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A recent survey is heartbreaking for those who know Jesus is God come among us. Larger percentages of Christians no longer believe this. Karlo Broussard explains why we can be confident that Jesus is, in fact, God.
Cy Kellett:
American confusion over the person of Jesus. Karlo Broussard with us next.
Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending the Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. I’m just going to read you the first line or two of a story from Newsweek magazine that all of us around here found a bit disheartening and alarming. A slight majority of American adults say Jesus was a great teacher and nothing more during his lifetime. That slight majority is 52% as a matter of fact. The article goes on to say 65% of evangelicals say Jesus is a creature and not the creator.
Now, admittedly polling people about their religious beliefs is always fraught with difficulty, and you’ve got to take these polls with a grain of salt. However, even if this is off by 50%, that’s serious business. Many, many people don’t know the identity of Jesus, and many of them are sitting right next to you in the pew in church on Sunday, so we’ve got to do something about that. We asked Karlo to come and talk about it.
Before we talk to Karlo, I want to remind you, subscribe to Focus on Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you listen so you’ll be notified when new episodes are released. If you would be kind enough, please give us that five star review to let others know that this podcast is worth listening to and help us to grow this podcast.
All right, so we talked to Karlo about the identity of Jesus. How can we know what it was, or what it is, and how can we maybe help other people settle that issue in their mind, especially our fellow Christians?
Cy Kellett:
Karlo, about this survey, just done this year in March, and I’m actually shocked at one aspect of it. Well, one part of it is just disappointing and upsetting. The other part is shocking. Disappointing and upsetting, 3,000 US adults, 52% say Jesus isn’t God. I don’t feel shocked by that because I feel like that’s-
Karlo Broussard:
Same here.
Cy Kellett:
That’s a Christian belief, and you have to come to that belief. Even among Christians, many have not come there yet. This second one surprised me. 630 of the 3,000 were evangelicals. 65% of evangelicals said Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. That one, not just disheartening, but shocking.
Karlo Broussard:
Yes, and it is indeed a wake up call for all Christians, right, that we cannot take for granted that Christian sitting in the pew on Sundays actually hold to and believe the essence and the heart of Christianity, that is namely that Jesus is God. We can’t take that for granted anymore.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Karlo Broussard:
Although this is sort of an elementary point or a first stepping stone in the apologetic enterprise, and for us who are in the world of apologetics this is elementary stuff, right? But in the historical circumstances that we find ourselves in, this is something that we can no longer take for granted, but that we have to emphasize, preach, proclaim, and defend, and articulate well the divinity of Jesus Christ. This is something not on the periphery anymore in the apologetic movement.
Cy Kellett:
No, you’ve got to get … Right. Which it makes me kind of happy that we do things like the kids show, because kids will just ask this. You don’t get many adults who call up and go, “Is Jesus God?” But a kid will ask you, and so you need those basics. But okay, so what strikes me here is there’s a couple things. One is there’s evangelizing the culture and letting the culture know that Jesus is God who has come among us, but now there’s this other tab that 65% of the people in an evangelical church, roughly speaking, are going to say Jesus is not God. That means evangelization of the evangelical Christians, evangelization I’m sure of Catholics, evangelization of-
Karlo Broussard:
Amen.
Cy Kellett:
Let’s do that then. Let’s maybe take it from the position of that there are Christians who need to be convinced of this basic tenant.
Karlo Broussard:
Right. Yes.
Cy Kellett:
like really, almost you want to say the most basic tenant, Jesus is Lord.
Karlo Broussard:
Yeah. I would say a different starting … It allows for us to launch from a different starting point, because when we’re talking to skeptics and we’re trying to convince them of the divinity of Jesus, a lot of work has to be done to first convince them that the New Testament documents, and in particular the gospels, are historically reliable. That requires a lot of leg work.
Cy Kellett:
That’s work, right.
Karlo Broussard:
That is some work. But for those Christians who are sitting in the pew, at least Christian in name right, who would fall into this 65%, at least in this survey, I would assume that they probably would accept, yeah, the Bible, yeah, we can trust him. We can believe what it says, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Karlo Broussard:
Maybe they won’t go so far as to say it’s the inspired Word of God. Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. But I think we could assume that they would generally accept, yeah, we can trust what it says, right? It’s accurate, and so let’s look to what the Bible says.
