Christians: Do you believe in Christ's divinity---why or why not?

While many believe that each of us harbors, to put it one way, the spark of God, I'm curious to know how many within the faith either affirms or denies Christ's divinity. True, there are many nuances (the Trinity, the kind of atonement ) but I'm trying to keep it simple.

Is your conception of Christ similar to the one held by Deists like Jefferson, and shared by many Unitarians and other sects, that is, Jesus as moral leader--the "good example"?

Or do you believe that Christ was the only Son of God, whose death served as man's atonement for sin, and resurrection as transcendence?



Ironically, before getting to college, my view of Christ was very much along the lines of the humanist's--Jesus was the pinnacle, and it was possible for each of us to achieve what he did. Yet in college, even as my politics verged farther to the left (thanks to men like the Berrigan brothers, King, Coffin, Borg, Bonhoeffer) I began to view Christ as the human incarnation of God, who loved His children so dearly that He suffered all the agonies this world had to offer in order to rob death of its victory. Christ became my avatar, and my Lord.

that Jesus was the son of God. Why? Because I choose to do so - it is an article of faith that cannot be validated by reason or objectively proven. It is what I choose to believe.

Exodus...
Moses: do you have a business card? What do I tell Pharoah---whio sent me?"

God: "You tell that putz IAM THAT I AM sent you, the MR. BIG, I AM."

John Chapter 8...
"Before Abraham sprang into existence in his mother's womb, I AM!"

(Edited to add and clarify)

Hard to wrap the mind around that paradoxical concept, but that's supposed to be the conventional & orthodox viewpoint, which I have to say that I subscribe to.

However, especially in America for about 150 years, conservative Christians seem to have had a problem with the humanity of Jesus. They over-emphasize the divinity because when one talks about Jesus having human needs, they think it offends God. I think they project, onto God or Jesus or Christianity, their own discomfort with admitting that they, too, are human beings.

And I wish more people could see this divine-human nature of Jesus as mystery. To the ultra-orthodox conservative mindset, the idea of MYSTERY is too uncomfortable, like riding a bike without training wheels. Isn't that what faith is all about? Trusting that you don't have all the answers?

I do believe Jesus had a sense of humor, got angry at pharisaical attitudes & platitudes, and felt abandoned by God on the cross. But he also had the power to forgive his killers, a power which transcends the human tendency toward retribution. And (for me) the reason the resurrection is so powerful is that the love of God is stronger than self-centered hatred and evil. To my mind, that is supposed to be the main message of Jesus.

Before I get any more longwinded, that's why I chose the quotes below for my sigline...

Suprema-Theologica = the supreme theology = all Who and What God is revealed in human form, the Messiah.

That quote is partially responsible for my religious conversion

.. so the "son" of God is a good description, and a son is less than the father in a family tree.

*** John 14:28 ***
28 YOU heard that I said to YOU, I am going away and I am coming to YOU. If YOU loved me, YOU would rejoice that I am going my way to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am.

Most will twist the heck out of Jesus' own description of himself, and turn it into "the father is equal to me" but Jesus, in his own words shows he is a being of less stature than almighty God.

Let the twisting (spinning) begin!

I used to believe that perhaps all religions were possibly right, that there were many in-roads to God. I went to Unitarian services for a while. But it left me empty--if all answers were "right" how could there be real truth? Real truth is exclusive; i.e., 2 plus 2 always equals 4, and even if someone sincerely feels it equals 7, that sincere belief doesn't make it the right answer... Chalk it up to my extremely analytical mind I guess--I was hungry for the truth.

I spent a lot of time reading the Bible, studying literature (a lot of C.S. Lewis, Strobel, McDowell) and speaking with intelligent, down-to-earth (not "goofy fundie") Christians, the latter of which answered many of the questions I had (and still have!), I've come to a place where I truly believe that Christ was God's Son who came to earth to save humankind from our sins.

You stated:

"I began to view Christ as the human incarnation of God, who loved His children so dearly that He suffered all the agonies this world had to offer in order to rob death of its victory."

That's exactly what Christians believe, with a couple of critical add-ons: Jesus actually rose again from the dead, and whomever believes in Him will have eternal life. (John 3:16) Gospel and Christianity in a nutshell.

Some have expressed doubt as to whether Jesus was the sole human incarnation, and some see His death as yet another example of a visionary murdered on the altar of intolerance and ignorance, not of atonement.

I'm not sure what exactly unites all Christians.

