Jesus was NOT the Son of God

When Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, God declared that Jesus was in fact his son:

And when Jesus was baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

(Matthew 3:16 – 17)*

The claim that Jesus is the Son of God is repeated throughout the New Testament, as the following passages illustrate:

Mary said to the angel, “How shall this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her,

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.”

(Luke 1:34 – 35)

When he came to the other side, to the region of the Gadarenes, two men possessed by demons came out of the tombs and met him. They were so fierce that no one could pass that way. Suddenly they shouted, “What have you to do with us, Son Of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”

(Matthew 8:28 – 29)

Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

(Matthew 14:28 – 33)

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

(Matthew 16:15 – 16)

Whenever the unclean spirits beheld him, they fell down before him and shouted, “You are the Son of God.”

(Mark 3:11)

When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where do you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

(John 1:47 – 49)

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

(John 11:25 – 27)

Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

(Mark 15:37 – 39)

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

(John 20:30 – 31)

But these many attestations to the divinity of Jesus are complicated by a few other passages that seem to imply that Jesus was not the only child of God. For example, this well known passage from the Beatitudes says that peacemakers are children of God:

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

(Matthew 5:9)

The following passage, from a dispute between Jesus and the Sadducees about marriage in the afterlife, states that resurrected people are also children of God:

Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.”

(Luke 20:34 – 36)

And here is a passage from Paul that says that any who follow Jesus are children of God:

So then, brethren and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh– for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

(Romans 8:12 – 14)

Here’s another passage in which Paul repeats this idea:

But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

(Galatians 3:25 – 26)

In addition, Jesus several times refers to himself as the “Son of Man,” as in the following passage:

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

(Matthew 11:18 – 19)

Jesus may have meant that he is the Son of God in the respect that Mary was made pregnant not by a human male, but by the Holy Spirit; and that he is the Son of Man in the respect that he was born to a perfectly normal human female via a perfectly natural human birth. That would reinforce the idea that Jesus was God made incarnate, and was therefore both divine and human. And it would make his suffering on the cross seem as real as it would be to any human.

Was Jesus really the Son of God? Certainly the New Testament provides many examples of miracles that Jesus performed, including the following:

Jesus cured a man of his leprosy (Matthew 8:1 – 3, Mark 1:40 – 42, Luke 5:12 – 13)
He healed the servant of a Centurion merely by saying that it would be done (Matthew 8:5 – 13, Luke 7:2 – 10)
Jesus stopped a windstorm (Matthew 8:23 – 27, Mark 4:35 – 40, Luke 8:22 – 25)
He drove two demoniacs into a herd of swine that drowned themselves in the sea (Matthew 8:28 – 34)
He healed a paralytic by telling him to get up, take his bed, and go home (Matthew 9:1 – 7, Mark 2:4 – 5, Luke 5:17 – 25)
He cured a woman who had endured a hemorrhage for 12 years (Matthew 9:18 – 22, Mark 5:25 – 29, Luke 8:41 – 48)
He brought a young girl back to life (Matthew 9:23 – 25, Mark 5:32 – 34, Luke 8:49 – 55)
He restored vision to two blind men by touching their eyes (Matthew 9:27 – 30)
He restored a man’s withered hand (Matthew 12:9 – 13, Mark 3:1 – 5, Luke 6:6 – 11)
He healed a man who was blind and dumb (Matthew 12:22, Mark 7:31 – 36)
He fed 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish (Matthew 14:13 – 21, Mark 6:30 – 44, Luke 9:10 – 17, John 6:1 – 13)
He walked many furlongs across the rough waters of the sea (Matthew 14:22 – 27, Mark 6:45 – 50)
He healed the sick of Gennesaret, most of whom were healed by merely touching the fringe of this garment (Matthew 14:34 – 36, Mark 6:53 – 56)
He healed a woman’s daughter who was possessed by a demon (Matthew 15:21 – 28, Mark 7:27 – 29)
He healed a great many of the lame, the maimed, the blind, the dumb, and many others along the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 15:29 – 31)
He fed 4,000 people with 7 loaves of bread and a few small fish (Matthew 15:32 – 39, Mark 8:1 – 9)
He healed two blind men by touching their eyes (Matthew 20:29 – 34)
He cursed a fig tree and it withered immediately (Matthew 21:18 – 22, Mark 11:12 – 14)
He removed an unclean spirit from a man (Mark 1:23 – 26)
He healed Simon’s mother-in-law, and many others who lived nearby who were sick with various diseases (Mark 1:29 – 34, Luke 4:38 – 41)
He drove demoniacs named Legion out of a man and into a herd of swine (Mark 5:1 – 13, Luke 8:26 – 33)
He cured a blind man of Bethsaida (Mark 8:22 – 26)
He removed a dumb and deaf spirit from a boy (Mark 9:14 – 29)
He cured the blindness of a man named Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46 – 52)
He restored a man who had died in Nain to life (Luke 7:11 – 15)
He removed a demon from a man’s only son (Luke 9:37 – 42)
He healed a woman who could not stand straight (Liuke 13:10 – 13)
He healed a man of dropsy (Luke 14:1 – 4)
He healed 10 lepers (Luke 17:11 – 14)
He healed a blind beggar near Jericho (Luke 18:35 – 43)
He healed the son of an official (John 4:46 – 53)
He cured a man’s blindness (John 9:1 – 12)
He resurrected Lazarus after he had been dead for 4 days (John 11:1 – 44)

