Did Jesus think he was God? What does the historical record say?

Jonathan M. wrote a post you should read at the new Christian Apologetics UK blog.

Summary:

A key part of the investigation into the reliability of the New Testament (and the transformative message which it conveys) lies in establishing what Jesus considered Himself to be, and the mission that he thought it was his role to fulfil. While a discernment of Jesus’ self-understanding is only a necessary (but non-sufficient) condition in establishing the truth of the Bible, it can nonetheless fit into a robust consilience of evidence which best makes sense only in light of the truth of the Christian message. If it can be determined historically — with a reasonable degree of confidence — that Jesus really did believe Himself to be the eternal and divine Son of God, the Saviour of all mankind, we can investigate the three candidate hypotheses offered by C.S. Lewis’ famous Trilemma: Was Jesus a Liar, a Lunatic or Lord? Once we have established what Jesus claimed about Himself, we can turn our investigation to which of these three candidate hypotheses best explains the available evidence.

I wrote an article on the divinity of Jesus, too.  In my article, I looked at these four passages:

• The early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, and 1 Corinthians 1
• A passage in Philippians 2
• Two passages from Mark, the earliest gospel
• A passage from Q, which is an early source of Matthew and Luke

I noticed that Jonathan’s article has some of these passages, but he has a few that are different, too.

Here’s one:

Argument #3: The “Son of Man” title and the criterion of dissimilarity

Jesus’ favourite self-designation, by a long shot, is the title “Son of Man”, a clear reference to Daniel’s vision recounted in Daniel 7:13-14. This self-designation is regarded, even by many skeptical scholars, as historically authentic, because it is not likely to have been an invention by the early church. Why? While the “Son of Man” title is clearly Jesus’ favourite self-designation in the gospel accounts, the title is nowhere to be found in the epistles — nor, for that matter, in any of the extra-Biblical Christian writings during the first 120 years following the life of Jesus. In fact, this term is only employed twice in any kind of Messianic sense in the entire Bible — once in Jewish tradition (Daniel 7:13-14) and once in Christian tradition (Acts 7:56). The point is simply this: How likely is it, exactly, that the early Christian movement would invent the “Son of Man” title as Jesus’ favourite self-designation when the church itself never referred to him in that manner?

The passage in Daniel, upon which this title is based, pictures a divine-human heavenly figure, of whom it is written:

“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. ¹⁴ He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”

In fact, the high priest Caiaphas, at Jesus’ interrogation, knew exactly what Jesus meant by his use of the term “Son of Man”, whom, we read in Matthew 26:65, “tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy.”

Jonathan has 6 arguments in his article.

The interesting thing about Jonathan is that his background is biology. I’m like that too – my background is software engineering. And yet both of us take the time to study up on things that are out of our way. Sometimes, I get annoyed when people tell me that they don’t need to learn this argument or that argument – because it’s too hard for them to understand. Well, boo-freakin’-hoo. How about this: everybody needs to know everything about apologetics eventually. Maybe not right away, but eventually. So what are you waiting for? Read Jonathan’s post! But read mine after!

And it might be worth bookmarking his new blog.

Filed under: Polemics, Apologetics, Bible Study, Christianity, Christology, Divine, Divinity, Divinity of Jesus, Early Christian Belief, Early Christianity, God, Gospel, Gospel of Luke, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Matthew, Historical Jesus, Identity, Jesus, Jesus Resurrection, Mark, Q, Q Source, Was Jesus Divine, Was Jesus God, Who Was Jesus, William Lane Craig