P.S. I *love* the works of C.S. Lewis--"Mere Christianity" helped guide me to the more traditional theology.

as are you, and me, and all of us . . . as for divinity? . . . well, let's just say that I believe that he, like all of us, is part of the ongoing Creation, and that we are all co-creators, with God, in that ongoing process . . . "God" being defined any way you choose . . .

The only point I'd quibble with is the "God" being defined any way you choose . . . Though I do think we all have different understandings of God, I'm not sure our understanding affects HIS reality, and I'm not sure if that's a distinction of an significance.

His own description -- "the Son of Man" -- means mankind's representative to God.

I believe that everything is Divine; human being's brains evolved in such a manner that when the outer layer in the back allowed a state of consciousness that recognized "life and Death" (good and evil), this was the Fall from Grace. (That layer of the brain made human childbirth a painful experience, as described in the Bible.) Jesus was the Master who helped people understand we are not separate from the Divine.

I think you just put into words what I have been thinking lately, but couldn't decribe! Thanks!

we are all one. we all come from source. we are all god.

and i think the bringing in jesus teaches us how to connect with the spirit within. that allows us to remove the veils we grow into over the years, and be able to shed the cloaks accumulated, to live in the lite that we are. the god that we are. it is never in seperation of who we are. we are all perfectly imperfect. even the sad me, the angry me, is all of me

yes i believe there is a divintiy within us. i believe the heaven on earth is when we live in this self. and the hell is not after death, but living on this eart seperated from self, god self, our lite

have made all talk of christ rather pointless....bush has literally made the looming extinction of humanity a small price to pay to shut them nazipoo fukkers up!
btw i do believe jesus was god, and god invested everything in creation...saving mankind isn't just academic to god; 'his' life will die with us

Fully human, because his sacrifice would mean nothing if he were not humand. The task would have been too easy, a kind of camera trick.
Fully devine, because ...well why not? If I believe that "God" created the world and everything in it (through the process we call evolution)the why would I limit God's power by saying the miracle of Christ's birth and life was not possible?
I believe it because I have "heard" that "still small voice".

I also believe the Christ died for all people, not just Christians.

I can only say that through personal experience I have the overwhelming feeling inside that Jesus is exactly who he said he was. For me personally, through all I have been through, my belief in Jesus has sustained me and kept me sane. I believe that he is the Christ and son of the living God. I believe his purpose on earth was to show us how much God loves us and to offer that love to all. Some of my beliefs are not orthodox, because I believe that God speaks to many people in many different ways, and that his love is for all regardless of whether someone acknowledges him or not. I believe Jesus brought reconciliation for all - not just those who chose to believe in him.

I guess you could say I'm agnostic on the subject. I dont' know whether to believe it's true or that it's more truthful to say some myth-making grew up around the man. :shrug:

At any rate, it doesn't matter to me. I find myself at this stage focusing not on miracles, but on the sheer humanity of him. The simple acts of reaching out to the lonely, the dispossed, society's forgotten. In that, I find God.

I agree with the concept of finding the devine within all of us, and in the process, getting closer to God. I think Jesus tried very hard to point the way to that. It makes me weep that he was killed for that reason.

As for the other, I guees I'll find that out when the time comes.

No, I'm not very good at traditional doctrine.

I once greatly upset a GO by saying that Jesus was also a man. I was really taken aback by his response because even though he was definitely conservative, he wasn't a Fundamentalist or a Theocrat, or a bush*-bot.

Though he did take his religion seriously, as became obvious in my discussions with him, he never gave any indication of being doctrinal about anything until this came up. There were a couple of other things that stuck out about him which make me wonder if his reaction is based on his Greek Orthodoxy or if it was something else.

...theology and the official position is the one expressed in the Athanasian Creed*, that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. I can't account for your friend's reaction, but perhaps he heard (in his mind) that you were, in affirming Christ's humanity, limiting (or even denying!) his divinity. It sounds like a misunderstanding.

My Orthodox friends are are less disposed to theological discussion than, say, my Catholic friends. What I cherish about my Orthodox friends is their willingness to let mystery be mystery and not seek to overdefine terms.

*A full discussion of this creed can be found at: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02033b.htm

I'll look into that link

...Deism. I can, through logic, posit a Prime Mover, First Cause, or whatever you want to call that which got the ball rolling. After that point, I leave the realm of rationality and enter the realm of faith.

(I think it's important to understand the realm in which you're operating and many troubles come from failing to make this distinction.)

In the realm of faith, I embrace the what I call poetic wisdom.(1) As part of that poetic truth I affirm the drama of redemption as summarized in the Nicene Creed(2). I personally allow for a wide range of understandings about this creed.

