In the Bible, did Jesus claim to be God?

GentleDove · Post by **GentleDove** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 8:41 pm

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote this about Jesus (emphasis mine):

"I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I am ready to accept Jesus as the great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a boiled egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Some debaters on the site have written that Jesus did not claim to be God and/or Biblical authors did not claim that Jesus was God.

Yet, it is an orthodox Christian doctrine, claimed to be Biblically-based, that Jesus was man and God in one person.

Questions for debate:

In the Bible, did Jesus claim to be God?
Did the Biblical authors claim that Jesus was God?

Jonah · Post by **Jonah** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 11:37 am

One of most virulent forms of anti-Judaims is the constant assertion by Christian fundamentalists that Jews are stupid...that they don't know their own Scriptures...they don't know how to be Jewish...and that the Hebrew Scriptures are not theirs...that the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures were not Hebrew, but rather some odd species of human being set against Israel...that they are on "God's side" as opposed to the "Jews' side." We see this time and again with Christian fundamentalists when they talk about the Prophets. They speak of The Prophets as if they were not members of the Hebrew people, and rather, they were "sent" to be persecuted by the Hebrew people as supposedly Jesus was. Thus Jesus and the Prophets are pitted AGAINST the Jews. It's nonsense.

McCulloch · Post by **McCulloch** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 12:15 pm

Jonah wrote:One of most virulent forms of anti-Judaims is the constant assertion by Christian fundamentalists that Jews are stupid...that they don't know their own Scriptures...they don't know how to be Jewish...and that the Hebrew Scriptures are not theirs...that the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures were not Hebrew, but rather some odd species of human being set against Israel...that they are on "God's side" as opposed to the "Jews' side." We see this time and again with Christian fundamentalists when they talk about the Prophets. They speak of The Prophets as if they were not members of the Hebrew people, and rather, they were "sent" to be persecuted by the Hebrew people as supposedly Jesus was. Thus Jesus and the Prophets are pitted AGAINST the Jews. It's nonsense.

I agree. However, I believe that this antisemitism is inherent to Christian theology. They must believe that Jesus, the Jew, was the messiah predicted by the Jewish prophets, misunderstood and sentenced to death by the Jews of that day. Removing this anti-jewish bias from the holy writings of Christianity would leave them with virtually nothing. Christianity is a bastard religion, it makes little sense except in the context of Judaism, yet it denies the fundamental teachings and traditions of Judaism. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, but in the sense that it is the illegitimate child of the Jewish group of religions, as Orthodox Judaism, Hasidic Judaism, Haredi Judaism, Kabbalah, Masorti Judaism, Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, Pharisees, Sadducees, Samaritans, Zealots, Essenes and Ebionites are the legitimate children.

Jonah · Post by **Jonah** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 1:39 pm

Yes, I agree. This is why I shudder at Jewish-Christian dialogue where the Christians get to keep the New Testament intact. The most honest Christian I knew in regard to this dynamic, is Dr. Norman Beck of Texas Lutheran University. He wrote a book entitled: "Mature Christianity: The Recognition and Repudiation of the Anti-Jewish Polemic in The New Testament".

Imagine: Surgically removing anti-Judaism from the New Testament. What indeed would you have left? You would have what the Ebionites had, and while that wasn't much, they didn't need much.

In short, the only legitimte path for a reconstructed authentic Christianity would be to return to Judaism in the umbrella you have described. It may not be mainstream Judaism as we would think of it today, but it would be a form of Judaism.

InTheFlesh · Post by **InTheFlesh** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 2:33 pm

Jonah wrote:One of most virulent forms of anti-Judaims is the constant assertion by Christian fundamentalists that Jews are stupid...that they don't know their own Scriptures...they don't know how to be Jewish...and that the Hebrew Scriptures are not theirs...that the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures were not Hebrew, but rather some odd species of human being set against Israel...that they are on "God's side" as opposed to the "Jews' side." We see this time and again with Christian fundamentalists when they talk about the Prophets. They speak of The Prophets as if they were not members of the Hebrew people, and rather, they were "sent" to be persecuted by the Hebrew people as supposedly Jesus was. Thus Jesus and the Prophets are pitted AGAINST the Jews. It's nonsense.

Does this rant have anything to do with the OP?

I believe in Jesus and the Old Testament
and I'm not anti Jew.
So what is your point?

Remember, the Jews are the chosen nation of God.

beloved57 · Post by **beloved57** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:12 pm

Remember, the Jews are the chosen nation of God.

Not the ethnic jews..but the spiritual jews are which are comprised of both jew and gentile elect..

Jonah · Post by **Jonah** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:12 pm

Granted, threads are subject to drift.

But as to rant? You may experience a Jew and Judaism insisting on defining Judaism by in-house Jewish parameters as a rant, but really...how can you credibly argue that a People (Jews) do not have a right to THEIR OWN self-understanding?

Whatever your Christian spin is on Jews and the "Old Testament" is is just that, and you ought to be able to admit that...that you are indeed not admitting Jews' own self-understanding as a source of credible information.

I really find little benefit in a Christian stating "Jews are the chosen nation of God" when the Christian has a totally un-Jewish view of "election".

As to OP, I think the drift here inheres in the Christian claim that the OT supports the idea of Jesus as God...which of course, Jews have said a loud NO to for two thousand years. There is nothing new here. The primary question then is the NT...and particularly so because modern biblical Scholarship, mostly from Christian quarters, have undermined the notion that deity for Jesus is claimed in the NT.

To be fair to both sides, I personally think you see the beginnings of a deity concept in some NT texts, but it was a gradual developmental thing. And even if anyone wanted to concede it's in the Pauline corpus, that in itself does not translate to immediate adoption by the whole Church. Paul can sell, but who buys is another question.

beloved57 · Post by **beloved57** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:14 pm

Did Jesus christ specifically claim not to be God ?

Jonah · Post by **Jonah** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:23 pm

Beloved's remark is indicative of the misunderstanding of election.

For some reason the American consumerist ideal has kicked into American fundamentalist Christianity...the whole standard of: "What's in it for me?...What do I get?...What status does it give me?" This notion imagines that election is some kind of prize, a blue ribbon in the cosmic county fair.

No. The opposite. Election is a due bill. It's an obligation. So. The trashy remark about ethnic Jews is really crass, because it imagines throwing out certain Jews. Just throw them out for sub-standard performance. NO. No one in Judaism gets off that easy. A bad Jew still gets the bill. Election is accountability, not a heavenly gold Master Card.

Jonah · Post by **Jonah** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 5:08 pm

Response to: "Did Jesus christ specifically claim not to be God ?"

It didn't come up, and wouldn't have come up. In Judaism, a human being cannot be God. The concept never had been present in Judaism, and in fact was anathema to Jewish monotheism. Does the NT put claims to deity in Jesus's mouth? Perhaps in some fuzzy way. But the NT is not a document Jews give authoritative credibility to. If the writer of the Gospel of John said Jesus stated this or that....Jews will have disbelief John is telling the truth on many of those things. Some things in the NT will have an authentic ring to them because the writers/editors did not have a theological reason to mess with the primary source.

beloved57 · Post by **beloved57** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 6:17 pm

jonah said:

It didn't come up,

How you know ? Did you happen to live back then or something ? How old are you, a couple thousand years old ?