JESUS: NEITHER GOD NOR HIS SON

The Christian Scriptures Deny that Jesus Christ is God

"As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism ; a sort of religious denial of God.

It professes to believe in a man rather than in God." Thomas Paine. My comment: that is certainly true in practice!

Read this site for a Christian refutation of the idea that the Bible holds that Jesus is God http://www.christadelphia.org/wrested1.htm

PREFACE

The purpose of this book is to reveal that the doctrine that Jesus is God is a fiction. Jesus was not God and the New Testament does not actually say he is God. When it doesn’t say it and especially since it denies it, we can be confident that Jesus is not God for it is the only source we have that is close to Jesus assuming he lived.

Why is Jesus Kyrios and never called God? Kyrios is Lord. It is God's name but that does not mean it can't be given in honour to a person who is not God but who represents God and has God's authority.

The non-divinity of Jesus is a wonderful tool for making Christianity collapse and should be employed towards that noble end. It also shows that Christianity has no business looking down its nose at idolatry for it is the biggest offender against God’s ban on idolatry. The Church may argue that if it is wrong about Jesus being God it means well and it is God not Jesus it means to worship for it means to worship Jesus only if he is God. So the error is not in who God is but what God has done or not done. But the Bible rejects this logic for idolaters want their worship of idols to go to the true God if they are wrong and still God says he hates idolatry and rejects the worship of them. The heathen believe that God has broken up into a pile of gods who live in idols and the Church does not say their error is in what God has done and not in what and who God is. St Paul said that the demons take the worship offered to idols. The logic of the Church would imply that if Jesus is not God and you feel more attracted to God by believing that he is then it is best to worship Jesus as God. It would be an argument for idolatry. It would be saying the Bible is wrong to condemn this sin.

The Ebionites and many sects rooted in the first century denied that Jesus was really God. If you read The Early Church, Paul of Samosata who was bishop of Antioch and was appointed in 260 AD (page 114), Origen who died about 254 AD (page 105) and Justin Martyr (page 86) of the mid second century, were major Christian theologians who did not agree that the Bible should be interpreted to mean that Jesus was literally Yahweh God.

The Christians fabricate Bible evidence that Jesus is God.

A prophecy in Isaiah that isn’t even about Jesus is thought to be predicting Jesus’ divinity in saying he shall be called Mighty God. But it only says he will be called it.

God in Numbers 23:19 says that God is not a human or son of man that he should lie or ever change his mind about anything. Jesus if he is God and risen is now in eternity and in eternity there is no past or present or future so for that reason God saying he is not man stands even though it was said "before" Jesus came. Isaiah knowing that text would not have meant Emmanuel is God.

They say Jesus said he knows all that God knows when he only said that nobody knows God but the Son and God knows the Son.

They say God called Jesus the Kyrios his own name. But God gives divine titles to men in the Old Testament as honorific titles. In Genesis 5, the birth of a man called Mahalalel is mentioned. Mahalalel means the Blessed God.

The Prophet Micah predicted a ruler whose activity and origin are from all eternity. This could be a poetic way of saying that this man was special. He more than any other man was the work of God and eternity is sometimes a synonym for God. Christians assume it’s saying the ruler never had an origin and only God has no origin so the ruler is God. But it does say he had an origin.

Christians say that when Jesus was worshipped that he never told the worshipper they were wrong. First of all, the gospels make it clear we must worship God only. So they didn’t need to tell us if Jesus did correct these people. Second, Jesus was merely called a good teacher and he told the man off for saying that. Third, we read of people making assumptions and Jesus despairingly not bothering to waste time trying to correct them.

Let us now comb the Bible to see if Jesus thought he was God the Son, God almighty. The Gospel of John is dealt with in my book John Gospel Denies Jesus is God. In brief, that gospel says that Jesus was the incarnation of the Word, the message of God and God is his message. But that is not the same as saying that he is God. A saint who is not God can be the incarnation of the love of God even though God is said in Christian belief to be love itself. When Jesus said that before Abraham was I am and I am being the name of God in the Old Testament he didn’t say he meant it in the sense that God meant it. Jesus said that he and the Father are one but that could be a reference to his being the manifestation of the Father for he said he is the image of the Father so that he who sees him sees the Father. He said he wanted his followers to be one in the same way he and the Father are one indicting that he didn’t mean that he was one nature with the Father. Jesus denied he was God when he said his teaching was not his own but the teaching of the Father.

Christians say that he means his teaching is not of human origin but divine. He was saying his teaching was not from himself as man but himself as God. So they turn it into a declaration that Jesus was God! But if you mean that you would say that. You would not use cryptic clues like, “my teaching is not my own for it is God’s”. To say my teaching is not mine but God’s is to deny that you are God. Christians have to obscure their doctrine that Jesus was fully human and fully divine and yet one person so that my referred to his personhood which was both human and divine and pretend that he was like a pantomime horse half human and half divine and was referring only to his man side.

