BELIEF IN JESUS’ DEITY IS IRRATIONAL

The Christian Church claims it is rational to believe that Jesus Christ though a true man was also truly God. Jesus in this theology was indeed both an ordinary normal man and God. The worship that is due to God is due to Jesus. Most scholars and researchers in the world disagree with Christianity in this thing. Who is right?
 
Most scholars deny that Jesus viewed himself as God. But if he did, is the theology of anybody being fully God and fully human logical?
 
CHAPTER 7, HANDBOOK CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS
 
Religion says that the doctrine reads like a contradiction but it says it is a mystery. Sorry but that is just a cover up. It is a contradiction.

Page 154 dishonestly argues that the incarnation, God becoming a man, is possible. What right has anybody who believes that Jesus was fully God and fully man two separate natures in one person to say that the incarnation is possible? He cannot know when it is like a contradiction. If it is a paradox then how do we know if it is a paradox or a contradiction?

REASON AND CHRISTOLOGY

The Christians teach that Jesus Christ is true God, fully God and true man – two distinct natures in one person. This doctrine was made official at 325 AD at the Council of Nicaea.

And it was defined to counteract the influence of the priest, Arius of Alexandria, who taught that the Son of God, Jesus, was not God but was the best and highest person God had created. Before he was conceived of the virgin Jesus was an angel in Heaven. Jesus was the first thing God had ever created. This heresy assailed the Church so successfully that it once captured the devotion of the majority.

The followers of Nestorius held that Jesus was two persons acting like one person. God the Son was not Jesus Christ but the two were in perfect union. The theory implies that a man who is not God can be prevented from sinning and still be freely good. This makes God an evil tyrant because he could have done something to all people so that they will not sin.

The Monophysite heresy, probably started by the bishop, Cyril of Alexandria, which was promulgated by the monk Eutyches, taught that Jesus was not two natures in one person but one nature in one person.

Many advanced the crude notion that Jesus’ divinity and humanity were mingled to form a new nature. Jesus was a mixture, a mongrel.

The mingling could not have involved the body for God is immaterial but would have involved the spiritual soul and the spiritual God being mixed together. The result would be a soul that was only partly human.

Some Monophysites might assume that the blending doctrine means mixing God and human nature like two colours of paint to make another colour. But God is timeless and this cannot be done with him for to mix him with something is to change him. And the result would not be God and man combined but a new nature that is neither divine or human. All that can be done is to produce a different kind of human being that God can be incarnate in and form one nature with.

The Catholics objected that if Jesus was one nature then he was not truly man. He was not the same as the rest of us and so could not earn our salvation for us. But if the mingling took place the right way Jesus could have felt like an ordinary person. It is really only experience that counts. Does it really matter if one has a body that is made of different material from what bodies are made of as long as one experiences life like ordinary people do? The Bible testifies to the normal and full humanity of Jesus. Jesus would not have been spoken of this way if he were a hybrid.

The fourth century teacher, Apollinaris of Loadicea, taught that while the human being had a soul (or a mind) and a body, Jesus had a body but no human mind or soul. His divine nature took their place. This would mean that Jesus had no idea of what it was like to be a human being at all. The Bible denies the Apollinarian heresy by saying that Jesus was attracted to sin and was like us in all things but sin (Hebrews 2) and suffered. God cannot suffer for he has no body and is happy. An infinite God cannot suffer and be happy at the same time. God is his power which is infinite so if God suffered he would be infinitely or totally suffering. If Jesus suffered then the heresy is wrong. God having a body that suffered would do him no harm for his happiness would erase the pain. It would hurt him less than a prick on the finger would us.  Pain is not suffering – suffering is a feeling that existence is worthless.

If Jesus was two natures and yet one person then did he have one will or two? The Catholics said he had two which worked in perfect harmony. But some heretics, the Monothelites, wanted to teach that he had only one will. If Jesus was really two natures then he had to have two wills.

