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Loading...This is my my last of three blasts-from-the-pasts dealing with fundamentalist, or conservative evangelical, forms of Christianity, this time addressing the claims often made (first by C.S. Lewis, who was decidedly *NOT* a fundamentalist) that since Jesus called himself God, he either was a bald-faced liar, a raving lunatic, or the Lord of the universe. No other option. Or … is there?
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C.S. Lewis was the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity, and The Problem of Pain.
QUESTION:
Do you think Jesus was a great moral teacher? If you think this is the case would you mind blogging about it? Fundamentalist are using C.S Lewis approach in this matter. Apparently they are happier if people call Jesus a lunatic vs. a great moral teacher.
RESPONSE:
In my last post I indicated what I think about Jesus as a great moral teacher: yes he was one, but completely and irretrievably in an apocalyptic context that we no longer share with him. In a future post I may deal with the question of whether it is possible to transplant ethical teachings of one context into a completely different one, without remainder.
In this post I want to take up the question about C.S. Lewis. Lewis was a great scholar of 17th century English and obviously a popular author of children’s books and Christian apologetics. He was certainly no fundamentalist himself, although fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals today continue to adore him and his work. I did too, for many years. I read virtually everything he wrote, in many cases (space trilogy; Narnia; Mere Christianity; Great Divorce, and others) multiple times. I was completely bewildered and puzzled when, at Princeton Theological Seminary, my philosophy professor dismissed Lewis as a complete amateur. But now I understand. When it comes to philosophy and theology, he really was an amateur. That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t smart and extraordinarily clever. But he was not a master of every field he wrote in.
This post is not about his philosophical abilities in general, however, but about one of his most commonly adduced claims. Since Jesus called himself God, then he was either telling the truth or not. If he was not telling the truth, he either knew he was not telling it or not. And so there are only three choices. Jesus either was a Liar, a Lunatic, or the Lord. (A liar if he was not telling the truth and knew it; a lunatic if he was not telling the truth but thought he was; and the Lord if he was telling the truth.) Moreover, given Jesus’ great ethical teachings, it is completely unreasonable to think that he could have lied about the most important facet of his proclamation, his own identity; and given the tenor of his life as we have it recorded in our early Gospels, he was nothing like a lunatic, but was exceedingly clear and level-headed and thoroughly sane. The only logical and sensible conclusion then is that he was who he said he was. Jesus really was God. He must have been. There is no other choice.
When I was a young evangelical this view seemed so logical to me, so clear, so certain. There was no way around it! It was only when I got an education that I realized why it was thoroughly problematic.
The problem is that …
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The problem is that in addition to not being a philosopher or theologian by training, Lewis also was not a biblical scholar. And any biblical scholar on the planet who is not a fundamentalist or conservative evangelical will tell you that the problem with this “proof” is its major premise – namely, that (“since”) Jesus “called himself God.”
The problem is that the only Gospel of the New Testament where Jesus makes divine claims about himself is the Gospel of John. In the three, earlier Gospels you do not find Jesus saying things like “I and the Father are One,” or “Before Abraham was, I am,” or “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” These sayings are found only in the Fourth Gospel, as are all the other “I am” sayings, in which Jesus identifies himself as the one who has come from heaven to earth for the salvation of all who believe in him.
One needs to ask why Matthew, Mark, and Luke never portray Jesus as calling himself God, or equal with God, or one with God. They certainly portray Jesus teaching a lot – for example, about God, and about the coming kingdom of God, and the apocalyptic crisis that is soon to appear, and what people must do in preparation for it to avoid the coming destruction. But he doesn’t ever teach about his divine identity in these Gospels. But how can that be? If Jesus really was God, and if he knew he was God, or if, at least, the Gospel writers believed that he knew (or thought) he was God – wouldn’t they say something about it? Did they just forget that part? Surely it would be THE SINGLE most important thing to say and know about Jesus. How could they possibly leave it out?
The most common way that scholars have explained this almost inexplicable omission in the Synoptic
Gospels is simply that their authors did not think of Jesus as a divine being who was equal with God and pre-existed his birth, who became incarnate as the God-Man. They had different understandings of who Jesus was, for example, that he became the Son of God when God adopted him at his baptism (possibly the view of Mark) or that he became the Son of God when he was born of a virgin (which is the moment when he came into existence, as in the Gospel of Luke).
If this view is correct – I agree with it completely – then the earliest Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – did not understand Jesus to be a divine being who pre-existed his birth and was equal with God from eternity past. Nor did the sources for these three Gospels (Q, M, L) understand Jesus this way. Nor did the oral traditions lying behind these sources understand Jesus this way. This way of understanding Jesus is only on our latest Gospel, written some 60 years after Jesus’ death. It was a view that almost certainly developed within the Johannine community (this, again, is the majority view among scholars who are not fundamentalists and very conservative evangelicals). And the ultimate pay off is that this view of the Fourth Gospel is not the view of the historical Jesus himself. It is a later view put on his lips by the author of John or his sources.
And so there is an easy response to the false conclusion that because Jesus called himself God, he *must* be a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. The response is that the premise is false. The idea that Jesus called himself God is not historical. It is a Legend. And so the choices are Liar, Lunatic, Lord, or Legend. Not that Jesus himself was a legend. Far from it! But the idea that he called himself God is a legend.
But you might also say he was a legend in the modern colloquial way we call great people legends.
There is one thing that I have been wondering is the abscence of the tetragramaton in the new testament. In John 8:58 “Before Abraham was, I am” they do not use the tetragrammaton YWHW to say “I am” they use in greek “prin abraam genesthai ego eimi”. Was the tetragrammaton still in use in the time of the first christian writings? If so, why didn’t they use it even in greek? The phrase “ego eimi” is used in other places as a term for “god”? . It seems to me that in that verse Jesus was only saying that he existed before Abraham but not necesarily that He is god. I mean, there seems no conection to the name of god here.
A Greek author would not use the Tetragrammaton itself because it is Hebrew.
but my doubt is: Did the words “ego eimi” were used as “god” anywhere else? If not, the claim that he was callling himself god in that verse would vanish, wouldn’t it?. That would mean he is only saying something like “I always existed”, not that he is yawheh.
