Quotes About Christianity

the idea that Jesus rose on the 'third day' was originally a theological construct, not a historical piece of information.

The first Christian author we have is the Apostle Paul

If Jesus really were equal with God from "the beginning," before he came to earth, and he knew it, then surely the Synoptic Gospels would have mentioned this at some point. Wouldn't that be the most important thing about him? But no, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke he does not talk about himself in this way—nor does he do so in their sources (Q, M, and L).

THE VIEW THAT THE earliest Christians understood Jesus to have become the Son of God at his resurrection is not revolutionary among scholars of the New Testament. One of the greatest scholars of the second half of the twentieth century was Raymond Brown.

The time when Christianity arose, with its exalted claims about Jesus, was the same time when the emperor cult had started to move into full swing, with its exalted claims about the emperor. Christians were calling Jesus God directly on the heels of the Romans calling the emperor God.

Eventually Jesus came to be seen as God in every respect, coeternal with the Father, of the same substance as the Father, equal to the Father within the Trinity of three persons, but one God.

Within three hundred years Jesus went from being a Jewish apocalyptic prophet to being God himself, a member of the Trinity. Early Christianity is nothing if not remarkable. HEAVEN

How did Jesus understand and describe himself? Did he talk about himself as a divine being? I will argue that he did not.

79 percent of Christians in America believe Jesus will be returning to earth at some point.

this is not reading the Bible as a book. It is using the Bible as a kind of Christian Ouija board.

Thus the Son who was not, but existed at the paternal will, Is only begotten God, and he is distinct from everything else.

The Father alone has existed forever. The Son was begotten by God before the world was created. But this means that he "is neither eternal nor coeternal . . . with the Father." God is above, beyond, and greater than all things, including Christ.

how Jesus came to be considered God. The short answer is that it all had to do with his followers' belief that he had been raised from the dead.

like all groups of Christians at all times and in all places, understood themselves to be the fortunate heirs of the truth, handed down to them by their faithful predecessors, who received their understandings about God, Christ, the world, and our place in it from people who should know—ultimately from the apostles of Jesus, and through them from Jesus himself, the one sent by God.

In one of my earlier books, Misquoting Jesus, I discuss the fact that we do not have the original copy of Luke, or Mark, or Paul's writings, or any of the early Christian texts that make up the New Testament.

The Christian religion is founded on the belief that Jesus was raised from the dead. And it appears virtually certain that it was Mary Magdalene of all people, an otherwise unknown Galilean Jewish woman of means, who first propounded this belief. It is not at all farfetched to claim that Mary was the founder of Christianity.

In my view, the early Christian Gospels are so much more than historical sources. They are memories of early Christians about the one they considered to be the most important person ever to walk the planet.

But the message was not only for Jews. It was for all people, Jew and gentile. And it came to gentiles apart from observing the Jewish law. Thus, to be members of God's covenantal people, it was not necessary for gentiles to become Jews. They did not need to be circumcised, observe the Sabbath, keep kosher, or follow any of the other prescriptions of the law. They needed only to believe in the death and resurrection of the messiah Jesus. This was an earth-shattering realization for Paul.

We call these books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John because they are named after two of Jesus's earthly disciples, Matthew the tax collector and John the beloved disciple, and two of the close companions of other apostles, Mark the secretary of Peter and Luke the traveling companion of Paul.

And so Christianity was the only evangelistic religion that we know of in antiquity, and, along with Judaism, it was also the only one that was exclusive. That combination of evangelism and exclusion proved to be decisive

The Need for an Empty Tomb ... If there was no empty tomb, Jesus was not physically raised.

The books we call the New Testament were not gathered together into one canon and considered scripture, finally and ultimately, until hundreds of years after the books themselves had first been produced.

Many Christians today may think that the canon of the New Testament simply appeared on the scene one day, soon after the death of Jesus, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

No, what made Jesus different from all the others teaching a similar message was the claim that he had been raised from the dead.