Tag: Jesus

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 11

What about Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this chapter, we will see the exact same in-depth research Paulos has given to every other section in this book.

Which is none.

Let’s just dive into it.

As noted, the occasion for these observations is Gibson’s gory movie and an underreported fact about its basis: there is little, if any, external historical evidence for the details presented in the somewhat inconsistent biblical versions of the Crucifixion. Unless we take literally and on faith the New Testament accounts of Jesus written many decades afterward (between 70 and 100 c.e.), we simply don’t know what happened almost two millennia ago, at least in any but the vaguest way. This, of course, is part of the reason that Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which purports to fill in the details of the story and its aftermath, was No. 1 on Amazon for so long, selling millions of copies to date.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 92). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Of course, there are no scholars here cited.

So let’s see what some say.

“The fact of the death of Jesus as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable, despite hypotheses of a pseudo-death or a deception which are sometimes put forward. It need not be discussed further here.” (Gerd Ludemann. .”What Really Happened To Jesus?” Page 17.)

Christians who wanted to proclaim Jesus as messiah would not have invented the notion that he was crucified because his crucifixion created such a scandal. Indeed, the apostle Paul calls it the chief “stumbling block” for Jews (1 Cor. 1:23). Where did the tradition come from? It must have actually happened. (Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Third Edition. pages 221-222)

 

Jesus was executed by crucifixion, which was a common method of torture and execution used by the Romans. (Dale Martin, New Testament History and Literature. Page 181)

 

That Jesus was executed because he or someone else was claiming that he was the king of the Jews seems to be historically accurate. (ibid. 186)

 

Jesus’ execution is as historically certain as any ancient event can ever be but what about all those very specific details that fill out the story? (John Dominic Crossan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-d…_b_847504.html)

Also, none of these are Christians.

But hey, reading is hard for people like Paulos. He might have to step outside of his bubble and encounter contrary thought.

Next, he goes on to talk about obvious biological absurdities like the virgin birth (Which I do affirm) and the resurrection. He says we will set those aside, but apparently thinks saying they’re biologically absurd is sufficient.

Paulos. I hate to tell you this, but ancient people knew how babies were made and they knew dead people stay dead. You go on though and pat yourself on the head and say you know so much more than they did.

Assume for the moment that compelling historical documents have just come to light establishing the movie’s and the Bible’s contentions that a group of Jews was instrumental in bringing about the death of Jesus; that Pilate, the Roman governor, was benign and ineffectual; and so on. Even if all this were the case, does it not seem hateful, not to mention un-Christian, to blame contemporary Jews?

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 92). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Yes.

I’m sorry. Does Paulos think I think were are to hold all Jews accountable for what some Jews did 2,000 years ago?

He then decides to take on Lewis’s trilemma.

Aside from its alliteration, Lewis’s question is not compelling in the least. Did Jesus really say he was the Son of God? We don’t know. Could he have meant it metaphorically rather than literally? We don’t know. Could he be an amalgam of various real and mythic figures? We don’t even know this. (Such untestable speculations about Jesus and other figures remind me of the classics scholar who published a seminal breakthrough. The Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by Homer, he asserted. They were actually written by another blind Greek poet of the same name.) In any case, there are many ways out of this trilemma that commit one neither to abandoning admiration for (at least a good chunk of ) Jesus’ teaching nor to accepting his divinity.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 94). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Never mind that this is all said and done after Lewis has established his case already for the historical Jesus. Paulos is too busy with an agenda to care about facts. He also says “We don’t know” but I am unsure who this “we” is since Paulos never cites biblical scholars and has apparently never read them.

So again, a chapter where Paulos ignores all the scholarship and expects us to take him seriously.

Don’t.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Was The World Waiting?

Was the world expecting the Messiah? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Sometimes we hear people say, and I might have said it in the past, that when Jesus came to Earth, the world was waiting for Him. There was a universal language, a universal travel system, and people were searching for hope. It sounds good to say, but as I pondered it, I wondered if that was true.

