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How Jesus Became God and Why That is So Important
This post was prompted by a couple of questions by Prudence Louise, one of my favorite Medium writers. Prudence and Graham Pemberton are also doing some writing and thinking on the question of the reformation of Christianity. Prudence expressed a preference for viewing Jesus as a prophet or specially gifted teacher and spiritual guide and asked why I believed that belief in the divinity of Jesus was so important to my faith. She also suggested that the salvation of souls by God may be seen as a relationship something like a courtship. A great question that has caused a lot of thinking on my part.
The idea of a craftsman’s son from the backwoods town of Nazareth being declared God Almighty, Creator of the Universe, is just a stretch too far for a great many today. I understand that. An earlier post attempted to explain why it seems reasonable to me, despite this huge gap in current rational thinking, that such a thing could and did actually happen. In that post I focused on the nature of the Creator God and his/her/its desire for relationship with the created universe, particularly the creatures given minds and souls, and why in a desire for relationship God would need to take human form.
In this post the question is about the need for Jesus to be God for the plan to restore a broken creation that is the core of the Biblical story. I…
