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<But isn’t the teaching that Jesus is the only Son of God in all the gospels, not just John?
That’s what I thought, and most Christians would agree. But that just shows how the other synoptic gospels have come to be read through the eyes of John.
Yes, they say Jesus was the Son of God, but what does that mean in the first century? Most scholars say “Son of God” meant a man who’s anointed by God to rule the nations. David was the Son of God because he was the anointed king of Israel.>
In one of my very rare times i went to Mass at university I heard a long demolition of the Gospel of St Thomas but I understood nothing.
In almost complete ignorance I had trusted MR James's opinion on the apocryphal gospels "There is no question of any one's having excluded them from the New Testament : they have done that for themselves". He said that before the Gospel of Thomas and many other manuscripts were discovered in Egypt.
To be clear I do not propose we should think the Gospel of Thomas divinely inspired but we should understand the three synoptic Gospels much better than I did till I read Mrs Pagel's words this evening.
Of course my Biblical Unitarian Facebook friend Daisy has been arguing that the Bible does not say Jesus is God eloquently (and worryingly for an orthodox Christian) for years.
I watched a approx 20 episode great lectures I think on Jesus Christianity professor former Christian so I was skeptical he’d be fair although I no longer believe I’m more anti anti Christian than anti christ cuck
ReplyDeleteHe did what seemed ( without his level of expertise but at least a good catholic school education) to be an exhaustive and even handed respectful job. His main thesis was in fact the evolution of Jesus from man to part of the Tridentine godhead.
Pagels book I read many decades ago not awful but she has a bit of an axe to grind. She did force me to look deeper into why some gospels did or didn’t make the cut. The choices made sense to the extent Christianity is less flaky than it might have been but a lot of that ties in with raising Jesus to co equal god. It doesn’t take a phd to notice something like that happened I can remember even in second grade asking the nuns why Jesus prays to god in a submissive way and is tempted by satan one example if he is god himself god bless those nuns patience w me
The Chistology of John is famously higher than that of the Synoptics, but it is certainly implied very strongly even in the latter that He was something more than human and claimed as much.
ReplyDeleteThe (what is called) high Christology in the 4th Gospel is one of the reasons why it is argued as being a late composition. In other words it took some time for the Church to realise just who Jesus was. The Synoptics are remember a one year account of the life if Jesus while John has three visits to Jerusalem and a substantial ministry around Jerusalem.
ReplyDeleteRemember the only event which is found in John and all the Synoptics between the baptism of Jesus and the triumphant Entry into Jerusalem is the feeding of the 5000. there is no temptation for example. Neither is there bread and wine on the night on which he was betrayed, but there is extensive reflection on bread of life in John 6 which is actually a key passage.
I don't know enough about Thomas to be able to comment, though I suspect that if there was a Q why might there not be other records of the sayings of Jesus. The NT is full of references to The Gospel but actually quite quiet about what it is in detail.
I suggest you read David Ford's Commentary about John (One reason why I recommend it is that David was at Trinity with me.
Remember that the early Christians argued about Jesus as God for 300 years and were only shut up with the Roman Authorities having the Nicene Creed, and then saying it was the only orthodoxy in the Edict of Thessalonica.