It’s all based on God’s name in his discussion with Moses in Exodus 3, in the Greek translation widely read by Jews at the time.
ooh yeah, the septuagint says that, Thank you Dr Ehrman.
But Jesus could foresee the future which surely makes him God. For example, the 3 denials of peter at the crucification or the destruction of the temple.
But that would mean that anyone who successfully predicts the future would be God. I don’t think anyone imagines, for example, that the prophets of the Old Testament were God.
Or The Amazing Criswell.
The implication of Jesus’ foreknowledge in the earlier gospels is that God has shared this information with him. He ascribes all his miraculous deeds to faith in God, and states (most notably in Mark) that anyone with the same faith as him could also work wonders.
The disciples do perform miracles in Luke and in Acts–written by the same author. But I don’t believe that happens in John. Which would make sense if John was saying that the miracles proved Jesus’ divinity. John the Baptist does show miraculous foreknowledge in knowing Jesus is the one whose coming he has foretold, the Lamb of God, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit (and doesn’t need to be baptized by John, since he is not a man).
Ultimately, John’s view won out. Jesus was the one with the magic hands, and the disciples just magician’s assistants.
It’s easy to put accurate predictions in the mouth of Jesus when you are writing after those events took place. And his biggest prediction that the end of the age was at hand, during their lifetime, did not come to pass!
On what basis do conservative Christian scholars assert that Jesus did in fact claim to be God and that the gospel of John is accurate in this respect? Are they using a completely different model for identifying which sayings of Jesus as reported in the gospels are authentic?
They see hints of it in the Synoptics as well; but the passages are all disputed, in terms of interpretation, and he never ever makes the claims for himself there that he does in John.
So they see those claims in John as historically accurate because of the hints they see in the synoptics? Is there a decent argument to be made that Jesus could have said the things John has him saying, just that you don’t on balance think he did, or is it purely a case of people’s pre-existing theological beliefs leading to this conclusion?
No, not quite. They see the claims in John as historically accurate on their own account (they think John is accurate). But they find supporting evidence int he fact, as they see it, that such claims are alluded to in the Synoptics as well.
I have read 5 of your books (thus far) and I understand what you maintain about Jesus as God in the Synoptics but I nonetheless have a related question: Do fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals make any claims that, in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus calls himself or implies that he is God? Thank you.
Absolutely! They claim that his miracles and teh fact he forgives sins, etc. shows that he must have been God. (It doesn’t work, in my opinion, since lots of other people do miracles and forgive sins; but that’s the argument)
An off-post question if I may, please.
Do you think that the time scale of Luke 24 (which includes the Emmaus couple’s encounter with Jesus, their return to Jerusalem to tell the disciples and the subsequent interaction with Jesus) indicates that this all happened on the day of the resurrection? If that is the case this would appear to suggest that Jesus ascended on that day rather than after 40 days. A complicating factor surrounding this issue is that both ascension accounts (Luke 24 and Acts 1) were written by the same author.
Absolutely. Look at how every paragraph in the sequence begins. It’s all on the same day.
Silver: “If that is the case this would appear to suggest that Jesus ascended on that day rather than after 40 days. A complicating factor surrounding this issue is that both ascension accounts (Luke 24 and Acts 1) were written by the same author.”
Bart resolves this apparent contradiction by seeing Lk 24,51 as a later scribal addition, ie, not part of Luke’s original gospel. See here:
https://ehrmanblog.org/does-luke-flat-out-contradict-himself/
Thanks, Robert, for directing me to this.
Ah yes, the “Trilemma”.
Obviously the Quadlemma is the best response (adding Legend).
But Lunatic is not discounted, either. Not all persons with delusions are stark raving madmen.
A follower of David Koresh, or Jim Jones, or even Charlie Manson, had things played out in a less “connected” time, could very well write a biography of one of these men that would make them seem rational, etc.
I would say these three were all “Lunatics” in a sense.
I think arguments like this 3L argument as well as how do you explain the empty tomb speak to a previous culture where most people still believed everything in the Bible, they just need a little nudge to believe the miracles. I’ve read the arguments come from 19th century to counter “liberals” who were having trouble with miracles but pretty much believed everything else in the Bible was accurate.
If there was an empty tomb, it wouldn’t be hard to explain at all, so I don’t think the liberals were convinced. (They were, however, right in believing that there were real events and people described in the gospels).
Circular reasoning is impossible to defeat (look at Richard Carrier), but that doesn’t make it convincing to anyone standing outside the circle.
According this monograph of the Society for New Testament Studies (Cambridge), with endorsement by Simon Gathercole and Richard Bauckham, the historical Jesus claimed to be God:
https://www.amazon.com/Christology-Society-Testament-Studies-Monograph/dp/1107199263
According to Andrew Loke, “the earliest Christians regarded Jesus as divine because a sizeable group of them perceived that Jesus claimed and showed himself to be divine”.
Suppose, for sake of argument, the historical Jesus did claim to be divine “in some sense” (the qualifier as used in your book “How Jesus became God”), would this rescue Lewis’ trilemma and lead to the conclusion that Jesus is God?
Yes, that’s right. That is absolutely the view of most conservative evangelicals (including Gathercole and Bauckham).
It sounds surprising to hear that we don’t have claims for Jesus’ divinity outside the gospel of John.
Mark
Seems that the very beginning of Mark, in 1:3, refers to Isaiah 40:3-5. It’s not a problem to say that Isaiah text doesn’t refer to Jesus, however, the argument is that the author of Mark’s gospel does refer to Isaiah.
In Mark 2:3-10 Jesus forgives sins, something that only God can do. Others also accused him for blasphemy. Isn’t this a direct confirmation of his divine claim? Moreover, Jesus heals paralytic. We assume that all of them knew what Psalm 103:2-3 says about these two deeds.
Jesus claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28), he controls winds and waves (Mark 4). If we go back to Psalm 107:25-30, we can read that this is again something that God could only do.
Also, what about Mark 14:62? He clearly confirms he is the son of God and refers to Daniel 7:13-14.
Also, what about epistles? Philippians 2:6 for example, or Colossians 2:9 or 1. Timothy 3:16.
Mark 1:3 never refers to Christ as God; and with respect to Mark 2, the priests in the temple also declared “your sins are forgiven,” but none of them was thought of as God. And there were plenty of people who did amazing miracles — even in the Old Testament — and none of them was thought of, as a result, as God.
