Well, if they're monotheists, how can all three be God? If Christ is God and God the Father is God, doesn't that make two gods? And when you throw the Holy Spirit into the mix, doesn't that make three gods? So aren't Christians polytheists? Christians wanted to insist, no, they're monotheists. That was quite a forceful change, and one could argue that it changed the understanding of religion and politics for all time.Ĭhristians had a dilemma as soon as they declared that Christ was God. When Constantine, the emperor, then converted to Christianity, it changed everything because now rather than the emperor being God, the emperor was the worshipper of the God, Jesus. I don't think this could be an accident that this is a point at which the emperors are being called "God." So by calling Jesus "God," in fact, it was a competition between your God, the emperor, and our God, Jesus. Right at the same time that Christians were calling Jesus "God" is exactly when Romans started calling their emperors "God." So these Christians were not doing this in a vacuum they were actually doing it in a context. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. This is not an unusual view amongst scholars it's simply the view that the Gospel of John is providing a theological understanding of Jesus that is not what was historically accurate.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title How Jesus Became God Subtitle The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee Author Bart D. That would be a rather important point to make. I think it's completely implausible that Matthew, Mark and Luke would not mention that Jesus called himself God if that's what he was declaring about himself. Jesus says things like, "Before Abraham was, I am." And, "I and the Father are one," and, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father." These are all statements you find only in the Gospel of John, and that's striking because we have earlier gospels and we have the writings of Paul, and in none of them is there any indication that Jesus said such things. You do find Jesus calling himself God in the Gospel of John, or the last Gospel. none of his disciples had any inkling at all that he was God. During his lifetime, Jesus himself didn't call himself God and didn't consider himself God, and.
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