This would be a different launching point in discussing this topic with Christians as it would be with skeptics, although with skeptics, you just have a preliminary stage and then you’re launching off, right? Because we can look at the New Testament as a historical document and see the evidence from history that we have good reason to conclude that Jesus is equal to Almighty God, right? Whether you believe the New Testament is inspired or not, it’s really a moot point because we can look to it as historical documents, and derive the evidence from there, and give us reason to make an act of faith in Jesus.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, so does the thing … Some people would even say though, even people who have read the gospels, “Well, he never says I’m God,” right?
Karlo Broussard:
This is a common claim.
Cy Kellett:
Let’s start there.
Karlo Broussard:
Yeah. A common claim is that Jesus never claimed to be divine, right, and that’s the first step we have to take in order to run what is classically known as the Trilemma argument. In order to run an argument for why I should believe that Jesus is God, I must first establish that he claimed to be God and that it wasn’t something that was put into his mouth later by his disciples. You see?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
With regard to the evidence that Jesus actually claimed to be divine, I think we can run through the two basic arguments you might say. Number one, we could look to Jesus’s divine claims themselves. He understood himself to be divine, and the evidence of that is found in the New Testament in both direct and indirect ways. We don’t have time to go into all of the evidence, both direct and indirect evidence from Jesus’s words and deeds, but I’ll just share a few.
Common passages that in the tradition apologists have, Christians have appeal to, is John 8:58 for example when Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am,” and the Jews immediately wanted to stone him, right? Well, why did they want to stone him? Because he wasn’t just being rhetorical and saying, “I am.” He was describing the divine name to himself. He not only was uttering it, which you’re not supposed to do. He was actually ascribing it to himself. Consequently, the Jews wanted to kill him for it because they perceive that to be blasphemy
It’s even clear in John 10:31-33 where Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” and we’re told by John that the Jews, once again, immediately picked up stones to try and stone him. John records the response of the Jewish audience. “We do not stone you for any work you’ve performed,” on the Sabbath is the context. “But because you yourself, a man, have made yourself equal to God.”
Jesus spoke in such a way that led his audience to think he was claiming to be equal to God, and Jesus did nothing to clarify such thoughts, implying that Jesus affirmed what they were thinking. Yes, he was referring to the unity he has with the Father not in some moral sense, but in a substantial sense, like he is equal to the Father. Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Karlo Broussard:
those are two passages from John. But here’s the problem, Cy. Many of our skeptic friends out there will say, “Well, wait a minute, Karlo. John’s written late first century. That’s just too much of a time gap for me to be able to trust what John is telling us Jesus said and did.” I think that’s a bad argument. I think there’s good reason to think we can trust John’s gospel. Dr. Craig Blomberg wrote a great book on trusting, The Historical Reliability of the Gospel of John, in that there’s evidence, strong evidence that he’s an eye witness, and that even a 65 year time gap between the events of Jesus’s life and the record, that’s still good enough for an ancient author to remember the events, and the sayings, and the deeds of Jesus.
Cy Kellett:
Sure.
Karlo Broussard:
But let’s put that off to the side. I think we have strong evidence from Mark’s gospel that Jesus claimed to be God. IN Mark 2, the story is, verses 1 through 12, the story is the paralytic who’s lowered through the roof. There we have Jesus telling the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven.” Okay, and that merits a charge of blasphemy from Jesus’s audience there, which they are charging him of blasphemy in their minds.
Not only did Jesus say, “Your sins are forgiven,” which was seen to imply a claim to be divine, right? Because only God has the power to forgive sins. Notice, he doesn’t say, “In the name of God, your sins are forgiven.” He simply commands it, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
Within that very context, he actually reads the thoughts and hearts of his audience charging him with blasphemy, which according to Jeremiah 17:10 and 1 Kings 8:39, only God has access to the inner movements of the mind and the heart, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
Okay. Then Jesus performs a miracle to vindicate that claim. “So that you may know that the Son of man has power on Earth to forgive sins, I say to you arise.” The purpose of the miracle was to vindicate his claim to have the power to forgive sins. When we look to that passage, we have clear evidence that Jesus is claiming to be God and actually provides proof and evidence for that claim, okay. That would be the first argument. Jesus actually claims to be divine himself in both word and deed, in both direct and indirect ways.
Cy Kellett:
In Mark’s gospel, we’re talking about something written 25 years.
