Truth Unites - Did Jesus Claim to be God? Answering Bart Ehrman

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Gavin Ortlund argues that Jesus did claim to be God, responding to Bart Ehrman on Alex O'Connor's YouTube channel. Thaddeus Williams' Revering God: https://www.amazon.com/Revering-God-Marvel-Your-Maker/dp/0310160405 See the original video: https://youtu.be/2STiabRV8TE?si=uOPKLGl2pnPzQ2iT Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Bart Ehrman argues that Jesus didn't himself claim to be God, but this was a belief that arose subsequently after his death among his followers. I am firmly convinced that Jesus never talked about himself as God. And one way to demonstrate that is to line up our sources of information about Jesus chronologically. You've got Matthew Mark and Luke, Luke, special sources. And M, Matthew's special sources. If you look at all of that material, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Q, M, and L, okay? All of that together, Jesus never calls himself God, all of our earliest sources. Where Jesus starts calling himself God is the Gospel of John, our last source.

To my thinking, you have these sources of information about Jesus. So I've just laid out six, six sources, six pieces of information versus one. The six are all earlier than the one. it seems to me completely implausible that six authors would describe the sayings of Jesus, knowing that he called himself God, and neglect to mention that part. Like, that bitch just isn't important enough to bring up. And so I think it's completely implausible. And we don't need to get into the critical reconstruction of sources behind these first three gospels,

Matthew, Mark, and Luke, what we'll call the synoptic gospels. For the purpose of this video, if you're curious, I'll put up the six sources he's talking about. This is a common way to understand the sources behind those three Gospels. We don't need to get into that here. The question I want to pursue in this video is, in these earlier texts, does Jesus claim to be God? This is a tough area. I remember when I first encountered Bart Ehrman's work on this and others several years ago thinking, at first glance, there's a lot of plausibility to this, right?

John is the latest gospel, and that's where you have the clearest state. from Christ to be God. The earlier Gospels, the synoptic Gospels, aren't as clear about that, so maybe that belief developed over time, you know. But let's slow down. Let's take a closer look. First of all, John is different from the synoptic Gospels in almost every way, in the style, the events narrated, the theological emphasis, the sources it draws from. So it's not necessarily a defeater, or even all that's surprising if the claims to divinity from Christ are different there when almost everything is different about John's gospel. But in this video, I want to go back to these earlier sources, especially the Gospel of Mark, and I want to argue that these do portray Jesus as

claiming to be God, though in a very different way, in a very Jewish way in the context of ministry inaugurating the kingdom of God. Now, even in John, Jesus' claims to divinity are somewhat oblique. Jesus, they come out again in the context of ministry and conflict with the Jewish leadership. nowhere in John does Jesus say I'm God or God is a Trinity and I'm the second member or something like that. So the difference between John and the synoptics is not absolute. There's differences, but they're easy to exaggerate. And what I want to argue in this video is even in the synoptic gospels, Jesus does claim to be God. So you get a coherent portrait from all four Gospels, even if they have different emphases, and none of them are really like systematic theology. They're all, you know, we'll see this, the drama,

of the narrative of the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish leadership and the concern of blasphemy. So that's where we're about to go. We're about to dive in. Real quick, before we dive in, I want to do a book recommendation. I started reading this this afternoon, and it's a fantastic book, Thaddeus Williams, revering God. I've interviewed him on my channel before about a previous video that he did about justice, which was also fantastic. I love his writing. I put up on the screen my favorite sentence from the introduction. He says, we crave awesomeness and the joyous self-forgetfulness it brings. It is my prayer that this book gives you a much-needed break from the burden of self.

