{"id":1802,"date":"2016-07-30T22:57:22","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T03:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/?p=1802"},"modified":"2016-09-01T00:06:19","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T05:06:19","slug":"the-deity-of-jesus-a-defense-part-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/the-deity-of-jesus-a-defense-part-16\/","title":{"rendered":"The Deity of Jesus: A Defense. Part 1\/6"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Deity of Jesus: A Defense<\/span><\/h1>\n

Introduction<\/span><\/h1>\n

The release of The Da Vinci Code<\/em> book and movie\u2014in 2003 and 2006 respectively\u2014unleashed a latent cultural era of skepticism in America. The film popularized ideas such as \u201cJesus was not considered God until the year 325 in the council of Nicaea.\u201d While this idea is easy to dispel and isn\u2019t believed by most critical scholars and serious historians, the idea that Jesus \u201cthe man\u201d was, at a certain point, \u201cdeified\u201d still prevails in some influential academic circles. Antonio Pinero, a Spanish critical scholar\u2014specialist in early Christianity and Greek philology from Madrid\u2019s Complutense University\u2014affirms that Jesus was a normal man \u201cwhose figure was re-interpreted after his death to the point of divinization.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

In this series of 6 blog posts<\/a>, I show\u00a0that, using only historical data that critical\/skeptical scholars grant<\/em>, it is possible to build a cumulative case demonstrating that Jesus not only was considered God by his followers and the early church, but that he claimed to be divine and acted consistently with such claim.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Word about Historical Sources<\/span><\/h1>\n

I was recently speaking with a skeptic about Jesus. When I mentioned the Bible he objected, \u201coh no! You can\u2019t do that! You can\u2019t use the Bible as your source. It is a biased propaganda book.\u201d For the purposes of this paper, I will grant that objection (at least in part)\u2014after all, there are few ancient Greco-roman historical accounts that don\u2019t include the super-natural or some kind of propaganda, but it doesn\u2019t follow they don\u2019t contain historical facts. But I will still cite parts of the New Testament (NT). What I will not<\/em> do, however, is assume that the NT is the infallible Word of God, that it is true a priori<\/em>, or that it is authoritative. I will treat it as an ancient document. After all, even critical scholars agree with Dr. Bart Ehrman that, \u201cif historians want to know what Jesus said and did they are more or less constrained to employ the NT Gospels as their principal sources\u2026this is not for religious or theological reasons\u2014for instance, that these and these alone are trustworthy. It is for historical reasons, pure and simple.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

With that said, I will engage with only three types of well-attested sources. First, critical scholars grant several undisputed letters of the apostle Paul; that is, epistles known to have been written by Paul and authoritative (not as inspired or divine but as generally reliable ancient historical sources). These include: 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philemon, 1 <\/em>& 2 Corinthians, <\/em>and Romans<\/em>. Second, I will also use early sermon summaries in Acts. These contain \u201cunevolved, short, concise, succinct theological statements of the gospel message\u2014at a time when Paul is not even around yet.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup> These sermons represent the \u201ccore\u201d of the pre-Pauline Christian beliefs<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Third, I will employ well-attested passages from the gospels. Here one must tread carefully because most critical scholars reject the majority of the gospels. But even people such as Pinero, Ehrman, and critical scholars from the Jesus Seminar will grant some<\/em> historical core from the gospels. Critical scholars have defined criteria of authenticity to determine if a passage in the gospels is authentic. They classify these sources or \u201cstrata\u201d in 5 groups: first, \u201cM\u201d is special material in Matthew not included in the other gospels, \u201cL\u201d is special material in Luke not found in other sources, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of John (which in this case I won\u2019t use since Pinero and others consider it too late and too \u201ctheological\u201d), and a \u201ctraditions document\u201d or \u201clost gospel\u201d named \u201cQ\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> which contains material in Luke and Matthew but not in Mark. With John5<\/a><\/sup> eliminated, we still may use four independent historical sources granted by critics.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Gospel_Sources\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Method and Background<\/span><\/h1>\n

In this series of 6 blog posts<\/a>, we\u00a0will mount a cumulative case to demonstrate the deity of Jesus. This method called HANDS<\/em><\/strong> was coined by Robert M. Bowman and Ed Komoszeuski6<\/a><\/sup> as an acronym to remember that Jesus shares the H<\/em><\/strong>onors<\/em> of God, the A<\/em><\/strong>ttributes<\/em> of God, the N<\/em><\/strong>ames<\/em> of God, the D<\/em><\/strong>eeds<\/em> of God, and the S<\/em><\/strong>eat<\/em> of God. The main difference with Bowman and Komoszeuski\u2019s method is that we will go a step beyond and only<\/strong> use sources and passages that critical scholars generally grant as historical<\/strong><\/em>. With that established, let\u2019s review the evidence!<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Next,\u00a0Jesus receives H<\/strong>ONORS<\/em> only due to God<\/a> …<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n
    \n
  1. Antonio Pinero, \u201cCarta program\u00e1tica,\u201d Personal Blog, http:\/\/www.tendencias21.net\/crist\/Carta-programatica_a1.html<\/a>, (accessed November 7th, 2015). ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Bart D. Ehrman,\u00a0The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings<\/em>, fourth ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 229. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  3. These \u201csermonettes\u201d are very early and circulated before the NT was written. Gary R. Habermas, \u201cEvidence for the Historical Jesus: Is the Jesus of History the Christ of Faith?\u201d <\/em>www.garyhabermas.com\/evidence1<\/a>, (accessed November 11, 2015), 25. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  4. \u201cQ\u201d is a designation named after the German word \u201cQuelle\u201d for \u201cSource\u201d. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  5. My decision to eliminate John as a source is not because I consider it a poor historical document. I think, in fact, that a strong case can be made for the reliability of John as a whole and for parts of John to be absolutely authentic using historiography. More so, I also believe John to have been written prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, but such a defense would take me beyond the limits of this document. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski,\u00a0Putting Jesus in His Place<\/em>: The Case for the Deity of Christ<\/em> (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2007). Kindle. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Deity of Jesus: A Defense Introduction The release of The Da Vinci Code book and movie\u2014in 2003 and 2006 respectively\u2014unleashed a latent cultural era of skepticism in America. The film popularized ideas such as \u201cJesus was not considered God until the year 325 in the council of Nicaea.\u201d While this idea is easy to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[275,269,1003,268],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics-en","category-historicity","category-jesus-as-god","category-new-testament"],"views":415,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritasfidei.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}