Karlo Broussard:
Yes. Right, right. Good point I forgot to mention. Yeah. Most scholars put Mark’s gospel full to be written right around AD 59, AD 60, so we’re within or right at 30 years removed from the events he’s recording, okay. According to standards of ancient literature, and the way they wrote, and the standards they were expected to adhere to, a 30 year time gap is nothing for the ancients to be able to remember what was going on. There’s actually evidence that there probably were written notes and there’s oral traditions that these gospels writers are drawing on, making-
Cy Kellett:
Plus there’s a lot of people alive who were there.
Karlo Broussard:
There are witnesses.
Cy Kellett:
They could have said, “That never happened,” if it … yeah.
Karlo Broussard:
That’s right. There are witnesses there to preserve that tradition of what Jesus said and did throughout the 30 years until he actually puts it on paper, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
We’re on good grounds to think that Mark, even 30 years removed, could have accurately recorded what Jesus said and did. I think Mark 2:1-12 is a good place to go to see that and know. We know on historical ground … and this is actually a story that’s, multiply attested to. Both Matthew and Luke have this story in their gospels, and that’s independent of Mark. We have two independent sources. Whether or not Matthew and Luke are drawing on the same source for this story or their own independent traditions, that’s a little up for grabs and to think through, but at least we have two independent sources here. Which according to for historians, when you have two independent sources attesting to an event, that’s a good sign for a high probability of historical reliability here.
Cy Kellett:
Can I just say one of the things about the gospels. You selected just a couple, but you could go all throughout the gospels. There are many-
Karlo Broussard:
Oh, man. There are many.
Cy Kellett:
Even in Mark’s gospel, the trial before the Sanhedrin.
Karlo Broussard:
Mark 14.
Cy Kellett:
He says, “I am,” again.
Karlo Broussard:
He says, “I am. That you shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven.” How does the high priest respond? “This is blasphemy.” Apparently-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. You’re not just like picking out-
Karlo Broussard:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
These are very strong examples, but there are examples all throughout.
Karlo Broussard:
Indeed there are, yes.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Karlo Broussard:
That’s one argument to support Jesus’s actual claims to be divided, but there’s another argument that’s more indirect, and that is the early disciples belief that Jesus was God. Now, many skeptics will appeal to and affirm, yeah, the early disciples believed he was God, but they were putting that into Jesus’s mouth, right? Like they came up with the divinity of Jesus, but it’s not found in Jesus. But I would push back on that.
First of all, the evidence that they believed, I mean, first of all, they believe he was God. Like they explicitly state that. 1 John 5:20, John says, “We are in him who is true in his son, Jesus Christ.” John is talk about being in Jesus. “This is the true God,” hoytos alethinos theos, “And eternal life.” John explicitly refers to Jesus Christ as the true God. Titus 2:13, Paul says, “Awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Then the early disciples believed Jesus was the creator of all things that are created, which means he’s not in the category of created things, which means he’s uncreated, which means-
Cy Kellett:
He’s God.
Karlo Broussard:
He’s God. John 1:3, “All things were made through him,” and listen to what John says, “Without him was not anything made that was made.” That excludes the word Jesus from the category of things that are made. 1 Corinthians 8:6, Saint Paul affirms the same thing, that Jesus is the creator.
Now here’s the argument, Cy. These were monotheistic Jews, right? But yet they’re affirming that Jesus is equal to the Father, that God the Father they pray in the monotheistic Judaism is God, and this dude walking on the face of the earth whose name is Jesus of Nazareth, he’s God too. If these were monotheistic Jews and they believed in Jesus’s divinity, then that belief must be rooted in Jesus’s claims. Why would they believe such a thing, right? It’s unlikely that they would have made this up-
Cy Kellett:
Right, sure.
Karlo Broussard:
Or that it would have become legendary, because that legend would have been squashed, man. They would have been like, “No way this dude is God.”
Cy Kellett:
Right. Yeah, you’ve got to remember, the early church is basically a collection of Jews.
Karlo Broussard:
Amen.
Cy Kellett:
There’s a few Gentiles and then more over time, but primarily you’re talking about a Jewish community-
Karlo Broussard:
And they’re believing the divinity of Jesus very early on, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right.
Karlo Broussard:
I mean so this is very early on in the Christian movement, and they’re affirming that Jesus is the creator and that he is the God, so that belief must be rooted in the claims of Jesus. There’s no other intelligible explanation of that data.
Cy Kellett:
Right, right. It’s just not something a community of Jews makes up.
Karlo Broussard:
Right. Jesus claimed to be God and the early Christians believed he was God, implying that Jesus did claim to be God. I think we’re on solid grounds that Jesus claimed to be God.
