But you state below that Jesus = God, which has unfathomable implications.
Not "unfathomable" for Christians. We know the implications full well.
You can crucify a god. For even God can be crucified. Truthfully, pray, even mortals can accomplish that.
It was the rising from the grave and the ascension to Heaven that was the impressive bit, actually.
Actually the cognitive dissonance required for this is extraordinary, or else Jesus was schizophrenic. It follows that God fathered himself, prayed to himself, spoke to himself, argued with himself, and even spoke of himself in the third person. Jesus on the Cross wailed, "Father, why have you forsaken me," (Mathew 27:46)- which is a unilateral if not bizarre conversation in its own right.
Welcome to the Mystery of the Trinity. "God in three persons, Holy Trinity," the hymn goes.
Christ is the human presentation of God, where He is joined with a human being. God borne of a woman, mortal and with all the imperfections of blood and sinew - yet still perfection in soul.
So when Jesus is walking, he is literally the Son of God - the deity in another form, as it were - and still God.
The blood sacrifice and redemption from the cruxifiction and resurrection was universal in nature for humanity; Jew and Gentile were granted salvation.
Worthy of the even the most obscure mystery cult, but you either believe this, or you don't.
Yep. Matter of faith. In fact, it is the one critical component of faith that determines if one is Christian or not.
I always enjoy conversations about the Devil, as a little study is very enlightning. The devil doesn't run around with a free hand in the Bible; he's allowed or commanded to perform devilish acts most of the time. Yes, there's the odd possession here and there, but it's at God's leisure, and they can be driven out by believers
simply by issuing a command in God's name.For really big destructive acts, God usually sends an angel, not the Devil, to do the work if He doesn't do it himself. The people of the Old Testament had very good reason to become prostrate and tremble at the sight of an angel; they rarely came to do anything nice, and usually had really bad news or a terrible task to make one do.
Indeed, the absolute worst thing to do is to have a little faith. Those of no faith are cast into the void - that is to say, destroyed - after death. All others either wind up in Heaven or Hell.
What's interesting is that if God can make two other facets of Himself that are distinctly different and yet of the same status of himself, is that the limit? Christians say yes - there is only the Trinity.
Islam disagrees; it places Jesus as a prophet, but not the literal Son of God. Muhammed is the true prophet of God. Jews, of course, reject the whole notion of Judeasim 2.0 (Christianity), and are still hanging on to their original operating system (Reformed or Non-Orthodox can be considered Service Pack 1).
How many "faces of God" are there really?
Now to an athiest, the question ranks right up there with angels on a pinhead. They lack all faith in anything but the biological.
And then forget that most of the scientific foundations and basic discoveries in Europe were in the context of the Church. Scientific ideas were actually vetted and "scientific consensus" delivered by the Church. Sometimes they got it wrong (Galileo), it's true; but look at the IPCC and Global Warming. They've made bold statements and predictions about Global Warming that are sufficiently wrong even since they made them that they've backpeddaled to the "Global Climate Change" label.
And certainly any scientist that is a non-believer in Global Warming is castigated and their reputations actively trashed as surely and swiftly as Cardinals issuing an order of ex-communication.