Surely if Jesus performed such miracles, it could only be because he was divine.

But there is an aspect of the teachings of Jesus that cast his divinity in doubt; and that concerns the most important prophecy that he made. In Matthew Chapter 24, his disciples ask Jesus about the last days:

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

(Matthew 24:3)

Jesus answers the second part of this question first, with a lengthy description of the events that will take place leading up to the last days. There will be many pretenders who claim to be the Christ. There will be wars and famines and earthquakes. The followers of Jesus will be hated; many will be killed; many will surrender their beliefs; and some will betray their fellows. And then the Son of Man will appear:

“Immediately after the suffering of those days

the sun will be darkened,

and the moon will not give its light;

the stars will fall from heaven,

and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

“Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

(Matthew 24:29 – 31)

Then, finally, Jesus answers the first part of the disciples’ question by telling them exactly when this will all happen:

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”

(Matthew 24:32 – 34)

Jesus said that his return as the Son of Man, the resurrection of the dead, and the last judgment would all happen before the passing of his generation. That is, Jesus expected the end of time to happen sometime very early in the first century CE.

Well, that simply did not happen. Therefore the most important prophecy that Jesus made was wrong. Why would a divine being have been so completely wrong about such an important prophecy? The simplest explanation is that Jesus wasn’t divine at all but was instead a character in a human authored narrative.

The story related in Matthew 24 concerning the end of time is repeated in Chapter 13 of the book of Mark. There is a similar narrative in Luke 17:20 – 37 and Luke 21:20 – 32, though Luke’s version has several differences. Even so, the narratives in Mark and in Luke both repeat the same prediction that the end of time would occur before the passing of the then present generation. This story is not repeated in the book of John.

The idea that the resurrection was near is repeated several times in the New Testament. Here are the words of John the Baptist:

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

(Matthew 3:2)

And here is Jesus making the same point:

From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

(Matthew 4:17)

Mark has a slightly different rendition of that passage in Mark 14 – 15. And here is Jesus making the same point again when he gives the Apostles their commission:

“When they persecute you in this town, flee to the next, for truly I tell you, you will not have finished going through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”

(Matthew 10:23)

What about the book of John? Here is John 3:16 again:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

(John 3:16)

The phrase “may not perish” is a tell. John certainly did not believe that people who were born in his time and who believed in Jesus would still be living several thousand years later. And yet he said they would not perish. He must have thought that the time of the resurrection would arrive before his generation passed away. That is, he must have agreed with the Jesus of the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke that the time of the resurrection was near.

Was Jesus divine? Certainly the miracles he allegedly performed are not the sort of actions that could have been carried out by a normal human being. But his prophecy as to the time of the resurrection of the dead was wrong. It’s difficult to understand how a divine being could have made such a monumental mistake.

*All passages from the Bible are taken from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, which was published in 2019. The owner of the copyright on that edition is the National Council of Churches of the United States of America and it therefore represents the orthodox Christian translation in the United States.

Why I am an atheist, just like you

Let’s begin by asking what it is that theists (people who believe in God) want– with the understanding that we are talking about monotheists only. I think there are three key beliefs at the heart of monotheism:

There is one and only one God in the universe
God is responsible for the creation of all that exists
God also exists

If God created all that exists, and God also exists, then God must have created God. Does that make any kind of sense?

Well, it’s an idea that certainly has precedent. The Egyptian gods Ra and Ptah were both self-created gods, according to some of the Egyptian creation myths. But regardless of whether the idea has been advanced previously, is it reasonable? Is it even possible?

To answer that question we first need to identify the attributes that a being must have to be able to self-create. We’re not talking about a god that just suddenly pops into existence with no antecedent. To self-create the being must have consciously decided to bring himself into existence.