Even if we look at the Jewish people at the time, we don’t see them saying “Look! The 70 weeks of Daniel are almost over! The Messiah is coming!” Of course, they were expecting a Messiah, but there wasn’t an effort done to pin down when the date would be. When the wise men come to Herod, there is no urgency on the part of the Jewish people to go and see Jesus. There is no cause of celebration among them. If anything, we read the opposite, that they were troubled.

Jesus came into a world He wanted to save, but that doesn’t mean He came into a world that wanted Him.

Jesus came into a world where He experienced more rejection and suffering than any of us have. Even as an infant, He could not escape it as His family had to flee to keep Him from being killed. At this point, the only “crime” He was guilty of was being born.

Not only that, but for any of us, when we experience suffering, it is not as if we are perfectly innocent people. Jesus is the only one who there was no justice in what was done to Him by the people. He is the one who should have been received with the most love, but instead, He was condemned with the most hate.

Not much has changed in 2,000 years.

Of course, Christians can be jerks just as much as anyone else can, but also we live in a world where we are hated for the positions that we hold today. If you defend marriage as a man and a woman exclusively, then you are a bigot. If you hold that human life is sacred from the moment of conception and should not be killed in the womb, then you hate women. Since we hold to the biblical miracles, we are also obviously anti-science as well.

We, like our Lord before us, are not welcome in the world.

Yet like our Lord before us, we are called to love this world and give ourselves for the cause of its salvation if need be. We are also called to love those who persecute us. We should consider that if Jesus was willing to go to the cross for those He loved, surely we are willing to be called a name for those same people.

Christmas should be a time to stop and remember not just that Jesus came, but why He came. By all means, have fun and celebrate with family and friends, but also remember Jesus came into a warzone. We still live in one.

The world didn’t want Him. It doesn’t want us.

Yet Jesus gave Himself for the world. We have the same responsibility to save the world He loves.

Let’s do it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Paulogia on the Resurrection Part 4

How did the resurrection claims end? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So now we come to Paulogia’s final points. After addressing these, for the final day of the week, I plan on writing about why I do not find these convincing overall. For now, let’s see what Paulogia has to say.

The first is that Greek-speaking Gentiles who never saw Jesus began writing down the stories centuries later. Of course, there is no real interaction with scholarship that places the Gospels early, not that the case Habermas and others build depends on them. You don’t see Jesus and the Eyewitnesses dealt with.

Paulogia does say the case against traditional authorship is ironclad and has a link to that. I understand he can’t argue for everything in a post. At this, I do just want to raise up some questions.

If these were Greek speakers writing about events long before them, why did they not put anything on the lips of Jesus that addressed their concerns. Why is there nothing on the nature of the Lord’s Supper and baptism? Why is there nothing on meat offered to idols? Why is there nothing on what Gentiles have to do to be saved or on circumcision? Why does the term Son of Man show up constantly when it doesn’t in the rest of the New Testament?

If we want to say that the Gospels were written as prophecy fulfilled after the fact, then why is this not done on the topic of the resurrection where one would think you would find the most Old Testament references? You don’t even find a doctrine of the atonement here. Why not?

Also, if we are talking about authorship, why would the church pick the names that they did? Matthew was a tax collector. Surely you could find a better representative among the apostles! Mark had a reputation of being a Momma’s Boy who ran away in the first missionary journey causing a split between the church’s two first great missionaries. Luke was a Gentile who is only briefly mentioned in the epistles. The only one that makes sense is John, and that is the one the church debated! Was it John the elder or John the apostle?

The 11th point is that some Christians were punished for behavior by the Roman government. The problem is we are not told what this was. How about the fact that Christians were also seen as intolerant because they refused to acknowledge other gods? How about Christians had a Messiah who was crucified which was shameful? How about Christianity was an automatic challenge to Caesar by calling Jesus the only Lord?

Paulogia says the church grew because they gave to the poor and were accepting of others. The fact that they refused to worship other gods actually had them be seen as unaccepting of others. As for the poor, that would explain the poor coming to them, but not anyone in elite circles. You could give to the poor if you wanted without having to follow a crucified Messiah.

And then finally, Christianity eventually gained tolerance and then became the official religion. Okay, but how did it get to that point? Paulogia says other points like an empty tomb are later embellishments. One thinks he doth claim victory too quickly. Also, Paulogia never explains why we have this story as I said at the start.

