/christianity/ - Christian Theology

Time to study.

>1

I am not familiar with the issue

>2

Buddhism and other eastern religions contradict the Christian gospel, even if they have overlap in certain areas. Christianity is preferred because that gospel is the historical truth: Jesus really lived a perfect life, died on the cross for your sin, and was resurrected.

>3

When does he say that?

The day of the lord is the second advent, and Jesus didn't even know when that would happen. Mark 13:32

"I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place."

Matthew 24:34

interpretation 1:

>Jesus made a mistake

nah

interpretation 2:

>Jesus meant it metaphorically, not literally, since the signs did not appear during the lifetime of that generation of disciples

>the destruction of Jerusalem fulfilled what Jesus predicted.

there's nothing in the text to indicate Jesus meant for them to understand the signs non-literally

interpretation 3:

>Jesus meant the generation of disciples that saw the future signs would also witness his return

there is a demonstrative pronoun that stresses He's speaking of the generation that He's addressing.

but the pronoun could also refer to the end times rather than to the generation.

so this one's possible.

interpretaion 4:

>generation (greek: genea) can refer to a race of people, not just to one generation (see: Matthew 16:4, Philippians 2:15)

>Jesus meant that the jewish race would not end before all these signs had attained fulfillment

seems bizarre

interpretation 5:

>the words "take place" or "have happened" (greek: genetai) meant "to begin" or "to have a beginning"

>Jesus meant "all these things" would begin in the generation of His present disciples (verse 33) but complete fulfillment would not come until later)

yeah maybe

>>4967

As far as I get it, a typical premise between those "historical Jesus" speculations is that miracles and supernatural things in general don't exist and therefore must have misreported originally or added to the story later on. However miracles are a big part of the Gospel narrative, so someone looking for a Jesus fitting into the boundaries of accepted contemporary science has a lot of work to do trying to make it all work together as a semi-coherent system.

I think people should be willing to look past the anti-supernatural bias common in the world today and examine the evidence. The canonical Gospels were all written relatively soon after Jesus's death.

>>4974

From what I understand, the word genea can also mean descent or lineage or family, which is what I believe Jesus is talking about in that verse. The generation He's referring to still has not passed away. The generation of the Christian Church. We are, spiritually, of His descent. He was saying that the Church and the Gospel will not pass away, no matter how bad things get. Another example of the word "generation" being used this way in a Greek text is in the Iliad when the gods decide to save Aeneas from Achilles to preserve the lineage of Dardanos.

>ὄφρα μὴ ἄσπερμος γενεὴ καὶ ἄφαντος ὄληται

<that the generation of Dardanos shall not die, without seed

The word γενεὴ used here is an older Ionic version of the word γενεά that Jesus uses in Matthew 24:34(according to wiktionary at least.) Both are usually translated as generation, yet Homer uses it in this instance to refer to the lineage of Dardanos, who lived long before Aeneas. I believe that Jesus is using the word in the same sense in Matthew 24:34. Granted, this all my own personal theory and I'm just a layman so I could be wrong.

https://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/24.htm

http://homer.library.northwestern.edu/html/application.html

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/γενεά

>>4967

>historical Jesus

You will find that a good many Christian-political writers think that Christianity began going wrong, and departing from the doctrine of its Founder, at a very early stage. Now this idea must be used by us to encourage once again the conception of a ‘historical Jesus’ to be found by clearing away later ‘accretions and perversions’ and then to be contrasted with the whole Christian tradition.

In the last generation we promoted the construction of such a ‘historical Jesus’ on liberal and humanitarian lines; we are now putting forward a new ‘historical Jesus’ in Marxian, catastrophic, and revolutionary lines.

The advantages of these constructions, which we intend to change every thirty years or so, are manifold. In the first place they all tend to direct men’s devotion to something which does not exist, for each ‘historical Jesus’ is unhistorical. The documents say what they say and cannot be added to; each new ‘historical Jesus’ therefore has to be got out of them by suppression at one point and exaggeration at another, and by that sort of guessing (brilliant is the adjective we teach humans to apply to it) on which no one would risk ten shillings in ordinary life. . . . We thus distract men’s minds from Who He is, and what He did . . . we substitute a merely probable, remote, shadowy, and uncouth figure, one who spoke a strange language and died a long time ago. . . . The ‘historical Jesus,’ then, however dangerous he may seem to be to us at some particular point, is always to be encouraged. - C. S. Lewis

>>4967

First thing to do is stop going to that bible college, if that is what they're teaching you.

>How do i deal with the gap between the Christ of Faith and the Historical Jesus

There is none. Stop listening to unbelievers, whose goal is to destroy your faith. You should only hearken to the opinions of believing scholarship.

>I'm currently studying eastern world religions, and likely because i have not read scriptures in a while the seeming similarities between theologies like buddhism and Christianity make me wonder why one is prefered to another?

I'm concerned what you think Christian theology is, if you think it's the same as Buddhism.

>Jesus said the day of the lord would come in his generation

No, He didn't. Don't put words in His mouth.