Thoughts on the ascension of Jesus Christ?
>>18477020my thoughts
>>18477020Based and it actually happened
>>18477020His return occurs within the individual.
>>18477020It didn't happen but it's a nice story
Just 2,000 more years
>>18477020why did jesus leave earth so quickly? he could've at least stuck around for a while longer. at least until cameras were invented.
>>18477061He had to drop his resurrected material body off in outer space quickly so he could come back in time to appear to Paul as a ghost and let him know that flesh and blood don't inherit the kingdom of God.
>>18477020It's absolutely hilarious people actually believe this nigger just lifted off and flew into space, why is every religion written like a trashy shounen anime?
Well, it probably didn't happen. We have no realistic sources that the story even went as declared, and his body might have either been dumped to a common grave, been snatched by grave robbers for magic items, or this only became part of the story later on.
Best kept secret: he is constantly coming and going, until everything is ironed out as it should beWorst kept secret: the Christian version likely focuses more on the appearance of Venus (female character supplanter) rather than his rebuilding in a quantum way
>>18477091Under the theory that the original form of the gospel of John was a gospel called "Manifestations" belonging to the 2nd century gnostic Apelles, I'm mad that we were deprived of its ascension scene because too many Christians really, really wanted their material bodies in the afterlife for some reason.https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0319.htm>He descended from the upper regions, that in the course of His descent He wove together for Himself a starry and airy flesh; and, in His resurrection, restored, in the course of His ascent, to the several individual elements whatever had been borrowed in His descent: and thus — the several parts of His body dispersed — He reinstated in heaven His spirit only.
>>18477136The ascension and the return of the elements may also have been described as accompanied by bright light, as in the Ascension of Isaiah, under the theory that the Ignatian letters are an edited form of letters belonging to an Apellean Christian.
Genuinely the most suspicious part of the entire story. The man who conquered death enters into a state that perfectly mimics death, almost as if he didn't actually come back. Imagine if he had marched with his followers to Pilate, or the Emperor, as proof of his victory.
>>18477136>too many Christians really, really wanted their material bodies in the afterlife for some reasonMaybe more likely the 100% bodily resurrection and ascension were favored for apologetical reasons, to firmly distinguish the miracle of Jesus' resurrection and ascension from anything that might be accused of being a hallucination or misinterpreted natural phenomenon.
>>18477020First define ascension of Jesus Christ.Second define Jesus.Third define Christ.
>>18477171The hallucination hypothesis falls flat on its face because the conservative total number of witnesses of the resurrected Christ runs well above 500 people at once. Hallucinations private events. Crowds of people don't have shared hallucinations. And as for him being purely spiritual, this is refuted by the Gospels. The resurrected Christ was unambiguously corporeal. And besides, in the Hellenistic world at that time, immortality of the soul was already a commonplace belief among the educated. A soul surviving bodily death would have been nothing to write home about. What was so miraculous was that a dead man's body had risen.
>>18477363>runs well above 500 people at onceWhich is a claim made by one man, who wasn't even present at the event, and who directly implies that plenty of the supposed witnesses are already dead. This is the only known claim of it happening. There is zero need to take this claim seriously. >What was so miraculous was that a dead man's body had risenA very common theme in Hellenistic and Jewish mythology.
>>18477370>Which is a claim made by one manIf this is your standard, then you would have to annihilate virtually the entire corpus of ancient historical knowledge (which you won't, because only this one threatens your worldview).And besides, the resurrection doesn't stand or fall on this one claim. The unanimous willingness of the Apostolic witnesses to suffer prolonged torturous deaths for their claim of having encountered the risen Christ without a single defection or recantation on record is pretty good reason. Nobody willingly goes to death by torture for something they know is a lie.>who directly implies that plenty of the supposed witnesses are already dead"Then he was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once: of whom many remain until this present, and some are fallen asleep." 1 Cor. 15:6He says some have died, but plenty are still around, meaning he's inviting people to go out and verify it themselves if they don't believe him.
