My (admittedly uneducated, and short) case for why Jesus was the Son of God

[Ivan_Denisovich]

@Spice_Weasel

@kenobi_65

The issue, in my mind, is that many Christians – particularly those who cite passages in the Gospels such as these as evidence of Jesus’ divinity – believe that the Bible is literally true, and is the inspired word of God.

In their view, if the Bible says that Jesus walked on water, or fed 5000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish, then that is absolutely, literally, what happened, and there’s no room, in their belief, for non-literal explanations of those miracles.

I have a close friend who believes this. He is a Presbyterian minister and he had to explain to us what it means to be a conservative theologian. I find it baffling, because he is a highly intelligent, otherwise rational person. He likes to talk about theology and I am happy to listen, but he is not heavy on the proselytizing, which would be a problem. But every once in a while, in private, I turn to my husband and say, “Can you believe Friend believes X?”

The thing that really gets me is how can you believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible if the version you are reading is in a translated language anyhow? What are the odds something got screwed up in translation? Pretty high, I’d wager.

This needs to be answered. Your friend is not a conservative theologian, in fact by being a Protestant/Catholic he is at minimum schismatic and like many Protestants he appears to be drifting into beliefs that are possible heresy. I do not label any individual a heretic unless they have been so labeled by someone with authority in such matters and I am not a priest or bishop, but biblical literalism and the theory it comes from sola scriptura is a deemed heresy.

Heretical beliefs are never conservative theology.