The Divinity of Jesus Christ, part 6

This is Part 6 of the apologetic regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ as set forth by Peter Kreeft and Ron Tacelli which I am summarzing here part by part, and lifting large parts of the chapter directly onto here. If I'm inserting my own opinion, or using other sources I will make it clear.

Part 1 can be found here.
Part 2 can be found here.
Part 3 can be found here.
Part 4 can be found here.
Part 5 can be found here.

The Main Argument, con't.

The Trilemma: Lord, Liar or Lunatic?

Perhaps Jesus sincerely thought that he was God, but was mistaken. If Jesus was mistaken about who he was, while he could not be considered "morally" bad because he did not intentionally deceive people, he would be considered "mentally" bad. A lunatic may not be wicked, but he is not more trustworthy than a liar.

Either Jesus believed his own claim to be God or he did not. If he did, he was a lunatic. If he did not, he was a liar. Unless, of course, he was (is) God.

Why could he not be either a liar or a lunatic? Because of his character. There are two things everyone admits about Jesus' character: he was wise and he was good. A lunatic and a liar are the opposite of wise and good.

The "divinity complex" is a recognized form of psychopathology. Its character traits are: egotism, narcissism, inflexibility, dullness, predictability, inability to understand and love others as they really are and creatively relate to others. A person exhibiting the attributes of "divinity complex" are essentially people with the polar opposite personality of Jesus. Jesus had the three attributes every human being needs and wants: wisdom, love, and creativity.

"He wisely and cannily saw into people's hearts, behind their words. He solved insolvable problems. He also gave totally to others, including his very life. Finally, he was the most creative, interesting, unpredictable man who ever lived. No one--believer, unbeliever or agnostic--was ever bored by him. The common verb predicated of those who met Jesus was "thaumazo", "To wonder." Lunatics are not wonderful, but jesus was the most wonderful person in history. If that were lunacy, lunacy would be more desirable than sanity.

If, on the other hand, Jesus was a liar, then he had to have been the most clever, cunning, machiavellian, blasphemously wicked satanic deceiver the world has ever known, successfully seducing billions into giving up their eternal souls into his hands. If orthodox Christianity is a lie, it is by far the biggest and baddest lie ever told, and Jesus is the biggest and baddest liar.

But in every way jesus was morally impeccable. He had all the virtues, both soft and hard, tender and tough. Further, he died for his "lie." What would motivate a selfish, evil liar to do that? We have never known anyone who thought Jesus was a deliberate liar. That would be more biarre than calling Mother Teresa a party animal.

Next, I will finish up the remainder of the Trilemma, and then hopefully soon get to the Quadrilemma: Lord, Liar, Lunatic or Myth?

The Divinity of Jesus Christ, part 5

This is Part 5 of the apologetic regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ as set forth by Peter Kreeft and Ron Tacelli which I am summarzing here part by part, and lifting large parts of the chapter directly onto here. If I'm inserting my own opinion, or using other sources I will make it clear.

Part 1 can be found here.
Part 2 can be found here.
Part 3 can be found here.
Part 4 can be found here.

The Main Argument

There are only five possible answers to the question: If Jesus is not God, what is he? The possible answers/alternatives to Christ's divinity are:

1. Jesus either Lord, liar, lunatic, guru, or myth.
2. He could not possibly be a liar, lunatic, guru, or myth.
3. Therefore "Jesus is Lord" (the earliest Christian creed) if he did not lie about who he was, or a bad man (if he did).

This can be and needs to be developed part-by-part.

The Dilemma: Lord or Liar? Aut deus aut homo malus ("Either God or a bad man.")

1. Jesus was either God (if he did not lie about who he was) or a bad man (if he did).
2. But Jesus was not a bad man. (Very few will challenge the premise that Jesus was not a bad man.)
3. Therefore jesus was (is) God.

But what justifies the first preimse, that Jesus was either God or a bad man? Why all or nothing? Answer: Common sense.

