Yes, Jesus was both God and man. No, I cant explain to you something I don't fully understand myself.
But I do know the Bible is clear on both truths, and you don't have to believe the Bible, but if you do believe it, then you have to believe its clear revelation on this.
"One of the oft-invoked arguments of liberal theologians against the deity of Christ is the claim that he never personally claimed to be divine. Since this flies in the face of all the evidence, as will be shown below, how can such claims be made? Henry notes that "the contention by some New Testament scholars that Jesus never claimed to be the Christ, God's anointed one, invariably flows from critical theories that invalidate in advance the factuality of the Gospels as Gerhardus Vos has definitively shown. [v]
This, in turn, leads to the conclusion that the biblical writers deliberately, although not maliciously, falsified the evidence given in the New Testament records for apologetic purposes. They were recording what the early church chose to or wanted to believe rather than the hard, cold truth. However, "the fact that the apostles wrote from the standpoint of personal belief is evidence not that they fabricated the facts but rather that they professed to tell the truth." [vi] Even those who knew him most intimately called him the Son of God. As Henry again notes, "Peter confesses him to be veritably 'the Christ, the Son of the living God' (Matt. 16:16, KJV), a conviction that Jesus in turn grounds not simply in subjective experience but expressly in divine revelation." Source
But for those of us, who like me, prefer our media in youtube size bunches, Driscoll does a good job of explaining it.
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9 comments:
2:16 pm
Gotta love the way Driscoll puts that
3:14 pm
Hello!
You wrote:"owever, "the fact that the apostles wrote from the standpoint of personal belief is evidence not that they fabricated the facts but rather that they professed to tell the truth." "
(le-havdil) I recommend you to read the research on the website www.netzarim.co.il about NT ; start with the “Christian”-page. It’s conclusions is very essential in this discussion.
Anders Branderud
4:56 pm
Hi Anders, actually I did not write that, I just quoted it. But I do agree with it.
The greatest evidence that the apostles believed in Jeshua, and that He was the great 'I AM', Jehovah, and the promised Messiah, was that their lives were transformed and they gave their lives for Him.
To not believe in Jeshua as divine, is to think Him a liar or mad.
Blessings!
9:29 pm
Can someone be a Christian and not believe in the divinity of Christ? I would think not but I'm shocked to meet more and more people who claim to be Christ followers yet believe Jesus was a mere man, a creation and nothing will convince them otherwise. This is an issue for a friend of mine who was raised in the JW church but his family left and became Christian when he was still quite young. His parents, despite claiming to be Christian, still stick to the JW belief that Jesus is only a man.
9:35 pm
If you dont believe Jesus was and is God, then you are not a Christian. It is a non negotiable element of the Christian faith, and is amazingly clear in the scriptures, and is in fact the whole point of the gospel of John.
5:50 pm
Mmmm I agree but it's disturbing how many Christians are being lead astray down the path of refuting or doubting Jesus' divinity. If you google unitarianism or something similar there are heaps of websites which take all of the verses that 'trinitarians' (don't like that term but couldn't think of anything else) use to explain this (including verses from John). Very very worrying...and there are a few of these people in my church.
9:47 am
I am with you Sarah, and know exactly what you are talking about.
This reference from Wikipedia is accurate,
"Unitarians believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ as found in the New Testament and other early Christian writings. Adhering to strict monotheism, they maintain that Jesus was a great man and a prophet of God, perhaps even a supernatural being, but not God himself. Unitarians believe in the moral authority, but not necessarily the divinity, of Jesus. Their theology is thus distinguishable from the theology of Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, mainline Protestant, Pentecostal and other Christian denominations which hold the Trinity doctrine as a core belief."
which begs the question, why attend a Christian Church if you are not a Christian? to sow dissent? or because you are on a journey?
I have no problem at all, in fact we actively encourage, those who are 'seekers' those on a 'journey' to come to church...thats what we want, its what we do. But those who are proud in their denouncement of Jesus as God, which is what He clearly said about Himself, are not Christians.
Jesus said "I am"
9:20 am
Yes, I find it hard to think how churches should respond to people 'on a journey'. While it is great to thoroughly explore what we believe and why, it is a whole other kettle of fish when people go from seekers/doubters/questioners to false teachers and start leading others astray.
I think those who disbelieve the Trinity genuinely see themselves as Christians and that we are the ones who believe false teaching about Jesus. Therefore they think we need them there to teach us the truth (that's what I've gathered from some conversations anyway).
9:40 am
yes exactly.
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