At the absolute minimum such a being must have self-awareness– that is, sentience. But this being must also realize that he doesn’t exist. That is, the being must have consciousness, but must not exist– and must be aware that he does not exist.

Secondly, this being would need to have the will to bring himself into existence. And that implies that he must perceive some advantage in existence.

And thirdly, he must have the power to bring himself into existence.

As I see it this line of inquiry poses far more questions than it answers. I don’t understand how it is possible for a being to have conscious awareness without existence. I would want to have that explained to me– and as far as I am aware, no one has ever offered any such explanation.

As to the requirement that he perceive some value in existence, I suspect that the only way such a being could appreciate the advantages of existence is if he had already experienced existence.

And finally, I have difficulty believing that this being could bring himself into existence without having some foothold in existence. I think of this being immersed in an ocean of non-existent consciousness who must somehow bring himself out of this ocean of non-existence into a realm of existence. I don’t understand how that would be possible– and again, I’ve never heard anyone explain such a thing.

So I regard the notion of a self-created God as profoundly unhelpful to our understanding of God. It raises a lot of questions, but provides no answers to any of those questions. Consequently I believe we should not base our theology on this idea.

So we are back to our original dilemma. How do we resolve the two thoughts that (a) God is responsible for the creation of all that exists and that (b) God also exists?

To address that question I would ask that you cast your thoughts back 5,000 years to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to see how religion was observed in that very ancient time. That’s a reasonable thing to do because those were the only two regions of the world at that time that had writing systems.

And when we think back to that very ancient time we find that the forms of religion at that time were broadly similar. Each town had its own god or goddess. That deity lived in a temple in the form of a carved or cast statue. Every morning the temple priests would bathe the god, dress the god, feed the god, pray to the god, and plead to the god for answers to the issues of the day. When should we plant crops. Our neighbors to the east are acting aggressively; should we be planning for war?

Then once a year the priests would remove the god– the carved statue– from the temple, put it in a sedan chair, and parade it down the main avenue of the town. That would be the one time when the average citizen would be able to see and interact with his god. And yes, it really does seem that the people of that very remote time did think that the carved statue really was imbued with the spirit of the living god.

That is how religion was practiced for at least 2,000 years throughout that broad region. But then, sometime after the Bronze Age Collapse, a people who called themselves Israelites appeared on the scene. They said, per the Second Commandment, that it isn’t possible to represent their God as a carved statue. God, they said, is beyond human understanding. Moses went to Mt. Sinai and saw a bush burning– but it was never consumed. And then he heard God’s voice speaking from it. He watched as God carved the ten commandments in stone. But he only saw the hand of God– never God’s face. In the book of Job, it was only when Job finally acknowledged that God’s purposes and designs are beyond human understanding that God finally restored to him everything that had been taken from him. God is not something that you can liken to a mere human, or represent in physical form. God is beyond our understanding. God transcends reality.

Consider a chair– a real chair, perhaps the one you are currently sitting on. No one would argue with the statement that the chair exists. But what exactly does that mean? In a modern context it means that we understand the chair to be comprised of a very large number of elementary particles– quarks, leptons, and bosons– and that those particles abide by a rather large set of rules. Rules that govern the strong force, the weak force, electricity and magnetism, special relativity, general relativity, the laws of thermodynamics, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and so forth. When someone tells me that God created the universe from nothing, I interpret that to mean that God created the material substances of the universe– the quarks, leptons, and bosons– and the rules that govern their interactions. If God created those rules, then God must not be subject to those rules. God must in a very real sense transcend the rules that govern reality. So the statement “God exists” cannot mean anything like what the statement “this chair exists” means.

If God is not bound by the rules that govern material objects, then not only cannot God be represented as a carved statue, but God cannot be represented as any kind of material object. If God truly transcends reality, then God is not bound by any of the constraints of reality. And therefore God cannot be real.

I am reminded of a song by George Harrison:

I really want to see you, really want to be with you

My Sweet Lord, George Harrison

Isn’t that what we all want– to know that which cannot be known? To see that which is hidden from us? To touch the face of God? But just because you want something, that doesn’t mean you can have it.

We need a new definition of God. And so I will offer you my own:

God is that which makes reality possible.

Note that this definition does not say how, or when, or why. It purposefully leaves unanswered the question of whether God created God. And yet I claim that this definition gives monotheists everything they want without giving them the one thing they cannot have– existence.

There is one and only one reality. Therefore there can only be one “that which makes reality possible.” The notion that there is only one God in the universe falls naturally out of the above definition.

