From Chapter 5 – Was Jesus Divine? © 2020 by Emory Lynn.
Many Christians of the liberal persuasion prefer to disregard parts of the Old Testament, particularly the six-day creation, the global flood and Noah and his ark. Science has not been kind to these biblical accounts. For liberal Christians the main thing is Jesus Christ and the salvation he provides. It’s most ironic that while these Christians disregard many parts of the Old Testament, Jesus certainly did not disregard them. Jesus referred to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament often in his teachings, including references to the six-day creation, to Adam and Eve, to Noah and his ark and to the global flood. Was Jesus promoting a literal interpretation of these Genesis stories, that an abundance of incontrovertible science has shown to be untrue, or an allegorical interpretation? If literal, then the divine nature of Jesus is seriously undermined, and the Christ of Christianity falls apart.
Jesus preached about God’s day of judgment and the need for repentance. Without repentance sinners would suffer a catastrophic fate just as everyone on Earth did in the Noachian flood. In Luke 17:26-27 we get this history lesson from Jesus: “And as it was in the days of Noe [Noah], so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark and the flood came, and destroyed them all.” Matthew 24:38-39 provides the same message from Jesus: “For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” Luke and Matthew both have Jesus conveying a literal interpretation of Noah’s ark and the Genesis worldwide flood.
When Pharisees asked Jesus if it was lawful for a man to put away (divorce) his wife, he answered: “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. … What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10:6,9). Matthew 19:4 likewise quotes Jesus about the creation of male and female in the beginning: “And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female?” Jesus was quoting Genesis 1:27 and certainly appears to have interpreted the creation of Adam and Eve as literal history.
In Luke 11:50-51 Jesus spoke of the “blood of Abel,” referring to the Genesis 4:8-11 account of how Cain, the firstborn of Adam and Eve, killed his younger brother Abel. Jesus was clearly assuming that Abel was a historical person. However, as we’ll see in Chapter 11 (The Real Story of Us), everyone to whom Jesus spoke had a massive collection of genetic markers in the DNA molecules throughout their body, that prove the human lineage could not have included Adam and Eve of biblical creation, or their children Cain and Abel. No one in Jesus’ audience had a lineage that originated with two fully human progenitors. You can say that the people to whom Jesus spoke held at the very core of their being the definitive contradiction to what Jesus was saying.
When Jesus referred to creation, to the first male and female that were part of creation, to Abel, to Noah, to the ark and the flood, he was referring in literal terms to events that never happened, and he was referring to people who never existed (except possibly for Noah who might have been an actual person, albeit not the savior of most of the world’s life forms who died at the age of 950). Either Jesus believed the mythical creation and re-creation stories in Genesis, which means he was not the Christ of Christianity nor was he even divine, or all four Gospels misquote Jesus, which means these quotations were not divinely inspired. If the latter is the case, the credibility of the Gospels is eroded even more.
The profound lack of understanding by Jesus and/or the Gospel authors about how the world and humanity began is truly a devastating indictment of the divinity of Jesus and the validity of Christianity. Further demonstrating that Jesus was a mortal human just like the rest of us is the fact that he never corrected any of the numerous erroneous worldviews about physical reality that were common at the time, and some of the erroneous beliefs were very detrimental to the health and well-being of people everywhere.
The Gospel of Matthew gives another teaching by Jesus that is contrary to reality: “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery; but I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28). It’s imperative for species that reproduce sexually to have a biological mechanism that stirs sexual desire. Having that desire, or the experience of ‘lusting after her,’ as Jesus expressed it according to Matthew, cannot be a sinful act if we are genetically programmed to do just that. The propagation and survival of sexually reproducing species requires it. Modern science has clearly shown that humans are no different. Did God make us this way and then condemn us for being this way? Sin comes from not properly controlling sexual desire, not from the desire itself. To briefly desire someone sexually is not the same as committing adultery. Equating lust of the heart with adultery is an honest mistake Jesus could have easily made if he were mortal and unaware of the biological imperative involved.
Yet another major obstacle to the believability of Jesus’ divinity comes from the treatment of Satan in the Gospels. I won’t go into the numerous references to Satan, but there is simply no question that the Gospels consistently treat Satan as an actual supernatural being. Jesus referred to a literal Satan many times. Christians who do not believe in Satan but do believe in Jesus as the Son of God have a discrepancy they may not be aware of. If Satan has never existed, then either the Jesus of the Gospels was not divine or the Gospels misquote and misrepresent Jesus in numerous places.
On a personal note, I believe Satan is nothing more than the personification of sin and evil. The belief that Satan is an actual demonic being is the most woeful and unfortunate superstition the human race has ever invented. Why Satan rose to such prominence in the Abrahamic faiths isn’t hard to understand. A sovereign and benevolent God can’t be reconciled with all the evil and suffering in the world? A formidable, supernatural adversary short-circuits the problem. Since everything God created was good according to Genesis, Satan could not have been evil from the beginning. God created Satan as an angel, but he turned evil in a manner that would seem to safeguard the benevolence of God—Satan misused his God-given free will.
Regardless of Satan’s past, having never rid the world of him doesn’t speak well of God’s benevolence. Many believe Satan will get his due with the apocalyptic return of Christ. But Satan has allegedly been serving up evil and suffering for several millennia, with no relief yet. I don’t recall ever believing in an actual Satan, but only in recent years have I come to understand the adverse implication the non-existence of Satan holds for the divinity of Jesus and the truth of Christianity.
