The Divinity of Jesus Christ

[BrunoMaria]

Why don’t people try to understand the obvious; Jesus Christ’s Divinity?!
The obvious is among other obvious divine things, that we - compared to history of man - exist here on earth, a terribly short time. It’s just a wee bit of the time humanity exists= almost nothing.
OK, science says humanity exists for Millions of years - but those where humanoids - not humans.

What comes next is eternity, which millions of our ancestors who had a soul out of God’s will, already live and experienced - one way or another. Of course we can’t prove that, and therefore we got belief or we ain’t got belief and replace it with by the chilly assumption of our time as most all did before us. Last of which is terribly sad, and makes life a sad thing having to be filled like an empty bottle, which will break one day and shed all into nothing.

Now, belief and to believe in God is deliberately meant as the challenge to believe in facts we can neither see nor prove. But belief is not a thing one simply believes like „tomorrow the sun will shine" - respectively „we’ll get buckets of rain tomorrow“, but it’s the certainty that what God; - what Jesus Christ told us, is the absolute truth! To doubt that, means to doubt life altogether, for LIFE is life in God only. Otherwise it’s a meaningless spark. Flashing up and burn out in a senseless wink; forgotten in all eternity, as those in condemnation, expelled from God’s kingdom, will not come to the mind to those in God’s and heaven’s eternity.

Now, definitely all of us will hear the whispers of hell sometimes, asking us: „What about if it’s not true, and Jesus was not God in God at all, but just a well-meaning Prophet, who in His enthusiasm even gave His life to make us believe“.
This we easily can exclude, as evidence of Jesus Divinity is manyfold given, and this not only in the Gospel. But let’s mind the Gospel-texts of John the Evangelist, we spoke about 12th of October this year.

Of course we all know his most touching words, and have heard them often. Still; - every word of the Bible is so very overwhelming and carries the world so much, that every time we ponder over them we discover new vastnesses, tough we can never really survey them to their last consequences we will all see one day - but we are allowed to vaguely percept it all. As Paul said, we now see blurred, but we’ll see in hilarious joy the truth very clearly.
Jesus Christ taught and said and preached and verified the truth of His Divinity among others in:

John 3,16: God so much loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. No, there is no alternative, but very simple: „perish or have eternal life“ Since John KNEW Jesus is God in God and experienced that truth manyfold, there was absolute certainly, and no alternative. No “YES BUT”. No buts and ifs. The truth always is without alternative the plain truth.

John 3,36: The one who believes in the Son has eternal life. The one who rejects the Son will not see life, but God’s anger because of evil will reside on Him. Isn’t it as clear as can be, that when even one of us accomplishes an extraordinary deed of love, which cost us bitter tears and surmounting, but then must see that it’s all taken as a fake or matter of acceptance, believe and doubts, then all our former love will turn into wrath against this refuser.

John 5,24: the one who obeys My message and believes the one who sent Me, has eternal life and will not be condemned, but has crossed over from death to life. This tells a lot and confirms John 3,36, as all of Christ’s statements are confirmed again and again from different angles in the Gospel. There is no alternative between condemnation and eternal life in God’s Kingdom. Just to cease one’s being like a daisy does after it faded away, is impossible, as much as atheists would prefer this to any Christian terrible „solution“. No, it’s either condemnation or life! We got the choice. That’s no blackmailing as some suggest, but the clear consequence when God’s protecting love manifested in John’s verse 3,16: So much God loved the world, that He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. To reject this incredible deed of love, indeed is worth of eternal condemnation!

 

[BrunoMaria]

John 5,43: I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not accept me. If someone else comes in his own name, you will receive him. How very true. So many even scream of excitement and enthusiasm when silly celebrities of stage and publicity appear and consider themselves lofty, when they even spoke a word with him or he just gave them a brief smile. We feel honored when a well known worldly grandeur such as Dalai Lama or a president enters our house or just shakes our hand. What are all these but puppets of their time. Another thing would be if Saints would see us. God does every day if we ask Him to! Where we hilariously happy to be able to speak to God in prayer?

John 6,35: I am the bread of life said Christ. The one who comes to Me will never go hungry, and the one who believes in Me will never be thirsty. Did we long for God; be hungry and thirsty for His nearness and affection? God offered it throughout our life. didn’t we then prefer worldly pleasures and satisfaction?

John 6,37: Everyone whom the Father gives Me, will come to me. The one who comes to Me I will never send away. And this promise we got even as we did send away Jesus Christ - rejected God in sin! But here we seek to certify Jesus’ Divinity. What’s more evidence, than when God the Father gives us whom He loves, into the hands of God the Son?!

In John 6,42 however, we and the whole world state often enough in false informations and hellish dictates and inspirations: Isn’t this Jesus the Son of Joseph, Whose father and mother we know? How can He now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’? To the world the usual and obvious, the mentally used and physically comprehensible is believed - same as a dog only believes what he smells - all other truths and existences don’t exist to him or are completely disregarded. But we are of higher, even highest possible intelligence in all the universe - all of God’s creation - not only created in His image, but also with His Odem= Breath of Life. Still, there is more than highest intelligence and reason. It’s what St. Paul called the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. It’s this really within us existing Peace of God that enables us to see and to grasp and to comprehend Jesus Christ’s Divine reality! Precondition is of course belief as Jesus Christ so often told us. But this is so little for so much; the eternal life together with God!

