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| Monroe County Community College |
Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives was released today. See today's nytimes for a report.
The bullets are:
- The virgin birth is an unequivocal truth of Christian faith.
- Christian teaching affirms that "Jesus was the son of God and was not conceived through sexual intercourse but by the power of the Holy Spirit, one part of the divine trinity."
- "The story of the virgin birth is not just a reworking of earlier Greek or Egyptian legends and archetypal concepts but something totally new in history."
- God's creative word is able to bring about something completely new. (See my recent God's Commands are Authoritative Words that Have Illocutionary Force.)
- God is a Creator. God creates. God invents. This is part of the nature of God.
- God is omnipotent. Benedict's reasoning is grounded in the understanding of the power of God. An all-powerful being is, by logical extension, able to bring about any logically possible state of affairs. "If God does not also have power over matter, then he simply is not God," Benedict writes. "But he does have this power, and through the conception and resurrection of Jesus Christ he has ushered in a new creation."