>>18477363To the extent that you believe Acts, Jesus' appearance to Paul was definitey visionary, but in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul lists Jesus' appearance to himself alongside the appearances to everyone else including the 500 without bothering to note any significant qualitative difference between them (like that all the others involved a body, while he only got a light and a voice) except that his was last and he was undeserving of it.Further, given that the appearance to the 500 would have been so significant, it's strange that there's no obvious story corresponding to it in the gospels or Acts. However, this could be conveniently explained if the appearance to "more than 500" were in fact a textual corruption in the Greek of "on Pentecost," which is conceivable and would be somewhat supported by Paul's reference soon after to Jesus as the first fruits of the resurrection (In Numbers 28:26, Pentecost is called "the day of first fruits"). Then there would be a clear candidate story for the appearance, namely the arrival of the Holy Spirit in Acts to 120 brethren with the wind-sound and the tongues of fire, which is fairly visionary.
>>18477399>If this is your standard, then you would have to annihilate virtually the entire corpus of ancient historical knowledgeA ridiculous claim, as historians are careful when assessing evidence for historical knowledge. An extraordinary claim of supernatural is just as powerful of evidence as a written record of 500 Greeks witnessing Zeus himself. In other words, it can't be taken as a fact, even if we tried to give it some leeway.>The unanimous willingness of the Apostolic witnesses to suffer prolonged torturous deaths for their claim of having encountered the risen Christ without a single defection or recantation on record is pretty good reason.Evidence for Peter and Paul's martyrdom is almost nonexistent, and those are the only apostles who were likely martyred. We only know they might have been executed by Romans, but their methods of execution come from much later tradition. Moreover, the only known evidence of their execution comes from one person decades later, and we do not know if he was even present. In other words, they might have very well rescinded their faiths, but this person just omitted it. Even if they didn't, it doesn't really disprove what was being said. We know for certain that Paul experienced some kind of strong hallucinations, and even if Peter didn't witness a vision of Jesus, he might have very well believed that someone else did. Even if we counted James, we don't know if he rescinded his faith or not, or that he had a religious conversion based on a vision of someone near him. It simply doesn't take a huge stretch.>He says some have died, but plenty are still around, meaning he's inviting people to go out and verify it themselves if they don't believe him. Again, does not really prove much, as he doesn't give any names or directions. What we do know is that he wasn't among them, and it's very likely just one person told him about this. Doesn't take a genius to admit that he probably just ran with it, not caring fact checks.
>>18477363>Crowds of people don't have shared hallucinationsSun miracles like at Fatima are pretty common and are arguably hallucinatory. People don't usually have especially *detailed* shared hallucinations, but strange lights and noises aren't so obviously too difficult to hallucinate in groups or, perhaps, they might be objective but collectively misinterpreted phenomena, like some UFO reports. People behaving weirdly in large numbers from social contagion also isn't unheard of, and all those are what's said to have happened on Pentecost, which may be the appearance to more than 500 as argued here >>18477414
>>18477437(cont.) In support of the idea that a manifestation of the Holy Spirit could have been understood by the early Christians as an "appearance" of the resurrected Jesus, in case that seems unbelievable, there's 1 Corinthians 15:45, where Paul says, "Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit." When did Jesus, the the last Adam, become a life-giving spirit? All the context seems to me to imply that it was at his resurrection.
>>18477020I like Jesus and Christianity more every time I come to this board, because every time i come here I see brown freaks seething about it.
>>18477462I'm white and I don't seethe about Christianity as such. I seethe that my favorite branches of Christianity got mostly killed off in the first few centuries along with much of their literature, and, with little hope of finding an IRL Christian community near me I would be happy to be part of, I cope with it by doing my part, on behalf of the probable truth, to bring the whole surviving structure down with the lost Christianities like the desperately wicked bucket-crab that I am.
>i will return in your lifetimes>still hasnt shown up 2000 years laterGenuine question, how do people still believe this bullshit
>>18477462it's all atheist trannies.