He finally says the ball is in Habermas’s court.

This is likely the closest Paulogia is going to get a return serve as I have no reason to think Habermas will take Paulogia seriously.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Paulogia on the Resurrection Part 3

Was Paul ridden with guilt? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re continuing our look at Paulogia that can be found here and today, points 7-9 will be covered.

Point 7 is that the story of Jesus spread orally with the emphasis being on recruiting new members to the movement instead of transmitting accurate history.

Paulogia appears to paint this as an either-or. It seems unheard of that you could recruit new members to the movement by transmitting accurate history. The implicit assumption is “If we tell the history accurately, we won’t get members” and “If we want to get members, we need to downplay the history.” Of course, there is no interaction with how oral societies communicate their stories.

There’s still nothing also on why this story. Why tell stories about a crucified Messiah? If you’re trying to embellish and rewrite the history, then surely one of the first statements you would want to eliminate is crucifixion. You could have resurrection without crucifixion. Jesus went into Pilate’s residence at the head of a mob and was killed in the attempt, but He was resurrected as a hero of the movement. Nope. Jesus suffers the capital penalty that was the worst in shame at the time.

Paulogia also says that the Gospels weren’t written until decades later. I suspect he is thinking of the communication being like a game of telephone with individuals talking to individuals, when it would be more stories being told in group settings. The groups would have certain members in them who would make sure the stories were told accurately. There is no interaction with people like Dunn or McIver or Bailey or others on oral communication as was said.

Now we get to Paul who had a non-veridical vision of the allegedly-resurrected Jesus. And what was the cause of that vision? Let’s say it all together boys and girls!

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE!

Yes, it’s that magic term atheists like to throw out when they don’t know anything else to say. Paulogia also compares this to PTSD. Over what? Who knows?

To get to Cognitive Dissonance again, there is no reading of someone like Festinger. There is an allegation that Paul is wrestling with guilt, but that is just Paulogia throwing his own culture onto the Biblical one. In the Biblical one, as in many honor-shame cultures, behavior was done to earn the approval of the group or some other external source, such as God, and was not based on internal feelings or conscience.

What does Paul have guilt over? Killing Christians? He would have seen that as a service to God. Paulogia also says he wanted a new purpose in life, because obviously rising up the ranks in Jewish society and being an up and coming star in that field was just not worth it. Obviously, he needed to attach himself to this shameful group that gave him persecutions instead.

As for Paul being prone to hallucinations, again, this is Paulogia’s stance. Evidence they were hallucinations? Well, that doesn’t happen. Why? Because there is no God that can provide visions? If so, that is part of the claim that needs to be demonstrated. Readers know I have plenty of times made my case for theism here.

Finally, Paul met the apostles, but they did not see eye to eye. Paulogia says this explains the lack of information about Jesus’s ministry in his epistles. Once again, Paulogia is pressing his own low-context culture on a high-context society. In a high-context society, background knowledge on the part of the reader is assumed. (It would be ironic if we found out that Paulogia also complains about alleged Christian bigotry after he has pushed his own ideas of how society works onto the Biblical culture.)

Paulogia also says that this is evidence Paul’s visit was not to talk about the life of Jesus. Yes. Because obviously, when he met with the apostles and conferred with them, they were just talking about the weather or all that time or perhaps how the Jumping Jehoshophats were going to do in taking down the Egyptian Eagles in that year’s chariot races.

So once again, we have nothing but weak cases from Paulogia that run on speculation upon speculation and ignore the culture of the time.

We’ll look at the rest of the work tomorrow.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Paulogia on the Resurrection Part 2

How well-known was Jesus after His death? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Continuing the look at Paulogia, the next point he wishes to make from here is that before the crucifixion Jesus had some followers, but most of them disappeared from reliable history aside from Peter, never to be heard from again.

So many vague terms here.

Paulogia refers to self-serving and fanciful church traditions here (Not sure what that means entirely.), Paulogia says that only Peter and John really get mentioned in the narrative. He does say that Sean McDowell says that Peter is the only member of the twelve whom we have a high degree of probability for with regard to martyrdom. It has been awhile since I read that book, but even granted that, what follows from that?