Reality envelops us. Everything you can do, or think, or imagine, or dream– everything you know and touch and believe– is a component of reality. So “that which makes reality possible” is absolutely necessary. Logically necessary. Therefore God is the logical antecedent of reality. And God is logically necessary.

But this definition of God says nothing about the existence of God. That’s not a limitation of the definition. It’s the boundary of our knowledge about God.

Did God create himself? The definition above gives us no answer– but it also doesn’t exclude the possibility.

2,500 years ago the leaders of the Israelites asked their people to believe that their God could not be represented as a physical statue. They said that God’s purposes are beyond human understanding. Now I ask you to carry that principle to its logical extent by recognizing that God cannot exist for the simple reason that God is transcendent. The God that has made reality possible is necessarily beyond reality– and existence.

I really want to see you Lord, but I know that I cannot.

Jesus Was NOT the Messiah

The word Christ is Greek for Messiah. Throughout the Greek language books of the New Testament Jesus is called the Messiah, as in the following well known passage from the book of Luke:

Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

(Luke 2:8 – 11)*

From his birth Jesus was announced to the world as being the Messiah. But what exactly does that mean? The Hebrew word “Messiah” means “Anointed one.” But there were a great many Hebrew leaders who were anointed before the time of Jesus. Every king of Israel and of Judah was anointed by the temple priests. Here Samuel describes the anointing of Saul as King of Israel:

Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him; he said, “The LORD has anointed you ruler over his people Israel. You shall reign over the people of the LORD, and you will save them from the hand of their enemies all around.”

(I Samuel 10:1)

At the time of Saul, there were two kingdoms populated by the descendants of Jacob: Israel in the north, with its capital in Samaria; and Judah in the south, with its capital in Jerusalem. After the death of King Saul, David was first anointed King of Judah:

Then the people of Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah.

(2 Samuel 2:4)

Saul’s son Ishbosheth was king of Israel at the time. After the assassination of Ishbosheth, David was anointed king of all Israel:

So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel.

(2 Samuel 5:3)

Following the death of this father King David, Solomon was anointed as king:

There the priest Zadok took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. Then they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, “Long live King Solomon!”

(1 Kings 1:39)

Anointment was also used for the installation of Hebrew priests:

“The sacred vestments of Aaron shall be passed on to his sons after him; they shall be anointed in them and ordained in them.”

(Exodus 29:29)

And even some foreign kings were considered to be among the anointed, as in this passage from Isaiah that describes Cyrus the Great of the Persian empire:

Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and strip kings of their robes…

(Isaiah 45:1)

Was Jesus anointed? He was baptized by John the Baptist, as is reported in this passage:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

(Matthew 3:13 – 17)

These passages illustrate that baptism isn’t the same thing as anointment. For one thing, baptism was performed with water, whereas anointment was done with oil. And anointment was the ceremony by which a person was initiated into a leadership position, whereas baptism was intended to be a form of confession:

Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going to him, and they were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.

(Matthew 3:5 – 6)

Baptism and anointment were two different processes that were devised for two different purposes. But in addition to being baptized Jesus was also anointed, as described in this passage:

While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke the jar and poured the ointment on his head.

(Mark 14:3)

That was a very different type of anointment. The woman didn’t anoint Jesus as part of an initiation ceremony; she did it in preparation for his burial:

“She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.”

(Mark 14:8)

So yes, Jesus was anointed with oil, but not as part of a ritual that would have appointed him a king or priest. This story is told in Matthew 26:6-13 and again in John 12:1-8; but in the book of John the woman is named as Mary the sister of Lazarus.

Jesus even made every effort to avoid being anointed as king:

When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

(John 6:15)

Luke says that Jesus was anointed in a completely different sense:

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to set free those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

(Luke 4:16 – 21)

(The passage from the book of Isaiah referenced in the above passage can be found in Chapter 61.) According to Luke, Jesus wasn’t anointed with oil, as would be done in an initiation ceremony; he was anointed with the Holy Spirit. The Annunciation of Luke 2:8 – 11 proclaims Jesus to be the Anointed One. But as we have seen, every king and priest of Israel was anointed– so Jesus could not have been “the” Anointed One– at least, not in the terminology of the Old Testament. And since Jesus was never anointed in the fashion of the kings of either Israel or Judah, he couldn’t have been a king, at least not in the Old Testament sense.

Returning to the annunciation, we should note that Jesus was also called a savior:

“…to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah.”

(Luke 2:11)

The word “savior” makes many appearances in the Old Testament, as for example the following:

“The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,

my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,

my shield and the horn of my salvation,

my stronghold and my refuge,

my savior; you save me from violence.”

