If Jesus Christ is not God, then who is He?
Well I have 2 ideas but 1 firm opinion, I think the Biblical Stories are accurate and I think that he was the messiah everyone was waiting for. I’m a Catholic and I study a lot about the life of Jesus, I used to be agnostic and there was no god in the house so I was not really caring about Jesus or religion at all but at a certain point in my life a lot of signs came to me. Things I couldn’t merely explain away, and things that were so personal to me that I absolutely could no longer deny the divinity of Christ. To this day every time I try to explain the things I’ve seen and felt that keep me so attached to this faith, I simply can’t. One of the simplest things I can explain is every time Ive went to Mass recently or read about Jesus or the Bible, or attended my RCIA class, or did something thinking about or related to Jesus, something extraordinary would happen. Whether it be writing on the wall, or conversation among people near me, something I read in a book or see in a video. This didn’t happen in the beginning, but I see numbers or names that deeply relate to me, my first day in class the deacon literally told a story about my middle name which I hadn’t told or showed anybody. I brushed it off because that’s nothing but when things like that happen over and over again near the same place it means something. I once heard a pastor quote “God leaves enough evidence for the faithful, and enough bluriness for those who want to reject him.” Essentially saying it’s intentionally very evident Jesus is god, but also many factors of the world can provide a scapegoat so to speak where one could plausibly argue against god and that he’s not a robot and doesn’t want robots, the point of free will is to choose him freely and with love, he’s not trying to force you into his kingdom.
but anyways sorry for the theology lesson, let me get to the other idea. I don’t believe this but I think it’s the alternative route. There are around 6000 manuscripts from the New Testament, I quote Voddie Bauchem when I say “The Bible is reliable source of historical documents written down by eye witness during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses, that report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.” There’s a lot to back that up, but this point isn’t to prove anything about Jesus being God(even though there’s a hell of a good argument behind it), the point I’m trying to make here is that Jesus has very many historical sources from the New Testament. But what about outside the New Testament? Well we have those too. About 5.
The Jews said Jesus was a magician and a fool and
the Romans said he was a sorcerer.
So let’s say he’s not god for one second, why would the Romans and Jews say that? He must’ve done something incredible.
I mean we would have to argue that these people were liars in order to come up with any sound reasoning to this. That doesn’t really add up, all of Jesus’ apostles met horrible deaths, were murdered in the name of Christ and claimed his divinity until death. Every one of them. Humans don’t defend a lie like that. We would snitch or we would out ourselves to avoid the torment. None of them did.
We know this historically because it wasn’t just Jesus and his apostles who said it. Romans historians took themselves seriously and so did the Jews. They were adamant enough to murder him that he wasn’t god, yet they explicitly state he’s a sorcerer and a magician. Also, experts in the fields of ancient mythology(meaning the formation myths and legends not for example Zeus specifically, but how Zeus came to be a god rather than just a story.) These people have all stated that the manuscripts from the New Testament are dated all the way back to within 6 months to 20 years after the resurrection of Jesus. The testimonies are by eye witness, which is extraordinarily rare in history, usually people become legends about 75–150 years after an event takes place and with no eyewitnessss. This is the case for Muhammad actually, his miracles weren’t considered miracles until much later on and he himself denies the idea of performing miracles.
All this to say one thing: If he wasn’t God, he was certainly a wizard, or a magician, or the sickest sleight of hand wiz that’s ever lived. The stories of healing the sick and performing miracles linger outside of biblical texts. People with no incentives, and some with more and deadlier incentives to say it was all a lie, are claiming he was magical. Looking at other biblical sources you can see without a shadow of doubt that even without being God he was a person with an amazing reputation. People don’t usually kill someone the way they did to Jesus, and then say they did something supernatural. There is absolutely no doubt as to whether or not there’s *something* about Jesus. I personally believe in Bible, I think that the effect a murdered man has had on the world is supernatural. There’s never been anything like it, and the fact that entire nations, even the ones involved with killing Jesus, became completely Christian. To me it’s an inescapable reality with tons of evidence to back it up but that’s just my opinion. Thanks for reading :)
Edit because I see a few shares full of garbage takes, and frankly I just wanna make one thing clear. Jesus has titles no other prophet had. He shares names with god such as the truth, he’s the most influential human who ever lived and there’s dozens if not hundreds of verses that absolutely affirm that hes godly. The amount of absurd arguments I’ve heard against his divinity from scripture are asinine to put it politely, because even the early church fathers provided so much writing that you could rewrite 90+% of the New Testament. Then the church itself has an unbroken chain of laying of hands that goes all the way back to Jesus who appointed Peter and started this chain. It’s been church traditions from the very beginning, and the trinity is supported not just scripturally but within natural law itself.
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