John 8,12: I am the light of the world. The one who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Now here the crowd said - ah, your’e kidding. How will you give witness of yourself, and Christ returned: „I KNOW WHERE I COME FROM AND WHERE I’M GOING BACK TO". So let’s not join these people, listening to God whom they held for just one these preachers - the very mistake so many commit today all the same. Nothing at all has changed in us since Jesus time.

John 10,9: I am the door. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will live and conduct himself in relationship to God, and so find pasture. No Prophet would ever have put himself so near to God, that he could predict what God the Father would allow us. „Through me“ not even Isaiah would have dared to say.

John 10,11: I am the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
This Jesus Christ did; voluntarily give His life under mortal torture (John 10,18), too save us from eternal condemnation, which would be the plain justice, as human kind did not serve God, but it’s own preferences. No Prophet could have done so, as all Prophets where people like you and I, but with the personal call of God - to be God’s voice. But no Prophet would have dared to say „I am God’s voice".

John 11,25: I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will come to life, even if he dies. Which other person could say such thing. If any merely human person would have said so, all disciples would have left Christ same minute! OK - many weak in belief did - 12 stayed - though one of them was a devil (Judas; later replaced by St. Matthias Acts 1,26).

 

[BrunoMaria]

John 12,46: I have come as a light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in darkness. But many prefer the darkness like that blind cave-fish who claims there is no sun! Though he couldn’t live without the sun. Who tells him so he’ll comprehend - as they balk at any enlightenment?! Same atheists and religious fools can’t live without God.

But let’s see to some more evidence as to Christ’s Divinity in John’s Gospel
there are bags of them - here are just some of St. John’s:

John 14,6: I am the way, even the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Now many claim same as the Pharisees even today in very many sides on the Net, that Jesus was mentally ill so say such thing. I wonder why God let’s the Internet exist with so many suchlike websites, which in hellish blasphemous Internet-sites insult God suchlike a Christian wouldn’t even dare to secretly think. No wonder our priest said in his sermon some years ago: Internet is a big trash heap - in which you as in all trash heaps, can find treasures too.

John 16,28: I came from the Father and entered into the world, but in turn, I am leaving the world and going back to the Father. All biblical apologetics make here clear, that this sentence summarizes the whole Gospel. It clarifies Jesus Christ’s Divinity more than many others state clearly the mission of God the Son received from God His Father with whom Jesus is one union or one being, together with The Holy Spirit as we confess in the Creed of Nicea.
This is further manifested in Jesus statements in John 15,26 - 16,7 and Joh 16,14/15; as anyhow the Gospel of St. John is the most intimate and clear teller and annunciator of Jesus’ Divinity.

John 17,11: I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them safe in Your name that you have given Me, so that they may be one just as We are one. Again Christ emphasized here His unity in God the Holy Trinity, as ONE in the Father who has created all there is, the Son Jesus who was with us right here on earth, and The Holy Spirit Jesus has send to us - to those who are willing to accept Him and long for God to be with them.

John 18,37: I am a king. For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world – to testify to the truth. What more evidence do we ask for to finally believe? It’s about like an offspring who doubts if his father really is his father.
In that case all togetherness and love between this son and his father is destroyed for ever, and it’ll take a lot more efforts to restore this former love, than with sons and daughters who never doubted!

Yours
Bruno

 

[HelenRose]

I believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ.
I accept the Bible as the word of God.

However, using the Bible as proof that Christ is God to someone who does not accept the Bible as the word of God is futile. To engage a non-believer we need to find some common ground to even begin to debate.

My answer to anyone who asks is:
For me to not believe is to die. Christ is my life. I can not prove my love for Him anymore than I can prove that love itself exists.

 

[Jeannie52]

I believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ.
I accept the Bible as the word of God.

However, using the Bible as proof that Christ is God to someone who does not accept the Bible as the word of God is futile. To engage a non-believer we need to find some common ground to even begin to debate.

My answer to anyone who asks is:
For me to not believe is to die. Christ is my life. I can not prove my love for Him anymore than I can prove that love itself exists.

AMEN! I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

 

[fnr]

Why don’t people try to understand the obvious; Jesus Christ’s Divinity?!

…

This we easily can exclude, as evidence of Jesus Divinity is manyfold given, and this not only in the Gospel. But let’s mind the Gospel-texts of John the Evangelist, we spoke about 12th of October this year.

Since I’ve done a great deal of argument with atheists and Muslims who deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, I think it’s useful to spell out their basic argument (and some ways to rebut them).