Someone who claims to be God and is not, is not a good man but a bad man. Merely a "good man" is one thing Jesus could not possible be.* By claiming to be God he eliminated that possibility. For a liar is not a good man, and one who lies about his essential identity is a liar, and a mere man who claims to be God lies about his essential identity.
------------------------------
*I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but i don't accept his claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The Divinity of Jesus Christ, part 4

This is Part 4 of the apologetic regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ as set forth by Peter Kreeft and Ron Tacelli which I am summarzing here part by part, and lifting large parts of the chapter directly onto here. If I'm inserting my own opinion, or using other sources I will make it clear.

Part 1 can be found here.
Part 2 can be found here.
Part 3 can be found here.

Why then did anyone believe Jesus' claim to be God?

The simple reason is that Jesus of Nazareth was good, wise, and trustworthy. The same thing can be found in Buddhism. The claims of Buddhism are equally incredible to Christianity. To believe that we are all living in perpetual illusion, our thoughts are false, that you and I and time and space are all illusions, and that everything is in actuality nameless and empty. People have believed this doctrine not because Buddhism seemed likely, or obvious, but rather because Buddha seemed true.

The same principle explains how Christianity expanded from 12 apostles around 30 A.D. to a billion believers today. We believe the astonishing claims of Christ's divinity because we believe Jesus Christ. To deny Christianity, you have to deny Jesus, and his claim to divinity.

The Impossibility of the Alternative
As to the fact that Jesus claimed to be God, perhaps the New Testament texts lie, or perhaps Christianity is a myth. But... this raises more difficult questions.

1. If the Gospels lie, who invented the lie and for what reason? Was it Jesus' apostles? What did they get out of the lie? Martyrdom--hardly an attractive temptation. Don't liars typically have selfish motives?

2. Why did thousands suffer torture and death for a lie? Pascal said "the human heart is very fickle," and particularly the heart of a liar. The enemies of early Christianity simply needed to produce one confession from one of Jesus' disciples that it was all a lie, a hoax. After myriad forms of torture and bribery were attempted, not one disciple or apostle cracked.

3. What force sent Christians to the lions' den with hymns on their lips? What lie is capable of making a man like that? Christianity conquered the world mainly through the force of sanctity and love. Saints, not theologians, converted the world. You cannot fake sanctity.

4. If it wasn't a lie, but a hallucination, or a myth mistaken for a literal truth, who were the fools who believed it? There isn't another idea a Jew would be less likely to believe.

Imagine this: the transcendent God who for millennia had strictly forbidden his chosen people to confuse him with a creature as the pagans did--this Creator-God became a creature, a man--a crucified criminal. Hardly a myth that arises naturally in the Jewish mind!

5. If it wasn't the Jews but the Gentiles who started the myth, where did it come from? Of the 27 books of the New Testament, only two were written by Gentiles.

6. If it were a myth, it could not have been a myth that could have started during the lifetime of those who knew the real Jesus; it would've been publicly refuted by eyewitnesses who knew the facts.

Other religious founders, like Buddha and Muhammad, were indeed "divinized" by later myths, but at least two or three generations (more usually two or three centuries) had to pass before such myths could be believed. But the "myth" of Jesus' divinity goes back to the very earliest times and documents.

7. Why has the "muth" continued to attract the brightest minds in history? If you pit Paul of Tarsus, John the Evangelist, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, John Damascene, Origen, Augustine, John Chrysostom, Boethius, Erigena, Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas, Bonaventura, Scotus, Ockham, Nicholas of Cusa, Cajetan, Luther, Calvin, Kepler, Ignatius Loyola, Dante, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Berkeley, Copernicus, Newton, Kierkegaard, Newman, Pasteur, Jaspers, Marcel, Galileo, Tolstoy, Chesterton, Dostoyevsky, T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis against Machiavelli, Hobbes, Renan, Freud, Drawin, Marx, La Mettrie, Skinner, Nietzsche, Sartre, Bertrand Russell, Ayer, and Paine it would hardly be a fair fight.

Aquinas argues that if the Incarnation did not really happen, then an even more unbelievable miracle happened: the conversion of the world by the biggest lie inhistory and the moral transformation of lives into unselfishness, detachment from worldy pleasures and radically new heights of holiness by a mere myth

No one has ever satisfactorily answered the simple question: If Jesus is not God, as Christians say he is, then who is he?