When it comes to what we have from the ancient world, what we have to have to get to us is that first, someone observed it, then someone wrote it, then it managed to be copied, then it somehow lasted to our times. Sometimes this is difficult and we know that there are many books that have been lost to history. The writings of Papias come to mind as an example.

Yet despite this, I wonder what Paulogia means by disappeared into history. Does it mean that they had no impact? Are the only lives worth recording those who were martyred? Paulogia leaves too much unclear on this point.

Paulogia’s fifth point is that after the death of Jesus, Peter was distraught and experienced a bereavement hallucination.

Okay. How do we know he was distraught?

Paulogia might say “Wouldn’t you be if the man you thought was the Messiah was gone?” Maybe, or maybe Peter was more “I can’t believe I spent around three years of my life following this fraud!” We don’t know his psychological state. There is a reason psychohistory has by and large been abandoned. I have been in therapy and still am and it’s hard enough to diagnose someone who you are talking to in person. Doing it with someone in history is more difficult.

Besides that, even if Peter was having a hallucination, the ancient world was familiar with bereavement hallucinations. It never led to them thinking that the person was alive again. One would also think that surely by the time Peter is being crucified he would be saying “You know, that probably was a hallucination.” Normally unless someone is in advanced stages of dementia or has a psychiatric disorder of some kind, they know when they have had a hallucination.

The next part is that James joined the movement after as well as John. But why James? Paulogia suggests social contagion, but why should anyone think this? What would it take to convince you that your brother was alive again and not only was alive, but was the Son of God?

He also suggests maybe James took over the family business. What business? James is never declared to be the Messiah even though he would have been an obvious pick. James is mentioned a number of times in Acts, but he is certainly not a highlighted figure in comparison to Peter and Paul.

Thus we conclude reasons 4-6 and what do we find but more of the same kind of material?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

The Problem of Unipersonalism

What assumption do Arians make? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I regularly debate the Trinity with Jehovah’s Witnesses and others. If there’s one big mistake that they make, it is what I call the assumption of unipersonalism. The topic under debate in these discussions is whether God is one person or not. What happens in the assumption is that it is automatically taken for granted that God is one person and every text is read in that light.

Imagine going to the Shema where we read “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” “Ah!” says the Arian! “That settles it! The Lord is one!”

The automatic assumption is that since the text says that God is one, that means that God is one person. All Trinitarians would agree that the Lord our God is one. They would not agree that that means that He is one person. If you say that Trinitarians ipso facto deny the oneness of God, then you are not understanding our position.

Another case of this is where you have verses of Scripture that mention God and then mention Christ as well as if they are two different persons. At this point, the Arian thinks they have won again. “See! The text mentions God and then it mentions Christ as someone else! They are two different beings!”

Several passages of Scripture have this kind of language. A search through BibleGateway reveals them. So you look at all of these and it sure looks like those are two different beings.

The problem is Trinitarians look at those and do not have any problem. It is actually what we expect. We expect God the Father to be spoken of in one way and Jesus to be spoken of in another.

If you do not believe in the Trinity, just consider this. If it is true, how else should this be spoken of? You have people realizing that Jesus is somehow included in the divine nature. They also know that there is still God the Father. They do not say God through God to avoid confusion. They treat Jesus as included in the divine nature and yet distinct from the Father. One common way of doing this is calling Jesus, Lord, and calling the Father, God.

Also, one has to be quite ignorant to look at all these verses and think that every single Trinitarian in church history just completely ignored all of them. Sadly, people who are Witnesses will extremely rarely ever read anything that disagrees with them. It would be easy to go to a library and find a commentary on these verses and see what was said about them in the past, but that will not happen.

Trinitarian theology is not easy to understand, nor should it be. We are talking about the nature of God! Why on Earth would anyone consider that to be easy to understand? People who argue against the Trinity owe it to themselves to at least try to understand the doctrine they are arguing against.

Doing so shows respect for truth as you are open to making sure you are not wrong by listening from the other side directly.

It shows respect for your opponents in saying you do not want to straw man them and you want to make sure you represent them accurately.

It shows respect for God as you want to make sure you are speaking about Him accurately and not just believing what any one person or group says.