(2 Samuel 22:2 – 3)

In the Old Testament it is God who is the savior. But there are a few passages that describe a savior who is to arrive at some point in the future:

On that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the LORD at its border. It will be a sign and a witness to the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the LORD because of oppressors he will send them a savior, and will defend and deliver them.

(Isaiah 19:19 – 20)

The savior Isaiah described is someone who will defend the worshipers of Yahweh, the god of the Old Testament. The above passage is part of a longer narrative of the conquest of Egypt by Judah:

On that day the Egyptians will be like women and tremble with fear before the hand that the LORD of hosts raises against them. And the land of Judah will become a terror to the Egyptians; everyone to whom it is mentioned will fear because of the plan that the LORD of hosts is planning against them.

(Isaiah 19:16 – 17)

The LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the LORD on that day and will serve with sacrifice and offerings, and they will make vows to the LORD and perform them.

(Isaiah 19:21)

Well, that did not happen. The kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Neo-Babylonians in 597 BCE. So the savior of this passage is really just a literary device employed by the author to serve his thematic purposes.

Here is another passage in which Isaiah identifies God as the Savior:

Truly, you are a God who hides himself,

O God of Israel, the Savior.

All of them are put to shame and confounded;

the makers of idols go in disgrace together.

But Israel is saved by the LORD with everlasting salvation;

you shall not be put to shame or confounded

ever again.

(Isaiah 45:15 – 17)

God in this selection is viewed as the savior of Israel, not of all the people of the world. The passage states that Israel has already been saved, and that its salvation shall last forever. That, too, turned out to be false, since long after this passage was written the Romans conquered Palestine. After a revolt in Judaea the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem in 70 CE, tore down the temple of Solomon, and used booty from the temple to build the Colosseum of Rome. That hardly sounds like a permanent salvation.

This gives us some context to understand what the word “Messiah” meant to the authors of the Old Testament. So does Jesus measure up to their expectations?

To answer that we need to go back to the story of the garden of Eden. Here’s what that story says about why God threw Adam and Eve out of the garden:

Then the LORD God said, “See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life, and eat and live forever” — therefore the LORD God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken. He drove out the humans, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

(Genesis 3:22 – 24)

God threw them out because he didn’t want the humans to eat the fruit of the tree of life, because doing so would extend their lives. He even posted cherubim and a flaming sword at the entrance to the garden to prevent any of their descendants from entering the garden and getting access to the tree of life. In other words, God threw them out to prevent any of their descendants from having eternal life.

And that is the perspective from which the entire Old Testament was written– except for Chapter 12 of the book of Daniel. That is the only section of the Old Testament that explicitly describes the resurrection of the dead, a last judgment, and rewards or punishments in the afterlife.

Here’s a passage from the Psalms:

I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
    I am like those who have no help,
like those forsaken among the dead,
    like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
    for they are cut off from your hand.

(Psalm 88:4-5)

If God no longer remembers the dead, then he can’t forgive their sins. If the dead are cut off from the hand of God then God can’t resurrect them.

The Old Testament authors (with the exception of Daniel) didn’t believe in the single most important teaching of Jesus: the rewards of the afterlife.

But it goes much deeper than that. They didn’t believe in anything Jesus had to say about the forgiveness of sins. The Old Testament was about knowing the law, following the law, and punishing those to disobey it. But Jesus said:

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.”

(Matthew 7:1-2)

You can’t punish someone according to the law unless you first judge them an find them guilty of violation of the law. Here’s another quote:

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

(Matthew 18:21-22)

So every sin must be forgiven 77 times. And which sins must be forgiven? Jesus answered that question too:

Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

(Matthew 12:31-32)

So murder, rape, incest, sodomy, assault, robbery, battery, fraud, slander, libel– all must be forgiven, and must be forgiven 77 times each. That is literally the opposite of what the Old Testament authors taught.

The Old Testament authors had a vision of the end of time– but it was nothing like that of the New Testament authors. Zechariah 14 describes a final battle that will take place before the gates of Jerusalem. And here’s what he says will happen afterwards:

Then all who survive of the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Festival of Booths. If any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain upon them.

(Zechariah 14:16-17)

That is decidedly NOT a New Testament vision. That is a vision of a world converted to Judaism, not to Christianity.

The Old Testament authors did not believe in Jesus’s message about the afterlife, they didn’t believe in anything he had to say about forgiveness, they didn’t believe in his morality, and they had a completely different vision of the end of time. Why would they have predicted the coming of someone whose beliefs were so antithetical to their own? Answer: they wouldn’t have.

*All passages cited are taken from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition that was published in 2019 by the National Council of Churches of the United States of America.