I thought about this book because I know a lot of my viewers struggle with intellectual anxiety, ecclesial anxiety, just anxiety in general. We're in such an epidemic of anxiety. This is a great resource to meet that because he's helping us just sort of get lost in the doctrine of God. And it's great for Sunday school classes or small groups. It's got, you know, discussion questions. It's very practical. but it goes, it's such a helpful resource on theology. I'm just revering God, fearing God, loving God,

and it's got great testimonies from people like Johnny Erickson Tata and John Perkins and people like this. It's a really cool book, so I'll put a link in the video description, check it out. All right, here's my response to Bart Ehrman, and I respond to him because I think he's a very eloquent proponent of this alternative view. But, and I'm going to assume the correctness of a higher critical approach to these texts. So we're going to go back to Mark 2 to start with, which is a passage that almost all critical scholars think does go back to the historical Jesus. I'll just note in passing that I think we can defend the historical accuracy of the Gospel of John. And Richard Bacham has done a great job in this book, which is just a fantastic work of scholarship, so check that out. But for the

sake of argument, let's just focus back on the earlier Gospels to be written. And And we'll start with Mark 2 because this is a passage almost everybody thinks goes back to the historical Jesus. This is the Declaration of Forgiveness of Sins to the Paralytic Man. And let's allow Airman to summarize this episode. Jesus is, he's in a house, it's crowded, people are all around. And there's this fellow who is paralyzed, and he's being carried on this cot, this pallet. And they can't get to him. He's four guys are carrying it.

He can't get through the crowd. So they take off the tiles of the roof and they lower him down into the house. And Jesus sees the man, sees their faith that they know he can heal him. And he looks at the man and says, your sins are forgiven. And the Pharisees say, wait a second, only God can forgive sins. And Jesus says, look, which is easier to say that your sins are forgiven or take up your pallet and walk? And obviously the easier thing to say is your sins are forgiven. because there's no way of showing that it's work.

Whereas you take up your palate and walk and he doesn't do it, then you know it didn't work, right? So he said to show that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins, take up your palate and walk. The guy gets up and walks out. And everybody's amazing. Whoa, what? Okay, so that's a pretty good summary.

But before we hear his response, let's just get really clear on the narrative events here because I want to put up the passage on the screen here of underlined five sections. Think of this as a five-act play. at least for our purposes. So stage one is the declaration of forgiveness of sins in verse five. Stage two, there's a concern of blasphemy from the scribes, because only God can do that, verses six and seven. Stage three, Jesus perceives the concern of blasphemy in verse eight. Stage four is the climactic moment. Jesus heals the man,

and the purpose is to demonstrate that he has the authority to forgive sins. That you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. Stage five, everyone is amazed in verse 12. So that's what happens. Here's how Airman interprets this. How that was interpreted when I was an evangelical, and still is today by most, probably most readers is. Only God can forgive sins.

Jesus shows that he can do the more difficult thing, healing the guy. And since he can do the more difficult thing, it means he can do the easier thing, which means Jesus is claiming to be God. Right? That's the typical explanation. Sure. And I think it's completely wrong.

It's Jesus' enemies who say that only God can forgive sins. That's an important point. Yes. Second point, Jesus does not say, in order to show I'm God, take up your pallet and walk. He says, in order to show that the son of man has authority to forgive sins. Well, who's given him the authority? Yeah. God has.

But why does he add that last little question there at the end? Who has given him authority to forgive sins God has? I don't see anything in the text that generates that. We'll put it back up. The text simply says the son of man has authority to forgive sins. I'm not sure why Airman introduced that idea of a divine bestowal of that on Jesus. That's not in the text. In fact, I'm going to argue the whole drama of this text is about the identity of Christ. Now, the other point he made is it's true that the concern of blasphemy arises from the Pharisees, but Jesus asserts his authority to forgive sin. in response to that concern. So to give a metaphor, suppose there's an orphan who doesn't know

who their biological father is, a man shows up and says, my son. And the child responds by saying, why are you calling me your son? Only a father can do that. And the father responds, so that you know that I have authority to call you my son, here's a birth certificate and DNA evidence. the fact that the child is the one who first raises the question of authority and identity doesn't take away from the fact that the father's claim about authority and identity is made in response to that, right? Similarly, Jesus is in a first century Jewish context saying, I have authority to forgive sins in response to this concern of blasphemy that comes against him. So it's true that Jesus doesn't say, so that you know that I'm God, but what he says

plausibly amounts to that, just like in John, Jesus never says, I'm God. But he says things like before Abraham was, I am, which plausibly amount to that. Now, let's try to work through this. Airman thinks that it doesn't amount to that. He thinks that Jesus is simply declaring God's forgiveness to this man. Here's how he puts it in his book. This is from how Jesus became God. quote, when Jesus forgives sins, he never says, I forgive you, as God might say, but your sins are forgiven, which means that God has forgiven the sin. And he sees this declaration as a kind of priestly act. So he says, Jesus may be claiming a priestly prerogative, but not a divine one. Here's how he puts it in the interview with Alex O'Connor.