Don’t think I agree, but nevertheless, that can only prove that he didn’t claim to be God, but he did claim to be divine and son of the God.
Back to the question – does a sane person make such claims?
Millions of sane people have claimed to be children of God! But if you’re thinking that he claimed to pre-exist and to have created the world (which he never claims in the Synoptics), yes, that would be quite different. But the other, far more important, point, is that there is a difference — a massive difference — between what the Gospels *say* Jesus said and what the historical Jesus *actually* said. I don’t think for a second that the historical Jesus claimed to be divine, in either the Johannine or Synoptic sense.
People read Jesus’ divinity into the Synoptic Gospels, but I don’t see it in my reading. Back to Jesus being a “moral” teacher, some take exception to certain things he said, or did not say, like he never condemned slavery. But Jesus believed the kingdom of God was at hand, and all that evil would be set right, very soon. In that context, Jesus was teaching the right thing: get yourself ready for the kingdom; don’t worry about long-term earthly concerns like family, slavery, social injustice, etc. The only problem is that he was wrong; God did not set everything right and so evils like slavery continued, often with the Bible being used to justify it!
Yup, it’s a problem….
I think you misunderstand the prophetic call
Jonah said that Ninevah would be destroyed in 40 days! Of course that was wrong.
Jesus said the Kingdom of God was near! Likewise that prediction was inaccurate
Both prophets expected or were told by God to ‘predict’ something that did not happen
Why didn’t the above predictions occur ????
Please review Ezekiel 33:13
If [God] tell[s] the righteous man that he will surely live, but he then trusts in his righteousness and commits iniquity, then none of his righteous works will be remembered; he will die because of the iniquity he has committed. So when I tell the wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ and he turns from his sin and does what is just and right; if he restores a pledge, makes restitution for what he has stolen, and walks in the statutes of life without practicing iniquity—he will surely live; he will not die.
My point is that plenty of prophets in the OT make accurate predictions of what will happen. That doesn’t make them God.
I know this is off topic but was there a specific reason why the Infancy Gospels were not ultimately included in the accepted Biblical canon?
They were recognized as being written much later and not widely used in teh churches. And legendary in character.
I thought perhaps it was because it showed a more vicious vindictive and abrasive portrayal of Jesus as God than the church wanted to except as orthodox.
As odd as it might seem, there’s no evidence that ancient readers saw these texts as presenting a vindictive and abrasive view of Jesus! They are certainly read that way frequently now, but they don’t have to be, and apparently weren’t!
Also, Irenaeus wanted only four canonical gospels because he attributed mystic significance to ‘4’.
I’d say that he latched onto the significance of 4 only after he already thought there were 4 Gospels; that isn’t why he restricted their number to 4.
I’ve never quite worked out why Jesus would have to be a lunatic in order to believe he was God. It seems like that’s only slightly more extreme than Lewis believing Jesus is God. Which he does. So why would Jesus be a lunatic and not Lewis?
If someone can believe that a man is God and be an otherwise sane religious person. Then why is the person who believes he himself is God automatically bonkers?
I guess the qeustion is: what would you think of C.S. Lewis himself if he seriously claimed that he, personally, was God?
Right, except Lewis is living in a post scientific, post enlightenment era. Would it really be comparable to an ancient person thinking they were God? I don’t disagree that Jesus probably never said he was God. Just with Lewis’ argument.
Weren’t there other ancient people who claimed to be God/Gods or divine? And if so, would they also be classified as lunatics based on Lewis’ logic?
Or liars.
touché
Elwin Ransom, hero of Lewis’ Space Trilogy, is a philologist, like Lewis himself, clearly modeled after his creator, sharing his tastes and opinons in basically all respects. And in the last book, he claims to be the Pendragon, Arthur returned from Avalon.
It’s the next best thing. 😉
Maybe my favorite of Lewis’s works (the Space Trilogy), even though I find That Hideous Strength to be the weakest, a rather obvious resistance to the idea that the world may not be ruled by “absolutes” and “objectivity” a view anathema to many Oxbridge Enlightened Humanists at the time.
I think Ransom’s character suffers from him becoming a sort of Celtic Christian Demigod. In the first two, he’s a very flawed fallible likable fellow, showing great courage and compassion, but also weakness and uncertainty. Admirable, but not idealized.
And in the last book, he’s almost unrecognizible, a tower of determination and strength (hideous or otherwise), noble beyond belief, who has suddenly become the fulfillment of a prophecy that is not even remotely in The Bible–though for a Briton of Lewis’ bent, as I said–almost as good.
This deep certainty in what is right works for Aslan (who is, after all, Christ in animal form–tempted to call him a Blonde Beast), but Ransom is Lewis’ fictional surrogate, and it’s a bit much–he’s whistling in the dark. Well, the early 1940’s, who wasn’t?
Anyway, haven’t read any of them in eons. Say what you will, they stick with you. My personal favorite is still Screwtape, though. Whatever that may say about me. 😉
When I say paganism never really died, this is part of what I mean. Lewis and Tolkien were as devoutly Christian as anyone could be–and just as devoutly pagan. And looking for some way to make the two passions connect.
As to your point: “In a future post I may deal with the question of whether it is possible to transplant ethical teachings of one context into a completely different one, without remainder.”
Please do….!!! would love to hear your thoughts on that specific issue.
And it would also seem, why couldn’t Jesus have just been WRONG? Even if he did say something, he could be honest, sane and just be wrong, especially if a lot of claims of his actions are legendary. These days, especially in politics, we frequently hear people called “liars” that are wrong but not deliberately so.
Lunatic: I’ve always been interested in that and definition and there are people on the blog that could professionally address it I think. So if someone is hearing voices that are telling them to do things, are they “crazy” or is that god? It’s always interesting how from the very religious side you are supposed to pray and “communicate” with god and even hear claims of hearing his voice. Yet we have people hearing voices and obeying in killing people and we put them away. So around here it appears very subjective: If you hear voices that say what Christians tell you to believe, it’s GOD! If you hear voices telling you to do things against what they say, you are crazy or it’s the devil. If you hear voices telling you “don’t lust after that woman”, it’s god stopping you from sin. If you hear a voice saying “go for it: I gave you your body to enjoy and live life” they say it’s the devil or self wishes. I know which god I’d rather have 🙂 but I’m just saying it seems one person’s “lunatic” is another’s prophet. Not judging anyone’s beliefs, but asking how is anyone really objectively deciding the difference, if at all?
