Thoughts of a Doubting Christian ✓

The Divinity of Jesus

Until very recently, one of the only parts of my faith that I didn't question was the divinity of Jesus. It seemed like such an obvious fact that it didn't occur to me to question it.

But then I realized: why did I question everything else, while assuming that Jesus really did all of the miracles attributed to him, was raised from the dead, and was truly the Son of God? If I rejected other supernatural and mythical stories in the Bible, why was Jesus the exception? Yes, I agree with his overarching teachings — charity, caring for the poor and disenfranchised, pacifism and forgiveness, love and compassion — but why hadn't I subjected the Gospels to the same scrutiny as everything else?

I was very resistant at first. If Jesus wasn't God, then what had I been believing all my life? How could I be so blind? Surely there were reasons to believe that even if many other things in the Bible were wrong, Jesus was still divine?

And the Gospels — they had to be right, didn't they? If they weren't, then who was Jesus? Did he even exist? My parents are very intelligent, so why would they believe in something that had no historical basis, and then pass it on to my brother and I? Jesus had to have been real, and there had to be evidence of his divinity. I simply wouldn't let myself think otherwise.

Then I stumbled upon How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee by Bart D. Ehrman. Finally, a book about how Jesus's divinity came to be believed and understood by his followers, written by a prominent New Testament scholar who did eight years of research for his book!

My walls quickly came crumbling down. It all made sense: Jesus hadn't thought of himself as God, but as the king who would rule over the twelve kingdoms of Israel when God established his kingdom on Earth. Hence why he was crucified with the sign "King of the Jews" above him. Hence why he was crucified at all — because he was claiming to be a king, which was a threat to the Roman emperor! It was only until after his death that his followers began to think of him as divine, and only much later that they thought of him as being at the same level as God the Father. Everything fell together.

Granted, Ehrman's work isn't perfect, but it gives a good example of how Jesus could have been thought of as God that is plausible and doesn't involve miracles or supernatural happenings. Once I was able to admit to myself that the New Testament could be as flawed as the Old, I could no longer cling to the belief that Jesus was divine without better evidence.

To make things worse, biblical sources are the only record of Jesus's miracles. Why did the Romans not record any miracles like raised dead, multiplying loaves and fish, etc.? Wouldn't that have seemed noteworthy enough to record? If Jesus was truly healing the blind and the sick and raising the dead, how come it didn't make a bigger splash?

I know that I'm going to upset people with this chapter, although I haven't explicitly made any claims about whether or not Jesus was divine. But it is worth pointing out that supernatural claims require supernatural evidence, and there isn't a supernatural amount of evidence for Jesus being divine or for the resurrection. This just one of many, many things that have contributed to me questioning my faith and everything that I've ever believed religiously. If Jesus wasn't divine and wasn't resurrected, then there is no rhyme or reason to Christianity and no reason to choose to be a Christian. So why am I one?