How God became Jesus

today dr. Craig Evans the pay's at New Testament professor at Acadia Divinity College right outside of Halifax in will fill one of my doctoral mentors my son's doctoral mentor is with us today and you are making news because you're giving a sensible intelligent rebuttal to this outlandish book of dr. barred Airmen that came out this week tell us his title tell us yours well the name of Bart Airman's book which has just released is how Jesus became God and of course the thesis of the book is suggesting it was an evolutionary process it's really ultimately a mistake and so forth Jesus wasn't really divine well the book we have brought out at the same time I and a few other collaborators is entitled how God became Jesus and of course what it implies it reverses the logic of Bart Ehrman's book and it applies according to Christian orthodoxy that God really did become incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ our dear friend Bart airman who started at U for Christ in Lawrence Kansas and went to Moody and then he went to Wheaton and then he went to Princeton said under bruce metzger how in the world did he end up with theology like this well in my own opinion Bart was raised as you know in his faith in a very fundamentalist and rigid way right both his understanding of Scripture and his understanding of theology was very brittle and I think what happened was a rude awakening when he was at Princeton and he discovered that theology didn't work but at the same time and I want to be I want to be fair to to Bart I know him personally I've known him for 25 years we hosted two vain yeah we have been in your home with with Bart Airmen but there were some personal issues too and that led him to lose confidence in God led him eventually to believe that if God is there he doesn't care and in my view it's it's a very faulty theology and so in a sense bar does some good because he exposes the weakness of what I think is a very narrow rigid understanding of Christian faith and a rigid understanding of the Bible so this gives us a chance then to set the record straight not just respond to him and show where he's off and in error in his own book but to say hey listen Christians out there you need to understand your own faith better you need to understand what the Bible is better and then you're not going to drop into this kind of a trap you're not going to fall into this kind of a quagmire that I believe professor Airmen is in and we might add that Bart does have a devastating impact he's a UNC Chapel Hill the religion department you can imagine all those North Carolina young people that are coming from evangelical churches and they said under him I've heard first-person testimony one semester they ditch their faith he he has such a strong skill at debate and he knows all the the soft point so let's get right into it bard has been attacking the Bible now he's attacking the deity of Christ and that little term that Jesus is God that he always was God can you just give us the dossier of his book and yours this week the New York Times Wall Street Journal everybody's carrying this well now now that people have the book and they and they can read it and I have no doubt it'll be yet another bestseller as many of his other books have been what they will read and what they will find out is that Bart suggests that Jesus was an ordinary Jewish prophet teacher he might have been very impressive even charismatic in some ways and his teaching a faith healer perhaps in a sense but he really wasn't anything more than that and so what happened was they his followers believed that he was significant and then believed that he had been raised from the dead and that impacted their thinking and they decided you know what maybe he was divine maybe we should speak of him as the Son of God not in so he followers deified him yeah he had no deity and it was a it was a bit of a process I mean the Easter message you know Jesus has been raised up he's appeared to Peter and then later to Paul apparently led some to think well you know he must be a God of some sort and I mean in the greco-roman world everybody could become a God if you did something amazing and so that's how he argues and so it's not that strange that Jesus gets morphed into a divine being and eventually as the years go by you end up with the Trinity and on you go and eventually you end up with Orthodox Christian theology and evolution of it is it is that's right okay so let's give the facts because we see the deity of Christ all over the New Testament arm believers so that they can again wade through Bart's misstep well I disagree strongly with his hypothetical evolutionary you know what he thinks is the process of how Jesus became viewed as God because these were Jewish people these are Jewish people and and our viewers need to understand that they not they're not like the pagans right the Greeks and Romans have no trouble turning Caesar into a divine being a God among many gods that's not how the Jewish people think they don't think that now they didn't think it then and God is you know he's wholly unique he's not some super guy that just sort of won a couple of battles and became God and so he is very separate from humanity he is the creator we are the creatures and so you do you don't just go from creature to creator not in the Jewish world that just doesn't happen and so I think what Jesus did he he taught in ways that were unique and and surprising he forgave people's sin he claimed Authority and he backed it up with miracles that had never been seen before that's what you read in the Gospels people saying we have never seen anything like this what about the de clarity of eye and statements that meant something good Jews sure and so in a Jewish setting you don't expect a teacher I don't care how charismatic he is or how compelling is to say things that make it sound like he and God