I’d say no. This can’t be an “objective” evaluation — it depends on who is making it.
Liar, Lunatic, Lord, legend or deLuded.
Deluded (sorry, de-Luded) is not the same as lunacy, if the test for lunacy is a lack of rational-sounding, calm discourse (as I understand it, this is the evidence against “lunatic” in the “trilemma”).
Deuteronomy 18:20-22 gives success as the only criterion. If the prophecy comes true, the character was a true prophet. If not, then the character was a false prophet. Amusingly, this means that Jesus was a false prophet (Mark 16:28).
I think Bernard Shaw gets the last word on that–or the best, anyway.
“For us to set up our condition as a standard of sanity, and declare Joan mad because she never condescended to it, is to prove that we are not only lost but irredeemable. Let us then once for all drop all nonsense about Joan being cracked, and accept her as at least as sane as Florence Nightingale, who also combined a very simple iconography of religious belief with a mind so exceptionally powerful that it kept her in continual trouble with the medical and military panjandrums of her time.”
Or, in the play itself–
JOAN. I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.
ROBERT. They come from your imagination.
JOAN. Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.
It’s not where someone says they got their ideas that matters. It’s the ideas themselves. It’s for us to decide if they are sound or unsound. Jesus himself said not to trust everyone who says God told him this or that. Jesus knew very well that there are plenty of charlatans and madmen posing as prophets. He just didn’t think he was one of them. Neither do I. But he was wrong on many points, for all that.
It was Wittgenstein who said if a lion could talk to us, we wouldn’t understand him. If God talked to us….?
Since the ‘First Century Mark’ fiasco came to light in May 2018, have the reputations of some of the leading players been reinstated or is the sorry saga still rumbling on?
It’s all *pretty* much resolved. At the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in November there will be a panel discussion of the entire saga and its implications for scholarly integrity. I’ll be one of the people on teh panel delivering a paper.
Hopefully we will see a summary of your paper or maybe even of the panel itself on this blog!
Would you consider blogging about this, please? I for one would be very interested in hearing more about this.
Yup, at the time I’ll certainly think hard about it!
Do you know yet if there will be a YouTube or similar online video?
Don’t know!
Do you have a favorite book in the New Testament?
Probably Mark.
That would seem to be a historians answer….. do you have a literary favorite?
Yup. Mark!
I definitely understand your answer! In the mid-1980s, I took a great class at North Park Theo. Seminary with Prof. Jay Phelan on the Gospel of Mark. We read Rhoads & Michies’s “Mark as Story.” Having previously studied at a literalist fundamentalist seminary, this was my first exposure to approaching the Bible as literature. As an ex-fundamentalist, I loved it! It was a whole new world. It was amazing to see the structures and how they functioned as elements in the story (without obsessing over whether it “really happened”). While serving as a Covenant minister after North Park, I taught a Bible study using my class notes and a paper I had written for class. I’m an atheist now, but I still appreciate the intricate literary structure of Mark as a story.
If it were Old Testament, I would have picked “Song of Solomon”. It’s fun to read it out loud in church when asked to read the Bible and talk about how inspiring it is to you. 🙂
Ha! It’s even more explicit in the original!
Has anyone made a more explicit translation?
I imagine so! But I don’t recall seeing one.
The funniest thing about all this is fundamentalists using C.S. Lewis at all, since he was decidedly not a fundamentalist, held many unconventional religious opinions, had a strange attraction to pagan mythology (like his Catholic colleague and friend, J.R.R. Tolkien) and were he alive today, those using him now might not even consider him a real Christian. Well, as we have learned, you can claim anything about anyone’s beliefs, once they’re dead. Might happen to you someday, Bart. 😉
Reading “Out of the Silent Planet” and “Perelandra” as a boy, I was struck by his insistence that even though the books are about intelligent life on other planets in the solar system, life anywhere else in the cosmos is categorically ruled out, because somehow that would diminish God’s creation–I think this is because Lewis was afraid that a universe full of intelligent life would dilute the significance of Jesus as Messiah and Son of God. Would he then have needed to appear to untold numbers of alien races, or taken an alien form himself? Or were there many others like Jesus, throughout the galaxy? Or were only humans in need of saving?
(Michael Bishop partly answered this question decades later, with his “The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis” where a sentient mantid who is also and equally The Christ comes to earth, after her many siblings had been martyred on her home planet. You can perceive Lewis’s influence, while recognizing he would not have been amused.)
Lewis, like all converts, was fervent in his beliefs. This often made him rigid, which went against his nature as a writer, I think. He’s trying to deal with conflicted feelings in his fiction, which makes it both moving and fascinating, but also sometimes a bit incoherent, intellectually speaking. He’s preaching when he should be just telling the story and letting us make up our own minds what it means.
If the fundamentalists want to take him at his word, don’t they also have to accept that somewhere there’s a giant talking lion who is just as much The Christ as Jesus? That there are a Venusian Adam and Eve who did not give in to temptation? That Arthur Pendragon is returning before Jesus? That Merlin’s sorcery came from neither God nor Satan, but rather some neutral power, and the victory of good may depend on his choosing our side? And that there is in fact no Satan, just a lot of devilish bureaucrats rather resembling Members of Parliament, or possibly Oxford Dons, who feast on human souls and sometimes each other, while debating the finer points of temptation?
I’m genuinely curious!
Hi Bart,
thanks for the interesting article. I do think, however, that Jesus is calling himself God in the Synoptic Gospels. Here’s an example: In Matthew 21,16 Jesus is quoting Psalm 8,2 and makes it very clear that he himself is YHW who, as stated in Psalm 8,2, is preparing praise out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies. Could you comment on those two passages?
Thanks!
If Jesus was YHWH, who was he calling Father and praying to???
But as a direct response to your question: in Matt. 21:15-16 he is (explicitly) claiming to be the “Son of David,” not YHWH.
Bart, thank you for all that you do…I’m somewhat confused by your arguments regarding Jesus as YHWH. As you know, the doctrine of the Trinity says the Father is God, Jesus is God and the HS is God or YHWH in three persons, but there are not three God’s (YHWH’s) but one. You seem to only link YHWH to the Father. Why not all three given the Trinity?
