beleive that there could be another angel above Jesus...so they must be one and the same....they ARE one in the same.

That is true. However Paul does inform the Christians that Christ is our peace - "For He Himself is our peace" (Eph.2:14) Do you think that David called an angel his Lord? I don't
Christ told the Pharisees thatthe son of David, is David's Lord."Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus questioned them, saying, What do you think concerning the Christ? Whose son is He? They said to Him, David.

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He said to them, How then does David in spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My riught hand unti I put Your enemies underneath Your feet?

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If then David calls Him Lord, how is He his son? And no one was able to answer Him a word ..." (Matt. 22:41-46)I mention this because like the passage where the man calls Jesus good. Jesus does not say he is wrong just as Jesus does not say to the Pharisees that they are incorrect to believe that He is David's son. But Jesus does expose the fact that their understanding is superficial and incomplete. If He is good He must be the good God. And if He is David's son then He is David's Lord.There is nothing in the OT about David calling Michael the angel his Lord. Yet He called Jehovah God His Lord continually. I am at the public library today and do not have the unlimited time to post. But latter we will revisit this matter in more detail. I am about to lose my alloted library time and will have to reply to this post latter. I would like to get you to see something about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This matter reveals God on a journey really. That is a journey INTO man to indwell man.The Father is God. The Son is God and Man united to accomplish redemption. And the Holy Spirit is the flow of this God-man into man to be his divine indwelling spiritual life.This Triune God's nature cannot be separated from His work and plan to dispense Himself into man.It is good that you have a good objective grasp of God outwardly and God's kingdom. What you have never been taught is the God Who is dispensing Himself into man. So I spoke of the indwelling of Christ and how absurd it is to think that is an angel. Rather it is the Father and the Son as the Divine "WE" who through the Holy Spirit, come to make an abode in the lovers of Christ.If God is in the believers in Christ there is absolutely no need for the indwelling of one of His angels.We will come back to this whole matter latter.

you really believe that God or Jesus, pefect, powerful spirit beings, dwell inside use weak, imperfect sinful humans? How can God do so when its because of our sinful condition that we are alienated from him? thats not what the greek scriptures say. The greek language is your answer to the trinity...remember 'ho theon' and 'theon' in John 1:1? But we've been over that and you obviously have not taken it seriously. what scriptures are you using to come to this teaching?Maybe you can explain to me what you mean by 'dwells in man' and how he gets in?