He says that as the father has sent me, so now I send you. We must think that surely the authority that Jesus has been given to forgive sins in this respect is given to him in the same way that he gives it to his disciples. That is not bestowing divinity upon them, but just the authority to forgive sins and nothing more. I agree with that. And it's also important to note that Jesus doesn't say, I forgive your sins.

Yes. He says, your sins are forgiven. And surely people don't think that when a priest pronounce forgiveness of sins that he's claiming to be God, if he says your sins are forgiven, that's why I think it's been a bestowed authority, not, but I completely agree. It doesn't mean that everybody who pronounces forgiveness of sins is thereby claiming to be God. Now, it's certainly true that a human agent can be appointed

to declare forgiveness of sins, like a priest or Alex mentions in that video, The Apostles in John 2023 and so forth. But that's not the drama that is playing out in Mark 2. Remember the context of the concern of blasphemy to which Jesus is responding. Michael Byrd comments, the scribes do not complain who can forgive sins but a priest alone, right? They say, but God alone, and Jesus is responding to that. So it's in response to the concern of blasphemy that he makes this remarkable claim. Put it up again, highlighting and enlarging it in every way I know how. You're going to get probably annoyed by the colors, but I've tried to go for maximal conceptual clarity here. Here it is. Who can forgive but God? The son of man has authority to forgive. So in other

words, scribes are saying, only God can do this, and Jesus is saying, I can do it. Now, there's nothing like that going on in John 20 or in priestly declarations of forgiveness of sins. So put up Bart Ehrman's words again, the italics here are his, but the coloring is mine. He's interpreting the words of Christ, which are in green here, as what I've put in red. So when Jesus says your sins are forgiven, Ehrman is saying, well, that that means is God has forgiven the sin. That's his interpretation. Now, that could be right or wrong, but that's how he's interpreting it. Here's why I don't think that's a plausible interpretation. Number one, it doesn't honor the context of the concern of blasphemy against which Jesus is speaking these words. And number two, that's just not what Jesus says.

There's nothing about God forgiving. Putting up his words, subject is in blue and the verb is in purple. The son of man has authority to forgive. That does not, you know, if you want to get something priestly or a declaration of God's forgiveness, you have to read it into the text. That is not the context that he's responding to, and it's not what the word say. Jesus is saying, I have authority to forgive sins. Now, so that's, and now here's the thing that's interesting. Mark 2 is not an isolated passage. This, I'm going to argue, this is consistent with what we get throughout the synoptic gospels. For example, you have Jesus worshipped all throughout the synoptic gospels. That's very significant. I go into that more in my book for why. You have Jesus claiming authority over demons,

over sickness, even over the Sabbath. He claims to be the Lord of the Sabbath. He's making detailed predictions about future events like Peter's denials or his resurrection. He claims to judge the world. He's going to judge the world. He says, we're two or three are going to gathered in my name, there I am with them. He equates devotion to the gospel with devotion to himself. In this passage in Luke 12 here I put up, he's basically saying your attitude toward me affects your eternal destiny. I mean, this is high stuff. So yes, Jesus is not walking around the synoptic gospels saying, I'm God. Just like he doesn't walk around John saying that. But what he does say and what he does do in the context of ministry is enough to get the Pharisees wondering,

what is the authority by which this man is acting? And so, in other words, the driving plot of the synoptic Gospels is conflict with the Pharisees, leading to crucifixion on the charge of blasphemy. The whole narrative structure of the Gospels is about blasphemy. You know, for Mark 2, what we saw there, what we just exegeted out of Mark 2, that's not an isolated event. That's the thread. That's the whole plot. The whole plot is he's crucified for blasphemy. So at the end of Mark's gospel, at his trial, Jesus is brought before the high priest, and he's asked, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? Jesus's answer here is a declaration of divine authority to judge from Daniel 7 and Psalm 1.10.

