Even Jesus
didn’t claim he was divine...
Let’s take a quick detour and look at two misconceptions about the New Testament.
In the first three gospels, Jesus accepts very vague titles that don’t really mean anything – son of Man, son of God, son of David. In Luke Jesus refused to put himself on the same plane with the Holy Spirit and specified that he was not God; in Luke it is also made clear that “son of God” merely means “descendant”. Likewise Jesus challenged the idea that the “son of David” was God. At one point he accepted the loose title “messiah” which simply means savior, which can denote a lot of things, but in Mark he didn’t even want to be called that. Under scrutiny from the Pharisees, he refused to even admit that he was acting on God’s authority. Mark’s mentor Peter admitted that Jesus died in the flesh and lived afterward only in spirit, which means that Jesus was completely mortal like the rest of us, and that the notion of him rising from the dead, saying howdy to his friends, eating a bit of fish and then flying into the sky, was a bit of a stretch.
Then came the Gospel of John. No one really knows who wrote this book, but it came along much later than the other gospels, about seventy years after Jesus’ death. In John, the claims for Jesus get a little broader, but still vague: depending on who is doing the translating, the book calls Jesus god’s only son, the light of the world, bringing God’s commandment as a prophet would do, a lord, a teacher, less than his father. In places, “John” quotes Jesus as very assertive, claiming authority over all people and insisting that people could only reach God by obeying Jesus; “John” claims Jesus saved us by cleansing our sins so we could seek eternal life. Elsewhere in the gospel, however, Jesus said that God the father was the divine one, and even his own brothers didn’t believe he was God. And “John” admitted that when Jesus made his claim about eating his body and drinking his blood, a lot of disciples didn’t believe it and, freaking out, left Jesus. And remember that this gospel is essentially anonymous anyway, and that its more impressive claims about Jesus’ divinity were not substantiated by people who were actually there when Jesus was preaching.
Paul, who never even met Jesus (unless we’re counting the visitation on the road to Damascus), went further. Paul focused on Jesus as savior, stating that Jesus wiped away our sins and mediated for us so we could reconcile with God the loving father, and be saved, reborn and justified for all time, if we believed – a role which a mortal could play. But Paul also called Jesus the firstborn of all creation, with the form of God and equality with God, above Moses and the angels, ruling forever. This is the closest the Bible comes to promoting Jesus to the role of God – from a man who never met him, after 80-90 percent of the story of the Bible is over.
Also, Jesus specifically rejected the concept of heaven which today's Christians believe in -- the place you go when you're saved, while everyone else goes to The Other Place. The first Christians often defined heaven in very concrete terms, which didn’t turn out so well. The book of Matthew said heaven would come within a man’s lifetime. In some passages of the Bible heaven is described as something that was actually going to happen, any old time: it meant a new, peaceful earth; or it meant a descendant of David rules the earth, or alternatively it meant the ruin of cities. Elsewhere heaven was defined as the end of sickness and death. Then, sadly, none of these things happened. Later, the priests said heaven was a place in the sky, until Galileo and NASA proved them wrong.
So, no heaven, and by logical extension, no hell either. According to Jesus himself.
Incidentally all the Bible has on the subject of hell is... well, let's look. The book mentions Sheol, the place of the dead, which could just be a cemetery for all the Bible says. And Tartaro, which was a jail for sinning angels, not people. And Gehenna, which like Sheol is just a place to put dead bodies, this one outside Jerusalem. And Sodom and Gomorrah near the Dead Sea, which according to Jude are still burning eternally, which obviously they are not. The only mention of hell as we understand it appears in the book of Revelation, a text which is so ludicrous and hallucinatory that the Christian fathers almost removed it from the Bible. Other than that, the notion of God sending all sinners to an eternal fire to burn forever does not appear in the Bible.
This is a quick illustration, to show that the Bible doesn’t necessarily means what you think it does. Here’s another illustration below.
Let’s take a quick detour and look at two misconceptions about the New Testament.
In the first three gospels, Jesus accepts very vague titles that don’t really mean anything – son of Man, son of God, son of David. In Luke Jesus refused to put himself on the same plane with the Holy Spirit and specified that he was not God; in Luke it is also made clear that “son of God” merely means “descendant”. Likewise Jesus challenged the idea that the “son of David” was God. At one point he accepted the loose title “messiah” which simply means savior, which can denote a lot of things, but in Mark he didn’t even want to be called that. Under scrutiny from the Pharisees, he refused to even admit that he was acting on God’s authority. Mark’s mentor Peter admitted that Jesus died in the flesh and lived afterward only in spirit, which means that Jesus was completely mortal like the rest of us, and that the notion of him rising from the dead, saying howdy to his friends, eating a bit of fish and then flying into the sky, was a bit of a stretch.
