THE TRADITION FOR WORSHIPPING JESUS IS NOT SOLID
Ideology is the power of the idea. Jesus is worshipped as God by those who do not know what they are talking about. That is ideology and Jesus is used as a prop for feeling okay about it or not seeing it.
The non-divinity of Jesus is a wonderful tool for making Christianity
collapse and should be employed towards that noble end. It also shows that
Christianity has no business looking down its nose at idolatry for it is the
biggest offender against God’s ban on idolatry. The Church may argue that if it
is wrong about Jesus being God it means well and it is God not Jesus it means to
worship for it means to worship Jesus only if he is God. So the error is not in
who God is but what God has done or not done. But the Bible rejects this logic
for idolaters want their worship of idols to go to the true God if they are
wrong and still God says he hates idolatry and rejects the worship of them. The
heathen believe that God has broken up into a pile of gods who live in idols and
the Church does not say their error is in what God has done and not in what and
who God is. St Paul said that the demons take the worship offered to idols. The
logic of the Church would imply that if Jesus is not God and you feel more
attracted to God by believing that he is then it is best to worship Jesus as
God. It would be an argument for idolatry. It would be saying the Bible is wrong
to condemn this sin.
The Ebionites and many sects rooted in the first century denied that Jesus was
really God. If you read The Early Church, Paul of Samosata who was bishop of
Antioch and was appointed in 260 AD (page 114), Origen who died about 254 AD
(page 105) and Justin Martyr (page 86) of the mid second century, were major
Christian theologians who did not agree that the Bible should be interpreted to
mean that Jesus was literally Yahweh God.
The Christians fabricate Bible evidence that Jesus is God.
A prophecy in Isaiah that isn’t even about Jesus is thought to be predicting
Jesus’ divinity in saying he shall be called Mighty God. But it only says he
will be called it.
They say Jesus said he knows all that God knows when he only said that nobody
knows God but the Son and God knows the Son.
They say God called Jesus the Kyrios his own name. But God gives divine titles
to men in the Old Testament as honorific titles. In Genesis 5, the birth of a
man called Mahalalel is mentioned. Mahalalel means the Blessed God.
The Prophet Micah predicted a ruler whose activity and origin are from all
eternity. This could be a poetic way of saying that this man was special. He
more than any other man was the work of God and eternity is sometimes a synonym
for God. Christians assume it’s saying the ruler never had an origin and only
God has no origin so the ruler is God. But it does say he had an origin.
They say that Paul said that though Jesus was in the form of God he didn’t cling
to equality with God but became a slave. Jesus was in the likeness of God like a
mirror reflecting and taking in the glory of God. He didn’t cling to equality
with God. In other words, rather than wanting to be God or equal to God or like
God he chose to be a slave. None of this indicates that Jesus was God or
entitled to seek equality with God, it only says that he didn’t seek it.
The angel in Revelation forbade John from worshipping him but Jesus accepted
worship so Christians say that Jesus must be more than an angel and must be God.
The angel’s job was to be a messenger of God not to answer prayers and to be
worshipped. He doesn’t say he shouldn’t be worshipped but just that now isn’t
the time. The angel says worship God only meaning that he was only God’s
messenger and it was God who should get all the honour for it was God who was
really doing the work. And besides we are never told that Jesus got the worship
due to God. Kings were worshipped in a sense. Nothing in the episode defends the
Christian belief in a divine Christ.
Christians say that when Jesus was worshipped that he never told the worshipper
they were wrong. First of all, the gospels make it clear we must worship God
only. So they didn’t need to tell us if Jesus did correct these people. Second,
Jesus was merely called a good teacher and he told the man off for saying that.
Third, we read of people making assumptions and Jesus despairingly not bothering
to waste time trying to correct them.
Let us now comb the Bible to see if Jesus thought he was God the Son, God
almighty. The Gospel of John is dealt with in my book John Gospel Denies Jesus
is God. In brief, that gospel says that Jesus was the incarnation of the Word,
the message of God and God is his message. But that is not the same as saying
that he is God. A saint who is not God can be the incarnation of the love of God
even though God is said in Christian belief to be love itself. When Jesus said
that before Abraham was I am and I am being the name of God in the Old Testament
he didn’t say he meant it in the sense that God meant it. Jesus said that he and
the Father are one but that could be a reference to his being the manifestation
of the Father for he said he is the image of the Father so that he who sees him
sees the Father. He said he wanted his followers to be one in the same way he
and the Father are one indicting that he didn’t mean that he was one nature with
the Father. Jesus denied he was God when he said his teaching was not his own
but the teaching of the Father.
