Responses to Question: "...why Christians believe that Jesus was the son of God?"

We received the following e-mail at our church website. How would YOU have responded?

Subject: Greetings
To: postmaster@presbycmoriches.presbychurch.org

Can you please explain to me why Christians believe that Jesus (May peace be on him) was the son of God? to me, that is a monstrous lie, and if the heavens could hear such a thing, they would crumble! please explain.

Rev. Letizia's reply

Craig Tenke's reply

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This is a reasonable question, and as such deserving of a considered reply. It seems to me that you might actually be looking less for "the doctrine the Trinity," and more for a way of grasping the REAL meaning behind the "monstrous lie." By way of introduction, I am not a theologian, but rather a scientist by trade, and a Christian by faith.

The claim that Jesus is the son of the one God, the God of Abraham is indeed a paradox of the faith, yet not a "lie" to me. How CAN such an expression roll off the tongue of anyone but a fool or a heretic? This was your reaction, and it was also the immediate response of the Jewish authorities two thousand years ago. When probed, this paradox actually contains a deeper truth. To understand this truth, and other paradoxes central to that faith of Christians, you must understand the faith of believers.

Christians adhere to the ten commandments, which clearly prohibit idolatry or the worship of any other god. If this is so, how can these beliefs coexist? What does this paradox imply? It clearly HAS been considered by CHRISTIANS for millennia, in many different contexts. Although I won't pretend to speak for all Christians, I think I can clarify some of the implications of the expression "the son of God," and with it to indicate why it is necessity for our faith. We all suffer from the limitations of our human comprehension, awareness and motivations. This view of God uniquely formalizes our PERSONAL relationship to God. Do we feel awe in the presence of the God of all creation? Certainly! However, we are also assured that we are cared for by God, much as a simple child is tended by a just and knowing parent, rather than a cruel and arbitrary tyrant. We don't just serve God out of fear, but out of devotion and love.

In a sense, Jesus didn't just bring people of other races and faiths to the God of Abraham; Jesus brought them to each other as well. Jesus taught that of all the laws, the greatest are to love God with all your heart and soul and might, and to love your neighbor as yourself. All the laws are based on these two. Judgement is God's, not ours. Furthermore, to serve God is to serve others. Our mandate to forgive is given by Jesus, who directly experienced human suffering, yet who prayed for the forgiveness of his tormentors.

Throughout the millennia, there have been cycles of insight and understanding, as well as ignorance and confusion - as is the case in all religious traditions. There have been doctrinal changes, changing styles of devotion or worship, as well as a changing awareness and understanding of, and compassion for, those who faithfully follow other religious traditions.

I hope this introduction helps you to understand why the heavens DON'T crumble when they hear our songs of praise and thanksgiving.

May God be with you,
Craig Tenke
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Dear ##### ####,

First of all, I hope I have properly addressed your name. I am not sufficiently familiar with your culture to know from your e-mail address whether "####" refers to your family name or is a title. Also, thank you for your sincere and honest question. I can see why the issue would appear like a monstrous lie to you.

Before proceeding, I should give you some background information. I am the pastor of the congregation which produced the web-site to which you addressed your concern. Responding to it could require quite a bit of attention, something I am willing to be committed, if you would like. If my shortresponse raises further questions, please feel free to raise them. Let me begin by asking you some questions. How is it that you chose to write to us? (I am a bit curious.) And should I assume you have asked the same question of many others? I cannot think that you regard our little congregation as a profound fount of knowledge. So, if you have sent this question to a whole host of others, you must be inundated with a flood of responses. And the results could be confusing, because Christians do not speak with one voice. (I can imagine someone only slightly familiar with Christianity saying, "But don't all Christians in the West follow the Pope's teachings?") So, let me begin by giving an overview. This will help you better understand my response in relation to that of the others (if any).

You can divide Christians into two main groups, with many variations of opinions within each group. One group, the fundamentalists, believe every word of the Bible is true, that no part of the Bible contains any falsehood of any kind, and that its meaning requires no interpretation. By bringing your question to me, you are seeking a response from the modernist (also called the liberal) group. My training takes modern scholarship, which questions the truth of everything, very seriously. The label that has been given to the overall perspective in which I have been trained is called "the ideology of practical atheism."

