{"id":6117,"date":"2014-04-02T10:49:48","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T14:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=6117"},"modified":"2015-05-11T17:28:23","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T21:28:23","slug":"do-the-gospels-disagree-about-jesus-and-god-part-2-counting-the-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/do-the-gospels-disagree-about-jesus-and-god-part-2-counting-the-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"Do the Gospels disagree about Jesus and God? Part 2 \u2013 Counting the Costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6118\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/counting-the-costs.png\" alt=\"counting the costs\" width=\"500\" height=\"349\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/counting-the-costs.png 500w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/counting-the-costs-300x209.png 300w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/counting-the-costs-420x293.png 420w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/counting-the-costs-460x321.png 460w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/counting-the-costs-90x63.png 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><a title=\"Part 1\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/do-the-gospels-disagree-about-jesus-and-god-part-1-three-options\/\" target=\"_blank\">Last time<\/a> we looked at this <strong>inconsistent triad<\/strong> of claims, one of which we must deny:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The New Testament gospels agree in their core claims about Jesus and God.<\/li>\n<li>Matthew, Mark, and Luke don\u2019t teach that Jesus is God.<\/li>\n<li>John teaches that Jesus is God.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>We can look at this from <strong>two directions<\/strong>. First, we can ask what the <strong>evidence<\/strong> for each \u00a0of 1-3 is. Second, we can ask what the <strong>downside<\/strong> is of denying each. In this post, I&#8217;ll do the latter.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The simplest is 3. <strong>What&#8217;s the cost of denying 3?<\/strong> Here, one must swim against a tide of catholic traditions about interpreting John. Isn&#8217;t it <em>obvious<\/em> that the gospel of John teaches that Jesus is God? &#8220;I and the Father are one.&#8221; &#8220;The Word was God.&#8221; &#8220;I am.&#8221; &#8220;He who has seen me has seen the Father.&#8221; &#8220;My Lord and my God.&#8221; What more do we need? In the minds of many Christians &#8211; and strangely enough, some others, like Dr. Bart Ehrman, it seems blindingly obvious that this book teaches that Jesus is God. &#8220;<strong>Here, Jesus is decidedly God<\/strong> and is in fact equal with God the Father.&#8221; (<em>How Jesus Became God<\/em>, p. 271.) (He clarifies on the next page that it doesn&#8217;t identify Jesus with the Father, that is, with the one God, but his view <em>seems<\/em> rather to be that it makes Jesus a sharer in the divine nature, and so essentially <em>qualitatively<\/em> equal to God.) But <em>is<\/em> it so obvious? Some of the most favored proof-texts dissolve under a careful reading &#8211; such as <strong>Ehrman&#8217;s treatment of John 1<\/strong> (p. 273-7), which I think is basically right. But if <em>some<\/em> dissolve&#8230; do they all? That&#8217;s what unitarian Christians have been arguing since Reformation times. Currently, the mainstream either ignores these arguments as simply non-Christian (!), or tries to shove them aside to matters of anti-cult apologetics. But are they right in so ignoring them? There is a strong minority report in our tradition here. In sum, the cost of denying 3 is <strong>risking contemptuous and quick dismissal<\/strong> by catholic Christians and those whose reading of John is influenced by them. Strangely, many will admit that the gospel of John itself contains plenty of passages that seem, after all&#8217;s said and done, to imply that 3 is false! They read the book as apparently self-inconsistent, which they spin and minimize as its containing logical &#8220;tensions&#8221;. To follow tradition, they affirm (and don&#8217;t also deny) 3. They simply assume that a seemingly self-consistent interpretation of John is impossible &#8211; the book is a &#8220;mystery.&#8221; But is it? The minority report says no. Are they correct?<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>cost of denying 2 is heavy<\/strong>, though often unperceived. The synoptic gospels reveal a very (and endearingly) human Messiah, and not merely a literary character, but a believable, flesh and blood first century Jewish man. These books\u00a0<strong>don&#8217;t teach his existence<\/strong> prior to his conception. This must be remembered, while evangelicals like Gathercole move heaven and earth to try to show that the authors presuppose or maybe suggest or imply his pre-human existence. Really &#8211; they <em>believed<\/em> that, but never thought it worth once asserting? <em>Really<\/em>? Jesus isn&#8217;t credited with creation there. He isn&#8217;t called &#8220;God&#8221; in those books, but he constantly calls someone else God. And he seems to <a title=\"post on Mark's christology\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/5620\" target=\"_blank\">deny by implication that<\/a> he&#8217;s either God or equal to God when he expresses his own fear of or ignorance of the future. He is a faithful<em> servant of<\/em> the one God in those books. Interpreters must vigorously massage them to find &#8220;<strong>hints<\/strong>&#8221; of Jesus being God there. And they must expend serious effort to obfuscate what&#8217;s meant by &#8220;the deity of Christ&#8221; or talk of Jesus &#8220;being God.