Christians say that he means his teaching is not of human origin but divine. He
was saying his teaching was not from himself as man but himself as God. So they
turn it into a declaration that Jesus was God! But if you mean that you would
say that. You would not use cryptic clues like, “my teaching is not my own for
it is God’s”. To say my teaching is not mine but God’s is to deny that you are
God. Christians have to obscure their doctrine that Jesus was fully human and
fully divine and yet one person so that my referred to his personhood which was
both human and divine and pretend that he was like a pantomime horse half human
and half divine and was referring only to his man side.
Nothing in the gospels or New Testament or anywhere in the Bible declares Jesus
to have been God. Saying Jesus was worshipped does not mean he was
worshipped as a god or God.
BOOKS CONSULTED
A CALL TO HERESY, Robert Van de Weyer, Lamp Press, London, 1989
ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE, John W Haley, Whitaker House, Pennsylvania,
undated
ASKING THEM QUESTIONS, Various, Oxford University Press, London, 1936
CHRIST IS GOD, Rev JP Arendzen DD, Augustine Publishing Company, Devon, 1987
CHRIST OUR LIGHT, J Buys SJ Geoffrey Chapman and Gill & Son, London-Melbourne,
Dublin 1966
CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED Ed John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany Fellowship
Inc, Minneapolis, 1973
DID JESUS CHRIST REALLY COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN? Alan Hayward, Christadelphian
ALS, Birmingham
DO CHRISTIANS BELIEVE IN THREE GODS? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
1992
EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press
Foundation, Bucks, 1995
FOUR GREAT HERESIES, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee,
1975
GOD AND THE HUMAN CONDITION, F J Sheed, Sheed & Ward, London 1967
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East
Sussex, 1994
HONEST TO GOD, John AT Robinson, SCM Press, London, 1963
JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES John Wijngaards, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1998
JESUS GOD THE SON OR SON OF GOD? Fred Pearce Christadelphian Publishing Office,
Birmingham
MERE CHRISTIANITY, CS Lewis, Fontana, Glasgow, 1975
MIRACLES, CS Lewis, Fontana, London, 1960
PRIESTLAND’S PROGRESS, Gerald Priestland, BBC, London, 1981
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE, Henry Morris, Moody Press, Bucks, 1988
SET MY EXILES FREE, John Power, Logos Books, MH Gill & Son Ltd, Dublin, 1967
SOME MODERN FAITHS, Maurice C Burrell and J Stafford Wright, Intervarsity Press,
Leicestershire, 1988
THE CASE FOR CHRIST, Lee Strobel, HarperCollins and Zondervan, Michigan, 1998
THE EARLY CHURCH, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
THE GODHEAD EXPLAINED, Christadelphian Press, Beverley, South Australia
THE METAPHOR OF GOD INCARNATE, John Hick, SCM Press, London, 1993
THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE, John Hick ed., SCM Press, London, 1977
THE NEW CULTS, Walter Martin, Vision House, Santa Ana, California, 1980
THE SPIRIT OF GOD, John Bedson, Lightstand Burbank CA 1984
THE UNAUTHORISED VERSION, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1992
UNDERSTANDING THE CULTS, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Campus Crusade for
Christ, San Bernardino, 1983
UNITARIAN CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER ESSAYS, William Ellery Channing, The
Bobs-Merrill Company Inc, Kansas, 1957
YOU CAN LIVE FOREVER IN PARADISE ON EARTH, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society,
New York, 1982
THE WWW
http://www.christadelphia.org/wrested1.htm
http://www.kevinquick.com/kkministries/books/reasoning/nwt.html,
Kevin Quick discusses the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the Bible never says
that Jesus is God
www.gospelassemblyfree.com/facts/fathersonwayne.htm
Father and/or Son by H Wayne Hamburger