In your opinion.
In your opinion it is my opinion. I deem it a brute fact, not an opinion. The contradiction in perspectives is obvious to anyone without theological antivirus blinders on.
Vinnie
You are allowed to. [ETA:] I don’t and we disagree.
(And where was I quoting from John, specifically?)
Ah, never mind. Found it.
Your post that ended with “Sneaky and ambiguous.”
Vinnie
(You missed my edit. I snuck it in while you were looking yourself. 
)
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(I was not paying attention to this part of the conversation.)…
Let’s look at point [1]:
“Now my soul is troubled” does not engender any ‘literal scoffing’. What follows is hardly scoffing. It is a resolute and rational analysis. And most significantly, it wasn’t Gethsemane with torture and crucifixion imminent, but unfathomably worse, the mystical but very real rift from his Father while he bore our sins.
This is Gethsemane:
So it is hardly the ‘different portrayal’ you are imagining.
Right… you think God has actually abandoned Him, as if that even makes the slightest bit of sense (unless you accept Mi Krumm’s Christology), while Vinnie just thinks this to be evidence that Jesus’ anguish in the garden is the doubt and fear of the average joe faced with death. Never mind the fact that Jesus habitually quotes scripture constantly, all through the rest of the gospels… but on the cross He must be suffering too much mental fatigue for that… Is mental fatigue also your explanation for why Jesus says “forgive them for they know not what they do?”
There’s more to it than that, never mind your sarcasm.
Jesus bore our sins. Our Father cannot abide sin in his presence. There was a mystical but very real rift that occurred. That is why he sweat blood in Gethsemane in anticipation of unfathomable agony, not mere death.
It absolutely is different. One says “take this cup” and the other asks rhetorically, “shall I say take this cup.” John is most likely aware of Gethsemane traditions and the info behind Hebrews 5:7. I already stated you could attempt to harmonize some details, though you would have to demonstrate why this practice is legitimate to start with, but made a cumulative case based on a larger portrait in both Mark and John. Much of GJohn’s material is synoptic in nature but it has gone through another theological rinse cycle. I think the parable of the lost sheep may be an example. I pointed out several instances of how Mark and John differ. There are others such as in Mark, Jesus tells people/demons multiple times not to tell anyone about him (the old much discussed messianic secret) or doesn’t allow them to speak. He has to ask the disciples, “who do you think that I am?” and Peter’s response is the messiah and the crowds come up with a bunch of different answers. Yet in John there is no secret. Jesus ultimately can’t stop talking about himself and his Divinity. In the synoptics the major thrust is on the Kingdom of God, in John, the resurrected Jesus has become the kingdom of God. John won’t even narrate a baptism. He skips past it. In addition to this, E.P. Sanders and Margaret Davies (Studying Synoptics p. 5) write: “In the synoptics there are short, pithy statements, aphorisms and parables which focus not on Jesus’ person but on the kingdom of God. The synoptics’ Jesus must ask his disciples who they think he is (Mark 8:27 and parr.), and it is clear that he has not identified himself explicitly. He refuses to give a sign to those who ask (Mark 8:11-13). When he is on trial, according to Matthew and Luke, he will not even give a straightforward answer about who he is when asked by the high priest. The Jesus of the Gospel of John, however, talks in long monologues, and the subject is usually himself: his relationship to God on the one hand and to the disciples on the other. He offers ‘signs’ in abundance (see, for example, John 2.11), and he says explicitly that ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10.30)."
There is no secret in John. Jesus basically says, yeah, I am God. I can only conclude from these competing traditions and the nature of us having a fourfold Gospel, that John is writing a true Gospel from the perspective of the pre-incarnate Jesus. He has casted the whole history of Jesus in light of his choosing to empty himself. From the sovereign perspective of God he writes and describes Jesus. In his narrative he has reunderstood everything in the human ministry from this perspective that, though it is not historical in the sense that this is what the emptied Jesus literally said and did, it is 100% correct. He is not describing the historical Jesus from the perspective of an eyewitness of his emptied ministry 60 or so years prior, though parts of this are certainly in his narrative. The differences between the type of material in GJohn and the Synoptics is very well known. God is more subtle in his inspiration and there is a reason we have a fourfold Gospel. Each evangelists tempers our understanding of the other as to the mission, message and meaning of Jesus.
