The Trilemma Argument - Part 4: Did Jesus Claim to be God?

THE ARGUMENT FOR THE KEY PREMISE (1)

The core of the Trilemma Argument is clear (see Part 2 of this series):

1. Either (a) Jesus is God, or (b) Jesus lied about being God, or (c) Jesus was seriously mentally ill.

2. It is not the case that: Jesus lied about being God.

3. It is not the case that: Jesus was seriously mentally ill.

THEREFORE:

4. Jesus is God.

 

Most of the Trilemma Argument is concerned with supporting premise (1), the claim that we are limited to just three options concerning Jesus.

Here is a diagram of the Trilemma Argument that shows the logical structure of the sub-argument supporting premise (1):

Based on my analysis of the sub-argument supporting premise (1), that sub-argument is based on a key historical claim: 

5. Jesus claimed to be God.

This historical claim is false, so the entire Trilemma Argument is based on a false historical claim. 

According to the McDowells, Jesus claimed to be God:

Among the great religious leaders, Jesus uniquely claimed to be God in human flesh. (EFJ, page 39)

The Gospels record many examples of Jesus claiming to be God. (EFJ, page 47)

ONCE I (JOSH) CONCLUDED THAT JESUS CLAIMED TO BE GOD, I realized I had only so many options left. (EFJ, page 64)

Jesus’s claim to be God must be either true or false. (EFJ, page 65)

Despite the confident assertions by the McDowells, Jesus never claimed to be God. The McDowells come close to admitting this historical fact:

CRITICS OF CHRISTIANITY ARGUE THAT JESUS NEVER uttered the words “I am God.” Technically, they’re right! But while Jesus is not recorded in the Bible as having said those three words, that doesn’t mean Jesus did not claim deity. (EFJ, page 41)

The problem, however, is not that Jesus never said the three words “I am God”. The problem is that there are at least fifty different ways that Jesus could have claimed to be God, but Jesus never made any of these fifty different statements. 

THE EVIDENCE AGAINST PREMISE (5)

In the New Testament, Jesus never says:

1. “I am God.”

2. “I am the eternal God.”

3. “I am the everlasting God.”

4. “I am the immortal God.”

5. “I am the living God.”

6. “I am the mighty God.”

7. “I am the Almighty God.”

8. “I am the all-wise God.”

9. “I am the holy God.”

10. “I am the true God.”

11. “I am the great God.”

12. “I am the supreme God.”

13. “I am the Most High God.”

14. “I am the God of heaven.”

15. “I am the God of heaven and earth.”

16. “I am the God of glory.”

17. “I am the God of peace.”

18. “I am the God of love and peace.”

19. “I am the God of hope.”

20. “I am the God of all grace.”

21. “I am the God of faithfulness.”

22. “I am the God of our ancestors.”

23. “I am the God of Abraham.”

24. “I am the God of Isaac.”

25. “I am the God of Jacob.”

26. “I am the God of Israel.”

27. “I am the God of the Hebrews.”

28. “I am the God of gods.”

29. “I am the God of the spirits of the prophets.”

30. “I am the God of the spirits of all flesh.”

31. “I am maker of heaven and earth.”

32. “I am the creator.”

33. “I am the creator of the world.”

34. “I am the creator of all things.”

35. “I am the creator of the ends of the earth.”

36. “I am the creator of Israel.”

37. “I am Yahweh.”

38. “I am the Almighty.”

39. “I am the Mighty One.”

40. “I am the Mighty One of Israel.”

41. “I am The Lord of the earth.”

42. “I am the Lord of all the earth.”

43. “I am the Lord of the whole earth.”

44. “I am the Lord of heaven.”

45. “I am the Lord of heaven and earth.”

46. “I am the Lord of hosts.”

47. “I am the Lord God.”

48. “I am the Lord God Almighty.”

49. “I am the Lord God the Almighty.”

50. “I am the Lord God of Israel.”

From these facts, it is clear that Jesus never claimed to be God.

Furthermore, the earliest Christian writings we have are the letters of Paul (particularly the seven letters that NT scholars view as authentic letters that were actually written by Paul), but Paul never writes that “Jesus is God”, and Paul never uses any of the above fifty different ways of stating this claim. So, Paul also never claimed that Jesus is God. If Jesus frequently claimed to be God, why didn’t Paul ever make this claim about Jesus?

Finally, nobody in the New Testament ever uses any of the above fifty different ways of claiming that Jesus is God. This is powerful evidence that Jesus never claimed to be God. Otherwise, some of the followers of Jesus would have made some of those fifty claims about Jesus.

Jesus also does not claim to have the divine attributes of God:

• I am eternally a bodiless person (or a spirit).
• I am eternally an omniscient person (or all-knowing).
• I am eternally an omnipotent person (or all-powerful).
• I am eternally a perfectly morally good person (or morally flawless).
• I am eternally an omnipresent person (present in every location).
• I am the creator of the universe.

Thus, Jesus neither claimed to be God nor claimed to possess the key attributes of God.

OVERVIEW OF THE MCDOWELL'S EVIDENCE FOR PREMISE (5)

What evidence do the McDowells provide to support their key assertion that Jesus claimed to be God?  In Chapter Five of EFJ (called “Did Jesus Claim to Be God?”), they focus on eight passages from the Gospels. Five of those eight passages, however, are from the Gospel of John.  But the Gospel of John provides a historically unreliable account of the life and words of Jesus, so most of their evidence can be tossed aside, because it is very dubious.[20]

In fact, one of the main reasons that N.T. and Jesus scholars view the Gospel of John as being historically unreliable, is that Jesus frequently makes exalted claims about himself in that Gospel, but not in the previous three Gospels.  It is precisely the sort of passages that the McDowell’s quote from the Gospel of John that leads most scholars to view that Gospel as being unreliable.[21]

Furthermore, Jesus does not clearly claim to be God in any of the five passages quoted from the Gospel of John. All five passages can be reasonably interpreted in a way that they do not imply that Jesus is God[22], and given that it is dubious that the historical Jesus spoke the words attributed to him in those five passages, the evidence from those passages fails to provide any significant support for the assertion that Jesus claimed to be God.

The McDowells also provide two quotations of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew, and one quotation of Jesus from the Gospel of Mark.

Aware of the serious problem with their assertion that Jesus claimed to be God, the McDowells appear to slide into making a weaker claim:

Even if Jesus never explicitly stated that he is God, he certainly made many implicit and indirect claims to deity. (EFJ, page 63)

If Jesus “made many implicit and indirect claims” to be God, then perhaps some modified version of the Trilemma could get off the ground, based on that weaker assertion. 

The problem with "implicit and indirect claims" by Jesus is that such "claims" are usually dubious because they require a significant degree of interpretation, thus allowing believers and Christian apologists to exercise subjective bias grounded in their wishes or desires that Jesus was God and claimed to be God. This is clearly the case with the Gospel passages put forward by the McDowells.