This week, we talked about the formation of the Gospels. One student mentioned that early
church had two sectors--a group led by Peter, which consisted of the apostles,
located in Rome, and a group led by Paul, in Greece. When the early church
leaders in Rome were killed by the Roman government, Paul essentially carried on
the church. This comports with Paul having written the Acts of the
Apostles, as well as many of the letters in the New Testament. We discussed the issue of credibility of sources of information. We discussed that there are four gospels which lends credibility to the overall gospel message and provides different perspectives. We then started talking about Mary's role in John's gospel. That led us to talk about miracles in the bible. We discussed that some people are skepticle of miracles, but that if we believe in God as creator of all, then miracles are not difficult to believe. We also discussed that we can put stories in the new testament into two categories-those related to getting us to beleive in Jesus and that Jesus is who he said he was-the son of God and those from Jesus telling us how to follow him and how a follower of his behaves. We again discussed then need to make a decision about belief in Chirst, to internalize the decision, and the need to make our beliefs part of how we live our daily lives. |