are somehow equated I and the father of one that kind of talk I you know he has he calls himself the Son of Man which is alluding to a vision in Daniel chapter 7 the Book of Daniel where a heavenly figure stands right in front of God the Father and receives Authority and he talks about himself as that person who has authority on earth got it from heaven now on earth he has authority to forgive sins so I think the disciples already realized this is no ordinary person he walks on water he raises the dead he heals people people born blind that's never been seen before never casts out evil spirits claims in one of his statements he has more power and authority than the devil himself angels don't have that kind of authority well and so execution in the first century was crucifixion let's go to the historians you got Philo in Alexandria Egypt and you've got Josephus in Jerusalem give us their time frames and how they corroborate to rebut what Airmen saying I'm glad you asked about these are very important witnesses Philo lived and the he was in Alexandria Egypt next door to Israel and he visited his room from time to time and he was a very important writer and we have most of his writings he lived in the first half of the first century so his lifetime overlapped with that of Jesus he was about twenty years older than Jesus Josephus was born the last year Pontius Pilate the Roman governor who crucified Jesus probably in the year thirty he was born the last year Pilate was in office 36 or so he talks about Jesus and a couple of very important passages in his writings now what both of these men say Philo and Josephus they say that when somebody's crucified in Israel during peacetime they definitely are buried that the Roman authorities respected these that's a very important tradition the idea of crucified people hanging on a cross or thrown into a ditch where their bodies are eaten by dogs that's ridiculous why are we talking about this barn Airmen in his book says Jesus likely was not varied yeah why is that important if Jesus wasn't buried then there isn't any empty tomb to discover Sunday morning so that's how he then cast doubt on the resurrection it's a legend it grew up later it's a story about some prominent women and so this legend comes along saying Mary Magdalene and some other women Vitt went to the tomb but that / that's much later nobody else knew about an empty tomb and what I respond in our book we and I hope a lot of people read this and learn this it's very important point this is not a made-up story it's at the very beginning it's it's why they spoke of resurrection the Jewish people back then as well as pagans Greeks and Romans they had their ghost stories yeah sure and if all somebody said was all I had a vision and there was Jesus and it comforted me people say oh that's great I'm glad to hear that maybe Jesus is in heaven because he was a good guy after all but nobody no Jew would speak of resurrection they speak of resurrection only if they're convinced that that body isn't in the tomb anymore that's what resurrection the Jewish world meant a getting up a standing up the dead arise if his body has just been chewed up in a ditch or which by the way would never happen in peacetime Israel because they are very concerned about the purity of the land unburied dead no way but if they knew his body was in a tomb or something like that and there it is and of course they keep track of bodies that's a major concern well nobody's gonna speak of resurrection sure they're gonna say oh well Jesus is speaking he is in heaven he he appeared to me but nobody would speak of resurrection without that empty tomb and I think that's an important point to make we got two minutes one question quick well the media is all skewed to quote the bard Airman's now you've been on the panel gospel of judas front cover of National Geographic most of the theologians didn't believe anything like you believed and there's the lone Craig Evans why is it so skewed left well that's what the media wants I mean why do they call the news news and so you'll never see a headline in the New York Times it says guess what the old way of understanding it was right you will never see that there and I've been interviewed by people they're always looking for something new and if it's sensational that's better yeah we might add that Bart Ehrman's mother is a wonderful Christian that loves Jesus Christ obviously praying for him your book how God became Jesus the real origins of belief in Jesus divine nature our response to Bart Airmen this book is available this week and it is an opportunity is it now give us just a 30-second plug why people need to get it and help those who may be confused by well Jerry thanks for asking there are two two real important reasons why I think lots of people need to read our book number one they need to understand where Professor airmen is simply wrong he leaves out key evidence and I think misinterprets key evidence and that includes archaeological evidence too so we set the record straight but for me actually a bigger reason is the second reason and that is Christians don't know their own history very well Christians don't know the Gospels and how the Gospels fit into the history of the times right and all the supporting evidence there are a lot of Christians I think are running scared and they don't realize that history archaeology and even the sciences are major allies that confirm these important truths so I want Christians to know this this important stuff a lot better nobody says it like dr. Craig Evans be sure to get his book how God became Jesus

Channel: 100huntley

Views: 40,885

Rating: 4.443038 out of 5

Keywords: interview, huntleystreet, mar-28-14, HS9597, 100huntley, Christian, Dr. Craig Evans, Jesus, divine, God, Jews, Dr. Bart Ehrman

Id: nZ0OQEmlhkY

Length: 13min 4sec (784 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 28 2014