Nothing in the gospels or New Testament or anywhere in the Bible declares Jesus to have been God.

BIBLE DENIES DEITY

The Bible itself proves that the doctrine of a divine Christ was not in the original Christian faith but was cooked up later on. This is not surprising when Jesus did a lot of wrong things. Read my Sinner of God. It says he was a Zealot so unlike a god he had to use force to achieve his aims. Read my Jesus the Zealot.

Mark the first gospel gives no hint that Jesus was anything other than God's right hand man but an ordinary man nonetheless. It is the later gospels that try to turn him into something like a deity. In Mark, Jesus never calls God Father or Daddy. Yet the doctrine that God is daddy is supposed to be fundamental. Its absence from the gospel is telling.

Jesus based all his authority on the Law and the Prophets. He even said that we should believe in his resurrection because of the prophets saying it would happen and not even because witnesses were saying he rose – the witnesses are worthless without the prophecies. How much credulous junk can one take? Anyway, it is impossible to believe that Jesus could have thought he was God and superior to the prophets when he did that. He did say he was wiser than Solomon but maybe that was because Solomon didn’t have as much scripture. He did say he was greater than Jonah but Jonah called a city to repentance and Jesus called more than that.

If it is true as a growing number of orthodox Christians are coming to believe that the Bible teaches that death is the complete cessation of existence then it follows that the Christadelphians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Dawn Bible Students are right to say that Jesus could not be God for God could not die. It would mean that Jesus would exist as God when his body and spirit were dead.

In Matthew and Luke, Jesus goes into the wilderness to fast for forty days. This was after his baptism and before his ministry. It was a spiritual preparation for that ministry. He was going to die for sinners so he had no need to fast for them. God does not need retreats. It is significant that the gospel that exalts Jesus the most, John, omits the temptations and fasting.

In Mark 10, James and John asked Jesus to seat them on each side of him when his kingdom comes. Jesus replied that these seats were not his to give but were for those they had been preserved for. Dubiously, Christians interpret this to mean that the seats aren’t Jesus’ to give for they have already been given away. But you don’t say anything is not yours to bestow when you mean it has already been allocated. The verse means that Jesus can’t interfere with God’s decisions which means he cannot be God. The interpretation has it that only those who have been promised the seats can permit others to take them. God could change this if he wishes and he is not going to. Jesus was not God for he makes it clear he cannot think of changing. The people who will get the seats will be completely subject to God and would give up the seats to James and John if God wanted them to. This means that the seats must really be God’s to give. Jesus is denying that he is God for if the seats are God’s to give and not his then he cannot be the same being as God.

They claim that Jesus can’t give them away for Jesus is God and God can give them to whomsoever he wishes. So Jesus as man cannot give them away but as God he can. This splits Jesus up into two persons.

Jesus said that it was far worse to blaspheme God the Holy Spirit than to blaspheme him (Matthew 12). If he had been God they would be equally bad. Christians say that they are equally bad but that if one insults Jesus not realising that he is God then it is not as bad. This is why they think Jesus said that insulting the spirit was unpardonable but insulting him was forgivable. This interpretation is wrong or Jesus never said that he meant those who insulted the Son of Man in ignorance. Nobody says, “There is mercy for those who offend me but none for those who offend God,” unless they meant the same thing by “offend”. Jesus denied he was God or equal to the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said he did not know when the second coming would happen (Mark 13:32). Some argue that know denotes make known not knows (page 41, Understanding the Cults).

But even then it is saying that the Son can’t make it known for it is up to the Father which makes the Son less than God. The Church says that we cannot understand how Jesus could have been God and not know everything. We cannot simply because it makes no sense. To be a person one must first have consciousness. If Jesus did not know what God knows then they had two separate consciousness and accordingly must have been two separate persons.

Mark 12:29-34 has Jesus telling a Jewish scribe that he is not far from the kingdom of God because he told Jesus that he believed that God is one and must be loved above all things and the neighbour must be loved for God’s benefit. By kingdom of God, Jesus meant his own reign under God. If Jesus had been God he would not have told the man he was close to this kingdom when the man did not believe that about Jesus and had stated that God was one meaning literally one person who was not incarnate in Jesus. The man just recited the main Jewish beliefs which shows that Jesus wanted to create a kingdom based on the same things.

In Luke 23:28, Jesus tells the women of Jerusalem not to weep for him but themselves. God is infinitely valuable and persons are not so God would not have told the women of Jerusalem to weep for themselves instead of God incarnate going to the cross.

Acts 2:36 says that God made Jesus Lord. If Jesus were God he could not be made Lord.