But, yes, in answer to your question, I believe Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine.


(1)I came to this position by reading the work of Giambattista Vico, an early Rennaisance thinker who developed the idea of "sapienza poetica" to explain mythological thinking.

(2) http://www.orthodoxphotos.com/readings/creed.shtml

I'm a Roman Catholic, and our (Nicene-Constantinopolitan) Creed says that Jesus Christ is "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father".

That indeed is what I personally believe.

Why? Well, for one thing, I don't believe that the the doctrine of the Trinity was just made up out of thin air. It captures something essential in the early Christian community's experience of God, and of the revelation of God in and by Christ. I find it hard to imagine that God would just allow such a colossal error to become so widespread and conceptually central to Christian tradition, assuming God regards Christianity as the fullest revelation of God available to us. I mean, if God is guiding the Church in any meaningful sense, it seems that the doctrine of the Trinity would be an important one to get right, given that it is so distinctive of Christianity historically. Otherwise, why not just be content with Judaism?

Secondly, it makes sense to me at least of the idea that God is love. I think of love as essentially the revelation/communication/gift of the self. If God is transcendent, then God has to reveal/communicate/give Godself to God. This is what is captured by the Johannine notion of the Logos/Word. This just sounds right to me. Rational consciousness by its very nature, inherently is in the business of knowing and loving (willing the good). An eternal infinite rational consciousness must therefore know and love, in the first place, know and love itself. But being infinite, the divine rational consciousness which by its very essence knows and loves (in the first place itself) cannot be divided, but is essentially one.

So the Logos/Word is one with that which speaks it forth.

So if Jesus is the incarnate Logos/Word, Jesus is one with God.

Hence Jesus is divine.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Given that God creates a world and not only reveals/communicates/gives Godself to God, then God's self-revelation, self-communication, self-gift will rather naturally be willed by God to be present in the world God creates. Hence the Incarnation of the Divine Word.

All this makes good sense to me.

The next bit is trickier in a way. Is the Divine Word incarnate in all human beings, or only in Jesus or somebody else.

This is where faith enters into it. I believe the apostolic witness that the man Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead. To me this confirms that what Jesus said and did was true, and validated/vindicated by God.

Now, there are many texts in the Gospels where Jesus implicitly claims that he has not only a higher authority than Moses, but indeed the same authority as God---the authority to forgive, the authority to command demons, the wind and the waves, the authority to heal on the Sabbath, and frequently identified himself in terms of divine sonship---e.g. "Simon barJonah, flesh and blood have not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven". See also the parable where the son is sent by the father to the vineyard but is killed---the son is contrasted in the parable with those servants who had been sent earlier but had been beaten.

But most significant of all---the Jews believed that the 'shekinah' or divine presence resided in the inner sanctum of the Temple, and Jesus, I think, very clearly and controversially and just prior to his death proclaimed that HE was greater than the Temple--which would be destroyed---and identified his own body as the true temple in which the 'shekinah' truly dwelt.

So here's the argument: 1) Jesus proclaimed his own person as being indwelt by God in a rather unique and salvific way; 2) the Apostles told the truth about the resurrection; 3) Therefore, Jesus was telling the truth about himself, and we should readily identify him with the Logos/Word of God, testified to in the Gospel of John.

I'm more of the Jeffersonian variety. There are things in the Bible that make sense to me. Jesus being God is not one of them.

I believe that people believe it because they want to believe it.

It does not seem like a stretch for me to believe that some people so wanted to believe it themselves that they fudged or exaggerated things in the Bible.

I realize that if I believed the Bible was the word of God that I would not be able to take this position. And the fact that I do is one reason some others feel the need to claim the Bible is infallible.

I don't see God as having such a direct "hand" in things that he would orchestrate the Bible... or the idea of the Trinity.



I think the idea "the universe is divine" is interesting. It seems like one of those things - that thinking it is so can make it so - that it is a matter of perception - and perceptions can be a positive force.

If the circumstances of His death and resurrection were not true, don't you think the leaders of Jerusalem (Jewish and Roman) would have been screaming their "proof" at the top of their lungs?

Don't you think their would have been tours of His tomb, showings of His bones, immediate trials of His followers?

Of course there is no proof of this, but it seems to me that He must have appeared to some of the leaders after He died as well.

And, also Jesus was "the good example" as well. A life well-lived and a philosophy which has rarely been equaled, if at all.