The bigger picture is that “God so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten Son” and John writes from that perspective. What we have to understand is none of these authors were trying to write modern historical biography.
I believe we can already see that the sense of “freedom” in Christ had spiraled into immorality for some in the early church. Paul responds to it but imagine if the entire Church had only Paul’s letters and not James as well to remind us that deeds are the sign of genuine faith and that without them it’s completely dead? Every statement in the Bible is given from the perspective of a time-conditioner human being based on their circumstances and worldview. I can only conclude that God uses the authors as he did to temper one another. If all we had was John we would have completely lost any sense of the humanity of Jesus in the early church and many wouldn’t even pay lip service to the creeds mentioning the full humanity of Jesus as they probably wouldn’t exist. If we didn’t have John his understanding of the incarnate Word of God who made all things would have to be derived from less clear tradition and be the subject of legitimate theological counter-explanations. Why we have four Gospels was something the early church (ca 150 and later) spent some time on.
You have to look at the whole picture of Jesus in the Gospels. As already noted, there are many passages suggesting the full humanity and non-divinity of the self-emptied historical Jesus. Clear limits to power and knowledge. There are other passages written from the Church’s post easter perspective, which is actually correct as they came to realize who Jesus ultimately was and what he meant.
I believe as other’s have done, describing the super-natural portion of Jesus’ life as gifts from the father makes sense of the whole picture. What human had a greater faith and closeness to God than his Son? And this is not to say that the synoptic authors in some respects are not on their way to John theologically. They are. Their Christology, including Mark’s, is extremely high. I am also not denying that the historical Jesus had an extremely high view of himself. As a Jew he felt he could countermand the Law given by Moses, that when it came to moral teachings and the kingdom of God, he was the penultimate authority. There is no question he knew himself to be very special and performing a big eschatological task for God. Jesu in the Gospels is portrayed as praying a lot. As it turned out, he had to die and he wrestled with this but was obedient to God’s will.
Once we admit that the authors never intended to write a completely factual account in the literal sense, the idea of inerrancy between the portraits of Jesus in John vs the synoptics drops from the discussion. We have to stop proof-text hunting competing traditions–make no mistake, they do compete–, look at the big picture, the entire witness of the NT, sprinkle in some critical history and form a conclusion. Instead of asking (assuming?) every detail in the Gospels is 100% factual history, based on our sources, we should be asking, what did the community and author behind this Gospel think about Jesus in broad terms? What perspective is this author writing from? What did Jesus mean to this community? If you assume from the outset that everything therein is full, accurate history remembered, a fruitful reconciliation between the portraits and understanding of why God left us a four-fold record of Jesus is doomed before it starts.