Since the early days, some “Christians” denied both the deity and humanity of Jesus. They claimed that he was a spirit that acted like a man but was not a man or a material being at all. Some agreed but claimed that Jesus was just an apparition of God. The heresy that Jesus was just a phantom is called Docetism.

Some of the Docetists claimed that Jesus could not suffer and others held that Jesus, though a spirit, was miraculously enabled to suffer. They pointed out that we are body and soul and when the body is maltreated the soul suffers too.

Docetism was inspired by the notion that the spirit was good and the body was evil and to be hated.

If Jesus was the supreme divine messenger then he had to be a spirit and not a material being unless he was sinless and perfect in which case it didn’t matter.

The body needs sleep and food so it distracts you from holiness. It leads you into sin for temptation appeals to it. If you did not have it you would not sin so the body must be evil. Docetism and God go together.

The orthodox Christian doctrine of the incarnation cannot be understood. We cannot fathom how Jesus could be fully man and fully God and still be one person. The doctrine of the Trinity has three persons being one being while this doctrine, called the hypostatic union, has two beings being one being. Christians say that there are not two beings in Jesus but two natures, one human and the other divine. But to say a nature is not a being is incoherent. It looks so much, too much, like a contradiction. It is said that it is not for the soul and body make one being in us in the same way. But the body is not a mind and the soul is a mind like the divine and human nature of Jesus. The oneness of the divine nature and human nature of Jesus is not like the union of body and mind in us. It is said that the distinction between a person and a nature helps prove that two natures can be one person. The distinction is apparent to anybody who knows that asking what is that is not the same as asking who is that. But the two go together regarding a personal being. A person being, say, a soldier is what he is but his being a person is not about what job he does but about what he is. This is the mistake. It is a person’s nature to be a person. Jesus can not be one person unless he is one nature. The doctrine of the hypostatic union is claiming that two natures can make one nature which is impossible.

The heresies are better than this incomprehensible theory of hypostatic union which offends against the principle that one should not have more mysteries than one needs. Anybody could devise a contradictory doctrine and call it a mystery like the hypostatic union. Mysteries can be dangerous.

To make a person you need consciousness. A person does not need a will or a body or a memory to be a person. You are still a person if you succeed in emptying the mind as in Oriental meditation techniques. God is consciousness. Jesus’ humanity would chiefly have consisted of consciousness. How could these possibly make one person if they are distinct? And if they are not distinct then the human awareness is not required for the result of a union would not be really human anyway. The doctrine leads to belief in unnecessary and/or ridiculous miracles. A God who does that could be at anything.

And it is no way out to say that Jesus revealed the doctrine and so it must be right.

We know by now that if God is a trinity and if Jesus taught that he was a member then Jesus would have to be a fraud for he would need to claim to be all three.

If God cannot be three persons in one human nature then the trinity is false. Thomas Aquinas taught that the three persons could become the one man Jesus at the one time (page 92, The Metaphor of God Incarnate).

And Jesus rejected the notion of saying he was all three.

Jesus said he was sent by the Father so he was not the Father (John 20:21). He offered himself to the Father (Hebrews 9:14). The Gospel of John says that the Word, who became Jesus was with God. He said that he did not come to glorify himself but his Father – that would be meaningless and deceptive if he were the Father. In John 14:6 Jesus called the Holy Spirit another comforter. The original word for another here means another of the same kind but not necessarily nature. Jesus was not the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We cannot take Jesus’ word for it that the hypostatic union is possible if he claimed to be God the Son alone.

The hypostatic union doctrine is really just taking God the Son and the human, Jesus Christ, and pretending that they are one person.

Justin Martyr saw Jesus as a second God or inferior God. In other words, he would have been a non-literal God who was called God because God had made him similar to himself. Theophilus the Bishop of Antioch in the late second century was the first to mention the holy Trinity and his trinity was one of attributes and not persons (page 4, The Godhead Explained) which is very important. The early Church knew nothing of a divine Christ and three persons in one God.
 