1. 
   *]John’s gospel is widely believed by most scholars to have been the last of the canonical gospels to be compiled in final form, generally in the 90s AD. As such, those who disbelieve in Christ’s divinity say that John’s gospel represents a fabrication by the Church decades after Christ’s death.
   *]Rudolph Bultmann was a giant in the field of Biblical historical criticism, and using form criticism, largely set aside all of the gospels’ historical value. Proceeding from an existentialist philosophy that faith was in God, not in miracles, he attempted to “demythologize” the New Testament. With the assumption that no one believes in miracles anymore (an assumption rooted in his existentialism), he posited the existence of a pre-existing document, the “Signs Gospel”, underlying the stories of the seven signs in John’s gospel, and a pre-Christian gnostic myth of a divine savior as the basis for the high Christology in John. Bultmann’s reading of John had an enormous influence on Biblical scholarship for decades afterward in making it highly critical.
   *]Muslims assert that it was Paul who invented Christianity and the notion of Christ’s divinity. They pretty much say that since Paul was the earliest writer of the New Testament, his invention of a divine Christ determined the whole course of everything else.
   
   To rebut those points:
   1. 
      *]While the consensus of scholars is that John was the latest complete gospel, there are very strong indications that parts of it reach back to earlier times, which were later assembled by a “Redactor.” This “Redactor” is sometimes thought to have a more pro-Petrine ecclesiological bent, for example, adding John 21’s “Peter feed my sheep” story to the gospel, which has a resurrection narrative featuring the symbolism of the disciple whom Jesus loved outpacing Peter in reaching the tomb. The bottom line of this is that while the 90s represent the date where the final version of the gospel was complete, most all scholars strongly believe that many of the stories, including the self-referring divinity descriptions, to an earlier time. In addition, archaeological findings, such as the discovery of the pool of Bethesda with five porticoes (Jn 5:2), confirm that John was written by someone who had an intimate knowledge of Jerusalem and its environs. Jn 10:23 references the Portico of Solomon, which would be an appropriate place for Jesus to be during the winter of Jerusalem – suggesting the author knew the weather and locations in the temple where people would be. Since Christians are said to have left Jerusalem for Pella before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, that suggests that the author of John was present there before 70, decades before the final gospel. Overall, there is both textual and archaeological evidence that parts of the Fourth Gospel are much older than the final form.
      *]While Bultmann’s form-criticism of the Fourth Gospel has been compelling in pointing out what seems to be multiple sources for the final gospel, his assumption that miracles are simply false has largely been rejected by modern scholars who point out that even in non-Christian sources such as the Talmud, Jesus was widely known as a worker of miracles. His assumption of a pre-existing gnostic savior myth underlying the high Christology has been refuted my modern scholars who point to the highly Jewish nature of the text of John. This has been aided by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which pointed out that there were very Jewish modes of thinking within which the Fourth Gospel fits very well. For example, Fr. Raymond Brown pointed out how the dialogue in John 6:31-45 is very much in parallel with Jewish modes of exegesis of their scriptures. Fr. Brown pointed out that rabbis would read a verse from the Torah, interpret it, and then cite a verse from the prophetic books to confirm their interpretation. In Jn 6:31, the crowd cites the Torah, and Jesus goes on to interpret it and provide a references to the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Jn 6:59 says that Jesus said these things in the synagogue in Capernaum, which places the Bread of Life narrative very much into the ancient Jewish style of scriptural exegesis. There are plenty of other places where John is shown to be a very Jewish text using very Jewish modes of thought, which helps set aside Bultmann’s arguments about it having arisen from gnosticism (claims which are often made by mythicists and atheists today).
      *]While Paul’s letters are the oldest complete texts of the New Testament, he is widely believed to cite earlier hymns, including Philippians 2:6-11, which has as high a Christology as is found in John. Another prominent example is 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, which Paul says he “received,” and is a hymn about the resurrection.

 

[odhiambo]

There is this quote from Saint Thomas Aquinas.
He said:
“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”!
St. Thomas Aquinas
He was so right; It is not easy to convince unbelievers.

 

[BrunoMaria]

However, using the Bible as proof that Christ is God to someone who does not accept the Bible as the word of God is futile

St. Stephen the first martyr proved with biblical words (of the at the time not yet existing Gospel) Christ’s divinity to pagans. Surely a seed of it reained in some of the crowd - especially in the present Saulus, the later Paulus. Other than by God’s word, God’s word is not provable.

To engage a non-believer we need to find some common ground to even begin to debate

After every biblical quote, I always do use “common ground” to make it’s selfe-evidence clear (which I tried to do above too). This “common ground” by itself and without Crhist’s evidence, never works

My answer to anyone who asks is: For me to not believe is to die. Christ is my life

This won’t impress anyone who doesn’ believe in Christ and takes Jesus as just one of these prophets. Those however who do ask, are some steps nearer to belief are sensible to statements of belief.

I can not prove my love for Him anymore than I can prove that love itself exists.

If you try to find “love itself exists” in the net, you get same picture as this sentence creates in the imagination of disbelievers.

 

[BrunoMaria]

St. Stephen the first martyr proved with biblical words (of the at the time not yet existing Gospel) Christ’s divinity to pagans.

They were of course no real “pagans” but people who did just as the vast majority today, deny and refuse Jesus Christ’s Divinity; as officially done today with Jews and Moslems. See Acts 6 and 7
Stephanus’ “homily” is a jewel of literature, inspired by the Holy Spirit (as the whole Bible is).