On the other hand, avoiding this tells your opponents you do not really care about truth, that you do not really care about them, and that you are more interested in your idea of God than you are in God Himself.

Not only that, but when I see arguments anti-Trinitarians make that they think are super-powerful, too often I just shake my head. They think they are destroying us when they are revealing their own ignorance instead. If you want to try to change the mind of someone like myself, you need to show me you have at least tried to seriously interact with my viewpoint.

Avoid the assumption of unipersonalism.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body: Exodus and Ruth

How was Ruth gleaning? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Today, we are going to look at some various passages. The first two are related and are from the Pentateuch. In Exodus 22:26-27 we read:

26 If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, 27 because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

and in Deuteronomy 24:13 we read:

Return their cloak by sunset so that your neighbor may sleep in it. Then they will thank you, and it will be regarded as a righteous act in the sight of the Lord your God.

In both of these cases, a person has their cloak taken from them as a pledge that they will do X for the person they are giving it to and the borrower is told to make sure they can at least sleep in it at night. What can we get from this? If we go and say this person had nothing else, then this is a poor person and all they have is a garment.

This would mean that if anything, a poor person would at least have clothing as his last possession, hardly what we would expect from a heavily nudist Israelite culture. Second, this is not at all saying that this is ideal. Frost is still on a hangup that Christians would consider this immoral. No. If you don’t have a garment and you are poor and in need, that is not immoral. Now if you do have a garment and yet you go gallivanting down the street, especially in the sight of children, that is something different.

Then we get to Ruth. Frost tells us that in Ruth 3:3, the word for best describing clothes is not there. Many translations do have it. I don’t have Hebrew qualifications and I don’t think Frost does either as he gives me no reason to think he’s an authority and has cited no biblical scholars. If many translators are putting the word best in there and Frost thinks they shouldn’t, it is up to him to make the case why they shouldn’t. That being said, in verse 15, he asks her to bring him the shawl she is wearing and it is a different Hebrew word.

He also says that Ruth would have been gleaning in the nude as was the norm. The problem is that nowhere does Frost demonstrate this. He just says it. There aren’t any Bible scholars cited or any archeologists cited. No evidence is given. Also, if Frost wants to convince us that these nudist societies were safe places in the past, then why did the men need to be instructed to not touch Ruth?

So Frost says this and then says the translators shoehorn the word best into the text in 3:3 because of our sensibilities. Really? Since when did Frost gain the ability of mindreading? He could be right, naturally, but he needs to show that. Could it be that maybe Hebrew translators know something he doesn’t?

What about in 1 Cor. 12 where Paul talks about our unpresentable parts? Frost says this refers to things like scars and warts and means “Less beautiful.” However, Ben Witherington says:

Verses 21ff. stress that no particular body member can devalue another or declare it to be of no worth. This then applies to people with gifts differing from one’s own. In vv. 22–24 Paul speaks of the weaker, less honorable, and even indecent body parts, referring at least in the latter case to the genitals, while the weaker organs may be the tender inner organs. His point in v. 23 is that these seemingly less honorable parts get more attention, being protected with more clothing. The “presentable” parts by contrast would be those that are not clothed. God composed the body by giving the parts that were lacking in appearance even more honor, bestowing on them the most crucial of functions, that is, reproduction. With this Paul is alluding to weaker and perhaps less apparently gifted Christians. His point in any case in v. 25 is that differences or divisions (schisma again) in the body are avoided by making the body of multiple interdependent parts.

Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 259.

It’s also difficult to see how scars and warts would make sense. Neither of those are essential parts of the body. The genitals and other parts are. I see no basis for less beautiful and again, Frost cites NO biblical scholars on these points.

Frost also says that in Luke 17, the servant coming in is told to clothe himself. The word there is actually the word gird. It could indeed mean as many translators seem to say, to dress properly. It would be saying to get out of your work clothes and be fitting for the table. Frost says that the workers worked in the nude, but again, no citations. He starts off with his assumption and then goes from there.