In Psalm 2, we read “The LORD (= YHWH) said to my Lord, You are My Son, Today I have begotten you.” Christians used this as a reference to what hte Father said to the Son. If the speaker is the Father and he is identified as YHWH, adn the person he is speaking to is not YHWH, then they aren’t both YHWH.
Understood, but my understanding is that Chistians believe that two persons within the Godhead (YHWH) can converse together as strange as that is.
The point is that one of them is called YHWH and he is addressing someone else called something else.
Love reading your reply here (and reply to an earlier comment to this post re passages in Mark) pointing out the interpretive errors. I would love to see you go chapter by chapter of each synoptic Gospel and point out how common passages in a chapter are commonly misinterpreted. That’s not asking too much, is it?
Ha! Not too much. Just two years of my life!
Bart, why did Jesus think that he was the Messiah?
He thought that had been revealed to him by God.
Professor, so assuming he thought that in the first century Jewish meaning (not the later Christian meaning), was he not then deluded?
I don’t think God really told him that, no. But I’m an atheist, so I couldn’t think that even if I wanted to!
Dr. Bart. According to the Rabbi community , in the gospels , Jesus controlled his own death . And he died before the 2 thieves , claiming he suffered all sins of all mankind. Those are some simple reasons (in order no to enter in theological issues and interpretations) that the Rabbis show me . How a man can claim to suffer from all sins if he let himself go before any more suffering? . They do no think he is a lunatic, but the product of a unreasonable legend.
Bart, just to play devil’s advocate, don’t the synoptic Gospels present Jesus as divine even if they don’t present Jesus as God? Maybe I am contradicting myself. I always found those verses in Mark and Luke confusing.
“Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” But then Jesus performs miracles. So, it would seem that not only did the author of the Gospel of John put words on Jesus’s lips and miracles on Jesus’s resume, so too did Mark, Matthew and Luke. Is that a harder case to make? It’s not enough to question the accuracy of “John.” But the other 3 Gospels also?
Just to take the other side of the debate for a bit, it is interesting that Jesus was God but outsourced the book writing project to anonymous mortals. It’s also puzzling that Jesus never took his ministry beyond Palestine.
The Synoptics do portray Jesus as divine in *some* sense. But there were lots of senses in which it could be true. They appear to think that at some point of his existence he was *made* into a divine being, not that he existed forever, e.g., as the creator of the world. I explain all this at length in my book How Jesus Became God.
Dr. Ehrman,
I think it would have been great to know what Jesus’ own self-understanding was, but it seems that many critical scholars have cast doubt on much of the Gospel accounts and think that there was much ‘dressing-up’ by these later writers and cases of vaticinium ex eventu. I think your stance is a strong one and the only one which we have strong evidence for: that Jesus became Lord with the resurrection. Let’s say Jesus really did rise; is it possible that could have happened and at the same time Jesus himself was not expecting everything to play out exactly as it did? Why couldn’t God have still vindicated him? Even in Matt. we have Jesus saying he doesn’t know the time of his return. So i.e. maybe it is not asbsolutely necessary that we have good historical evidence about his birth or that every healing was exactly as it is written in the Gospels, and so forth. At core, it seems to have all began in the straightfoward way as you indicate: he died and sometime later he was seen alive again.
*These sayings are found only in the Fourth Gospel, as are all the other “I am” sayings, in which Jesus identifies himself as the one who has come from heaven to earth for the salvation of all who believe in him.*
Is Mark 13:6 not an “I am” statement; said in the context of an end of the world prophesy.
“Many will come in my name claiming εγω ειμι”
Not necessarily. εγω ειμι was simply a way of saying, in Greek, “it is I.” They are the precise words that the healed blind man uses in John 9:9, for example.
Yes but in John 9:9 its necessary to use both words for the emphasis that’s required in the blinds mans response.
In Mark 13:6 its a choice to use them and they give the exact words spoken when people will claim the name of Jesus.
No, nothing necessary about it. He could have just said Yes. (ναι)
Its just the way the author has constructed the sentence that makes it necessary. Some were saying it was him others were saying it wasnt but the man himself said it *is* me.
there’s no necessity in mark 13:6 – “claiming εγω ειμι” could have been left out.
Would 1st-century Jews consider the coming Christ as a divine figure (as are Angels and without equating that figure with almighty God)? I appreciate there was a plurality of views amongst what or who was expected, but wasn’t King David seen as the anointed divine Son of God in the Psalms, even though he was a natural human being?
If so, then wouldn’t it follow that anyone who claimed to be the Christ (which Jesus did concede privately in Mk 8:29-30) would see themselves as the promised heir of David’s throne who could claim a form of divinity that would not equate himself with almighty God?
Most appear to have thought that the future messiah was a human.
Aye, but from the perspective of people in the ancient world, did they not also consider some human beings as having some form of divinity? I’m thinking some of the Ceasers (in the Pagan world) and King David (within Judaism).
Would it not follow that the promised Messiah would be both human and divine, like King David?
Yes, some humans, but not all. Some did think of the messiah as a divine figure. But most, not.
Since all three synoptic gospels do not portray Jesus as a pre-existent divine being, it is amazing that an adoptionist version of Christianity did not survive to the present time.
I suppose it’s still around on the margins, but yes, it was squelched pretty much by the beginning of the third century, and after that never had a chance.
I’m a Christian, but the church would consider me a heretic as I’m also an adoptionist. I’ve had friends of mine I’ve known for over 20 years disowning me on account of this. I only came to these beliefs after reading this blog, so I hold Bart totally responsible!
Incidentally, whilst I believe Jesus was fully human, I also believe he had divine properties or powers after his adoption at his baptism (the Holy Spirit was said to “remain” upon him) before he became fully human and fully divine at his resurrection and exaltation.
There is no Christian in all of history who wouldn’t have been considered a heretic by some other Christian.
No two people ever believe the same exact things in the same exact way. This is the mystery of faith. If it’s not a personal expression, then what is it?
Some people confuse faith with dogma. Dogma is what you have in place of faith. “Just say you believe this and you’re saved.”