"Atheism! From a Christian pastor?" you might be asking. "Practical atheism" means the only assumptions I can accept, upon which I can build my faith, must be acceptable to the atheist, or non-Christian. (I imagine the phrase was created by religion's detractors. So, I use it to attack secularism from within.) I use it, because if Christianity is going to engage those outside it, Christians must do so on terms set by those outsiders. (Since you are outside my Christian perspectives, if you should find something faulty in what I am about to present, would you be so kind to let me know? For spiritual growth for both of us comes only in the give and take of wrestling over our personal beliefs.)

By the rules of practical atheism, if something in the Bible sounds absurd (such as Jesus walking on water, or Jesus being raised from the dead) the story should be treated as absurd, unless good reasons can be given to believe it. Without actual proof for a seemingly absurd belief, I must maintain a preference for the atheist, or skeptical, position. Otherwise, I cannot dialogue with a non-Christian.

Continuing the attempt to be clear to a non-Christian, let me observe that the language Jesus' followers used does not fit their experience. They used such words as "resurrection," Messiah" (Christ, or Lord), "Son of God." A messiah, or an anointed one of God, such as King David, is a warlord; Jesus did not raise an army, and the disciples of Jesus came to regard him as the Savior over demonic, not earthly powers. A resurrection, as a return to life on the operation table after the heart stops beating, implies the resurrected person would die a normal death within the usual span of a lifetime; the disciples of Jesus claimed something quite different. They claimed divinity. Yet as you noted, it is indeed absurd to believe God had some kind of physical progeny. Clearly, the language tools available to them were not sufficient to adequately describe what the disciples of Jesus had to say. The disciples' words do not fit their common meanings. (By the way, titles as Lord, or son of God, belonged to the Roman emperor, who was using the cult of his divinity to unite the Roman Empire. Applying such titles to Rabbi Jesus eventually would bring great hardship upon the ancient church. More on this later.)

I am aware that some Muslims do not believe God allowed someone as special as Jesus to die the degrading, shameful death of crucifixion. Yet, this is the very reason contemporary secular scholars accept the death of Jesus. Their basis is called the criterion of embarrassment. Given two different interpretations of an event (God miraculously substituted another for his beloved prophet vs. Jesus was indeed crucified), the explanation which caused the greatest difficulty for the ancient church is the preferred reading. Without going further into it, scholars have preferred what is called the "scandal of the cross."

Regarding the "resurrection of Jesus Christ:" What is human dies. Once a person is actually dead, that person cannot come back to life again. On the other hand, what is divine cannot die. Jesus' disciples claimed they experienced Jesus existing again after he had died. They did not claim he was a ghost, haunting one particular place. They made claims about Jesus which belongs only to what is Divine.

Given the Jewish background in which they were raised, in which they were taught not to look upon the word "GD" spelled out, in which they were taught to use circumlocutions in order not to pronounce The Name, what they claimed must have seemed idolatrous. In describing their experiences the disciples of Jesus made claims that in Jewish monotheism could only indicate divinity, claims that would bring the persecution of the Emperor upon them.

My Procedure:
Once upon a time, truth was easy to recognize. Indisputable, self-evident first principles grounded any assertion of truthfulness: Aristotle's logic was absolutely true. Mathematical truth expressed pure knowledge. The sun obviously rotated around the earth. Today, in postmodernity, no absolute truth exists to ground knowledge. In this climate, I must relate the Lordship of Jesus as Christ (or what amounts to the same thing to me: Jesus Christ as Son of God) to broader areas of accepted knowledge in such a way that a denial of what is asserted also necessitates the abandonment of what is accepted as authoritative knowledge.