On the Transcendence of God

Religions that promote the reality, or existence, of the divine generally insist that the divine transcends reality. That very idea is self-contradictory. If the divine exists or is real then it is part of reality and so can’t transcend that which is real.

This conundrum illustrates a difficulty we have in thinking about the world around us. We speak of reality as something all-encompassing. Everything I experience is part of reality. Everything I can imagine is part of reality. Everything I dream or feel is part of reality. Everything that I or anyone else could possibly know or believe or understand is part of reality. So how is it possible for that which is all-encompassing to not include that which is beyond our capability of knowing– namely the divine?

Let us for the moment assume that there is a domain that we shall call “the Divine” that in some yet-to-be-defined sense transcends reality. Why should we expect it to be possible for beings trapped within the confines of reality to perceive or know or comprehend or understand anything that thrives in the realms of the Divine if those realms are truly “beyond” reality? There is in fact no reason to believe that any avenue to such knowledge exists.

But if there were such knowledge– if it were indeed possible for the residents of reality to apprehend the Divine– then that knowledge must be in all respects real or it would not be knowable to beings who dwell in our reality. This means that there must exist some mapping of the Divine onto apprehensions that are fully real. And do we have any certainty that such a mapping is in any sense comprehensive, or even representative? For example, imagine that beings of the Divine inhabit a realm of 100 dimensions, and imagine further that a human living in our four dimensional space-time were to gain knowledge of these Divine beings. Can we be sure that whatever vision the human has is representative of the true complexity of a being that resides in a realm of 100 dimensions?

The Judgment of Paris illustrates this problem perfectly. Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy, was asked by Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera to determine which of them was the most beautiful. But as the three beings whose beauty he was asked to judge were all goddesses, they could make themselves appear to their human judge however they liked. And they could offer him anything he might desire. Hera offered a kingdom. Athena offered him knowledge and skill. Aphrodite offered him possession of the most beautiful woman in the world– Helen, the wife of Menelaus. Rather than judge on the basis of beauty, Paris accepted the gift of Aphrodite and thereby precipitated the Trojan War.

The idea that humans, bound as we are to our four dimensional space-time, can know with certainty the nature of that which is beyond the reality of our four dimensional existence is at best a hypothesis. And it is one for which no proof is possible. We are incapable of perceiving anything in 100 dimensions, though we might be able to imagine it, and we are therefore incapable of measuring the degree to which our perception of a 100 dimensional being deviates from that being’s true nature.

Einstein once said that imagination is more important than knowledge. Regardless of whether it is greater than or less than knowledge, imagination is certainly not the same thing as knowledge. I can imagine a unicorn with blood of liquid gold, but such an imagining does not guarantee its reality.

We have a language that includes a word– transcend– that allows us to describe a state in which a thing or a being is “beyond” our knowledge, our experience, and our reality. The possession of this word doesn’t mean that there is any such thing as a transcendent being.

A religious apologist would argue that we have all the proof we need of the reality of the Divine. A Jew would say that we have the Torah. A Christian would say that we have that and the New Testament. A Muslim would say that we have the Koran. A Mormon would say that we have the Christian Bible and the Book of Mormon. All of these writings are considered by their advocates as proof of the reality of God as each is assumed to have been delivered directly by God.

It is important to note that the followers of these separate faiths view their scriptural writings as being exclusively the Word of God. When a Jew says that the Torah is the Word of God he or she really means that the Torah and only the Torah is the Word of God. The New Testament is not; the Koran is not; the Book of Mormon is not; the Mahabarata is not; and in fact no other religious writing on the planet is the Word of God.

The fact that the followers of these separate religions point to different texts as proof of the reality of their God is evidence that they do not perceive the divine in the same way. Hence we have every reason to reject the notion that humans are inherently able to experience or understand that which transcends reality.

But they can imagine it. A temple or cathedral or mosque or synagogue is a monument to the very human yearning to capture and experience the divine. Salvador Dali’s painting Last Supper conveys the transcendence of Jesus and God through the translucence of their physical forms. Alan Hovhaness’s Fra Angelico portrays the intercessions of angels with a series of trombone glissandos. Art of all forms has long sought to convey the transcendent through media that humans can experience in the real world.

There is an even more radical way in which humans can envision that which is truly transcendent– and that is through science and mathematics. The science of cosmology tells us that the universe was created about 13.8 billion years ago. That event began with a moment of quantum instability. And exactly what gave rise to that instability? We do not know with any certainty, but human imagination has framed a number of possibilities in the language of mathematics. Several of these explanations are based on spaces of more than four dimensions. It is even conceivable that one day these imaginings may be subjected to a test that could prove them either true or false. But until one of these hypotheses passes such a test they remain merely imaginings and cannot be regarded as real.

