DID JESUS CALL HIMSELF GOD?
This question is
heard every now and then, from certain marginal Christian groups and Muslims,
who claim each on their own accord, that Jesus of Nazareth never called Himself
‘God’, and that this appellative was given to Him by a distorted Christianity
three centuries later. In fact, the first controversy over this, which tried to
be settle the issue, was during the First Council of Nicaea in the year 325 CE;
which also proved how widespread and older was this idea than Arius and his
immediate followers; so strong that survived for centuries later, and even
though it lost strength through time, mainly through strong persecution, but it
remains to this day, especially among unitarian groups.
This proves two
important facts:
1 – That
regardless of how old an idea is, how convincing or how widely held, it is not
prove that is correct.
2 – That
Scripture contains all information necessary on all topics of the Christian
faith, without the need to wonder or guess over non explicit areas. All basic
points are clear and direct, the non-clear are open to debate, and the
forbidden issues, condemned unanimously.
A CREDIBLE
SOURCE
Christianity has
only four authoritative testamentary records of the life, work and words of
Jesus of Nazareth, and which are recognized as true containers of Jesus’s
message while He was on earth.
From these four,
the first three commonly known as gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, are really
anonymous works, assumed to have been written by these Apostles and disciples
of Jesus, or under their direct approval, but some modern critics who have more
of secular than believers, enjoy putting into doubt their apostolic origin, and
therefore the value of these records.
However, the
last one attributed to Apostle John is the only one which openly claims to have
been written by a direct disciple of Jesus, who was present at the last supper,
and most probably was Apostle John, son of Zebedee (John 13:23; 19:26; 21:20-24;
Mark 10:35; John 21:1-2).
WHAT THE
GOSPEL OF JOHN SAYS
Whoever wrote
the called Gospel according to John, the internal claim is that it was written
by someone who knew Jesus deeply, more than any other disciple, to the point of
developing a close relationship with Him, that awarded him the nickname of the
‘Beloved Disciple’.
The document
that this disciple of the Lord wrote, contains the most developed theological
document about the nature and mission of Jesus of Nazareth than any other. In
this record the author openly declares Jesus to be the Logos or ‘Word’ of God, and
being God (John 1:1, 14-15). Also declares this Word to be ‘the only Son of the
Father’ to have existed in ‘the beginning’ next to the Father (John 1:2), which
in this context implies eternity, since for God there is no ‘beginning’ of any
kind.
Furthermore, the
word used is ἐν (in), and not ἀπὸ (from), discarding all reference to a
personal beginning of the Word, but a permanent existence together with the
Father from eternity.
Jesus Himself declared his divinity by calling God
YHWH and Himself, ‘One’; and by calling God, ‘Father’; which was understood as
a personal identification with the Supreme God of the Jews, YHWH (John 10:30-33),
and thus also declares the author of the gospel of John personally, taking away
any idea of the Jews having misunderstood the Lord (John 5:18), clarifying that
that was the intention of Jesus by saying that.
Finally, Jesus Himself declared that meaning when He
said to Phillip:
“Have I been with you so long, and you still do not
know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say,
‘Show us the Father’?”
John 14:9
CONCLUSION
Jesus Himself never said explicitly ‘I am God’, but indirectly
He implied it constantly, and thus was the sense in which everyone understood
his declarations, so much his own disciples as did the Temple officials who
condemned Him for blasphemy.
Jesus never said openly He was God because He did not
want to obscure the reality and person of God YHWH, since the common listener
would have understood it that way if He had openly said ‘I am God’. Jesus was a
different person from YHWH, and He also made that perfectly clear, but He also
implied his divine nature by putting Himself on equal status as the Father by a
pre-existing nature (John 17:5), which could not be understood in any other
way, save that He made Himself ‘equal to God’.
Furthermore, as the gospel of John was written after
the fulness of revelation was completed, the author could express this directly
and clearly, as this truth was fully revealed 300 years prior to any
Christological council or synod, by claiming that Jesus was God and that no one
ever, had really seen YHWH, but that it was Jesus who appeared to the prophets
and received worship from them:
“No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the
Father’s side, he has made him known.”
John 1:18
Omar Flores.
Comments
Post a Comment