&#8221; Clarity would risk refutation. But there&#8217;s a growing awareness that the traditional arguments for Jesus&#8217; &#8220;deity&#8221; based on things he does and says in the synoptics are problematic &#8211; e.g. <a title=\"Only God can forgive sins. False.\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/4535\" target=\"_blank\">his forgiving sins<\/a>, his <a title=\"my talk &quot;Who Should Christians Worship?&quot;\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/4037\" target=\"_blank\">being the object of <\/a><em><a title=\"my talk &quot;Who Should Christians Worship?&quot;\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/4037\" target=\"_blank\">proskuneo<\/a>, <\/em>his fulfilling prophecies about what YHMH himself will do, occasionally speaking out God&#8217;s words first-person, his being a sin-offering.\u00a0In brief, everything Jesus does and says in those books, and everything there said about him, makes good sense if we think the authors viewed Jesus as the human Messiah, the unique Son of God, sent and empowered by God, to advance his Kingdom. There&#8217;s no noise there about revising the core theology of Israel&#8217;s prophets; Jesus affirms the <em>Shema<\/em> with no addition or qualification. Absolutely none of this material requires that Jesus &#8220;is God&#8221; <a title=\"Part 1 of this series\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/6106\" target=\"_blank\">in the sense defined here<\/a>. Nor does it require the newly coined, confusing talk about Jesus as &#8220;belonging to the divine identity.&#8221; In sum, <strong>the cost of denying 2 is going against a mountain of careful, in-context exegesis<\/strong> of those books, in favor of hint-hunting that seems an <em>ad hoc<\/em> defense of traditional talk, or something resembling it.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>cost of denying 1<\/strong> is, I think, not often thought about. I&#8217;m inclined to think it is high. Jesus personally trained eleven people who continued on after his crucifixion. And we Christians believe that back from the dead he also personally called Paul, who then instructed both by the 11 and by God&#8217;s spirit. We Christians also believe, minimally, that the four gospels came from the circles of the apostles. Either we accept traditional authorship, more or less, or at least we think that they accurately represent the teachings and memories of the apostolic movement(s). Now, if you think that John emanates from a different context, that this book is truly alien to the apostolic tradition, and not substantially based, ultimately, on apostolic memory, then you&#8217;ll be happy to deny 1. But if you think John is, broadly, apostolic, and you affirm 2 and 3, you&#8217;re now taking the view that the apostles collectively did not have their story straight about Jesus and God. Either, Jesus was not a competent teacher, or he was competent but simply confused about himself and God, or else the apostles foolishly forgot his teaching very soon after his ascent. <strong>These are all, to Christians, bad options. It is arguably even problematic for the secular historian.<\/strong>\u00a0These options are <em>uncharitable<\/em> to Jesus, and to his students; we&#8217;re postulating confusion, incompetence, or culpable forgetfulness. It&#8217;s not enough to mutter something about how doctrines develop. We should avoid these hypotheses<em> if possible<\/em>. Is it? And why was John so widely and quickly accepted, if it was in fact different in its core theology and christology, and if it in fact had little connection to the historical Jesus? Wouldn&#8217;t there have been a big fight about its new theology, and demands for an inquiry into its provenance? Wouldn&#8217;t it make more sense, if possible, to see the gospel of John as, despite its bold recasting of Jesus&#8217; story, consistent in its core points about Jesus and God? Maybe it&#8217;s bold because it&#8217;s <em>by John,<\/em> as tradition has always said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of these, I think the <strong>most urgent<\/strong> to look more into is 3. Is the cost so high as many suppose?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last time we looked at this inconsistent triad of claims, one of which we must deny: The New Testament gospels agree in their core claims about Jesus and God. Matthew, Mark, and Luke don\u2019t teach that Jesus is God. John teaches that Jesus is God. We can look at this from two directions. First, we&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/do-the-gospels-disagree-about-jesus-and-god-part-2-counting-the-costs\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Do the Gospels disagree about Jesus and God? Part 2 \u2013 Counting the Costs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6118,"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":[37,21,15,6,4,14,33,38,20,3,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-bible","category-christology","category-complaints","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-history","category-incarnation","category-monotheism","category-mystery","category-theories","category-unitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6117","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=6117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35338,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6117\/revisions\/35338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}