Is Jesus human? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Yes. He is.
Next time we’ll continue looking at this book and…..
Oh. You probably want to hear more.
There are some interesting aspects to point out in this chapter, but overall, the goal of Fatoohi in this chapter seems to be to keep pointing out that Jesus was human. I don’t know where these Christians are that he thinks he needs to convince of that are. It’s actually an essential part of Christianity not just that Jesus was human but that Jesus is STILL human.
I was surprised to hear him say that the Christ was killed on the cross. I do not know if he is somehow making some distinction between the Christ and Jesus, which strikes me as an odd position for a Muslim to take. Still, it is rare as well to find a Muslim that agrees that Jesus died on the cross. I don’t think the Qur’an necessarily rules it out, but I also know the majority of Muslims argue against it, even sometimes calling it the cruci-fiction.
Yet in the very next paragraph, he says that the Christians repudiated the view of the Jews that the Messiah would be a conquering warrior yet replaced him with a divine figure. He claims that this had no roots at all until Paul came along and until the Gospel of John was written. I do think he has other chapters on this later on. We’ll see but if so, I won’t fault him for not making his case now.
Later on, Fatoohi says that Jesus lived, died, and will be resurrected like everyone else. Again, this is a fascinating admission. He does say that Christians invented the concept of the second coming when the end of the world didn’t come. Readers can look through what I have written on Preterism to know how I see that concept.
So somehow, Fatoohi still thinks it’s a major point to stress that Jesus was a human being like all other Messiah figures in the Old Testament were. Again, no one is arguing against this. True, Christians do tend to downplay the humanity of Christ, but they still know He is human.
This is the problem I often find with reading material written to attack Christianity. I don’t care if we’re talking about Muslims or if we’re talking about internet atheists. Most of them do not really understand the position that they’re arguing against. They do not read the books that argue for the position they are opposed to. Meanwhile, when I realized I could be speaking to students about the doctrine of the Trinity for when they speak to Muslims, the first books I was buying were the Muslim books I could find on the topic.
Will it improve in this book? I’m doubtful. It would be good to have my position treated properly, but I honestly don’t remember the last time that happened. Still, there’s no stopping since I’ve started and next time we look at this we will see more on the idea of Jesus being the Son of God.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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