Christians today say that as man Jesus did not know all things but as God he did. That is a contradiction for knowing is a sign you are a person. If Jesus did not know as much as he did as God then he was not God. The doctrine is incoherent.
 
Another fatal contradiction though euphemistically called a problem in theology is that if God cannot sin then Jesus could not sin and thus could not really be able to please God by obeying him. If love is voluntary then Jesus had to have the power to sin even if he did not use it. The doctrine of merit is that you cannot deserve anything good or bad unless you have free will and are the cause of your decisions and are not programmed. A Jesus who cannot sin cannot deserve the salvation he supposedly won for our sins on the cross. The doctrine of Jesus having to die to make up for our sins is nasty and unfair and insulting to justice and therefore mankind.

Conclusion
 
To believe in Jesus being God isn’t a rational belief and it is full of contradictions.
  
BOOKS CONSULTED

A CALL TO HERESY, Robert Van de Weyer, Lamp Press, London, 1989
ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania, undated
ASKING THEM QUESTIONS, Various, Oxford University Press, London, 1936
CHRIST IS GOD, Rev JP Arendzen DD, Augustine Publishing Company, Devon, 1987
CHRIST OUR LIGHT, J Buys SJ Geoffrey Chapman and Gill & Son, London-Melbourne, Dublin 1966
CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED Ed John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany Fellowship Inc, Minneapolis, 1973
DID JESUS CHRIST REALLY COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN? Alan Hayward, Christadelphian ALS, Birmingham
DO CHRISTIANS BELIEVE IN THREE GODS? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1992
EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
FOUR GREAT HERESIES, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1975
GOD AND THE HUMAN CONDITION, F J Sheed, Sheed & Ward, London 1967
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1994
HERESIES AND HOW TO AVOID THEM, Editors Ben Quash and Michael Ward, SPCK, London, 2007
HONEST TO GOD, John AT Robinson, SCM Press, London, 1963
JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES John Wijngaards, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1998
JESUS GOD THE SON OR SON OF GOD? Fred Pearce Christadelphian Publishing Office, Birmingham
MERE CHRISTIANITY, CS Lewis, Fontana, Glasgow, 1975
MIRACLES, CS Lewis, Fontana, London, 1960
PRIESTLAND’S PROGRESS, Gerald Priestland, BBC, London, 1981
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE, Henry Morris, Moody Press, Bucks, 1988
SET MY EXILES FREE, John Power, Logos Books, MH Gill & Son Ltd, Dublin, 1967
SOME MODERN FAITHS, Maurice C Burrell and J Stafford Wright, Intervarsity Press, Leicestershire, 1988
THE CASE FOR CHRIST, Lee Strobel, HarperCollins and Zondervan, Michigan, 1998
THE EARLY CHURCH, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
THE GODHEAD EXPLAINED, Christadelphian Press, Beverley, South Australia
THE METAPHOR OF GOD INCARNATE, John Hick, SCM Press, London, 1993
THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE, John Hick ed., SCM Press, London, 1977
THE NEW CULTS, Walter Martin, Vision House, Santa Ana, California, 1980
THE SPIRIT OF GOD, John Bedson, Lightstand Burbank CA 1984
THE UNAUTHORISED VERSION, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1992
UNDERSTANDING THE CULTS, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Campus Crusade for Christ, San Bernardino, 1983
UNITARIAN CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER ESSAYS, William Ellery Channing, The Bobs-Merrill Company Inc, Kansas, 1957
YOU CAN LIVE FOREVER IN PARADISE ON EARTH, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, New York, 1982
 
THE WWW
 
http://www.kevinquick.com/kkministries/books/reasoning/nwt.html,
Kevin Quick discusses the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the Bible never says that Jesus is God

www.easyspace.com
Gives the Jehovah’s Witness response to this site

www.gospelassemblyfree.com/facts/fathersonwayne.htm
Father and/or Son by H Wayne Hamburger