Of course it's metaphorical! You don't think the sun was walking around Palestine recruiting fishermen, do you? He is metaphorically the sun just as any solar deity.Flann 5 wrote: The bible uses light and darkness metaphorically sometimes and other times literally. In John's gospel Jesus says he is the light of the world, but he also says he is the bread of life and the door to the sheepfold.
You act like this was lost on pagans!! You think they didn't liken dark and light to good and evil or to knowledge and ignorance or to truth and falsehood? Why do you think the Romans called the sun god Sol Invictus--the Invincible Sun? Because the light and all its metaphors can't be conquered or suppressed forever. No matter how deeply you bury them, they always eventually emerge. Jesus was no different from the other solar deities before him. As a metaphor for light (truth, knowledge, good), they tried to bury him but he rose again just as the sun is buried in the earth each night only to re-emerge in the morning. That's why the Christians moved their Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. That's the whole meaning of Christmas, December 25 being the birthday of Sol Invictus. After the winter solstice, the sun appears to sit still for three days and then begins to rise and set more progressively northward and so we mark that day as the rebirth or reemergence of the light--the Day of Increase. But even as the Light will emerge, the Dark Giants will always reappear to bury the Light again and so it is an endless cosmic battle--the War in Heaven. To the pagans, these cosmic truths were embodied in the movements of the sun and other celestial bodies and the cycling of the seasons. They were interpretable on more than one level and so important that they were played out in the very heavens which is what made them cosmic truths. It's a beautiful way of imposing meaning on the universe and our place in it.In the beginning of the same John's gospel Jesus is described as being the creator of everything.
"All things were made by him and without him nothing was made that has been made." Again as with Paul a sharp distinction is made between the creator and the creation.
If you want to think he is modeled on ancient pagan 'door' deities or 'bread deities' also that's your right, but I don't think it's a reasonable approach to interpretation.
Light and darkness are used as metaphors for moral truth and error when not literal descriptions such as of day or night.
Jesus as Sol Invictus from Mausoleum M beneath St. Peter's Basilica, dated late 3rd century:
![Image](http://courses.washington.edu/rome250/gallery/earlychristianimages/web_Christ_as_Sol_Invictus.jpg)
From Wiki: In the 5th century, Pope Leo I (the Great) spoke in several sermons on the Feast of the Nativity of how the celebration of Christ's birth coincided with increase of the sun's position in the sky. An example is: "But this Nativity which is to be adored in heaven and on earth is suggested to us by no day more than this when, with the early light still shedding its rays on nature, there is borne in upon our senses the brightness of this wondrous mystery."
"It is cosmic symbolism...which inspired the Church leadership in Rome to elect the southern solstice, December 25, as the birthday of Christ ... While they were aware that pagans called this day the 'birthday' of Sol Invictus, this did not concern them and it did not play any role in their choice of date for Christmas."--Steven Hijmans
Notice the opening sentence of Hijmans--"It is cosmic symbolism." Of course, the Roman Fathers denied Christmas had anything to do with Sol Invictus but that really doesn't matter. In fact, it only proves, if anything, even though they are independent (they are not, of course) they still couldn't help but liken Jesus Christ to the sun any more than the gospel writers could because when truths are cosmic, they're cosmic!
You know you're getting killed with the mythology thing. I tried to help you by not bringing it up anymore and judging Christianity on its own merits and you took this as a sign of weakness and keep pressing the issue. Between youkrist, Robert Tulip and yours truly, you're getting killed! The only resurrection you seem to truly believe in are these arguments you keep bringing up and others here keep killing. The next post from you--voila!--they're back again
Yeah? Well, when I start telling people who and who isn't going to hell for disagreeing with me or for living a "lifestyle" I don't agree with, maybe you'll have something there.The problem here is that you assume you know how God could or could not think as if your thought processes and capacities are the same. But that's absurd.
The universe WAS caused. It was caused by the Big Bang.In a previous post you quoted Stephen Hawking to support your argument,but Hawking doesn't think the universe was uncaused, so you are misconstruing him.
This explains the problem you're either not capable of or are unwilling to grasp:
http://www.deepastronomy.com/what-cause ... -bang.html
Hawking meant that only hard data from scientific experimentation can definitively answer questions about the universe. Philosophy will always be debated which means it can't provide final answers. He has a point.Hawking declared " Philosophy is dead" and fell into the same hole as Lawrence Krauss due to his disregard for philosophical thought and logical thinking.
I am essentially an idealist. I believe that everything is ultimately consciousness. It is consciousness that can't be caused or effectively analyzed. Science generally believes matter is the primal constituent although quantum theory at least points to the consciousness actually being the primal constituent. Hawking might disagree with me, you might disagree with me but, as Hawking points out, the only way we're going to get anywhere is through scientific experimentation such as what's bring done in the hadron colliders. Even then, it may not yield up final answers because any data we collect and analyze still boil down to unquantifiable experiences and sense-data. In other words, we have to use consciousness to examine our data and it's consciousness itself that has to be examined and we have no real way to do that. But it's the best we've got.Reality cannot be reduced to the straitjacket of scientism or materialistic philosophy. There are many abstract and non material things such as numbers,dreams,laws such as of logic and the laws of physics themselves.
This is a real problem and highlights the assumptions made in competing worldviews.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anGAazNCfdY