He also says that in John 20 at the resurrection, Jesus would have been naked seeing as the linen cloths were still in the tomb. Actually, the Jewish Virtual Library says that Jews were buried clothed. The linen cloths were burial cloth and not clothing. Clothing would be used to preserve purity, even of a corpse.

He also says that in John 13, Jesus went naked to wash the feet of His disciples. Okay. And? He also immediately when done put his clothes back on before rejoining them. Why didn’t He just stay that way if this was the ideal? What was seen as worthy of emulation in Jesus was not nudity, but servanthood. It is even questionable if the word means He was completely naked or just removed outer garments, but I am going with the worst-case scenario for my side. For some reason, the early church never seemed to embrace nudity as normative.

Next time, we’ll look at how Frost concludes this part of his book.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

Book Plunge: The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 6

What about God in the Old Testament? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Iqbal now turns to the Old Testament. The first part worth noting is when he talks about how Mark 1 quotes Isaiah. Iqbal points out that this quotation is actually a combination of a quotation from Isaiah and Malachi. He ignores that there is actually scholarship on composite quotations which occur not just in Jewish and Christian writings, but in writings in greater Greco-Roman antiquity.

He also says Jesus never refers to Himself as the Son of Man. This is a strange argument because it assumes the only way He can is if He comes out and says “I am the Son of Man.” He also rarely says “I am the Messiah.” One example that shows Jesus saw Himself as this figure is in Matthew 19 when He tells the disciples that they will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. It’s thought to be authentic since He says the twelve will which would be problematic with what Judas did. The question is, “If the apostles sit on twelve thrones, where does Jesus sit?”

There is some discussion on what the word Echad means. He does say that it can refer to a compound one, but sometimes it doesn’t.

Okay.

But sometimes it does.

Thus, just saying echad isn’t sufficient to show that this is a one that is absolutely solitary in nature. You can point out that there are many cases where this doesn’t happen and yet, that doesn’t matter. Each time it is to be interpreted based on the context of that passage.

He also asks why it refers to three in the case of God if that is the case. Why not three?

Because three persons is the number revealed throughout the Bible….

He says that the plural means the plural of majesty. In some cases, I am open to that entirely. In some cases, it doesn’t apply. Why should I think echad refers to a plural of majesty? Iqbal gives me no reason to think so.

He also says that Paul explicitly says he didn’t get information from the original apostles of Jesus on the gospel. He ignores that in Galatians 1, Paul speaks to them and presents the gospel to make sure that his race had not been run in vain. I can’t help but wonder if Iqbal has ever truly read the New Testament for himself.

So once again, we have a Muslim who tries to argue against the Trinity and really demonstrates he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. When dealing with these arguments, I tend to hit only the highlights….errr…..lowlights? It would be too much to go over every argument and some of them have been done over and over again and I try to trust on newish arguments that I have not dealt with before.

But, there are other books, so we will soon begin going through another such book sometime to see what else Muslims have to say on the topic.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 4

Does Jesus have the attributes of God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Early on, Iqbal brings up two passages of Scripture to show Jesus was not omnipotent.

John 5:30 — By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

And

Mark 6:5 — He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.

With the former, what does he expect Jesus to say? “I do everything on my own and I make judgments the way I want to regardless of the Father?” This is a claim of strong unity with the Father. He is saying “When I judge, it is the judgment of God. When I act, it is the act of God.”

As for the latter, it seems strange to think Jesus’s ability to do miracles depend on faith when in the Gospels, His followers weren’t expecting His resurrection and yet, there it was. We can grant Muslims don’t believe in the resurrection, but that doesn’t change that it is in the Gospels and thus they are primary sources for Christian doctrine. What is going on is Jesus is responding to loyalty there. Since the people don’t welcome Him and want Him, He doesn’t do many miracles there.

Iqbal also says God does not pray to anyone, but this assumes that God is unipersonal, which is the statement under question. If there are at least two persons who are God, what is wrong with one of them “praying” to the other one? This is especially the case since Jesus was fully human. Iqbal needs to show why this is a problem and not just assume it is.

He then looks at what Warfield said about how Jesus acted in both His humanity and His deity. This is certainly true, but then Iqbal jumps to full Nestorianism saying that this means Jesus had two persons in Him. That was a position the early church called heretical. (And interestingly, could have been the kind of Christianity that Muhammad was most in contact with.)

