Can you question Jesus’ Divinity?

Can you question Jesus’ Divinity?

Marco Cheng

Gerolami, Natasha

RLST 1106EL 01

November 16^th,2011

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What does it mean to be divine? A dictionary definition is: godlike, characteristic of or befitting a deity. And this definition should be questioned before accepting Jesus as your personal savior and lord, as this whole idea of humans being created to worship God out of love is not always something logical to the mind. Now there is also good points within John Shelby Spong’s concept about Christianity being stuck in the past and must be refashioned before our generation can truly understand.

Well to me, understanding divinity is something at the back of my mind when reading the bible and I can say that it is impossible to truly understand it. Describing something as ‘divine’ is more than just saying that it is godlike, it also implies that it is an unreachable status for humans, it is perfect, and resides in it, unimaginable power. I have thought about whether or not if this word deserves such a strong definition, and I have come to conclusion that if the Christian God is described as divine, then the two definitions are correlated.

Now one of the major issues brought up in Spong’s first chapter in Why Christianity Must Change or Die, was the divinity of Jesus. Is Jesus really a divine figure who was brought into the world through Virgin Mary and is the only Son of God? From being an adolescent boy raised in a secular family, I have not grown up questioning religion, and the idea of understanding Jesus through historical facts never occurred in my head until I went to church by myself. From what I learned through sermons, Sunday school, and books, I heard about many different sources of evidence that supported the legitimacy of the bible. However, I have heard strong arguments on the opposing side where they do not agree with the idea that the bible is any more than a well written storybook. After struggling for several years, I have only came to this idea that no matter how hard humans were to try and find out the past, there will never be an exact understanding due to the limitations of our scientific ability.

I say yes, accepting Jesus as a divine figure is a must for Christianity because that is the basis of

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this entire religion. The Christian gospel loses all purpose if Jesus’ crucifixion were not God’s way of allowing humans back to heaven. If Jesus was not divine, then all Christians today are putting their faith into something untrue and every person would go to hell. This is assuming that there is God, but Jesus was not divine. If there is no God at all, then there is simply no life after death. As a true believer though, believing that Jesus and God were not separate is essential. It should put us in a position where we marvel at the unconditional love because God had himself get killed by the same people God loves. And this is why Christianity requires faith, as humans put their belief into something unseen. Christians have to have faith that not only Jesus was divine, but is and always will be. Yet this is also one of the reasons where we can never be sure about religion, where not everything is revealed to us. Though one might argue that if we can understand God completely, then God is no longer God.

Having faith in Jesus is what Christians should be truly doing, yet what Spong says pushes me to rethink that because we may be limited in our ability to understand from teachings past interpretations. Spong suggests that Christians today should not stay within the older generations’ interpretations of the bible, but to ‘refashion the symbols by which Christianity is to be understood in our time’ (Spong, 1998). A point that may be easily overlooked is stated, that the modern world’s understanding of the bible should not just be seen as the truth, but that this only a point of view that was decided as truth in the past. Recommending that we should revisit past controversial debates, Spong is encouraging the idea to perform critical thinking and to embrace religious belief through oneself instead of just old teachings. Now it would foolish to ignore past interpretations, but it is much too easy to just accept them and not think for ourselves.

Now the idea sounds sensible and doable, but let us deduct the possible outcomes and shortcomings. From my own personal experience and observations in Christian youth groups, the

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teenagers that I have interacted with showed me that people cannot be simply put into a range of between newcomers and been at church since they were born. People are much harder to categorize when you realize that there are a significant amount of people who legitimately practice their faith outside of church. What I am getting at is that there was large amount of people I met who showed little any thought on their religion, where they would just repeat the same routine every week. But what I did not see, was the development they experience from places where I could not be able to access. This includes their home, school, and their own mind. Until I got closer with people and they told me about their personal life, my understandings of people were limited by my older epistemology.

Whether I agree or disagree with Spong’s idea that Christianity must change or die, I must say that I somewhat disagree. From reading the first chapter, rather than death of Christianity I saw inevitable change. The understanding of Christianity is definitely going to change throughout time, we can already see how feminism and medicine have changed from back when the interpretations of the bible were very patriarchic and relied on faith to fill the gaps of our knowledge. The idea then, should be to see through the changes and be able to see where the changes come from.

A change in the church’s thinking and development is possible, but it is more possible for people to change their ways through personal development because it is just too easy to be caught up in simply accepting the church’s teachings. However adamant I am about believing Jesus’ divinity as the basis of Christianity, I need to be open minded enough to challenge this thought as with any other. I agree with Spong’s idea and to me, mentioning that Christianity needed to change was quite the radical idea. Before reading, I automatically assumed that truth can never change. Now that I can expect it, I should more understanding if I ever encounter a different interpretation of the bible.

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References:

Spong, John Shelby. (1998). Why Christianity Must Change or Die. San Franciso: Harper.

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