Vinnie
I hope I am misinterpreting your summary of my view but I have to say, its baffling to me how, arguing from an armchair in our ivory towers, we can so easily dismiss and caricature people’s concerns over uncertainty and death as “average Joe”. Or claim, directly or indirectly, because we don’t fear death we are somehow morally superior to a person who has doubts or occasionally wrestles with uncertainty–especially when at the moment they know death is coming. Is there no sympathy here for a cancer patient who is just informed that they have less than year to live and the emotional distress this causes them? If I didn’t know any better, I would think the other perspective is that of a robot. But to be fair, I suppose you may assume Jesus knew all along this was coming and did every single thing the gospels record. But you are characterizing my view of Jesus and I don’t accept that presupposition so its unfair to my view to dismiss it as such. You have to take my view as a package deal if you want to critique it (see my previous response to Dale). To me, Jesus may very well have been that cancer patient. Jesus got the news through prayer with the Father as his ministry went along. He is healing people. preaching, teaching and amassing a following and comes to realize opposition is growing. He has faith and feels he is doing God’s work and feels confident his safety is in the Father’s hands but then he learns from the Spirit he is going to die. Jesus may have essentially received the same news of a person just diagnosed with terminal cancer. God said you have a shelf-life and it apparently hit Jesus much in the same way it hits other people in a similar situatoin.That is my view. Not that Jesus knew everything with divine absolute certainty all along, that he knew in five minutes after his death he’s be seated at the right hand listening to the angel’s play harps in heaven. Jesus came to learn he was going to die and he had to embrace that news. How subtle or direct the message was to him, we don’t know. This is my view. Having loved ones who died of cancer, as I am sure most of us have, I know how devastating the news can be and what do they and we do? We pray that cup be taken away from them. We pray for healing but also that God’s will be done. We imitate Jesus. I am okay with being an average Joe and so was Jesus. That is why he emptied himself. I can’t so easily dismiss what it means to know you will die as some of you. Uncertainty about the future is the penultimate concern of humanity in general, despite the intellectual superiority of some people who apparently have it all mapped out perfectly. Calling this average Joe seems demeaning and this is exactly what the incarnation teaches us about the emptied Jesus who faced everything we face as humans. Instead of dismissing these concerns as those of an “average Joe” we should be more careful not to insult our Lord and Savior because that his exactly what he became, an average Joe. Scripture and the creeds teach this. An average Joe that showed us how to live and the gifts we could have if our faith were stronger. The average Joe version of Jesus is far more plausible than the schizophrenic Jesus and with all this pejorative talk about the incarnate son of God, I can only paraphrase Jesus on the cross in response, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they say.”
Vinnie
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Yes unlike you, I accept the truth of the accounts told in the gospels. I do not pick and choose according to what fits a more comforting theology. And that is why I reject your package deal as a reject other package deals. I find my own way between all these fantastic extremes, not superhuman and not average-joe, neither just a victim nor necessary human sacrifice, not one in a self-pity party nor god horrified by an imagined fracturing of doctrinal trinity. Even if I found merit in your idolization of a cancer patient, I frankly see far far more heroism in many cancer patients than I do in the role you are casting Jesus into. That is why I find your characterization of Jesus so absurd and your claim that 100% human necessitates this. I have known too many human beings who are simply better than this. It is one thing to say that fear, doubt and self-pity is a natural and understandable human reaction and quite another to say, as you have been, that bravery, determination, and self-sacrifice are inhuman or schizophrenic. No, I will not enslave the gospels to such a comforting pity-party of total self-absorption.
Is courage better than fear? Yes! Is determination better than doubt? Yes! Is self-sacrifice better than self-pity? Yes. Was Jesus someone just living His own personal life? No. Jesus was NOT a middle class consumer totally shocked when His comfort zone collapsed. Instead He was one consumed by the work of God teaching the very highest ideals which human beings can reach for. “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” “If You Want To Be Great, You Must Become A Servant.” If you want comfort for a middle class complacency then you must look elsewhere.
I am not arguing for inerrancy. I am only arguing that the Jesus portrayed in the Synoptic Gospels is not portrayed substantively differently in John. John’s gospel ‘merely’ records and develops what might be considered more relational aspects of Jesus’ personhood with respect to his Father and to us as individuals.
And, as I defended above with respect to the three distinctly different situations of Bethany, Gethsemane and Golgotha, the presumed differences as to who he was, how he viewed himself and how he reacted are incorrectly inferred, forced and inaccurate.
Yeah, actually, I think he did. Unless one wants to argue that Jesus’ followers ret-conned all the times he says he’s going to be killed and rise again, it’s hard for me to walk away from the text thinking that Jesus didn’t absolutely know it was coming… that it was already written.