He also says one idea also among Christians is that Jesus laid aside His powers based on Philippians 2. No. That’s known as the kenotic heresy nowadays and you will not find it espoused, at least by Christians who know what they’re talking about.

He then has D.A. Carson being quoted arguing against this in The Case for Christ and then treats it as if Carson is saying he doesn’t know how to explain the incarnation. Unfortunately, I do not have my copy of the book with me, but I do remember Carson goes on to explain what he thinks is going on in this passage. Strange that Iqbal doesn’t show that part.

Iqbal also stresses that Jesus never says “I forgive you” but “Your sins are forgiven” and saying that Jesus is saying the forgiveness comes from God. Yes. And? This is something a Trinitarian has no problem with. What is unusual is Jesus pronounces forgiveness even without a person actually repenting (Hard for that paralyzed man to repent) and acting as if He is the temple Himself where the presence of God dwelt.

He goes on to list eleven signs Jesus was a human, which no one is disputing. One is that Jesus died on the cross, but God cannot die. When people present this to me, I ask them what it means to die. If they say it means the person ceases to exist, then yes, God cannot cease to exist. But if that is the case, then what happens to passages like Colossians 1 that say the Son holds all things together? The Son could never cease to exist. If instead it means, the soul of Jesus left the body of Jesus, then we have no problem.

It’s odd to see that he says Jesus is guilty of falsehood. In one case, Jesus says to the thief that the thief will be with Him in Paradise, but Jesus went to hell for three days. I take hell to be best understood as the realm of the dead. I do happen to think Jesus did go to Paradise with the thief. Iqbal also talks about Jesus’s harsh language like calling the Pharisees broods of vipers. Statements like this are allegedly unbecoming of the Son of God. We are not told why this is.

Finally, there’s the idea Jesus got prophecy wrong. Just do a search on this blog for Preterism and what I have said about it. There are far too many to link to.

We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 3

What kind of Son of God was Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re returning to this book so let’s see what a Muslim has to say about this topic.

Iqbal starts quoting the Qur’an on how Jesus was a messenger like those before Him.

Here it is clearly stated that Jesus, the Messiah, was only a messenger of God like other messengers of God who had come before him. He was a human like them and this is simply based on the fact that it is the way of God to send messengers to his people, not His literal “divine sons”. Had that been the case, sons of God in the literal sense would have always appeared before and even after Jesus.

Iqbal, Farhan. The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ (Kindle Locations 882-887). Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama`at Canada. Kindle Edition.

I honestly can’t make heads or tails of what he is saying here. The best I can gather is that Iqbal thinks that Jesus is one divine son of many and God would send many more. This is nothing that Christians believe in that sense. Angels can be called sons of God, but certainly not in the same way that Jesus is the Son of God. John 1:18 kind of clinches for us that Jesus is the one and only.

Iqbal later in this chapter talks about the I AM statements and says “People say I am” all the time in the Bible. This is true. If we had an apostle saying “I am hungry”, no one would take that as a claim of divinity. The question is how are the phrases used by Jesus and what do they mean? John 8 has a clear usage in the end of Jesus taking the divine name upon Himself. Other usages have them speaking of Him in glorious terms.

Going back to John 8:58, Iqbal says that Christians have to go to Jesus’s enemies. We don’t say Jesus’s enemies explain what Jesus meant. We say that they understood what Jesus meant. The meaning was clear.

He later goes on to give out the same claim of Gospels being written decades after Jesus’s death and Paul never meeting Jesus. Of course, the book that was written about 600 years after the time of the ministry of Jesus by someone who never met Jesus either is completely reliable with what it says about Him. No. There is no interaction with something like Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

He does say that many prophets claim to be doing the works of God, which is true. Why is it that Jesus’s should be different? The difference in Jesus is the emphasis was on Himself. Jesus saw Himself as greater than the Sabbath, greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon, and as a walking temple. Jesus said He did miracles by the finger of God meaning the Kingdom was among the people.

So that’s it for this entry. There is some other stuff in here, including claims of dreams and visions from their “Messiah”, but nothing relevant to the topic. We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)