| Episcopal Bishop JohnShelby Spong provides a courageous and thought-provoking answer. The NSP does not endorse any particular religion or perspective within that religion except to the extent that we side with all who validate The Left Hand of God (those interpretations in each religion which emphasize love, kindness, generosity, caring for others including those not of one's own religious tradition or ethnicity, and ethical/ecological sesnitivity,and awe and wonder at the grandeur and mystery of all Being). This is a copy of a q&a that was sent out on email by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong: Question: Was Jesus also God? Or was he just a wonderful, inspired man more in touch with spiritual things than most other men?
Answer:
Unfortunately, the way you ask this question does not lend itself to a simple answer. I need to know what you mean by the word "God" and what you mean by an "inspired man." This confusion has been created by the Church itself out of a dualistic mindset that believed that God and human life, heaven and earth, souls and bodies, spirit and flesh were radically separate categories. That reflected an ancient mindset that is not part of our world view.
The Christian experience best articulated by St. Paul affirmed that "God was in Christ," that is, in the person of Jesus we met, engaged and interacted with the presence of God. Later when Christians tried to define how God, whom they thought lived above the sky, got into Jesus living on this earth, they had a problem. That is where you begin to get the explanations you find in the gospels.
Mark, the earliest gospel (ca. 70) said that at Jesus' baptism the heavens opened and the spirit of God entered him. The word you used, inspired, really means filled with the spirit.
When Matthew wrote (82-85) he introduced the Virgin Birth story that said God entered Jesus at conception. At that moment, Jesus' full humanity was compromised. Luke, writing a bit later (88-93), confirmed Matthew's Virgin Birth account, but with greatly varying details. John, writing at the end of the century (95-100), asserted that Jesus was "The Word of God" present as part of God at the dawn of creation, and that this "Word" was enfleshed in the fully human Jesus. It is of note that John totally omits the miraculous birth story.
I think most of this debate is irrelevant. I believe that God can dwell in all of us and that the experience of the early Christians was that God indwelt Jesus in a particularly full and complete way.
To say that "Jesus is God" in a simplistic way is absolute nonsense. Jesus prayed to God. Was he talking to himself? Jesus died. Can one say God dies?
I meet God in Jesus. I also meet God in people like you. The difference, I am convinced, is one of degree not one of kind |