Cy Kellett:
All right, so I don’t think many Christians will make this argument, but other people will make this argument. Okay, I agree with you, Karlo. the early church believed in it because he said it, but he was lying. He didn’t tell the truth.
Karlo Broussard:
That’s an alternative explanation, right? We have the data that Jesus claimed to be God. Early Christians believed it. The question is, should we believe in it, right? Should we believe Jesus’s claims to be divine? We can’t immediately say no. We’re going to have to think through this, because there are alternative explanations that could explain the data of Jesus’s claims to be divine.
As you assert, maybe he’s lying. Well, I don’t think this works because, number one, he performed miracles. We can establish the historical reliability of the miracle accounts in Jesus’s ministry. He performed wondrous deeds, right? He delivered people from demons. He was an exorcist. Even the healing miracles, the nature miracles, raising people from the dead. He healed the paralytic. These are all historically substantiated as historical facts. If he’s performing miracles, then he surely cannot be lying about his identity to be divine, because God would not be granting him the power to usurp a power that would give evidence of usurping the very authority from which the power comes. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
Since he performed miracles, he can’t be lying. Even most skeptics will affirm that Jesus was at least a good moral teacher, a good moral guy. Well, if he’s moral, then we can trust him, and if we can trust him-
Cy Kellett:
He’s not a liar.
Karlo Broussard:
He’s not a liar. Right. Then finally, there is no evidence that Jesus had selfish motives or reasons to lie, right? He wasn’t seeking political power. Remember he said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He allowed himself to be taken into the hands of Pilate. He wasn’t seeking fame or fortune. Often, he was going off alone in prayer, in Mark 1:12-13, and people following him. He wasn’t going out to the people. Sometimes he went to minister to them, but he often sought to be alone, right? He disapproved of the love of riches, right, that disordered love of riches. He disapproved of that in Mark 10:23-27.
There’s no evidence that Jesus had selfish motives or reasons to lie. There is nothing to gain for him from lying about his identity. Because of that, I think we have good evidence to negate this alternative explanation that he’s lying about his identity.
Cy Kellett:
I’ll tell you that there’s this documentary now on one of the stations running about Charles Manson, who’s a kind of messianic figure, but you get a strong impression Charles Manson was out of his mind. I think many people will just look at that, say, “There’s this figure of a Manson like figure,” or even some people will say like, “There are all these figures that appear throughout history. Well, maybe he wasn’t lying. Maybe he was just nuts.”
Karlo Broussard:
That’s right, and that’s another alternative explanation, because Lord or liar are not mutually exclusive of the possibilities here. Maybe he is lunatic or crazy, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
But I think the evidence militates against that alternative explanation. Number one, recall from the gospel narratives that Jesus spoke in ways that captivated his audiences, right? Mark 1:27 says, “They were all amazed,” right? Other passages speak of the crowds being in awe with the authority with which he spoke, right, and they’re following him and at his feet soaking in his wise teachings. That’s not the characteristic of a crazy man, of a lunatic.
Secondly, Jesus was actually able to read the hearts and minds of those with whom he was speaking. We already referenced that in Mark 2:8 when they charged him of blasphemy and he says, “Why are you thinking this,” right, “In order that you know I have the power to forgive sins, here you go. I’m going to perform a miracle.” That’s not a characteristic of a crazy man or a lunatic.
Finally, Jesus argued with the smartest people of his day, and he beat them at their mind games time and time again. Just one example was the woman caught in adultery, right, in John 8:1-11. That’s not the mark of a lunatic. I mean, he is beating some of the most sophisticated intellectual people of his day at their own mind games, right? Escaping from their intellectual traps. This proves that Jesus was not a lunatic. He was a pretty smart guy. He was a wise teacher, which even our skeptic friends will say, “Well, he wasn’t God, but at least he’s a wise teacher.” Well, if he’s a wise teacher, don’t you think he’s wise enough to know who he is?
Cy Kellett:
Who he is. Yeah, right.
Karlo Broussard:
Who does he say he is? Well, we already looked at the evidence for that. We say he’s God. We have the claim. We have the data. He’s claiming to be God. Should we believe that? That claim is either true or false.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Karlo Broussard:
Okay. If it’s false, well then he either knows it’s false and he’s lying or he doesn’t know it’s false and he’s a lunatic, right? Those are our two alternative explanations, either liar or lunatic, if his claim is false. We’ve already given reasons to think he’s not lying and he’s not a lunatic. Therefore, his claim to be God and equal to the Father cannot be false. It must be true. Thus, we have what it has been come to know as the Trilemma argument: Lord, liar, lunatic. Now, some people might throw in a fourth option and say, “Well, maybe he’s claiming to be divine like a guru, like in the eastern sense.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. You hear more and more of this now. Right.