Next--The Main Arguments attempting to explain away what Jesus is/was.

The Divinity of Jesus Christ, part 3

This is Part 3 of the apologetic regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ as set forth by Peter Kreeft and Ron Tacelli which I am summarzing here part by part, and lifting large parts of the chapter directly onto here. If I'm inserting my own opinion, or using other sources I will make it clear.

Part 1 can be found here.
Part 2 can be found here.

Some Clues to the Possibility of the Doctrine.
1. C.S. Lewis calls the Incarnation "myth becomes fact." Throughout history are various myths of a god who came down from heaven, some even tell of a god who died and rose for the life of man. Just as the flood story appears in may different traditions and legends, something akin to the Jesus story does too. However, this does not lend credence to the idea that the Jesus story itself is a made up myth, but rather, the more witnesses tell a similar story, the more likely it is to be true. The more foreshadowings for an event, the more likely it is that the event will happen.

2. How does the critic who says the Incarnation is impossible, know so much about God that they know what God can or cannot do, did not do?

If the objection is that the doctrine of the Incarnation claims too much, claims to know too much, the response is that to deny it claims to know much more. Logically, a universal negative proposition is the hardest kind to prove.

3. If God exists, he must be omnipotent, and able to do anything that is possible, anything that is meaningful, and doesn't involve self-contradiction. The Incarnation is not self-contradiction, therefore the Incarnation is possible.

There are several other points, but I'm going to move on to Arguments for Christ's Divinity.

Christ's Trustworthiness
Everyone throughout history agrees that Jesus of Nazareth was a good and wise man, a great and profound teacher. Even nonbelievers such as Ghandi saw him as history's greatest moral teacher. In other words, he is seen by all people as eminently trustworthy. (If you do not see Christ as eminently trustworthy based on the Gospels, you have some other reason for not thinking so--such as skepticism regarding the historical reliability of the Gospels).

If a teacher is trustworthy, he can be trusted particularly when it comes to his own identity. If we do not trust Jesus of Nazareth about his own identity, we cannot say that he is trustworthy.

The size of the gap between what you are and what you think you are is a pretty good index of your insanity. If I believe I am the best writer in America, I am an egotistical fool, but I am not insane. If I believe I am Napoleon, I am probably near the edge. If I believe I am the archangel Gabriel, I am probably well over it. And if I believe I am God? . . . Would you send your children to Sunday school to be taught by a man who thought he was God?

Why then did anyone believe Jesus' claim to be God?

The Divinity of Jesus Christ, part 2

This is Part 2 of the apologetic regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ as set forth by Peter Kreeft and Ron Tacelli which I am summarzing here part by part, and lifting large parts of the chapter directly onto here. If I'm inserting my own opinion, or using other sources I will make it clear.

Part 1 can be found here.

The Importance of the Issue
The difference between an orthodox Christian and a non-Christian or a modern revisionist is that the Christian believes that Jesus Christ defeated death by rising from the dead on Easter Sunday, and that he is the risen Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity.

Christians have come to believe a significant amount of their doctrine because the Doctrine of the Incarnation lies as a predicate foundation. Christians take much of their doctrine from the authority of Christ, as it is recorded in the Bible.

If Christ is divine, then the incarnation of God is the most important event in history.

There is also an unparalleled present existential bite to the doctrine. He is an omnipotent God and present right now, he can transform you and your life right now as nothing and no one else possibly can. And, if Christ is divine, our absolute obligation is to believe everything he says and obey everything he commands.

The Difficulty of the Doctrine
Christians ought to realize how difficult, objectionable, and unbelievably absurd this doctrine is bound to appear to non-believers. They need to understand this for apologetic purposes to understand the state of mind of prospective converts, and for purposes of appreciating their own belief in all its astounding character.

The difficulty is a double one. First, there is the immediate, instinctive, intuitive shock. everyone who met Jesus was shocked. No one understood him--his disciples, his enemies, Jews, Gentiles, Greeks, Romans, Sadducees, Pharisees, the pious, the impious, the learned, the unlearned, liberals, conservatives--no one. No one had ever met anyone like Jesus before. "Never has anyone spoken like this" (Jn 7:46).