Now, I've made that case a little fuller elsewhere. The point for now is to see how the high priest responds. It's a charge of blasphemy and the tearing of the clothes. because the Jewish leadership knew what Jesus was saying from Daniel 7 and the clouds and Psalm 110 in the right hand of God and so forth. So Jesus is making claims about his identity in very Jewish ways and in the context of ministry and in the context of conflict with the Pharisees. But they are claims to be God and they were taken as such by his contemporaries. That's why he's crucified, including in the synoptic gospels. Now you could say, well, why doesn't he say I'm God?

Why doesn't he just explicitly come out and say something that clear? Why is it through the context of ministry that he wields divine authority? Well, that's a fair question. But if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. I mean, would it really have served his purposes to just walk around saying, I'm God? You know, the point of Jesus' ministry was not to answer questions that people later on are going to be asking about him. rather it's to fulfill his ministry, which is not just to go to the cross, but many things,

but ultimately his mission is to die on the cross. And it's not clear that that mission is going to be well served by just walking around saying, I am God. In fact, it's fascinating how much Jesus conceals his identity. All throughout Mark, for example, with the demons, Jesus is constantly commanding them not to speak about him because of their perception of his unique identity. To the crowds, and especially those who witness miracles, especially those who receive healing, you'll often notice it's a very stern warning.

It's like he's saying it's very important that who I am not become too widely known. And even to his disciples at two climactic moments in Mark's Gospel, Peter's confession and the Transfiguration, Jesus is saying, don't tell anybody. Don't tell them that I'm the Christ. The glory that you saw on the mountain at the Transfiguration, another significant passage. don't tell anybody about that until I've risen from the dead. Why would he conceal his identity? Because his purpose wasn't just to make it as clear as possible to everybody. His purpose was his ministry and his mission to go to the cross. So the point is, it's not necessarily shocking

that we don't have these just explicit statements like, well, God is triune and I'm the second member of the God and so on and so forth. Final point to say about this is we also have to look outside the Gospels at corroborating data. And for ancient history, to have the wealth of information we have just in the New Testament alone is pretty amazing. Paul's writings, you know, we're talking here two decades after Jesus dies, very close in time, reflect an extremely high Christology or doctrine of Christ. In Philippians 2, we have divine language explicitly predicated of Jesus, applied to Jesus. And even Airman would agree that Paul is quoting an earlier tradition in this passage. It's amazing. One scholar summarizes this point

when he's talking about Paul's Christology in the 50s A.D. before any of the Gospels are even written, saying the highest Christology of the New Testament is also the earliest, which is interesting. So the point is, taking Jesus's claims alongside this other data, which we need to do more in other videos to get into all of it, we have some corroborating evidence. You know, if Jesus wasn't claiming to be God, then this belief seems to have arisen virtually immediately among his followers, which is very significant. So why does all this matter? Because, it's finishing off. Because in mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis posed a famous argument that's often, I think, neglected today, but I think it's a pretty intriguing argument. Let's finish the video with it, because this is why all this matters.

The Lord Liar Lunatic argument. Have you heard this argument? It actually goes back earlier, probably to the Scottish pastor John Duncan in the mid-19th century, and others have articulated this as well. Now, the problem with this argument, of course, is that it assumes he did claim to be God, which is something that is now in dispute. And if Bart Ehrman is right, then he didn't. Which means we have to add a fourth category. Thankfully, the alliteration will still work, so we can turn it into a tetra lemma, Lord, liar, lunatic, or legend. Now, some have tried to get a pentilemma by adding a fifth category of various kinds, or even. even more categories than that. You know, people say, well, he could have been an alien and stuff like this.

