I really enjoyed talks in City Bible Forum, and over the past 3 weeks, John Dickson has been giving talks from his book “A Spectator’s Guide to Jesus”. I’ve always managed to learn something from those talks, and yesterday from the talk about the divinity of Jesus (i.e. is Jesus God?), John used the parallel of Philippians 2:9-11 and Isaiah 45:23-25 to help us to see the theology of divinity of Jesus has long been established prior to Synod of Laodicea.
Now, Philippians 2:5-11 is probably an early Christian hymn, written by early Christians who profess Christian faith, and was quoted by Paul in his letter to the Philippians.
Philippians 2:9-11
9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Whose name is this that is above every name, so that every knee should bow and every tongue confess? Now these Christian hymnists must have known the Old Testament, and must have written this song with Isaiah 45:23-25 in mind.
Isaiah 45:23-25
23 By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.’ 24 “Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me, are righteousness and strength; to him shall come and be ashamed all who were incensed against him. 25 In the Lord all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory.”
That sort of matches. Isaiah 45 is what they have in mind when they wrote a song about Jesus. So who is that first-person in Isaiah 45, who every knee should bow and every tongue swear allegiance? It is the Lord, the YHWH, the God Almighty.
Therefore, the idea “Jesus is God” must have been something in the head of a hymnist in the first century. It is not something made up 200-300 years later to rebuke those claiming Jesus is less-than-God. Christians recognised it right from the beginning.
This and about a thousand other passages prove Jesus’s divinity from the Bible. How the various cults deny it is beyond me. At least the [theologically] liberal don’t claim to regard the Bible as perfect in their error!
Patrick
Editor-in-Chief, ShareYourFaith.org evangelism
In regards to the above comment, I really don’t know how you can look at the conflicting accounts of the gospels and say that the Bible is without error. Let’s say that somebody came along to you and said “Stewart really insulted me, he came up to me and said “you are so ugly” and then left” then you have another person say “I saw Stewart go up to her and say “I don’t like you” and then he left”. Both of those things may have been said, but Stewart could only say one of those things just before he left, not both, so one of them is wrong. Either his last statement was the first or the second, but both can’t be right. We see the same thing for the last words of Jesus on the cross. Luke and John tell us that He said different things and then died. Either He said one thing and then died or He said the other thing and then died. The honest approach in my opinion, is to admit, not both can be right in the sense that they both account “the” last words. Both things may of been said by Christ and I am sure they were, but they both can’t be “the” last words as there can only be “one” last word, not two. This is why I cannot subscribe to the idea that the Bible is without error, as with contradictory accounts, clearly, it is.
Honest Theist, I would suggest examining the text more closely to see if there is a room for harmony without contradiction.
To humor you, let’s look at the accounts:
Luke 23: Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
John 19: When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Notice that neither text said that “…then immediately he died” or “…without saying anything else, he died”. For there to be a contradiction, *both* texts would need to indicate that these were absolutely his last words, but neither does. Instead, Luke used the general phrase “When he said this”, and John also gives a vague “With that”, niether of which indicate such. So both texts seem to allow for Jesus to have said both of these things before dying.
One question for you: did you even Google to try to find the non-contradictory explanation for these two verses? This is surely among the easiest to explain of the apparent contradictions in the Bible.
The contradictions I have seen are not “apparent”. I admit that it does not say that “these were the very last words, I mean “the” last words, not the last words in general, like he said something after that which I ignored. These are the “very” last words”. It doesn’t say nonsense like that and of course, it wouldn’t. It does however say that “He said this and then died”. It’s pretty obvious it means what it says. You are just trying to make excuses for it and make it what it is not. There is no need to do that though. The Bible has errors in it, I know that and fully accept that as it is completely obvious and logically absurd to say otherwise. My faith however is still intact, in fact, this view not only makes the accounts more convincing (as it proves they didn’t get together to make the story up), it also solves a lot of other problems. The Bible is not a text dictated by God and viewing it as such creates problems. I am happy that God inspired people to write the books of the Bible, but I am not happy to say that God protected the Bible from false records of minor details and also misconceptions of God. The Bible is a text written by man and open to error, it is also a text inspired by God and contains words of divine revelation. We can and should take it as both. More examples of contradiction can be found in the account of when Mary went to visit the tomb. One says she was alone, another with two others, another with a group of women. They can’t all be right therefore at least one is wrong, it’s as simple as that. The question isn’t “are there errors?”, it’s “what do you do with the knowledge that there are?”. I recommend you read Keith Ward “The Word of God?”.
God be with you bro.