That, I assert, is the only avenue to the apprehension of the truly transcendent– through imagination, whether expressed in art, architecture, or science. It cannot be characterized as either knowledge or experience of the transcendent. But it may one day lead us to such knowledge.

On the Efficacy of Prayer

Many claims have been made for the power of prayer– that it can provide comfort and healing; that it can answer spiritual questions; that it can help with finding one’s way through the challenges of life; and that it can answer questions about the true nature of the universe.

Humans have been praying to gods of many sorts for at least the last 5,000 years. Those many years of history tell us of the limits of prayer. Prayer cannot possibly provide answers to questions about the nature of the universe since if that were true then humans would have learned thousands of years ago that the atomic and molecular theory of matter is true– and they didn’t. Humans would have learned that the heliocentric model of planetary motion is true– and they didn’t. Humans would have learned that the sun is a star and that the other stars of the universe are immensely far away– and they didn’t.

So we know for certain that prayer is never going to provide any answers to questions about the natural world. But is it possible that prayer might be able to answer spiritual questions? Let us consider that possibility.

How would one go about determining whether or not such a claim were true? To answer that question we would need to know generally what constitutes a spiritual truth. And that is unquestionably the province of religion. So we must determine what religious questions can be answered by prayer.

But this poses a problem in that most religions claim exclusive knowledge of spiritual truths. Judaism has one set of spiritual truths; Christianity another; Islam another still; Buddhism yet another. And each of these religions claims that its spiritual truths are more perfect than are those of any other religion. How are we to determine which set of spiritual teachings is true?

The only way to resolve a question of this sort is by way of an experiment. And here is an example of how such an experiment would be conducted:

We get volunteers from 4 religious groups: fundamentalist Jews, fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, and fundamentalist Mormons. We will ask them 3 yes or no questions, and then we will give them whatever time and space they need to pray to their God to obtain the true and correct answers to these questions. Then we will ask for their answers and compare.

We should note that fundamentalist Jews believe that they pray to the God of Abraham. And that fundamentalist Christians believe that they pray to the God of Abraham. And that fundamentalist Muslims believe that they pray to the God of Abraham. And that fundamentalist Mormons believe that they pray to the God of Abraham. So they all pray to the same God. And they should therefore get the same answers to any spiritual questions we might ask.

What questions should we ask our subjects? The questions we ask must be specific to the spiritual claims of each of the four religions, and they must be definitive in the respect that a given set of answers must tell us unequivocally which of the spiritual messages of the 4 religions is actually true.

Here is my proposed set of questions:

Is Jesus the Messiah?
Is Mohammed the greatest prophet of God?
Is the book of Mormon the word of God?

I think we already know exactly how the experiment I’ve proposed would turn out. The answers I think we’ll get from this experiment are as follows:

The fundamentalist Jew will say that No, Jesus is not the Messiah; that No, Mohammed is not the greatest prophet of God; and that No, the book of Mormon is not the word of God
The fundamentalist Christian will say that Yes, Jesus is the Messiah; that No, Mohammed is not the greatest prophet of God; and that No, the book of Mormon is not the word of God
The fundamentalist Muslim will say that No, Jesus is not the Messiah; that Yes, Mohammed is the greatest prophet of God; and that No, the book of Mormon is not the word of God
The fundamentalist Mormon will say that Yes, Jesus is the Messiah; that No, Mohammed is not the greatest prophet of God; and that Yes, the book of Mormon is the word of God

That is to say that we will get 4 completely different sets of answers from our 4 subjects.

How can that be? All 4 of our subjects pray to the same God, so they should get exactly the same answers to each question.

There’s only one possible explanation for this result: Prayer cannot possibly provide true answers to spiritual questions.

This method can be extended to all possible religious groups. We would only have to extend the list of questions to include queries about the most fundamental beliefs of each religion.

This makes sense because prayer is simply talking to yourself. And when you talk to yourself you generally just reinforce whatever thoughts or desires you had in the first place. So there’s really no possibility that prayer is going to answer any questions about the natural world, or about spiritual questions. But it may make you feel good.

Written 2019-06-19.

