From: cjhs@minster.york.ac.uk
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: LORD, LIAR, OR LUNATIC?
Date: 31 Aug 92 08:19:41 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

Mikel Evins (mikel@Apple.COM) wrote:
: In article <714947054.2915@minster.york.ac.uk> cjhs@minster.york.ac.uk writes:
: >
: >joyce@meaddata.com wrote:
: >
: >: The distinct claims of Jesus to be God eliminate the popular ploy of
: >
: >Jesus made no distinct claim to be God. There as places (most notably
: >the confession of Thomas in John's gospel) where he misses the chance
: >to deny that he is God, but his own distinct and explicit claims as
: >recorded in the gospels consistently make him subordinate to God.
:
: In service of my curiosity about this point, I asked a Christian friend
: for examples of passages he takes to be distinct claims to divinity
: by Jesus. He provided the following, and promised more, given a day
: or two to research.
: 
: I promised him that I would summarize (worthwhile) responses for
: him.

I'll try to respond for the start at least, using an assumption I do
not usually hold, which is that writer of the gospel of John is telling
us exactly what happened in minute detail.  Under this assumption, if
John says Jesus said something, then that is precisely what Jesus
actually said.

: The purported claims of divinity by Jesus:
: 
: >From the gospel of John, chapter 8:
: 
:      "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"
:      At this, they picked up stones to stone him.
: 
: The reason they were going to stone him, is that "I am" is the way God
: characterized himself to Moses, and every Jew knew that claim well.

Excellent -- I had forgotten this passage, and concede a point. This
passage should send a shiver up the spine of any student familiar with
the OT. It is a fair claim to being God, to the point where I consider
my question answered. A citation has been given.

I'll have more to say below, but note that I do accept this as a
citation providing evidence that Jesus did claim to be divine. Being
in a kind of code word form, it does mean that we will be looking futher
at the gospel to see what Jesus was claiming, even under my extreme
literalist assumption.

: >From John 10:
: 
:      "I and the Father are one."  Again the Jews picked up stones to
:      stone him, but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great
:      miracles from the Father.  For which of these do you stone me?"
:      "We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews,
:      "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."

Much weaker. See later on in John's gospel in the upper room discourses
for how Jesus regards oneness with God -- it is a unity that is to be
shared also by the disciples. Certain of the Jewish people found Jesus
offensive (but by no means all, nor even most of them) and his claim to
being of one mind with God is thus very aggravating. Here it is not Jesus
making a distinct unabiguous claim to be God -- it is those who would
stone him who take his words in the worst possible way.

: >From John 17:
: 
:     "Father, the time has come.  Glorify your Son, that your Son may
:     glorify you.  For you granted him authority over all people that
:     he might give eternal life to all those you have given him."

This is a passage *I* would have cited to show that Jesus clearly
does *not* regard himself as God, but as subordinate.

: and later:
: 
:     "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I
:     had with you before the world began."

Better. See also the first 18 verses of John. This passage does
imply Jesus existed before the world did; though it still keeps
Jesus as subordinate to God, as I originally suggested.

: When he appeared to Thomas:  (John 20)
: 
:     "Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"  Then Jesus told him,
:     "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those
:     who have not seen and yet have believed."

Ambiguous. I did in fact mention this passage in my post quoted above.
It is not Jesus who makes a claim, but Thomas. Thomas' words can also
be taken as an exclaimation, rather than as refering to Jesus as God.
However, I do think this interpretation is a little forced. The writer
of the gospel does fairly clearly intend this passage to indicate
Thomas is confessing Jesus as God.

Response in point form:

1) I think it fair to say that the writer of John does regard Jesus as
   more than just a prophet or messiah, but as actually divine in some
   sense. The christology is never spelt out in detail (and the church
   fought over the question for centuries) but I would also suggest
   that the passages above indicate that the divinity of Jesus is not
   of the kind "Jesus is God" but rather some kind of subordinate to God.

2) I will concede that my original request for a citation has been
   answered, but I don't find it very convincing as evidence that Jesus
   himself claimed to be God. The discourses of Jesus in John's gospel
   are long and would not be treated as literal transcriptions of Jesus
   own words by most Christian bible scholars today. They are a vehicle
   for expounding the gospel in finer and more academic detail than the
   stories of the synoptic gospels.

   I do not expect Joyce, or Mikel's friend, to agree with this
   assessment. However, they should at least concede that the passages
   cited tells us more about how John perceives Jesus than how Jesus
   perceives himself, except under a kind of "divinely inspired in the
   most minute detail" method of understanding scripture. And that such
   a method of interpreting scripture will not even be convincing in
   most theological seminaries, let alone alt.atheism.

3) Much more could be said, contrasting John with the synoptics, and
   noting the development of teaching even within the NT, and then also
   in the early church, to show that it ought to be a highly contentious
   claim that say that Jesus made a distinct claim to be God.

   This is as far as I really want to go. My objective is certainly not
   to convince you that Jesus did not make any such claim: it is to
   convince you that it is a reasonable hypothesis that Jesus made no
   such claim, and hence that the McDowell's trilemma, as posted by
   Joyce, is pretty naive.

By the way, check out talk.religion.misc for a Muslim view on what Jesus
claimed to be. I am no Muslim, but I do feel that Islam hangs together
more coherently than Christianity. In this case, the Muslims have a much
better case, even without refering to the Qur'an (which would no more
convince you or me than John's gospel will work here), and it is
presented for you in detail in that forum.

I'll re-post the Muslim article here if there is enough interest, but
on the other hand I expect people are getting tired of this thread.

Felicitations -- Chris Ho-Stuart
Newsgroups: alt.atheism