Then came the Gospel of John. No one really knows who wrote this book, but it came along much later than the other gospels, about seventy years after Jesus’ death. In John, the claims for Jesus get a little broader, but still vague: depending on who is doing the translating, the book calls Jesus god’s only son, the light of the world, bringing God’s commandment as a prophet would do, a lord, a teacher, less than his father. In places, “John” quotes Jesus as very assertive, claiming authority over all people and insisting that people could only reach God by obeying Jesus; “John” claims Jesus saved us by cleansing our sins so we could seek eternal life. Elsewhere in the gospel, however, Jesus said that God the father was the divine one, and even his own brothers didn’t believe he was God. And “John” admitted that when Jesus made his claim about eating his body and drinking his blood, a lot of disciples didn’t believe it and, freaking out, left Jesus. And remember that this gospel is essentially anonymous anyway, and that its more impressive claims about Jesus’ divinity were not substantiated by people who were actually there when Jesus was preaching.
Paul, who never even met Jesus (unless we’re counting the visitation on the road to Damascus), went further. Paul focused on Jesus as savior, stating that Jesus wiped away our sins and mediated for us so we could reconcile with God the loving father, and be saved, reborn and justified for all time, if we believed – a role which a mortal could play. But Paul also called Jesus the firstborn of all creation, with the form of God and equality with God, above Moses and the angels, ruling forever. This is the closest the Bible comes to promoting Jesus to the role of God – from a man who never met him, after 80-90 percent of the story of the Bible is over.
Also, Jesus specifically rejected the concept of heaven which today's Christians believe in -- the place you go when you're saved, while everyone else goes to The Other Place. The first Christians often defined heaven in very concrete terms, which didn’t turn out so well. The book of Matthew said heaven would come within a man’s lifetime. In some passages of the Bible heaven is described as something that was actually going to happen, any old time: it meant a new, peaceful earth; or it meant a descendant of David rules the earth, or alternatively it meant the ruin of cities. Elsewhere heaven was defined as the end of sickness and death. Then, sadly, none of these things happened. Later, the priests said heaven was a place in the sky, until Galileo and NASA proved them wrong.
Other Christian arguments were not so
outlandish. One school of thought argued that heaven meant only the faith
within Christians. In Luke 17,
Jesus himself admitted that heaven wasn’t a place, or something people can see:
it is just something within you. Origen in the third century said
Jesus himself was the kingdom, whatever that means; then he said heaven simply
consisted of the hearts and minds of Christians. Eusebius said heaven meant the
believers themselves, and Augustine said it meant the Church. Later priests
argued that heaven was something that only existed for believers, and everyone
else was left out, which was just a bit convenient, don’t you think? In other
words, our reward for belief in God is…being one of the believers in God.
Others argued that heaven just meant
a man’s relationship with God. In the Bible, heaven was described in some
passages as seeing God and sharing his life. The Catholic Church, the people who essentially invented the Christian
concept of heaven whole-cloth, finally admitted years ago that heaven means
nothing more than eternal “communion” with the trinity of Gods, and that
hell was separation from them. Pope
John Paul admitted that neither heaven nor hell is a physical place:
heaven is being with God, hell is abandoning him. Heaven and hell are just
states of consciousness. Pope Benedict XVI said we still exist after we
die…because God thinks about us. In other words, our reward for belief in God
is…belief in God.
The Protestants are all over the
place on this. Some say we die and are judged upon death; others say we are
judged at the Second Coming. Some think we go to heaven, others think heaven
comes to earth. The evangelicals add to all this confusion by including all the
hallucinatory nonsense in the Book of Revelation.
Incidentally all the Bible has on the subject of hell is... well, let's look. The book mentions Sheol, the place of the dead, which could just be a cemetery for all the Bible says. And Tartaro, which was a jail for sinning angels, not people. And Gehenna, which like Sheol is just a place to put dead bodies, this one outside Jerusalem. And Sodom and Gomorrah near the Dead Sea, which according to Jude are still burning eternally, which obviously they are not. The only mention of hell as we understand it appears in the book of Revelation, a text which is so ludicrous and hallucinatory that the Christian fathers almost removed it from the Bible. Other than that, the notion of God sending all sinners to an eternal fire to burn forever does not appear in the Bible.
This is a quick illustration, to show that the Bible doesn’t necessarily means what you think it does. Here’s another illustration below.