>>18477519Jesus' second coming was when he came back down (after first ascending post-resurrection to take up the prisoners he freed from Hades) to let Paul know that he had reached a legal settlement with the demiurge, allowing his living followers to relocate to his Father's heaven above the demiurge's heaven after they died via spiritual resurrection. Something like this seems to be what Marcion believed was discernable from his gospel and Paul's letter collection.It's hard to work out exactly how it might've been inferred, but one idea is that, if you look at 1 Thessalonians 4-5, and you exclude as not present in Marcion's version the part of 4:16 ("with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet") and all of 5:3, you're left with the statement that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. And, ideally, a thief in the night doesn't want to cause a huge commotion and have to murder all the occupants of a house to get at whatever he's trying to take. So maybe in Marcion's version the second coming was understood to be like a thief in the night all the way through, not only in the sense of being unexpected.
>>18477548It's also widely believed by critical scholars that 2 Thessalonians is a forgery, and it says: "As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here."And IIRC this is usually taken to mean that it was intended to replace 1 Thessalonians, which does seem to imply that Paul expected to be alive for the day of the Lord, though it doesn't go as far as saying that it's already here, so the fit isn't perfect. However Marcion also had a 2 Thessalonians, and given how generally incompatible our 2 Thessalonians is with his beliefs, I wonder if his 2 Thessalonians was totally different, and our forged 2 Thessalonians was actually intended to replace that one, which we've lost entirely.
>>18477558Ideas like this depend on disregarding most attempted reconstructions of Marcion's canon based on what the heresiologists say when they seem to be quoting it, and I'm not sure how defensible that is. But if you don't do that, it's really hard to see how the Marcionites could've used their canon to reach their doctrine. Could the heresiologists have been quoting their own letter-versions half the time as if that could be used to prove Marcion was an idiot? Or could they have only tried to guess what Marcion's canon looked like without actually having a copy? It seems really unlikely, but I've seen arguments not too far off from that sort of thing online before, so idk.
>>18477170I don't think you actually understand the theology of the ascension. It was part of his victory. Jesus ascended for several reasons1. To be enthroned as king of the universe at the right hand of God.2. To enter the heavenly sanctuary as our great High Priest, purifying it in a heavenly yom kippur, and making intercession for us.3. To send the Holy Spirit and reign over the Church with God through him. Jesus needed to ascend in order to exercise the fullness of his offices as King, Priest, and Prophet. By this we know that Jesus is the Messiah. He is the victorious Messiah.
>>18477658The jesus lore is the most dumass shit I have ever heard of, its slop theology for stupid masses. Get the fuck out of here.
>>18477399>Nobody willingly goes to death by torture for something they know is a lie.And what makes you think they were actually killed for refusing to recant? Historical records for their deaths are quite scarce and most accounts of the apostles’ deaths come from church tradition or apocryphal texts written centuries later. Even if some apostles were executed, it may not have been because they were given an ultimatum to recant or die.- They might have been executed as perceived political agitators or for specific crimes like “disturbing the peace,” where recanting their belief in the resurrection wouldn't have saved them.- In many ancient persecutions, simply being a member of a suspect movement was the crime; a late recantation might not have prevented execution.- Psychologically, individuals who have invested their lives and reputations into a movement may choose to die rather than face the humiliation of admitting they were wrong or a fraud.
>>18477225Kek. He didn't define and people are giving their opinions about something they don't understand.Fruitless thread.
>>18477020pretty good
>>18477020It's describing the moment that reality defined with words.
>>18477225>AscensionWhen there is something worth carrying around with you, you lift it up, and place it in your "worth-ship". So you pick it up, and it ascends up to the place where all the other good things you have seen are housed.>Jesus The things that God is saving. (Salvation of God). Aka, righteousness, truth, and life (aka motivation).>ChristThe word. For example, when you christen a boat or a person, you give them a name.>GodThe judge of what is good, and what should be saved. The selector/chooser. The creator of Christ.Also, I am the person who asked, "why should I believe this".