Second, on the reflective, rational level this claim seems patently absurd. It is the claim of a man who came from a woman's womb, grew from a baby, got hungry and tired and angry, suffered and died--to be divine!

Tomorrow, I'll summarize what Kreeft sets forth which are clues to the possibility of the doctrine, and then arguments for Christ's divinity such as his trustworthiness, and the impossibility of the alternative, competing possibilities known as the quadrilemma: Lord, Liar, Lunatic, or Myth? And Kreeft doesn't presuppose that they are competing "possibilities" are "impossibilities", he sets out a considerable case explaining in a logical fashion why each horn of the quadrilemma is fallacious.

Faith and Works and Faith Alone and Protestants and Catholics

I feel compelled to transcribe a few paragraphs from Peter Kreeft, since Catholics and Protests still to this day commonly misunderstand one another on soteriology (salvation). The "faith and works" issue is particularly important because it is most likely where the heresy that "all good people go to Heaven" comes from, and has to be cleared up wherever that ugly booger rears its head.

The issue of salvation sparked the Protestant Reformation and split the church. It seemed to both sides at the time that Protestants and Catholics taught two radically different gospels, two religions, two answers to the msot basic of all questions: What must I do to be saved? Catholics said you must both believe and practice good works to be saved. Luther, Calvin, Wycliffe and Knox insisted that faith alone saves you. Unfortunately, both sides have been talking past each other for 450 years. But there is strong evidence that it was essentially a misunderstanding and that it is beginning to be cleared up.

Both sides used key terms, faith and salvation, but in different senses.

1. Catholics used teh term salvation to refer to the whole process, from its beginning in faith, through the whole Christian life of the works of love on earth, to its completion in heaven. When Luther spoke of salvation he meant the initial step--like getting into Noah's ark of salvation--not the whole journey.

2. By faith Catholics meant only one of the three needed "theological virtues" (faith, hope and love), faith being intellectual belief. To Luther, faith meant accepting Christ with your whole heart and soul.

Thus, since Catholics were using salvation in a bigger sense and faith in a smaller sense, and Luther was using salvation in a smaller sense and faith in a bigger sense, Catholics rightly denied and Luther rightly affirmed that we were saved by faith alone.

Catholics taught that salvation included more than faith, just as a plant includes more than its roots. It needs its stem (hope) and its fruits (love) as well as its root (faith). Luther taught that good works can't buy salvation, that all you need to do and all you can do to be saved is to accept it, accept the Savior, by faith.

Both sides spoke the truth. Since truth cannot contradict truth, the two sides really did not contradict each other on this most important of all questions. That assessment may sound unduly optimistic, but it is essentially what Catholic and Lutheran theologians said publicly in their "Joint Statement on Justification" a few years ago. Pope John Paul II said the same thing publicly to the German Lutheran bishops. It both astonished and delighted them (D'Souza talks about this very thing in What's So Great About Christianity).

. . . .

The official teaching of Catholicism (as distinct from the popular misconception) is that salvation is a totally free gift that we can do nothing to "buy" or produce. The Council of Trent's "Decree on Justification" is as insistent on the gratuitous nature of grace as Luther or Calvin. So is Aquinas in the Treatise on Grace in the Summa Theologiae, the bottom line of which is that we can do nothing without God's grace--not be saved, not deserve grace, not even ask for grace.

Handbook of Christian Apologetics, p320-321.

The Divinity of Jesus Christ, part 1

I'm currently read/studying, studying/reading The Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli. One section of the book that I've found particularly compelling is on the divinity of Christ. I'm going to try to summarize best I can the chapter of the book a little each day until I've gotten it all down. Kreeft asserts that all the data except the Christian alternative has been shown to be false, and that the divinity of Jesus Christ is the only reasonable explanation. This compared to the attempted explanations of liar, lunatic, myth, guru, as well as various conspiracy theories regarding the apostles, and early Christian Church.