Karlo Broussard:
Well, first of all-
Cy Kellett:
No.
Karlo Broussard:
Folks, no. He’s a Jew, right, and Jews believed in the monotheistic God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who as one created heaven and earth and is utterly and transcendently distinct from creatures, and he claims to be that God. This is why the Jews that consisted of his audience charged him with blasphemy, right? They would not have charged him with blasphemy if he was speaking of divinity in some Eastern mystic sense, mystical sense.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Karlo Broussard:
Because they would recognize, that ain’t God, right? You’re claiming something else, but not to be equal to our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That option is off the table. It’s embedded in Jesus’s claims to be divined that he’s claiming to be the Jewish God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the one creator of heaven and earth, utterly distinct from all of creation, who is the uncreated creator, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Karlo Broussard:
We only have these three options, Lord, liar, lunatic, and we already gave evidence for why not liar, why not lunatic. Therefore, the only reasonable option is that he is Lord. What that does, Cy, is that gives us good reason to make an act of faith, right? It’s not going to move us to the act of faith in Jesus, but it does shed light upon in the mind so that I know if I give my life over to Christ and accept him as my Lord, my Savior, and my God, that is a reasonable thing to do. It’s not a blind impulse of the mind. It’s grounded on good evidence, a foundation of reason and evidence. That’s what makes the Christian faith reasonable.
Cy Kellett:
Before we conclude then, I just want to ask you, we say that that’s good news, that Jesus is Lord and we call that good news.
Karlo Broussard:
Oh yeah, euangelion.
Cy Kellett:
This is another thing that I think like whether you’re a Catholic, or an evangelical Christian, or you’re a mainline Protestant of some kind and you are waffling in your mind about whether Jesus is God … First of all, I hope the arguments that Karlo has given will help you move past that waffling, but you should know that you’re missing out on good news. Can you say something about why is this good news?
Karlo Broussard:
Well, first of all, if Jesus is God, then he’s the reason why I exist right now. Without his very willing me to exist, I would lapse into nothingness. The good news is that he is the one whom I ought to worship and direct my life toward in order to achieve perfect human happiness. In him lies my happiness. That’s good news, the good news of how I can be happy as a human being. I need to direct my life to Jesus, love him, serve him, and know him, right, and foster that relationship.
The good news is that the God man, Jesus Christ, is not dead. Of course, if he were staying dead, he wouldn’t be God. He rose from the dead, and he’s living and alive right now. Getting back to our game show a while back, he is alive right now and we can encounter him-
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Karlo Broussard:
And we can have a relationship with him. Finally, the good news that Jesus is God is because of his death on the cross, our sins can be forgiven and heaven is opened up to us. If he were not God and he died on the cross, all it would serve is a good example of how we ought to love our friends, right, or an innocent man going to death and how tragic that is. But if he is God, then his death on the cross has infinite value. Heaven has opened up to the human race, and my sins can be forgiven, and that I can receive the life of God that I need to actually exist in heaven, which is my ultimate destiny, where I will find perfect, complete human happiness. That, Cy, is good news.
Cy Kellett:
Good news. Praise God. Jesus is the Lord.
Karlo Broussard:
Indeed he is.
Cy Kellett:
Thanks, Karlo.
Karlo Broussard:
Thank you, Cy.
Cy Kellett:
Knowing who Jesus is puts everything else in perspective. If Jesus is God, then God is love. If Jesus is God, then God’s love is total, complete self giving. God gives himself entirely to us, even his tiny little creatures, much lower than the angels walking around on this earth. He loves us so much that he gives himself to us. That’s good news.
Also, as our friend Joe Heschmeyer says in a recent book, if we know who Jesus is, we know who we are. We know we are the precious sons and daughters of the living God. We’ve got to get that message out there and we’ve got to make sure that people really understand it. Jesus is God.
Thanks for listening this time on Catholic Answers Focus. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Please email us if you’ve got something you want to tell us, including a suggestion for a future episode. Our address: focus@catholic.com. Subscribe to Focus so you’ll be notified when there are new episodes. If you watch on YouTube, don’t forget to like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe. That makes a big difference for us.
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