So why the prayer that the cup pass? It’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer. But here’s my take: the Psalms are full of prayers from David lamenting how his enemies are destroying him, and beseeching God to intervene. I think Jesus knows what his destiny will be, but I think in the Garden he’s genuinely hoping, like David or any human would, that God would intervene and make another way. Sin is “not thy will but mine be done”. For Jesus to “reverse” Adam, he must be a human and he must have a will of his own that he submits to the Father’s. And the only way to defeat death (which is the whole point of the project) is to go through it.
To me, the straightforward reading of the story is that in the moment of crisis, Jesus hopes there’s another way… and in fact he has the power to escape his doom. But the Father has all along revealed to him that this is how it must be if the Father is to reconcile all things – and (contra Adam) he chooses the Father’s will over his own. At that point, his death does become the only way – because he wills what the Father has willed. If this raises problems with one’s theology or Christology or whatever… so much the worse for those things. But it’s how the Story goes, regardless. The Gospel is a proclamation, not an explanation.
There are no differences, presumed or otherwise, as to who he was or how he viewed himself. He always was the Son of God, and before he took up his mission, he viewed himself in that role. The only differences are how he obtained that understanding of himself and whether he could be tempted by doubt in extreme circumstances, yet remain faithful. The reading I put out there (way back when) is natural to the text and supported by some serious NT scholars. Disagree if you will, but there’s nothing unorthodox or inaccurate in what I’ve said.
I do not have scholarly credentials, but it is plain to see that Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness do not have to be temptations to doubt his identity, nor do the taunts during the crucifixion.
Dares and challenges can be phrased prefaced with either ‘If’ or ‘Since.’
“If you are a professional this or that, then I challenge you to…” “Okay, since you are a ‘professional’ this or that, I dare you to…”
I hope you can see that those are equivalent and not challenges to a true professional’s identity. They will not cause legitimately confident professionals to doubt themselves and can self-assuredly reject their adversarial tempter.
Technically perhaps not. I think, however, that after Gethsemane, the Son of God went clearly, consciously and resolutely to the cross to redeem me, not hesitantly wondering. Think of first responders rescuing people from perilous situations. He laid down his life willingly. This is how we know what love is.
They don’t have to be, but I think it’s plain to see that they are temptations to doubt his identity and mission. “If you are who you think you are, prove it.” The devil left him “until a more opportune time,” and then the same words are thrown at him at the cross. Matthew made an obvious connection between the two events. Again, if there was no possibility that Jesus would sin, then there was no temptation.
They’re not equivalent because you’re conflating two types of experience. Religious experience is of a different type than professional experience. The situation with Jesus was not a challenge to his education, training, or years of experience. That would have been like the devil saying, “If you’re a carpenter, build me a bench.” No problem. Religious experience is personal. How did Jesus come to know that he was the Son of God? If it was by revelation or inspiration, then that occurred between him and God/the Spirit. That’s of an entirely different order than everyday experience.
You’re misunderstanding. I’m not saying Christ went to the cross hesitantly wondering, nor that he wasn’t willing to lay down his life. In every case, he was tempted to doubt yet set those doubts aside and faithfully responded. It’s not much different than the moment of fear that soldiers experience before battle.
I can grant that the second temptation in the wilderness may have been for him to doubt his mission and identity. It is more likely, after the manner of a schoolyard bully, that Satan is tempting him to a sin of pride. “Okay, if you really are who you say you are, the Exalted Son of God, then throw yourself down because angels will catch you, as they would for no lowly human. Show me.”
The first temptation was explicitly about his hunger after his extended fast, to idolatrously elevate his desire for food above righteousness. Hence his answer, “‘Man shall not live on bread alone…”
Otherwise, you are making the temptations about the same thing, that the temptations indeed were the same, and only about him doubting his identity.
I still do not understand the insistence on interpreting it as a temptation to doubt, even if doubt is a (not the) doorway to sin. There are plenty of other ways for him to have doubted to have shared in our humanity, as I have illustrated earlier. (Speaking of, was he sharing his humanity with you because you have been tempted to doubt that you were the Son of God? 
