Is Jesus Christ of Nazereth, God in Human flesh?
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 6 votes and with 21 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
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- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 4
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 30,000
- Voting period
- Six months
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
I am a Christian, and would like to present evidence that Jesus is God.
C1: Jesus Sinned
Sin in this context means violation of the Torah Law. According to Christianity, Jesus was born under the Torah Law and thus must have kept that perfectly. With that, let’s begin by listing the sins of Jesus.
Sin 1: Causing Damages
The Gospel of Matthew records this interesting passage:
"Not far away there was a large herd of pigs feeding. 31 So the demons begged Jesus, "If you are going to drive us out, send us into that herd of pigs." 32 "Go," Jesus told them; so they left and went off into the pigs. The whole herd rushed down the side of the cliff into the lake and was drowned. 33 The men who had been taking care of the pigs ran away and went into the town, where they told the whole story and what had happened to the men with the demons." Matthew 8:30-33.
The pigs were the livelihood of the person who owned them. This certainly caused extreme emotional and financial damage to them.
Sh'mot / Exodus 21:37 "If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep.”
Jesus left town and failed to repay the damage done to the property owner. If Jesus is an all-powerful deity, surely he can cast out demons without causing financial loss.
Sin 2: Lying
Jesus lied to the Jewish court. Here’s the text in question:
John 18:20, "I spoke openly to the world, I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing.”
But this statement is false. Jesus purposefully veiled his teachings and taught in parables to prevent people from repenting from their sins:
Mark 4:11-12 “He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven.”
This text is especially problematic. The entire goal for Jesus is to “save the sins of the world,” yet he did this to prevent people from being forgiven!
C2: The NT rejects Jesus’ Divinity
The NT does not portray Jesus as God. There are several points to prove this.
Sub-point 1: Jesus has a God
Jesus and the NT repeatedly call God “my God” and portrays Jesus as being separate from God. Here are a few references.
John 20:17 “Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’””
If Jesus is God, who is he calling “my God?” There are many other references to this in the Book of Revelation.
Romans 15:6 “glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”
Ephesians 1:3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Revelation 1:6 “[Jesus] has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen”
Revelation 3:12 “The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never Mashall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.”
That is another reference where Jesus is clearly calling God his God.
Sub-point 2: Jesus prays to God and commands u to pray to God
If Jesus was God, who was he praying to? Moreover, when Jesus tells us how to pray, Jesus tells us how to pray, he tells us to pray to God and never to himself.
Matthew 6:9 “Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
Obviously, Jesus cannot be God if he is directing prayer to someone other than himself.
C3: Messianic prophecies show that the Messiah is purely a man
Whether or not Jesus is the Messiah is beyond the scope of this debate. I believe I have conclusively shown in other debates that Jesus cannot be the Messiah. What I want to focus on here, however, is to prove that every time the prophets mention the Messiah, they portray him as a righteous servant of God and as a man.
Isaiah 11:1-3 “And a shoot shall spring forth from the stem of Jesse, and a twig shall sprout from his roots. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and heroism, a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. And he shall be animated by the fear of the Lord, and neither with the sight of his eyes shall he judge, nor with the hearing of his ears shall he chastise.”
Very clearly this messiah is not divine.
Conclusion
There is irrefutable evidence that Jesus is not God in human form. Jesus sinned, had a God, and the messianic prophecies portray the Messiah as a human figure.
forfeit
Pro forfeits last round, that's poor conduct.
Cons argument here is most relevant: “In order to win this debate, Pro has to prove that Jesus Christ is God in human form. My opponent's entire argument rests solely on the Bible. The first obvious question to ask is why should we consider the Bible as God's word? Even if I concede your argument, you only proved that from a Biblical framework. You need to do more than just that to win this debate.”