This is precisely the kind of religiosity Jesus despised. But while I think he’d be unhappy to learn that the Kingdom hasn’t come yet, he wouldn’t be surprised to find that there were people of this mindset taking his name in vain. He knew them well, and he knew they would be with us always, until the Kingdom comes. If it ever does.
I see a third possibility where authors of the synoptic gospels didn’t understand the elevated message of the Master, whereas the author John did. My reasoning for this is, “I am” spoken in an elevated way is to identify the world, universe, you and I, and everything in the scope of our perceptions as “One”, and that “One” is God. By identifying that “One” we too identify ourselves as one with all. People who don’t understand this will separate themselves from that “One”, so that there is man and there is God, but in truth all are One. The concept is basic mysticism and appears also in Eastern religions. But alternatively you could be right that the words were added to John, but I think by including those phrases the author of John probably does have a comprehension of the “All are One” concept, whether the words were from Jesus or were added.
The idea is common with the numerous “new age” gurus roaming about. All probably understand it initially, but for some it goes to their head, and these people are seen as kooks.
Gospel of Thomas saying #77 clearly shows how “I” and “I am” etc. are to be properly read, indicating the fullness of life is the divinity, not a man:
77 Jesus said, “I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.
Split a piece of wood; I am there.
Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.”
I’ve long wondered whether Lewis’ False Trilemma was more likely the result of willful intellectual dishonesty rather than one of naivete or Christian tunnel vision.
Or is the explanation that his inner author was so enamoured of the alliterative power of his trinity of ‘L’ s that he was blind to the facileness of the argument?
I don’t think he was at all dishonest. This is something he really thought (imo)
I’m curious why neither you nor any of the comments mention Paul. His is the closest we have to contemporaneous material, and he never suggests that Jesus was God.
Actually, I think Paul did think Jesus was God (in some sense). But the issue we’ve been addressing is whether Jesus himself called himself God, not whether later followers did.
Bart.
I believe I’m correct in saying the only thing Paul wrote that he disagreed with Peter and James (who both heard the historical Jesus preach) about was the “Jewish” issue, i.e. was it necessary for Gentiles to convert, be circumcised, should Jews and Gentiles mix, etc. In other words, it’s very likely they all agreed on the question of divinity.
Is there any way to know whether Paul’s view of Jesus’ divinity (in some sense) altered Peter and James’s view, or whether it was the standard belief among proto-Christians *before* Paul became a believer?
If it was the latter, couldn’t one argue that the belief must have been based on some claims Jesus made about himself, since both Peter and James heard him preach?
What am I missing?!
No, I”m afraid there’s no real way to know, since we don’t have any writings from either Peter or James, or reliable accounts of their views.
Bart, C.S. Lewis was a really bright man. Any thoughts on why the fourth “L” never crossed his mind?
He rejected the idea that the Gospels are not essentially reliable reports of what happened in the life of Jesus.
Bart, your explanation seems a reasonable one.. Lewis’ (false) Trilemma was basically a circular argument with his tacit presupposition that the gospels were true, in his mind serving to narrow the possible explanations for ‘Jesus calling himself God’ to his trinity of ‘L’ s.
I guess he just couldn’t take his ‘god glasses’ off long enough to see how unconvincing the argument appears to people who don’t share his ‘faith commitments’.
He was a convert. Now this has to be qualified, since he was raised in the Church of Ireland. But much like Bart (hmmm!) he had an adulthood conversion to a more intense form of belief. Most people in the established church tend to be a bit lukewarm, mistrusting what was sometimes called ‘enthusiasm.’ He wanted to be enthused. He wanted to passionately fully believe, without reservations or qualifications. But he also wanted to go on being an educated sophisticated modern man (who also had a deep passion for pagan mythology).
Well, this is the problem. It’s a problem for many adult converts. Dorothy Day comes to mind. Sensitive brilliant people, who want to give themselves over to something ancient and powerful, while still remaining individuals with fully developed consciences. (Nobody gets upset if they give themselves over to Star Trek or Harry Potter, but when it’s Jesus, people get nervous.)
Lewis’ interpretation of being a Christian meant that he had to accept everything in scripture. He didn’t necessarily have to take all of it literally–he wasn’t a fundamentalist in the modern sense. But neither was he a modern liberal Christian, who rationalizes and explains away the bible stories, since that’s what he was rebelling against. He wanted to BELIEVE. It’s an artistic choice as much as a devotional one. There is something unsatisfying about belonging to something without believing in it.
Obviously the arguments aren’t there, and intelligent as Lewis was, he must have understood that on some level. But he still felt–as many fine and brilliant people continue to feel–that faith is needed in this world. I feel that way myself.
But I won’t accept a bad argument as a good one to further that end. There must be another way.
What about a fifth option? Liar, Lunatic, Lord, legend or “Little of all”. I mean, It could be don’t you think? Maybe he lied sometime, maybe he was a little crazy but he was great moral teacher that deserved be called god, and as you said it was a legend in many ways. I am joking but let me be.
The response to the false conclusion is that the premise is false. But that response adds another premise, that the gospel of John is much later than the synoptics. And what if this premise is false?
Most scholars would argue that John is later than the other three because of its complex theology.
What if the synoptics recorded Jesus’s preaching to the peasants of Galilee, while John (and for that matter also Thomas) recorded his teachings to the inner group? In this case Jesus claim to be God may be authentic.
Bart – I’d love for you to write a post or two on this issue:
Who’s movement was it – John the Baptist or Jesus?
John doesn’t seem to remember that he said Jesus was the one we’ve been waiting for as seen in John 7.
18 John’s disciples told him about all these things. Calling two of them, 19 he sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” 20 When the men came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’”
And Jesus’ answer to John’s disciples’ messengers asking Jesus if he was the “one who is to come” doesn’t answer the inquiry specifically. Why didn’t Jesus simply tell John that he is the messiah – the son of God, and that he has been sent by God to redeem mankind?
The text indicates that John still had a large following, and even Jesus speaks of John’s baptism as something that had great meaning and purpose.
Why, if Jesus was the messiah, did he not take over the movement led by John? After all, scripture indicates that Jesus has what seemed to be a competing group of disciples – to whom he never mentions that John’s mission was complete and that John’s disciples needed to get behind his (Jesus’) movement. And why did John not join up with Jesus?