Acts 5:30-31 says that at the resurrection Jesus was exalted to be Prince and Saviour. He would have been prince and saviour before that unless he was an ordinary man who had to pass God’s test to become Messiah and saviour. Had the author believed Jesus was God he would have been more careful with this material in case the simple readers would have been misled. It means exactly what it says.

Paul wrote that some day, the last day, Jesus would hand over the kingdom to God and then be subject to God himself (1 Corinthians 15:24, 28). This proves that he thought that though Jesus is sinless he isn’t always doing what God wants him to do. He errs. The day will come when God magically enables him to suit himself exactly so that God will be all in all. If Jesus were God he could not go wrong for it is impossible for two conflicting minds to be one mind, one being. Paul gave us the first existing Christian writings so the Church that sprang up after Christ did not adore him as God.

Paul declared that Jesus was made the Son of God by his resurrection (Romans 1:4). Here, the Son of God means the one nearest and next to God. If Jesus was God then he was always the Son of God. Paul is saying that Jesus was not God the Son. Jesus could not have been God if he was not always the Son of God as in chief man.

Paul stated that God knew how much he loved the Philippians (read chapter 1) and he told them that he loves them AS Jesus Christ loves them. Clearly he is saying that Jesus loves them as a good man like himself does. If Jesus is God his love will be perfect and nobody could say they love others as he loves them. The Catholic answer is that after saying that Paul tells them Jesus will work in them to make them perfect for God. Thus they argue that Paul is clarifying that his love is not as perfect as Jesus'. But Paul sees Jesus as God's instrument thus Jesus could still be imperfect. If he produces perfection it is down to God. The Catholic answer is to be rejected as it is reading later Catholic doctrine into old documents. That is anachronistic.

Paul said that there could be no salvation for forgiveness without the death of Jesus. He meant that it causes it in some way. He must have thought that it earns it. If Jesus were God then one good deed would suffice to make up for an infinity of sins because everything God does is infinitely valuable. The death of Jesus would then be an act of insane bravado and needless in spiritual terms.

In Romans 8:31-34 we read that with God on the side of the followers of Christ nobody can be against them. Since God gave up his own Son for them they can be sure that he will not refuse them anything its lawful for him to give. Then it asks rhetorically if anyone could accuse those that God has chosen? Could anybody condemn a person when God acquits them? Could the Messiah Jesus condemn? No for he not only died for the believers but rose from the dead and there at the right hand of God he stands and pleads for them.

Study it carefully. If Jesus is God it would be absurd to ask if he can condemn those who God has forgiven. It only makes sense if he is a separate person and entity from God.

And also, the reason Christ doesn’t condemn is because he died for sinners and rose again and intercedes now. It’s not because he was God the person who did the acquitting. Christ could die for sinners and still condemn them. He can’t intercede for sinners unless he sees them and judges them as sinners first which illustrates this point. It’s Jesus’ actions that Paul uses as evidence that he treats us as acquitted not his nature. This is very important. Paul believed as a Jew that God forgave sins before Christ came. The Jews didn’t have any belief in a Jesus dying and rising to save them. Paul says that if God acquits a person even Jesus cannot condemn them afterwards so God could acquit in principle without Jesus. And we know Jesus cannot condemn by his actions of love for sinners. So God acquits just because God is nice and Jesus acquits because he paid for sins. Clearly the two are separate beings and people.

Another observation is that if Jesus dying for us and rising and praying for us proves he considers us acquitted then Jesus provided substitutionary atonement. In other words he obeyed the demands of God’s law for us so that God could overlook our UNREPENTED and our repented sins and blame him for them instead. We know this because if Jesus only gave the benefits to repented sin as the Catholic Church teaches then we have no reason to think that Jesus dying and rising and praying proves that he doesn’t condemn us for he could be condemning us for our unrepented sin and refusing his atonement to us. The chapter has the idea of salvation by faith without any good works in mind. It’s pure Protestantism.

And when Christ is at God’s right hand as if he is second in command that shows he is not God. If Christ was God he would not be at God’s right hand of his throne but on the throne. The Church says that as man Jesus is at God’s right hand but as God he is on the throne. This is nonsense for since Jesus as man is in perfect synchronicity with his divine nature and mind and is God and man in one person there is no way Jesus can be in anyway inferior to God so that as man he is seated at the right hand of God.

The idea of God acquitting and Jesus praying for us to keep us acquitted shows that God and Jesus cannot be the same being for you have one disagreeing with the other. Jesus can’t ask God to have mercy on us unless he thinks he knows better than God and God should have mercy. He is correcting the all-knowing God!

The John Gospel says that God is the Word and the Word became flesh, Jesus. But God in the Bible is identified with abstract things. It does not call Jesus God but calls him the word. God being the word and Jesus being the word does not mean Jesus is God.

The doctrine of a divine Christ is a heresy.