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The Question
of the Divinity of Jesus of The Incarnation -- Jesus as God
incarnate, in the flesh. The Trinity -- one God in three person. Here we have the bedrock of Christian belief. Or do we? Many would say that to be Christian,
you have to believe that Jesus was divine, and that he was one person in a three-part God.
But most of the Gospel writers didn’t believe these things -- so how can they be necessary to being Christian?
I greatly admire the Trinity as
a way to accommodate Christianity to the thought-world of the But that doesn’t mean this is the only way to explain God or identify Jesus today -- or even the best way. As a Christian, I cannot accept the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity. There are four reasons for this: First, there is the liberating fact that there is no one interpretation of Jesus in the Gospels -- and certainly not this orthodox doctrine. Second, these doctrines are not logically possible. Saying that someone is both human and divine, finite and infinite, is like talking about a square circle. It may be imaginative, but it is nonsense -- as contrasted to a paradox. Third, they violate our common sense. What was imaginable for Zeus or Apollo -- to descend to the earth in human form -- is not imaginable for the God of the Universe. Finally, for many people it is unnecessary and unhelpful. Unnecessary, because we do not need to believe that Jesus is divine in order to choose him as the focus for understanding of God, to try to follow his teachings. Unhelpful, because many of us just can’t make sense of it -- and we refuse to just say we believe the incomprehensible. Furthermore, if Jesus was human as we are -- and lived the way he did -- maybe we can, too.
For more on the Trinity, unitariansm, and Unitarianism, see this page>> |
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Common
Sense Christianity © C. Randolph Ross |