Also, consider Christ's declaration. He declared the He would physically rise from the dead. If Jesus was trying to fake people out, he could have just said it would be a spiritual rebirth, thus eliminating any need for proof. But the Lord took a step further: He declared that He was rise from the dead, physically. This the empty tomb, which was sealed by the Roman seal that no one would dare break, was and is proof of His resurrection.

the thought blew me away.

People are people, whether then or now. The political-mindset has not changed one bit, only the means of its implementation.

If you say yes then you are with us, and if you say no....

Yes Jesus was the son of god, just as we all are, manifestations of god in the physical world.
But the difference with Jesus and us is that he was god conscious, in that he was not trapped in the physical world with no consciousness of the spiritual one.
The Buddhist would have considered him to be a great Master that had defeated the illusion of the physical world.

But Man is not ready to understand that just yet, or we would not be leading this existence.
Jesus is the Christ which is a title that means eventually the savior of man. And he came as a savior to all men whether they could, or could not, understand the great mysteries of the universe. And if some choose to worship him as God because they cannot understand any other way then so be it. It may be an error in there logic or thinking but it is no hindrance to there spiritual development.

So I guess my answer is yes and no

The divinity of Christ is basically the linchpin of the faith. If Christ is not who he says He is, then He's just some guy, who is either a liar, insane, or both. So, either Christ is who he says he is(the Son of God, and yet fully the Son of Man), or he's a liar.
BTW, I believe He is who He says he is, in case I may have confused anyone.

I believe there is one God who sent part of Himself into the world into the body of Christ. I do not believe that God will redeem only Christians. I do not believe that we must ‘accept Jesus’ as our personal savior. I do not believe that an infinitely loving God would be so vain as to require us to worship Him, or to love Him before He will love us. God is one who is righteous. I definitely do not believe in a god whose thirst for blood was somehow satisfied by the death of Christ. I do not believe in a god who makes Christ somehow ‘responsible’ for our sins.
I believe that Christ came from God, and that Christ will go back to God. I believe that when Christ discards His flesh and goes back to God, it will only be fair for us to be given the same opportunity. Our flesh is discarded, and our spirit is judged as a separate entity under the Law, and this I believe is how God redeems all of His children to live with Him in eternal paradise regardless of their religious or non-religious affiliation.

Done

belief of a Christian is to believe that Christ was God's Son. He has two natures, Human and Divine. The fact that two thousands years after His death, we still have problems with this concept is not new. During the early years of Christianity -- even after it became the State Religion -- there were countless heresies about this issue.

...it is you that say He is the Son of God.

Or at least that's what He said...

Jesus is Fully Human and Fully Divine.

Man is fully human, made in the image of the Divine. Big Difference.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

as far as christ goes -- he is/was fully human and fully divine.
it only follows that the path for divinity would have to come through being fully human.
it's what i like about jesus -- in my mind he really was just one of us slobs.
and finds glory in it.

And there is no why in faith

As one post-er mentioned it earlier, I can't recommend this book enough to understand the beliefs of Christians about Christ.

This also relates to one issue I always had with the Trinity. God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, a tri-une God, yet he is monotheistic. I singular God.

My wife helped me figure it out: God being 3-in-one is no different than me being a father to my own son (if I had one), a son to my father, and a brother to my brother. So, because I am 3-in-one: a father, son, and brother, does this make me not a singular being?

Thanks,
-Brent

If He were not divine, then it would be more a philosophy of Judaism, then its own separate religion.

Thanks,
-Brent

I believe that Christ is separate from God and was created by Him. He is more divine than any other being except the Father. The Trinity is not in scripture. That Jesus was begotten by the Father is in scripture as well as his independence and role as an intecessor between humans and the Father.
Whatever God is God is regardless of what we believe, but this is always how I have understood the relationship of God and Christ through my study of the Bible.

that Jesus was/is God the Son, sent to show the way to the people of Israel, and whose death and resurrection was not as much man's atonement as it was Gods atonement to man...also I don't believe that Jesus is the only human manifestation of God the Son...(if you read the Bible you can get glimpses of this..for instance.."no one comes to the father but through the son (doesn't say to God and by Jesus)...)..I think that God the Son has appeared to every culture in the history of man...with the same message, just tailored to fit the needs of that culture...

basically that there is one GOD and one path to God...but there are many different ways onto that Path.

(yeah I know, heretic)

I've played around with similar theories regarding the prismatic affect of God. Where God, being a loving God, must appear to all people in all times as the type of God that would best serve them. For example, the old-testament God my not have flown very well with a Native American culture, so he needed to appear to them as they would best be able to comprehend. Just thoughts.

Thanks,

Brentos, the Freshmaker