If it seems impossible to you that God could dwell in His redeemed people it is only because you underestimate the effectualness of His redemptive work. You vastly under appreciate His finished work of reconciliation on His cross to justify the sinner and set him in a righteous standing before God.And this unbelief on your part, I think, is related to your thinking Jesus is an angel and not God incarnate Himself.Low recognition of Christ's redemptive work leads to unbelief that God could indwell those whom He has redeemed.It is, however, a totally undeniable fact that the New Testament teaches that God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit indwell the believers. I am again at the Public Library and cannot take the time I would like to. But one passages now is enough to show that the Father is "in all" of the members of the mystical Body the church."One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all" (Eph. 4:6)Did you get that Peg ? The Father is "in all" of the believers in Christ who constitute the new testament church.If you stagger in disbelief then you simply do not know to what a total degree God has justified sinners in Jesus Christ. I am again pressed for time. And I cannot think of one single exchange you and I have had that really needs going over a second time in the sense that your objection was not already thoroughly addressed, Greek or no.One thing is certain from the NT, God abides in those who believe into Christ:"Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God." (1 John 4:15)God abides in the Christian. And the Christian abides in God, period.Now I ask you this: If God Almighty, Jehovah abides in the Christian than what need is there for Michael the angel as Christ to ALSO abide in the Christian? What purpose would that have?To prove that Christ is in the believer, I submit "Test yourselves whether you are in the faith; prove yourselves. Or do you not realize about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you are disapproved?" (2 Cor. 13:5)Can you tell us why in addition to God Almighty - Jehovah (being in all as the Father God "in all"), and as the God who abides in the Christian, is there the need for Michael the angel to also dwell in them?Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Concerning the first question, the entire Bible, especially the New Testament would testify that what God does cannot be separated from what God is.But to sum it up economically in one passage, I might submit John 16:13-15 particularly verse 15 which I will quote first. Then we can go back and see context: The unsearchable riches of what the Father has is the possession of the Son Jesus Christ. But what the Father has in Christ will be conveyed and declared to the believers in Christ by the Holy Spirit. These riches are riches of the life and nature of God.Now let's look at the verse in larger context as Jesus is speaking about the work of the Holy Spirit. You should be able to see that the First Person of the Triune God is channeling all His possessions through the Son and eventually flowing them into the believers by means of the Spirit of reality, the Holy Spirit.Please do not limit this to just information about prophecy. It includes, I think, the life of divine nature of God. For the believers in Christ are "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). And it is through that divine nature of God the Christian must learn to live.The Spirit also transmits the life of God into the believers. For He is called "the Spirit of life" (Romans 8:2). And it is by the Spirit that the Christians know that God Himself abides in them. So the Spirit brings God into man (1 John 4:15; 3:24)It is by the indwelling Holy Spirit that the Father and the Son as the divine "WE" can come and make an abode with the believers in Christ (John 14:23).So the Holy Spirit is the final stage of the Triune God reaching man's inside being. Did you know we are created as vessels to contain God? Here Paul says that the apostles and all believers on Jesus are vessels:"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not out of us." (2 Cor. 4:7)We are enterable. And God desires to impart His life and nature into man. For this He redeemed man and justifies those who receive that gift. The Holy Spirit brings Christ into them. That is why Christ became the life giving Spirit:"the last Adam became a life giving Spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45).What is more subjective to man than life? God imparts Christ as the life giving Spirit to be the living treasure in the earthen vessel of the saved man's being. The saved woman becomes the earthen vessel and Christ becomes the excellent treasure in the earthen vessel.Now please come back to John 16:13-15. This indwelling takes place by the Spirit. And the Spirit, the Third of the Trinity, imparts the vast riches of the Father which are now embodied in Christ, into the believers:"All that the Father has is Mine; for this reason I have said that He receives of Mine and will declare it to you."Can you see the Trinity at work here? He is triune for this dispensing of these riches of divine life out from God into man. What He is is intrinsically related to His operation of dispensing His life and nature into man.This does not mean that the saved become objects of worship. Nor does it mean the those non-communicable attributes becomes mans.The saved will never create universes. They will never be objects of worship. They will not be omnipresent, omnipotent, or omniscient. God remains the sole HEAD of this union of God and man.However, the saved receive all the riches of the Father that are embodied in Christ and trasnmitted by the Spirit into a great corporate and collective expression of the union of God and man. His non-communicable attributes remain His alone. But we have already proven that the believers are "partakerss of the divine nature".This is a matter of partaking. It is not to be merely spectators of that nature. It is not merely to be subjects to that nature. It is neither merely to be onlookers or worshippers of that divine nature. It is to be participants in that nature - "partakers of the divine nature".If you stagger at this then you simply do not realize to what degree God has justified the believers in Christ. And this hesitancy, I think, is due to your not realizing that Christ is God incarnate. Rather you deem Him to be the angel Michael. And you do not realize that God Himself in Christ has reconciled the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19).You will never learn about the indwelling of God from the Watchtower theologians. It is no wonder that you remain puzzled. They can only teach you about an outward kingdom ruled by an ourward King. But the fallen man was "alienated from the life of God" (Eph. 4:18)The Triune God therefore operates to redeem man so that He may dispense His very life into man.

Jaywill,before you go onto new subjects, please address the scriptures i posted

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First Thessalonians 4:16 talks about the archangel and his authority The LORD himself will descend from heaven with a commanding call, with an archangel’s voice and with God’s trumpet, and those who are dead in union with Christ will rise first.

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look at the context of 1 Thessalonians very closely:
13 Moreover, brothers, we do not want YOU to be ignorant concerning those who are sleeping [in death]; that YOU may not sorrow just as the rest also do who have no hope. 14 For if our faith is that Jesus died and rose again, so, too, those who have fallen asleep [in death] through Jesus God will bring with him...

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those who are 'dead in union will christ' will rise again because of who? Vs 14 says "through Jesus"

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you dont think its signifigant that the archangel and Christ are mentioned in the same sentence interchangably?. And im sure you dont beleive that there could be another angel above Jesus...so they must be one and the same....they ARE one in the same

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Please address this before going on.thanks.