The Christian world just celebrated the Easter holiday, the Resurrection of Jesus, the God-Man, from the dead. Yet there are many people who either don\u2019t believe in God or, if they do, certainly don\u2019t believe that the Supreme Being assumed flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.<\/p>\n
At the same time, however, they hold the man Jesus in high regard, either reinterpreting many of His remarks or explaining them away as inventions of later generations.<\/p>\n
Neither approach succeeds.<\/p>\n
Antony Flew is a world leading philosopher who died at the ripe old age of 87 just a few years ago.\u00a0 For over 50 years, Flew was recognized for being among the profession\u2019s most powerful critics<\/i> of theism (belief in God).\u00a0 Such was the relentlessness and force of Flew\u2019s arguments that he is credited by his colleagues\u2014both theist and atheist alike\u2014with having virtually revolutionized the field of the philosophy of religion.<\/p>\n
Within the last decade or so, Flew\u2014a paragon of intellectual honesty\u2014concluded that all of this time, he had been wrong<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Though he never became a Christian\u2014the belief that <\/i>God exists is not <\/i>equivalent to belief in <\/i>God, much less belief in Christ<\/i>\u2014he came to think that among the world\u2019s religious traditions, none is as intriguing, as alluring, as Christianity.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday,\u201d Flew states, \u201cI would say that the claim concerning the resurrection is more impressive than any by the religious competition,\u201d and that made on behalf of the Incarnation \u201cunique.\u201d\u00a0 He admits to believing that more so than any other religion, Christianity \u201cdeserves to be honored and respected\u201d\u2014regardless of whether it is the \u201cdivine revelation\u201d that it claims to be. \u201cThere is nothing like\u201d its \u201ccombination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul.\u201d\u00a0 The latter, Flew asserts, \u201chad a brilliant philosophical mind and could both speak and write in all the relevant languages.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his book, There is A God, <\/i>Flew shares his correspondence with one the world\u2019s most seasoned and respected of New Testament scholars, N.T. Wright.\u00a0 Flew admits to being \u201cvery much impressed\u201d with Wright\u2019s argument(s) for the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ, calling his approach \u201cenormously important,\u201d \u201cabsolutely wonderful, absolutely radical, and very powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright grounds his \u201cfaith in Jesus as the incarnate Son of God,\u201d not in the Gospels, but in the way and ways in which \u201cfirst-century Jews understood God and God\u2019s action in the world.\u201d This Jewish understanding, in turn, was anchored in the Hebrew Scriptures, i.e. The Old Testament. Jews, Wright reminds us, \u201ctalk[ed] about the Word of God,\u201d \u201cthe wisdom of God,\u201d \u201cthe glory of God dwelling in the Temple,\u201d \u201cthe law of God,\u201d and \u201cthe spirit of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright notes that when we turn to the Gospels, what we find is \u201cJesus behaving\u2014not just talking, but behaving\u2014as if somehow those five ways [of talking about God] are coming true in a new manner in what he is doing.\u201d In other words, Jesus behaves and talks as if He believed that \u201che was called to embody <\/i>the return of Yahweh to Zion\u201d (italics original).<\/p>\n
Since \u201cembody\u201d is the English equivalent of the Latin \u201cincarnation,\u201d the point is that, on Wright\u2019s reading, Jesus indeed conceived Himself as the incarnation of Israel\u2019s God. <\/i><\/p>\n
Lest the skeptic think that Wright\u2014a universally esteemed biblical scholar, mind you\u2014is just another incorrigibly prejudiced Christian, he calls upon Jacob Neusner, a prominent Jewish<\/i> scholar who concurs with Wright\u2019s interpretation. \u00a0\u00a0In addition to his numerous books on Judaism, Neusner also authored a book on Christianity.\u00a0 \u201cIn it,\u201d Wright says, Neusner remarked \u201cthat when he reads that Jesus said things like, \u2018You have heard that it was said thus and so, but I say unto you this and this and this,\u2019 \u2018I want to say to this Jesus: Who do you think you are? God?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
C. S. Lewis wasn\u2019t the first to articulate what has since come to be known as \u201cLewis\u2019 Trilemma<\/i>.\u201d As the 19th<\/sup> century Scottish preacher John Duncan said: \u201cChrist either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma.\u00a0 It is inexorable.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Christian world just celebrated the Easter holiday, the Resurrection of Jesus, the God-Man, from the dead. Yet there are many people who either don\u2019t believe in God or, if they do, certainly don\u2019t believe that the Supreme Being assumed flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. At the same time, however, they hold…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n