Hey, Esprix, c’mon, give the right-wing and middle-of-the-road churches a break. They’re fixed on a legalism based on the Bible (never mind what Jesus said about legalistic attitudes for the moment), but at least they’re drawing the line between orientation and action. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
In just a few years, there will be much more controversial things than gay sex to disturb the legalists. You have my promise on that.
Joe Cool, a nice comeback. Nobody doubts, I think, that whatever else Jesus may have been, he was certainly a student of the Torah, and knew quite well that he was quoting two verses from it. I’d venture to guess that he was aware of Hillel having spoken of them before he did.
As for him “claiming He was God” though, while I don’t totally disagree with you on this – I believe He was, and have pretty fair confidence in the sources on which I base my belief – it’s only fair to haul out the documents. And each Gospel is written with a particular “slant” – paints a particular portrait of the same man, if you will.
For Matthew, Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one whom God had sent in accordance with the prophets’ messages. He strains the meaning of the O.T. passages he quotes in an effort to prove that point.
For Mark, Jesus was the wonder-working Son of God. But what exactly Mark may have meant by that is subject to dispute. The Jesus of Mark is intent on keeping secret the fact that He is the Messiah.
For Luke, he was the compassionate man of sorrows who cared about what hurt the people who turned to Him. There’s much more to Luke’s portrait of Him than that, but that’s the key to Luke.
In none of these does Jesus make any significant claim to be God. Occasionally He speaks with the authority of God – as had the occasional prophet, in the past.
This is not to deny His divinity, only to set forth the straight dope, to coin a phrase, on what the Gospels depict Him as.
In John, some interesting things happen. First, John is a far more mystical document than are the other three. It uses imagery rather than parable or narrative to a far greater extent. For John, Jesus is the pre-existent Word through Whom all things were made, become flesh and dwelling among us. And in John, Jesus repeatedly uses the “I am” teachings – “I am the way, the truth, and the life” – “I am the bread of life” – “I am the door of the sheep” – “I am the true vine” – and rather interestingly, he uses the standard Greek “'ego eimi” rather than dropping either the pronoun or the verb or paraphrasing it as “this humble one is” as any devout Jew would do. Why? Because in the Septuagint, the Name of God which he pronounced of himself, “I am that I am,” is translated by “'ego eimi.” And so no first-century Jew will say “I am” in Greek with the full pronoun+verb construction; to do so would be self-aggrandizing blasphemy.
Libertarian told of having been zapped by reading the most amazing phrase of them all, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Jesus says this of Himself in John, and it’s very clear that He is identifying Himself with God in it.
But the fact that John is a mystical gospel gives us a point to ponder: I am to see Christ in you, in Esprix, in all people. We are part of the mystical Body of Christ, says Paul, and individually organs (“members” in the old sense, whereby being a member (=organ) of the church seen as Christ’s body led to being a “member” in the modern sense).
Is this a verbatim claim? Or is He speaking in mystical language? Certainly I can claim to be “in God” – for Christ is God, on any orthodox trinitarian interpretation, and I am a part of His mystical body.
What exactly was Jesus saying? How certain can we be that John didn’t paraphrase? – which, you’ll recall, was legitimate literary license in that day. A biographer would think nothing of making up the speech that Scipio or Hannibal, given the character as known to the public, would have said in that circumstance, and writing it as though Scipio or Hannibal had actually said it. About the closest parallel I could draw would be the modern historical novel, in which you are expected to characterize Daniel Boone as being the man he was and doing the things he did, but you can include things that a man like that might have said and did that are not historical but the product of your creativity, interpreting the character to modern readers.
And I’d welcome your views, Joe, on what exactly Paul’s teachings and the O.T. moral law mean to the Christian, since I suspect we are coming at this from somewhat different perspectives.