)
That would have been Gethsemane, when he was most struggling. The words thrown at him at Golgotha were taunts, not temptations to doubt. There may have been a temptation to sin by saving himself from the pain, contrary to his Father’s will, but that is still not a temptation to doubt. Was he doubting who he was when he asked for forgiveness for the centurions? Was he doubting who he was when he was assuring the repentant thief?
I guess even Monty Python got it better than you by portraying him as singing a song mocking those who put him there.
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I believe since Jesus was setting an example of how we are to live, He would not exalt Himself and remained humble. He pointed to God as we should do. If anything good is seen in us or comes from us (appears to anyway) it is only because that is God IN us that it was seen. So when we “do” good, it is actually not us doing good, but God. So what Jesus says is true, no one is good but God.
I don’t believe even Jesus was born good nor did good things and remained sinless because of who Jesus was. Rather Jesus was moral and sinless BECAUSE He had help from the only good one, God. This is exactly why Jesus prayed that ‘cup’ prayer and why Jesus quoted Psalm 22. Jesus needed God’s help…and as the Psalms 22:24 says “has listened to his cry for help”.
What good would that do us, if God decided to come as God, and was perfect and awesome because He was God and couldn’t sin. Good for HIm? Of course He could not sin? But what if instead, God sent a human to have every struggle we have, but end up succeeding where we failed. And what was the difference? Why did this One succeed while we all failed? Because this One honored the Father with every action and deed, and gave glory to the Father for all things and asked the Father for help in all things. We can greatly benefit from that example. All we have to do is to honor God in all things, and ask God for help in all things and we too can no longer sin.
I have to differentiate and say that I do believe we can no longer sin, not say we can achieve perfection, because perfection can only be achieved by those who haven’t sinned in the past. So I do believe Jesus had some form of a ‘head start’ and help form God from birth. But I do not believe Jesus would have used this as a bragging point of who He was. Again, He would have given all glory to the Father for being who He was. Because nobody is anything apart from God, and all glory belongs to God.
We don’t know a lot about Methuselah or Job or others seen as “righteous” in God’s eyes. But if these men were perfect as well, the only reason they were perfect was because of God. Achieving perfection or having a (from now on) sinless life isn’t anything anyone can brag about as if it was of their own strength, will or might. It would only be because that is what God wanted and allowed them to do, and so He would receive all the glory/credit for it.
Though I agree with you there (in a literal form), and I agree that the prophets of old did I believe all the exact miracles that Jesus did and I don’t believe there was one unique miracle Jesus did. BUT, one thing Jesus did that I am not aware of any other human being able to do is forgive sins. God allowed Jesus to heal that paralytic AND forgive sins to validate that Jesus was God and ONLY God can forgive sins. Only the one who was debted against can forgive that debt.
That and Jesus did say “I am”…which is also only something God can/did say.
I have heard this misnomer too many times. The very proof that God can be in the presence of sin is Jesus coming to dwell in the presence of sin.
Sin is not God’s kryptonite. God is not weakened by sin. What is true, is that a sinful man cannot be in the presence of a Holy God and live. Much like a peasant cannot come into the throne room of a king and do or say whatever they want whenever they want. The get executed for that. BUT the King can extend His scepter (at His OWN discretion) to spare the live of the peasant.
When Jesus touched the leprous man (which defiled the Jew) did Jesus become defiled too? No. Jesus actually healed that man. Jesus could have spoken healing and that man would have been healed. But He decided to TOUCH that man I think to drive this point home.
I think Jesus bore our sins for many reasons. As Jesus became the sacrificial lamb, the interceding/intermediary high priest, and the scape goat. The scape goat also “bore the sins” of man. Do you really think the goat was a “sinner”? The reason I believe God commanded this is to help man out. It feels good to “get things off your chest”. This is God’s way of allowing us to not feel the guilt anymore, to move on. God no longer holds it against us (if we repent) only the accuser, so let it go, give that weight to Jesus, allow Him to bear it.
