Lord, liar, or lunatic?

[ryanoneil]

There are a set of criteria that scholars have developed for figuring out which parts of the Gospels can be accepted confidently as reliable from a purely historical perspective. You can read about these criteria in the work of Catholic scholars such as John Meier–they are shared by Christians and non-Christians alike. Some of these criteria can be challenged from a scholarly point of view (particularly the “criterion of discontinuity,” which says that statements by/about Jesus are more likely to be true if they are unlike both Jesus’ Jewish context and later Christian doctrine), but others (such as independent attestation) are just basic historical principles. They do not of course limit what we as Christians believe to be true about Jesus, but they are helpful guides to keep us honest in what we expect non-Christians to accept prior to any adherence to the Christian faith.

I’m not familiar with these criteria enough to comment.

I guess the thing I wonder about is why non-Christians will cite the Bible to prove Jesus was only a prophet, but when it say Jesus is divine they disregard it?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not surprised people don’t believe Jesus is God. What gets me is when they try and use the Bible to prove it.

They almost always believes that Jesus was a good man, a prophet, or a sage. Well, if he was a sage, you can trust him and believe the essential things he says. And the essential thing he says is that he is the divine Savior of the world and that you must come to him for salvation. If he is a sage, you must accept his essential teaching as true. If his teaching is false, then he is not a sage.

But Christian tradition does not say this in a uniform way. The four Gospels all have slightly different ways of stating who Jesus is, and only John records an explicit claim of divinity. A secular historian can compare the different Christian traditions with each other and try to figure out which is reliable. One helpful result of this kind of scholarship is that we Christians become more aware of the distinctive voices of the New Testament documents, which we often blur by harmonizing them all.

I don’t have a problem with a lack of uniformity or small inconsistancies in the gospels, because they don’t contradict each other in the overall message. Most of us realize the gospel writers had theological agenda’s, so I would be suspect if there weren’t distinctive voices.

Do you think this is an explicit claim of divinity?

“For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.” (Matt 12:8, Mark 2:28, Luke 6:5)

Doesn’t being the Lord of God’s law mean He is God?

However, you’re right that we are almost exclusively dependent on Christian tradition for information about Jesus. But this is true for other religions as well. We don’t really know anything about Muhammad independently of Muslim sources, or anything about Buddha independently of Buddhist sources (in all three cases we do have other testimonies, but pretty much all of them appear to be later than and dependent on the “inside” sources).

Edwin

I agree.

Peace,

Ryan

 

[Herrobp]

Please bear in mind that I’m playing devil’s advocate in order to make the point that the evidence is inconclusive. I don’t think that the Ebionites were the best interpreters of who Jesus was. But the argument that Christianity as we know it is an essentially Gentile construction is a serious one that has to be dealt with, not simply ignored or dismissed.

Edwin

Edwin,

your arguments are convincing, and I agree that the evidence is not inconclusive. I confess that I know absolutely nothing about the Ebionites (I’m interested and would like to learn).

Nonetheless, the concept of a gentile construct of Christ’s deity definitely has its flaws. I believe the Biblical quotes attributed to Jesus that imply divinity, must have been accurate representations of His actual teachings, or a “gentile construction” of Christ’s divinity would not have found many adherents so quickly. Even with the existence of the Ebionites (who apparently rejected Christ’s divinity–again I know nothing about them), historical writings at least indicate that many followers of Christ (if not most) believed in His divinity from the earliest of times. In fact, as you pointed out, it was the Docetists to whom Ignatius of Antioch was responding in the quote I offered as evidence earlier.

Had Christ never made the claims featured in scripture, it is unlikely that an artificial construct of divinity would have found so much favor among Christians (both among the mainstream as well as the large contingent of Docetists at the time).

The existence of Christians at the time who denied Christ’s divinity does not necessarily constitute evidence that Christ never claimed divinity. Consider that even after the cannon of scripture was defined by the Church, which included the scriptural references to deity, there were still many who rejected the idea of Christ’s divinity, such as the Arians.

So even if it had been widely accepted among the earliest Christians that Christ made those claims, there is no reason to believe that groups such as the Ebionites couldn’t have interpreted those claims in such a way as to deny Christ’s divine nature (just as the Arians did despite scriptural references that appear to attribute a divine nature to Christ).

In both the case of the Ebionites and the Arians, there must have been a sufficient degree of perceived ambiguity in the teachings to allow for contrary interpretations, one accepting of Christ’s divine nature, the other rejecting it. If the Arians were able to interpret the scriptural references in such a way as to reject divinity, than the existence of a large contingent of Christians in the first century who did the same (along side the large contingent who did not) indicates that Christ’s actual teachings must have included the same sort of perceived ambiguity. Had He never made the claims, there would be no ambiguity on this point and a gentile construct of divinity likely would have been dismissed.

Those are my two cents on the concept of the imposition of an artificial gentile construct of divinity.

Thanks,
-Brian