{"id":569,"date":"2008-12-11T14:24:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-11T18:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=569"},"modified":"2013-11-25T00:14:13","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T05:14:13","slug":"jesus-and-%e2%80%9cgod%e2%80%9d-part-11-review-and-conclusion-dale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/jesus-and-%e2%80%9cgod%e2%80%9d-part-11-review-and-conclusion-dale\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus and \u201cgod\u201d – part 11 – Review and Conclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n10 parts in the series so far… but how many points?<\/em><\/small><\/div>\n

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Time to wrap up this long in the tooth series with a summary<\/strong>, and a few extra thoughts along the way. In parts one<\/a> and two<\/a>, we laid out simple arguments that Christ is divine<\/strong>, or that he is the one God. Careful examination of these raised the question: What does it mean to call something “a god” or “divine”? Christian philosophers tend to merrily assume an Anselm-inspired definition, so that to be divine is to be the greatest possible being. But in ancient times, no one used the word “God” (etc.) to express that concept.In part 3<\/a>, I tried to give a general schema for God-talk in most cultures – including those of the ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans. This was \u201cX is a god\u201d (or \u201cX is divine\u201d) means \u201cX is a provident being who must be honored\u201d. This isn’t so much a definition, as a schema for construction of definitions, based on what is meant by “provident”, “must”, and so on. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Our<\/em> god-talk is very tight – we use “God” as a name, or as a title which can apply, we tend to assume, to only one thing. But in parts 4<\/a> and 5<\/a> I point out that ancient pagans called emperors gods, and (perhaps more surprisingly) in the Old Testament, without irony or sarcasm, people, human ghosts, kings, and other divinely used men such as prophets are called \u201cgods\u201d<\/strong>. This helps us carefully read an often misinterpreted passage in John chapter 10, where some of Jesus’ enemies accuse him of “claiming to be God”.<\/p>\n

In part 6<\/a>, I looked at the issue of NT passages where Jesus is called “God”<\/strong> (“god”, “divine”), giving a mini-review of a book which is just about those. There are some such passages, although fewer than you might suppose. We can infer that the writers held Christ to be a provident being who must be honored. And so, premise 1 of the argument for the deity of Christ is supported by those passages.<\/p>\n

Or at least: that premise is supported if it means no more than just stated. The God of Israel, of course, is also a provident being who must be honored. So are these two gods or one?<\/p>\n

In parts 7<\/a> and 8<\/a>, I looked at the famous Shema<\/strong> passage, which is so often quoted as support for monotheism. It turns out that according to recent scholarship, it was not in fact an expression of monotheism. But this is a sidetrack, as there are other OT passages which stoutly affirm the uniqueness of YHWH, and in some sense his sole divinity.<\/p>\n

In part 9<\/a> I asked, what is “monotheism” anyway<\/strong>? Superficially, it’s the claim that there’s one divine being, one god. But what’s a divine being\/god? If it’s what my analysis says, there there are few real monotheists as just defined, and most Jews, Muslims, and Christians won’t be monotheists! I suggested that monotheism paradigmatically involves these claims: (1) our god is the one high god, and (2) some other things thought to be gods are in fact false gods. Note that this allows one to consistently say this: Religion R is monotheistic yet R holds there are many gods. Monotheism, then, would be, typically, a sort of exclusivist polytheism!<\/strong> Though this grates on the ears, I think it is true. Those are rare who think there’s really only one provident being which must be honored. Most theists allow the existence of angels, but those would be gods. It wouldn’t follow that we should honor them in the way that we honor God, or the one we might refer to as “the one true God”. But that raises this issue: What is worship?<\/strong> Maybe there are many beings we should honor, but only one we should worship.<\/p>\n

Enter part 10<\/a>: there’s another familiar argument for Jesus being divine. Only God is rightly worshiped, and Jesus is. Now Jesus is indeed worshiped<\/strong> or honored in certain NT passages, with no hint than any idolatry is being committed. I argue that, although it may be polemically convenient, we need a concept of “worship” on which it is not analytically true that only God is worshiped. Jesus is worshiped in the NT, and yet he portrayed as having some features not had by God. Hence, it must be proper to worship something other than God.<\/p>\n

Now why isn’t this idolatry?<\/strong> Good question. Some define idolatry as worshiping something other than God. I’m not sure that’s the best understanding of what the sin of idolatry is. If I were going to continue this series, I’d chew on this problem. I’m going to pass for now. Certain early modern philosopher-theologians discussed this extensively – maybe I’ll discuss it via there discussions at some future date.<\/p>\n

For now, the vague and negative point<\/strong> is this: biblical arguments for the divinity or godhood of Jesus are trickier than they look! Keeping in mind the actual usage of terms current at the time, one can’t infer that Jesus is divine or that he is God because he’s rightly honored, or because he is described or addressed as “god\/God”. It’s no good reading our linguistic practices back into these texts.
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10 parts in the series so far… but how many points? Time to wrap up this long in the tooth series with a summary, and a few extra thoughts along the way. In parts one and two, we laid out simple arguments that Christ is divine, or that he is the one God. Careful examination… Read More »Jesus and \u201cgod\u201d – part 11 – Review and Conclusion<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,21,15,14,33,38,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-bible","category-christology","category-history","category-incarnation","category-monotheism","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5491,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions\/5491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}