Also Jesus bore the weight in the sense that He was aware of all of the horrendous disgusting perversions man has done to the amazing blessing God gave us as image bearers. All the blashpemous things we do and disrespect we have done to God and to call our selves God. And Jesus bore that weight, the weight of knowing what we did, yet STILL deciding to continue to do this so we can be forgiven.
I imagine this is also why Jesus prayed that prayer. He was as a human afraid of failure. Knowing if He messed up, mankind was doomed. Walking on a 2’ wide sidewalk is very easy without falling. Put that sidewalk 100’ feet in the air and now lets watch you walk it. I bet you start sweating and shaking MUCH more right? Jesus was being given this tightrope to walk on with no safety net (other than faith in God which is the greatest safety net) in sight. He was preparing for this daring act and it was petrifying for a man. This is again why He needed and asked for God’s help.
So when Jesus “bore” our sins and became a sinner like Jesus became defiled from leprosy when touching a leprous man right? No Jesus defeated and healed the leprous, just like Jesus defeated and ‘healed’ the sinners. All praise be to God!
Why can’t it be both? It was very difficult to breath while being crucified, so I imagine only the most important things were said. He said them for a reason and wanted us to hear them. God clearly knew His heart, it didn’t need to be spoken. It was spoken for our benefit. Jesus was able to remain humble and merciful “Forgive them…”. And Jesus really needed help. How could Jesus communicate that He needed help and was in great anguish, YET He wanted us to know that He never lost faith in His Father?
Be referencing a well known Psalms. One that begins with (roughly translated) I really relaly need help, this is the hardest thing I can imagine. It is so hard, it is almost as if you are not even hear to help me, as if You have forsaken me. All while referencing the clear prophesies of mocking and pierced hands and feet. But then going on to vs. 19 “come quickly to help me”. And the crescendo of verse 24
“For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.”
Acknowledging that God is helping Him, is not forsaking Him, and will always listen to His cries for help. Psalms 22 is clear lamentation of a very difficult task, so difficult it is using hyperbolic phrases of showing how hard it seems, and them bringing us back to the tr
uth that God will never forsake us, EVEN when we feel He has.
Jesus wanted us to know He was human and it was important to take care of each other, and thirsted, that we are to forgive all at any time, that when true repentance is shown, forgiveness is given from God and your past is past and you will be with God, that we are to ask God for help, any time, that God will never leave us, and God gave Him everything He has and He yielded it back to Him, and that it was finished!
Be careful in proclaiming you have the absolute and only truth.
I like to share my opinion as a potential to illuminate others. Show them something they never thought of before, and let them chew on it/wrestle with God (as Jacob did) all allow Him to reveal the truth to them. I by no means claim to or intend to appear as if I have the one and only absolute truth (apart from the truth that God is righteous, loving, merciful, and just). Other than that, I just have what God has revealed to me, and I continue to learn and change certain stances I have through the Word and others illuminating things to me.
Also don’t forget that just because you are right, it doesn’t mean someone else is wrong. If you look at a 6 from below and call it a 6 but from above I look at it and call it a 9, we are both right, and none of us is wrong. I believe God made life ‘confusing’ like that for many reasons. One, so no one man can claim the absolute truth. And two, so we are all (with God’s help) learn to respectfully disagree with each other, YET still serve and praise God as one. But unfortunately we fail the world in this all too often and join the lost zombies of the world pridefully arguing over who has the one truth and how because I am right, that must make you wrong.
We are supposed to be different from the world, united in purpose to praising God, in SPITE of seeing things from different perspectives. I pray the Church can get rid of denominations one day and all the bickering over who is right and just praise God.
I would recommend to change your intent to persuade anyone as to what you believe, and rather come from the approach of potentially being used by God to illuminate something He potentially wants to illuminate for them and wrestle with them over. But also realizing God might not want that person to see what you see, and it is ok, it keeps us humble and we are all different.
The foot is no less than the hand and visa versa. But the fork might help the hand feed the body, it is useless to the foot. It is futile (and potentially hurtful) for you to adamantly (and potentially angrily and prodefully) attempt to convince the foot the fork is a useful tool.