The Fourth Possibility C.S. Lewis Missed in His Infamous “Trilemma”…

“How Jesus Became God…”

Bart Ehrman, one of today’s top Textual Critics argues in his book, “How Jesus Became God” that Jesus never even said he was God in the first place.

He takes the position of a historian (which he is) and chronologically presents a historicity of how this a messianic Jewish preacher become identified as God.

Again, I intend this to be a “shorter post” so, I’ll make this brief and write more extensively on this later…

There are many things to detail in that the most important term still used to today is the title “Messiah”. Today, we here this (within our American context) and assume “Jesus” and more particularly we assume “Jesus as Lord”.

But, context matters; in the OT the title of Messiah referred to “the anointed kings, priests and prophets of the Old Testament. This is not even including the complexity of “Davidic Sonship,” Jesus’ refusal to be identified as the Messiah.

Conclusion…

Maybe Jesus was a good man who, in the words of Drake, “started from the bottom…” And, His making it to the top was something to be remembered. We constantly dehumanize great [wo]men by making them into idols. But, I will say that in seminary the one line that stood out to me was this:

[Maybe] “Jesus is so terse about the “messianic’ title, not because he rejected it but because he was more than a Messiah: He gave the state and dignity of a Messiah to others.

Is this not the Gospel? Is this not the very reason we chose to follow Jesus?

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