I will use the logic of disjunctive (either/or) syllogism. If what the disciples believed and claimed had no basis in reality, they were deeply disturbed people, most likely due to very abnormal grief over the death of Rabbi Jesus. The word that describes this malaise is, delusion." Persons who only had imagined they experienced a resurrection, thought a mere rabbi was the Son of God, trusted they were under the guidance and protection of this Son of God, and believed they were sent on a mission by God to rescue the sin-sick world, are - paranoid. ("Paranoia" has the same meaning as "delusion" throughout this paper, wherein delusions of persecution create delusions of grandeur which cause further delusions of persecution through self-fulfilling prophesy.) Under this presumption, the bizarreness of their delusional beliefs would indicate the degree reality testing had been compromised. The length of time the symptoms were held (its chronic aspect) would indicate the depth of the pathology. They never surrendered their "delusion." A simplified version of my argument is: either the disciples were very sick people or they had a truly amazing experience of some kind. They certainly were not "sick." They were not deluded. Therefore, they truly had an amazing experience, which they called, "the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."

My argument twists Aristotle's logic:
Either the disciples of Jesus were psychotically disturbed people, or they had a truly amazing experience; they definitely were not deluded, but . . but, - a resurrection of Jesus from the dead? How could this be? Why, if this is so, what I call reality is false! The very heavens would crumble!

I accept this twist as theologically appropriate; the theologian, Rudolph Bultmann, claims that if God should prove the Almighty's existence in some way, then human sinners have become the judge over God, deciding whether God did produce an adequate demonstration. More importantly, putting the issue this way maximizes the spiritual conflict God's action places upon an inquirer (produces perplexing spiritual conflict over who will be ruler of one's soul). In addition, it minimizes the temptation toward an imperious forcefulness from Christians, and by not dogmatically forclosing the issue, opens avenues of dialogue with non-Christians.

Defense of the argument:
By definition, a delusion or hallucination is idiosyncratic, something unique to an individual. There is no such thing as a group hallucination or delusion. A group (Nazi Germany, say) might seem to be sharing a delusion (about being a master race). In actuality, one dominant person controls the group: how it thinks, how it perceives the reality it thinks it sees. I believe the more bizarre the beliefs (the more the beliefs violate accepted social constructs - as a dead person coming back to life as God's Son), the more endangered the group (The early church was the only group to be officially cursed by the Jews.), the more impoverished they became (They sold their possessions, believing the world was about to end. Acts 2:44-45) the more tyrannical that one leader must be. Saddam Hussein developed a reputation for getting people to see things his way. Even though he tried in recent years to convince Iraqis of his Islamic devotion, I do not think he really convinced many that the Almighty held him in special regard. He did not possess enough of Adolph Hitler's charismatic power to form a cult of meek followers. ("Meek followers" only in relation to the tyrant. Hitler's henchmen certainly bullied others.)

Some cite Peter as this leader. That is impossible. Even though he is the only logical candidate, he wavered too much to maintain paranoid domination of the endangered group. In the letter to the Galatians (Gal. 2:11-16), the Apostle Paul reports he had lambasted Peter publically. (Such humiliation! It's hard to think of Saddam accepting such a threat to his control.) The beginning of Gal. 2 tells of an agreement among leaders of the ancient church that Gentiles need not convert to Judaism to become Christians. So, when he visited Paul in Antioch, Peter lived like a Gentile. When a group of conservative Christians came to them, Peter vacillated and acted as a kosher Jew, withdrawing his fellowship from Gentile converts to Christianity. This wavering of commitment is what drew down Paul's ire. That wavering disqualifies Peter from being the paranoid leader imposing his will upon unthinking followers.

Of course, one example of sound behavior will not establish the equilibrium of the early church. (And I sense I already am getting too lengthy.) So, let me quickly cite two "pressure tests." I already hinted at one. By arrogating the titles of the Emperor to their "dead" rabbi, the early church directly challenged the authority of Rome. (Tradition holds that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome during Nero's persecution.) So, how did this supposedly dysfunctional group hold up under severe pressure? (Similarly deluded groups, such as Jim Jones & his followers at Jonestown, David Koresh & the Camp Davidians, Marshall Applewhite & Heaven's Gate, last 30 to 50 years before a major calamity.)