Interestingly, when Paul confronts some of John’s disciples he asks them what baptism they had received. They answered John’s baptism. Paul did not indicate anything odd or wrong about their answer; just that they needed to be baptized in Jesus’ name in order to get the Holy Spirit.
Again, this is a group of John’s disciples – and Paul does not tell them to change anything other than add the baptism of Jesus.
Good idea. You would probalby be interested in my friend Joel Marcus’s recent book on John the Baptist. He will be providing one or more guest posts on it here on the blog.
Jesus was a young man who had likely been told he was the Son of God. After all, what would a mother tell a son untimely born? We don’t know all the pressures about that. I too know that about my own birth. The fact of being a son of God doesn’t make one God. Whatever, he no doubt felt a special closeness to God, his father, as have I. Jesus was sensitive to the abuses evident in the religious life of those about him. He sincerely wanted to make the world a better place, teaching and living a higher standard than the norm. I credit him as being my brother, a teacher and example of sticking with what he knew to be true to the bitter end, but he was not God. God was a spirit then, and is now and will ever be. Jesus introduced a more loving spirit of God than we often saw in the Old Testament. A spirit that I would like to believe is really what God is like.
It is very very unlikely he was told he was the Son of God (and he himself never claimed to be). There is no indication, in the stories we have about his interactions with his family, that they were aware of any supernatural aspect to his birth. It’s possible there was something odd about it, that got garbled over time–there are odd things about lots of births.
We don’t know his birth was premature, we don’t know he was illegitimate (why would Joseph marry a woman pregnant by another man, and suffer mockery as a cuckold for the rest of his life?) That’s probably all stuff cobbled up a lifetime after the event, (I believe the Virgin Birth may have begun as a baseless vindictive slander of Mary).
Yes, you can tell the story that way, but that’s all you’re doing–and thus acknowledging the underlying ‘facts’ as legitimate, just putting a different spin on them. What Bart has been at pains to inform you is, nothing we have about Jesus’ origins, other than his being a poor man from Nazareth, has any clear factual basis to it at all. We just don’t know. So why assume?
He MAY have believed God told him he was his son by adoption, in a vision he had after his baptism. That’s not necessarily a sign of mental imbalance. People who are quite sane can have visions in moments of exaltation or stress. It was a commonplace thing for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to have visions, which they believed to be quite real–achieved by fasting, or the use of certain plants, or maybe they just had particularly vivid dreams and looked for a meaning behind them.
My grandparents all came from Ireland. My mother’s father had a dream he was cutting a loaf of bread, and the loaf never ran out. My grandmother said that meant he would have a great success. He managed to buy a gas station shortly afterwards, which got his family through the Depression. Did that happen? My mother told me the story, as her mother told her. It was real to them. The gas station sure was. My grandfather died in old age of cancer, probably caused by the chemical additives in the gasoline.
Another option is that the resurrection appearance claims in the pre Pauline Corinthian creed were invented out of whole cloth. I explore the possibility here: http://palpatinesway.blogspot.com/2018/03/examining-easter-peering-behind-veil-of.html
Greetings from Mexico. In my contact with Rabbis , as you know they refuse the Jesus, not only in the theological doctrine. But they also argue many issues. We know that in Palestine were Greek towns, and Jesus never confronted a Greek or even a Roman about woshiping the false gods of these civilisations. The Rabbis can´t accept a Meshia that assuming himself as a God, did not debate with Romans and Greeks about the believing in the wrong gods. Instead he focused only in criticized the leaders of his own people. When the prophecies told that the Meshia would protect his people.
Excellent post. One of your best. Thanks.
Dr Ehrman –
Tangential to the lunatic charge:
Question – On what basis was Jesus making his claim in Mark 13:30, that all would take place within the lifetimes of his audience (my focus being on the specific timeframe)?
The claim itself clearly coheres with and fits into a broader context of apocalyptic belief in certain strains of 1st century CE Judaism (and especially that of John the Baptist), but what I’m trying to get at is the specificity of the claimed near-term timeframe. What (cogent) reasons would he (or JB for that matter) have marshaled if asked by an onlooker, “Listen, I get that the forces of evil are arrayed against God’s people and his divine plan, and that the Scriptures attest that God puts things right in the end, and that when the end time goes down the Son of Man will usher it in on the clouds of heaven; and I even grant that the miraculous works you’re doing show that God is again working in the world in a way he hasn’t in a long time; but what is it precisely that makes you think it’s gonna happen now (vs. 100 years from now, or better yet in September 1988)?”
Thanks much!
N.B. When do you expect the 7th edition of your NT textbook to drop? Eagerly awaiting…
He thought it had been revealed to him by God. 7th ed: soon. It’s in production now.
Got it, thank you.
Relatedly, without delving too deeply into speculative psychology, is there anything one can say about the nature of said revelation? I.e., would he’d likely have described it as something more along the lines of a revelatory appeal-to-authority argument (“God has revealed this sense of timeliness to me”), rather than a specific signs type of argument (“signs X, Y and Z point to now”)? Or too speculative?
Great on the textbook edition – my wife is imploring me for an idea for my birthday. I can now also appeal to authority that the time draws near.
My sense — without evidence one way or the other — is that like other prophets, Jesus believed God gave him insights into reality not commonly known otherwise.
Many thanks as always
In addition to the fact that the historical Jesus probably did not make any claim to be God, despite John’s Gospel, there seems another dimension to the larger question of whether we should think of Jesus as merely either a liar/lunatic or the Lord. If we were dealing with any other philosopher, for instance, who is generally regarded as just a human being like the rest of us, then readers often find no difficulty in rejecting the truth of some claims the philosopher makes and accepting others, or in accepting certain claims as being true while rejecting some of the larger assumptions or framework in which they were originally grounded. I might, for example, reject the truth of Schopenhauer’s metaphysical conviction that all human beings are in their essence one, but still be convinced by his arguments that compassion is the primary human virtue. I might not believe, as Schopenhauer did, that compassion emerges from the fact that we recognise the same human essence between ourselves in the people we are compassionate for, but I might still believe, as he argues, that compassion produces ethically desirable results when we exercise it for one another. This could easily be the case with Jesus too–we might not believe that forgiveness is important because we must be prepared for the immanent apocalypse, but we may still believe forgiveness is important for other reasons–some of which Jesus might also articulate. So, I think this dichotomy of Jesus either being a lunatic/liar or the Lord only holds for a person that believes that Jesus must be God in the first place, and thus can’t be wrong about anything he says, or if he is wrong, then he must have been crazy. The dichotomy, that is, only stands for people who hold Jesus to different inerrancy/fallibility standards than we hold for any other human being. But if we do treat Jesus like a human being, human like the rest of us, then we can accept that he may have just been mistaken about the when God’s Kingdom would come or even about his own identity, but those mistakes do not mean that other things he taught could not hold considerable and important wisdom.