Response from a reader:

sherijkennedyJun 20, 2019·realitywithatwistbooks.wordpress.comUser Info

I’m interested in your experiment for the efficacy of prayer, but I’m confused on why the answers are a foregone conclusion and how, even if your supplied answers were correct it would conclusively prove that prayer was not effective in answering spiritual questions.
Certain the doctrine of each of these fundamentalist religions would dictate those answers, but that’s exactly why prayer is part of what the devotees to each are supposed to practice. Documents and dictates are static, but prayer is meant to be dynamic – to help the person who prays come to understanding of how the writings and traditions apply to them in their circumstances and their time.
In your experiment, if the subjects are truly praying, they must have an open heart to the voice of their God. If they are open to whatever answer is given, it may be quite different from the traditional doctrine and fundamentalist ideas they have been taught to believe.
I know this because I’ve done this experiment in my own life. I found something rather than nothing. I was not talking to myself because I gained deep understanding that I hadn’t had prior to the exercise. I also gave up affiliation with my fundamentalist Christian church and adherence to the traditional doctrines because I reached a different conclusion than their interpretation of the writings central to that religion. But my actions and ‘faith’ if you will are still deeply aligned with the spiritual and moral teachings of that religion, and scholars I’ve spoken with in depth usually try to conclude that I am as much or more in line with Biblical teachings and principles than most Christians.
So my point is, until you try the experiment with people who are willing to listen to and report what they learn and hear instead of reaching foregone conclusions, you can’t reach your foregone conclusion about the efficacy of prayer.
I’m sure you’ve heard the quote of ‘Seek and you shall find…’ I sought and I found, though it wasn’t quite like I would have expected. But part of seeking is setting aside expectation and letting the answer come freely and having an open mind and heart to accept and follow the answer when presented.
Thanks for the provocative topic and for stating your views clearly here. It’s interesting to contemplate and to continue to listen and learn.

My response:

Very well, then let’s add one additional question: “When you pray, do you open your heart to whatever God tells you?” But I’m pretty sure that Michael Ben-Ari, head of Jewish Power, Pat Robertson, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Russell M. Nelson, president of the Mormon church, would all answer “Yes, absolutely!!”

Religion in the U.S. Constitution

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…
Amendment 1 to the Constitution of the United States

The First Amendment of the Constitution makes it clear that the United States is never to become a theocracy. The authors of the Constitution were mindful of the hazards posed by state religions of any kind, and they wanted to prevent the United States from suffering their worst effects.

Does the First Amendment protect religious beliefs, or does it protect religious practices? The wording of the Amendment seems to imply that it protects both. The phrase “the free exercise thereof” seems to encompass not just religious beliefs, but religious practices as well.

But that isn’t a plausible interpretation. Consider the following scenario. A judge, who is an ardent and practicing Catholic, is presented with a case involving a Catholic priest who is charged with pederasty. His attorney is a Jesuit who argues that the court has no jurisdiction in the case because the Vatican claims priority involving all Catholic clergy. Because the judge regards himself as a staunch Catholic, he agrees and releases the defendant to the custody of the Vatican.

Article VI of the Constitution says the following:

The Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Article VI of the Constitution of the United States

So the judge described in the scenario above would be bound to regard the Constitution as the supreme law of the United States, regardless of whatever claims the Pope might make to the contrary. And the decision to turn the defendant over to the Vatican would be an act that violates the Constitution, regardless of the wording of the First Amendment.

Consider now the case of a judge who, when he is appointed, is an avowed evangelical Christian. And suppose further that after a period of some years he undergoes a spiritual transformation in which he converts to a strident form of Islam that insists on the enforcement of Islamic Law. So when he is brought a case of robbery in which the defendant is found guilty, he sentences the robber to have his right hand and left foot chopped off.

Again, the Islamic judge is bound by his oath of office to follow the Constitution, the laws of the federal government, and the laws of the several states– NOT the teachings of the Koran, or of any other religious writing.

The previous cases involve judges who render opinions in courts of law. What about private citizens? Are their religious practices defended by the First Amendment? Imagine a devout Christian who studies the old testament of the bible and finds to his delight that Jacob had two wives– Leah and Rachel. He also learns that each of these wives had a maidservant, and that Jacob fathered children by both of his wives and by their maidservants– four women in all. Jacob was renamed Israel by God, thereupon identifying him as the patriarch of the Israelites. He thereupon deduces that God must want good Christian men to follow in this practice. So he marries four women in a state that has long since outlawed bigamy.

To consider a more extreme example, suppose that a cult of the Aztec god of war, Huitzilapotchli, takes hold in this country. The Aztecs believed that the god required regular ritual human sacrifices. So the cult leader insists on performing a ritual human sacrifice every new moon in accordance with the ancient practices.

None of these behaviors is protected by the First Amendment. In fact the only religious practices which are protected are those which do not violate the secular laws of the state, and of the nation.

Written 2020-11-25