Another example: extreme prejudice (with its corresponding social pressure) can be spotted when two words are used as one. In Jesus' day, a Jew could speak of "Gentiles," or "sinners," or "Gentilesinners." As already noted, the early church lived Jesus' ethic of love for the outcast by extending their fellowship to Gentile sinners. Any imam who publically would preach that Christians and Jews should be allowed to build houses of worship in Mecca could well receive pressure similar to what was placed upon the early church. The emotional well- being of such an imam had better be intact. If the early church did not have some kind of valid experience of their "risen Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God," (I use quotation marks because language cannot contain their experience.) then they were severely disturbed people. How well did this supposedly dysfunctional group hold up under exacting pressure? The answer is history.

Craig Tenke (the web master of our site who already responded to you) and I are thinking of publishing a dialogue of other "pressure tests" in which he will react as a scientist to my assertions.

Dilemmas:
All that I wrote to you may be dismissed as irrelevant by one who believes in the God portrayed in the Bible but clarified by the Koran. Specifically, God may be for you an unquestionable, yet very real presence, who IS jealous ("no other gods before me"). The monstrosity of the lie, in that case, cannot be a matter of logic, but rather what you would regard to be the heresy of my claim.

In response: A very devout man named Joseph Smith was upset by the confusing variety of religions claims. He believed God appeared to him in a vision and promised to reveal the truth. In 1827, he received a divine revelation which he translated into the "Book of Mormon." While you and I might have a different perspective, Joseph Smith believed that this "revelation" corrects all previous errors. Yet, why should either of us accept Joseph Smith's "revelation?" Merely to make a dogmatic assertion based upon an alleged revelation coming at a later time is insufficient. It is not a "correction." A person of a particular religious persuasion has to back the assertion up by appealing to a source of authority OUTSIDE the revelation itself, in order to speak to outsiders.

When I read the part of your question in which you confided that believing Jesus was a son of God would be like believing "a monstrous lie, and if the heavens could hear such a thing, they would crumble!" I thought of Roger Bacon, the ancient philosopher credited with developing the scientific method. He wrote that Copernicus "thinks nothing of introducing fiction of any kind into nature provided his calculations turn out well." "Fiction" in this case is something that does not seem plausible or intelligible, based upon a prior sense of reality - one's "first principles." Eventually, Isaac Newton overwhelmingly established Copernicus over Ptolemy. Even though our senses give us direct "proof" the sun orbits the earth, Newton's perspective became a part of scientists' first principles. These principles became so well established, that the 20th century's quantum mechanics and relativity theory seemed like "fictions" from a Newtonian perspective.

Paradoxically, I claim the alleged resurrection of Jesus shatters the epistemology and ontology of both believers and non-believers. Anyone may conclude the alleged resurrection of Jesus Christ is impossible, but must do so by assuming, through first principles, what is "obviously" true. Yet, equally valid first principles, based upon secular authority, also tell us delusions and hallucinations are idiosyncratic. If this is not so, if they can be jointly experienced, any group at any time can be sharing nothing but a dangerous delusion. No criterion for judging what is real would be possible. In that case, how does truth differ from deluded appearance? What is reality?

The issue of the resurrection has destroyed our constructions of reality for both Christians and Christianity's skeptics. If what the disciples claimed they experienced is true in some way, then a deeper reality exists that our senses cannot fathom. If their "experience" is a shared delusion, then no means exists for anyone to know reality.

I believe anybody who desires to be guided by ALL the facts for and against the resurrection of Jesus Christ quickly becomes enmeshed in a painful conflict over truth, truth concerning what has Power to sustain life and give hope. This conflict can only be resolved through a deep commitment of faith. (God will always remain a paradox. God does not prove divine existence to humans: by faith we are saved.) A skeptic could try to believe Jesus' followers must have shared delusions and hallucinations, or believe some strong tyrant must have guided them. Such assertions reduce the alleged doubter's faith to beliefs based upon denial. Something happened to the disciples of Jesus after his crucifixion. "Paranoia" cannot explain it. But what can? That question mark will always remain. Christians believe a Reality entered their lives, giving hope for something beyond touch and sight. This is the reason Christians claim Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
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