Note: I'm only going to cite something else if it is something from a different book, and I'll make my opinion known, so that all you are reading is the information provided from Kreeft and Tacelli

Part 1 -- The Claims Made by Jesus and the Claims Made by Others About Jesus.

The questions and problems of Jesus' identity emerge from the data. The data being the four Gospels--which tells us the claims he made about himself and, the claims others made about him.

1 Corinthians 12:3, authored by Apostle Paul -- Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.

Philippians 2:11, authored by Apostle Paul -- and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Matthew 11:27, authored by Matthew -- "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

Mark 12:6, authored by John Mark -- "He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, 'They will respect my son.'"

Mark 13:32, authored by John Mark -- "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

Mark, 14:61-62, authored by John Mark -- But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer. Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" "I am," said Jesus. "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."

Luke 10:22, authored by Luke -- "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

Luke 22:70, authored by Luke -- They all asked, "Are you then the Son of God?" He replied, "You are right in saying I am."

John 10:30, authored by John -- "I and the Father are one."

John 14:9, authored by John -- Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing the work."

For further scripture see: Tit 2:13l 1 Jn 5:20; Rom 9:5; Jn 1:1; Col 1:15-20; Jn 1:1; Phil 2:6, Heb 13:8; Heb 7:26; Jn 8:46; 2 Cor 5:21; Mk 2:5-12; Lk 24:45-47; Acts 10:43; 1 Jn 1:5-9; Jn 8:58; 1 Tim 6:15; Rev 17:14; Jn 10:30; Jn 12:45; Jn 14:8-10; Jn 10:37-38; Jn 14:25-26; 16:7-15; Mt 3:17; Mt 17:5; Jn 8:18; 1 Jn 5:9; Jn 3:16; Jn 5:39-40; Jn 20:30-31; Mk 8:31; Lk 9:21-22; Lk 9:21-22; Lk 12:49-53; Lk 22:35-37; Lk 24:1-7; Jn 3:11-14; Jn 6:63-64; Jn 13:1-11; Jn 14:27-29; Jn 18:1-4; Jn 19:26-30; Lk 6:1-5.

The data is the foundation for the divinity of Christ, or the assertion that Christ is divine. Many people will take a shortcut and say they do not believe that Christ is God because they don't believe the Scriptures themselves, or the authors of the Sciptures, or that they were revised, etc. etc. etc. Kreeft gets to that later in the section of the chapter, and I will get to it in a later post.

Tomorow I will try to get part 2 up and it will be about the importance of the issue, and the difficulty of the doctrine.

Clearing Something Up...

I recently realized this post could be taken wrongly by some people.

Specifically, I could foresee the charge that I was "encouraging people to read atheist philosophers and atheist literature."

Actually, I was . . .

I firmly believe that there is absolutely nothing to fear from atheists or their literature. If a person is on a quest to find the answers to life's toughest question hopefully they will feel their head with some of everything. If a person with intellectual honesty endeavors to find the Truth , it is my belief that Christianity will triumph over any other worldview--especially atheism.

Both sides in this battle deserve a fair look. As Peter Kreeft said, Christianity is reasonable but it is not obvious.

If it were obvious intellectual giants such as Hobbes, Machiavelli, Voltaire, Rousseau, Jefferson, Shaw, Russell, Franklin, Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, Freud and Skinner would not have rejected it--amongst many others.

And if it were not reasonable other heavyweights such as Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Luther, Descartes, Pascal, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, Dante, Lewis, Chesterton, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Tolkien, da Vinci, and Michelangelo would not have embraced it.

And as NYU Philosophy professor Thomas Nagel said "I'm not comforted by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people that I know are religious believers."

There is absolutely no reason for Christians to not be confident in their Christian faith and worldview. If the atheists could have discredited Christianity they would have already done so. If the unbelievers from Jesus' own day could have come up with his body after the ascension they would have (they had the motive and the means). The Bible has time and again withstood the test against the critic; there is more manuscript evidence for the Bible than for any other ancient text or document--Homer's great works don't even come close. There is no reason at all for the Christian to shirk or fear.

While Christianity may not be obvious, it is the Truth, and those who seek in earnest and in good faith will find what they are looking for.