I don't think these other fifth and sixth and other options that are out there in the literature on this are very plausible. I deal with all of this a little more in my book, by the way, if that's of interest to you, or you can watch this dialogue I did with Cameron Bertuzzi on capturing Christianity about this argument. But let's just hit the main most plausible options here, these four. And so Lord Lyer, lunatic legend, well, the relevance of this video is, if what we've argued here is correct, that no, even in the synoptic gospels, Jesus does claim to be God. Jesus's divine self-understanding comes out very clearly if you just read it in, if you understand what Jesus is saying in the context of his ministry in a first-century

Jewish context. If that's true, then that significantly reduces the plausibility of the legend category and at least enough to give us consideration of these other three categories. So in other words, we're back on to the trilemma of Lord Lyre Lunatic, and I think a very reasonable, abductive appeal can be made from that point. Think about it. Here we have humanity's largest and most diverse religion. Arguably, a great deal of good has been done in the world from this religion. All the hospitals, all the universities founded, on and on we could go. At the font of this religion is this incredibly mysterious, enigmatic figure, perhaps the most influential

human being who's ever lived, Jesus of Nazareth. Who was he? Well, it turns out we have a limited number of options for explaining his identity. And frankly, none of them are casual and easy. All of them are kind of bracing. I think the least likely is probably liar, because it seems inconsinent with Jesus' goodness and the fruit of his teaching. Think of the sermon on the mount, you know, that all this good that has resulted from this man is the result of someone who's so supremely malevolent that he's tricking people into getting crucified for him. If he's just lying, you know, you also have to face, well, why would he maintain the lie even unto his own crucifixion, right? That doesn't seem particularly plausible. What about lunatic?

Well, we use the word lunatic for the alliteration, but we're not thinking in a technical or clinical sense at this point, okay? We're using the word lunatic in a little bit more of a colloquial way, to refer to someone who's just completely out of touch with reality and completely out of touch with his own identity. And this option is also kind of strange to countenance. It seems inconsinent with Jesus's influence and stature. People who are totally out of touch with reality usually don't acquire billions of followers, right? Now, Richard Dawkins says Jesus could have just been mistaken. But this is what is so tricky about this. It's very difficult to see how somebody can pronounce themselves the judge of the world, superior to the angels,

pre-existent with God, and they're just honestly mistaken. You start to think about the level of error involved in that mistake. You know, these highly specific and gargantuan claims, like when all things are renewed, I will sit on a glorious throne, you guys will have 12 thrones and so forth, and you think, what is the mechanism that can generate that? kind of error in a sane person. If you get crucified for me, you'll live forever in heaven. Oops, I was wrong. It's like, how did you get to that point where you were wrong about that? The level of deception involved does seem very strange to cash out as just an honest miscalculation. It's possible, but it seems very unlike. That's not an easy alternative. If you don't want to call

this lunacy, he's pretty out of touch. And it's strange to think that the largest religion in human history is founded by someone who's that out of touch. So the conclusion that then you, I think any honest person should bear their soul before and consider, and I'll probably get emotional in evangelist mode here. Baptist preacher coming out of me. What if Jesus was just telling us the truth? What if at the start of our largest and most diverse religion is neither deceit nor madness or legend, but simply truth? What if he really did have authority to forgive sins? To walk on water and to heal the sick and to rise from the dead and to repair broken people's lives and to bring hope into the world and so forth? That hypothesis has a lot of explanatory power. At the very least,

it's worth taking really seriously and it has one other benefit to it, and that is it's thrillingly happy if it turns out to be true. And if you want to know how happy it is, to think if Jesus actually was God and he actually did rise from the dead, which then is another consequence that falls out from that. Check out this video. I explored that more. Now, a lot of things is going to depend upon our priors here. I think this kind of appeal is most powerful if we're already kind of leaning toward theism. If you're already kind of wondering, well, yeah, you know, it looks like God probably does exist, so I wonder if he showed up in human history. That's the point at which I think this argument is most effective. And I understand not everyone is

coming from that standpoint. So if you want to see a video going back to, you know, prior case for God, I honestly, I did this video on the fine-tuning argument over the summer. I'm still kind of amazed at that argument. It's a powerful argument. So you can check that out if you're interested. All right. Thanks for watching everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments. I appreciate the views. If you stay to the end, wow, that's especially I appreciate it. If you want to support Truth Unites, you can do so in a tax-deductible way on the website or through Patreon. Links to all that. If you're a regular supporter, you get to come to supporter meetings and get early access to videos and that kind of stuff. Mainly just know it means a lot to me because I feel called to this

ministry. I love it. It's so much fun. I'm giving my heart to it every single week, but I do need to support, and it means a lot to me. All right, thanks for watching. Don't forget to like this video and share it around if you think it's of use. Thanks for watching, everybody.