From: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: LORD, LIAR, OR LUNATIC?
Date: 30 Aug 92 23:43:17 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins) writes:

>>Again, he avoids saying the words "I am God" himself.

>Again, I agree, although here our best choices are to either
>regard the quotation as a claim of divinity or as some
>very slippery weaseling on Jesus' part (obviously Christians
>will be unlikely to choose the latter option).

Weaseling (though I would use a word without such a negative
connotation) is not such an unreasonable choice for a Christian.  One
of the best-known scholarly theories about Mark is the "messianic
secret", the idea that Jesus never said directly that he was the
Messiah, but hinted it.  There are a number of good reasons why he
might have done that, ranging from a concern that it might have been
misinterpreted as giving a military role that he didn't want, to
wanting people to come to that conclusion for themselves.

As for this case, it's very unusual for the NT to say directly that
Jesus is God.  You'll see things like "in him the fulness of God was
pleased to dwell" (Col 1:19) or "[he] bears the very stamp of his
[God's] nature" (Heb 1:3), but it is very rare (if it occurs at all)
to see "Jesus was God".  The reason should be obvious: God is
immortal, invisible, all-powerful, etc.  These attributes were
obviously not present in Jesus.  It is nonsense to think that he is
simply identical to God.  This nonsense would have been even more
obvious in a 1st Cent. Jewish context, where "I am God" would have
made the listeners think of either claims made for ceasar, or more
likely, stories of Zeus and other Gods appearing as humans.  (There
are actually stories in the early OT books of God appearing in bodily
form.  That's not what is being claimed for Jesus, however.)

Later Christian theology claims that Jesus is the *human form of* God.
But it does not claim that any human being, even Jesus, is simply
identical to God.  Rather, that human being and God's being are united
in such a way that they should be thought of as a single entity.  I
have some qualms about the use of neo-Platonic metaphysics here, and
wouldn't want to defend this language as the ideal way to talk about
Christ.  I prefer to think of a functional identity, not a
metaphysical one.  But the point I'm making is that even in the fully
developed 4th and 5th Cent. theology, there is still some distinction
maintained between human and God as applied to Christ.  The human
being Jesus is God, but in a somewhat indirect way.  In a 1st Cent.
Jewish context, one would certainly not expect Jesus to say that he is
God, even if he knew and approved of later theological language about
him.

The problem with discussions like this is that they typically operate
from a naive view of what Christian theology says about Jesus.  This
is not a criticism of atheists: They're getting it from Christians.
Conservative Christians have (quite properly) reacted to the tendency
for many people to see Jesus as just a teacher, or to take ambiguous
positions that use wording similar to orthodox wording but seem to
mean something else.  As is common in Christian tradition, they have
chosen to reassert orthodox theology in its most unambiguous form,
insisting on "Jesus is God".  While I am sympathetic to this, the
specific phrase "Jesus is God" requires a good deal of theological
explanation to make sense.  If you take the words in the most obvious
sense, it would mean that Jesus is identical to the Trinity, is
immortal, invisible, etc.  It's a lot like the argument many centuries
ago, when Christians defended orthodoxy by insisting on the statement
"Mary is the mother of God" (though it sounds a bit less paradoxical
in the original Greek).  Again, they wanted to come up with something
that would unambiguously separate those who seemed to be using many of
the right words but with the wrong meanings.  But a fair amount of
explanation is needed to make sense of the statement.

Anyway, to support orthodox theology we don't need Jesus saying "I am
God".  Indeed that would be inappropriate, at least with the people he
was speaking to.  Rather, we need him representing God to the people
around him, functioning as God's presence in the world.  I believe we
can see evidence of that.

-------------------------------------------------------------

In my opinion, "Liar, lunatic, or Lord" was not one of Lewis' better
arguments.  It doesn't take into account the most common agnostic or
atheist position, which is that his words have been modified over
time.  And by its tendency to produce black-and-white contrasts, it
tends to lead to arguments that don't do justice to the subtleties of
Christian theology.  However there is some point to his comments.
Perhaps it's not as common now as when Lewis wrote, but many people
tried to think of Jesus as a great moral teacher, but not as the
Christ.  While Jesus may not have said "I am God", he did speak a lot
about himself and his specific mission from God.  To see him as simply
a moral teacher, you have to ignore much of what he was trying to say.
Lewis was speaking to these people, who accepted the NT portrait of
Jesus, but ignored half of it.
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