Well put, though I think you underestimate how much certain philosophers can take on a nigh-religious significance for some people–many more people were murdered in the name of Karl Marx than Jesus in the 20th century. Plato has inspired many a dictatorship.
And nearly all Christians selectively interpret Jesus, whether they admit it or not. To C.S. Lewis, it might seem worth deifying him, if that means people would take him seriously about the deeper values he preached. But as Jesus himself knew, there would always be some who deliberately misunderstood–who made it all about them. The goats.
The real problem is that we can be quite sure Jesus didn’t say all the things attributed to him, and in any event, he wasn’t saying the goal was just to do what he said. The goal is to do what’s right. He believed the basic rules were already there in Judaism, as we can say they existed in other religions and philosophies before his birth. But so few people live up to the systems of morality they profess to believe in. Many will pervert them in order to gain power and influence.
This happens with or without theistic religion. It can often be worse in an atheistic system, where selfishness can be given free rein, with no higher authority to appeal to–a very serious misreading of Darwin’s ideas was used to justify many horrors, including the Third Reich. (And Darwin is sometimes treated as semi-divine by some–always depicted as an old white man with a beard, though he was a much younger man when he did the work we remember him for).
It’s not what you believe. It’s how you act on it. Jesus clearly did not believe you had to be a Jew to gain the Kingdom, or that all Jews would get there. He believed God only judged behavior, not beliefs. But beliefs do tend to shape behavior. And with no beliefs at all, no moral structure to work with, human behavior can be worse than any hell ever imagined.
This gets to my issues with “Gospel harmonies.” By blending the different gospels together to create a unified whole you actually end out creating a new work that says things none of the individual gospels say. You understand each Gospel better by studying it as its own thing.
I’ve made literalists who use proof-texts from John angry before by asking if they think that the other three canonical gospels got t wrong when they disagree.
“You’re not supposed to ask questions like that!”
Thinking is obviously a very bad thing…
If you really want to grind a fundy’s gears simply point out the passages that show Jesus lying through his teeth, viz, John 12:27 where he forswears and categorically rejects any notion that he would ask God to spare him. Then, when nobody is looking, (Mark 14:35-36) he falls on his face and begs for his life. Was it twice or thrice?
Then there are those passages that, if you believe the text is inerrant, strongly suggest Jesus was suffering from dementia/insanity, viz, John 12 where he responds to Andy and Phil’s message from the Greek Jews with an irrelevant, semi-hysterical rant about how a seed must die.
Lastly, and confirming the brain damage, is Bart’s (and my) favorite IC (irreconcilable contradiction) in John 13 and 14 where Jesus upbraids his disciples for not asking where he is going when they had just done exactly that!
So…liar? Check!
Demented? Check!
Next question?
If you are an atheist, what motivates you to keep searching and seeking? Is it the fact that you have invested so much time in the study all ready? Are you out to prove to the world that God is truly dead, or never was? Is there still the “spark of God” within that you cannot ignore and moves you forward? You need not answer to me; however, I wonder if you consider these questions in the quietness of your time? Actually, my faith has not been lessened by your books and Great Courses DVDs which I have purchased. I can accept the fallacy of much that man has written., and yet, within, I believe that God is. All else is elaboration. Best Wishes on your journey.
No, I’m afraid you completely misunderstand me. I have no desire or interest at ALL in trying to prove there is no God. (Why would you think that? Have you read my books? I’m always quite clear about that)
How do you think about what Paul might have thought about Jesus’s Messianic self knowledge when quoting the creedal hymn in Phil. 2:6-11 around 60ce ?
Paul understands Christ to be a pre-existent divine being who came to earth and then returned. Presumably he thinks Christ would have known who he was at every stage.
Calloused? Because he wore sandals everywhere and did a ton of walking? Presumably you mean callous.
I think you mean ‘callous’ liar not ‘calloused liar’ – the phantom spell-checker strikes again?
Cambridge dictionary gives:
callous: unkind, cruel, and without sympathy or feeling for other people
callused. adjective also calloused uk – He stood looking down at the dark, callused palms of his hands.
Jesus may have had calloused hands – he was a carpenter after all – but I think you mean ‘callous’…..
Ha! It wasn’t spell-checker: it was pathetic me and rushed typing!
If Paul’s writings are the earliest views of Christianity (Relative to the gospels) and he thought Jesus was a pre existent divine being why isn’t this Christology present in Mark? Shouldn’t Mark have shared this view?
Yup, interesting question. It’s because Christian theology developed differently in different places and different people had different views, just as they do now. We tend to think that everyone thought the same thing at the same time, and if someone developed a more “advanced” view, everyone got on board. Not actually!
The OTHER problem with the C.S.Lewis trichotomy is that it reduces all the complexity of the human mind to a single unit. People can have a mental illness and be morally insightful at the same time.
Hey, Dr. Ehrman, how do you respond to the fact that in all of the synoptics, the Disciples worship Jesus after the Resurrection appearances? Clearly, these traditions are mutually dependent, and Mark may have been a source for the others, but to me, that indicates some kind of equation of Jesus with God even in the synoptics. Many people have argued that only Yahweh would be worshipped by the Apostles due to their strong monotheistic leanings and Jewish upbringing. How would you respond to that? Do you think the Apostles worshipped Jesus while he was live? Why or why not?
To start with, it doesn’t happen in all the Synoptics. (Mark, for example, never has an appearances of Jesus to the disciples after the resurrectoin) But my view is that the Synoptic writers DID think of Christ as divine in SOME SENSE. Not that he was Yahweh or that he had existed with God before his birth, but that he was made a divine being at his resurrection (or some other point). I talk about all this at some length in my book How Jesus Became God if you’re intereested.