Pro offers no non biblically based examples, or evidence: this means even if buy pros contention - it only proves it within a biblical framework and not objectively. The resolution does not appear to clearly note this, and thus on the grounds of the above, I cannot consider that pro has met a basic burden of proof. Con on the other hand produces a set of clearly unchallenged biblical examples. In terms of BoP, I would assess that pro must provide BoP to affirm, where as proving a negative means cons burden of proof is merely to negate pro. Given this - con clearly uphold this burden with ththe above, and thus arguments go to con.
Conduct also goes to con for the forfeit.
Pro effectively concedes which was the right move. Stringing together bible verses seldom convinces the unconverted and Con's R1 was succinct, sufficient, and devastating.
For the laziness in the last 2 Rounds including an actual Forfeit, Conduct would be to Con except for something I will come to later.
Con didn't use sources remotely as well as Pro did. Con could write anything and say its a Bible verse, get a credible source for people to click on and see 'ah, yeah that's legit.' Pro went through the effort of doing this for each and every single verse mentioned, it helped a lot.
Con wins because Pro keeps trying to assert that because Jesus was being promoted, resurrected and ultimately forgiven in ways no other being than God was known to do in the Bible, that this directly meant that Jesus was God in the human flesh. Perhaps Pro is actually correct, but Con points out that being assisted by God and being a sinning being of flesh that's later forgiven, superpowered and the highest ranking soul other than God, doesn't make that you are God in the human flesh. Additionally, unless God has split personality disorder, where is the 'link' to explain why Jesus refers to God The Father in third person a fair few times as Con quoted?
Pro's reply is that Jesus was forgiven for all sins... That's literally Pro's reply. Pro brings a new angle though, saying that the term Saviour is a direct God-only role in one part and a name for Jesus' role in another... This is where Con was cowardly. Con suddenly backtracks absolutely everything from the earlier Round and says 'but the Bible is just lies written by humans' in essence. This is kind of severe cowardice but whatever, Pro never replies to this sufficiently as Pro starts to give up and troll Con.
Pretty much no contest. ... Next time please use the description to define what God in Human Form would be prior to the debate rounds, or at least by what standard is to be used (con could have trolled with a simple K denial of God's existence... he quite respectfully gave the desired debate).
"that was a lot of points to counter." ... was badly ironic given the Gish Gallop in R1.
C1 had an attempted counter, pointing to an isolated place where it said without reason (or at least without double checking the rest) that Jesus was without sin; but that left the thrust of those sins he committed unrefuted.
C2 and C3 wholly dropped.
CONDUCT: Forfeiture.
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>Reported Vote: OoDart// Mod action: [Removed]
>Points Awarded: 5 points to pro for sources and arguments, 2 points to con for S&G conduct.
>Reason for Decision:
Both participants solely used the Bible as their sources. Pro used the context of the verses whereas con did not, and failed to realize the assumptions he made were incorrect.
Con made one error (saying "u" instead of "you") but overall, had better spelling and grammar.
Pro forfeited a round.
Reason for Mod Action>Reason for Mod Action: This vote is not eligible to vote. In order to vote, an account must: (1) Read the site’s COC AND have completed 2 non-troll/non-FF debate OR have 100 forum posts.
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Lol. How do people still believe Obama is the antichrist?
I don't know much about Jesus, but I believe firmly Obama is the antichrist.
A couple bits of advice:
1. Use the description to define the debate you want to have (like if the bible is considered valid evidence, and God is assumed to exist).
2. Write your R1 before starting the debate, then grab the character count from it (word and Google docs make this easy... probably the same with every other application). Double and round that character counter count, and use it for the characters per argument (this way you don't get too far in over your head).
3. Never assume hurt feelings if people do not agree with you. By starting a debate, you are literally asking them to do just that. They might wholly agree with you, but are trying to help you strengthen your argument as if it were an academic paper being peer reviewed.
Easy vote
Since you are arguing in the affirmative, I would prefer to be the instigator. I have an approach that says that the affirmative case should be the instigator
Would you like to challenge me and post your arguments as your opening case?
The ones here
Will you be using the arguments you posted here or devising new ones?
Yep 100% am!
If you are still interested in debating this topic with me please let me know