Mikel Del Rosario | Did Jesus Really Say He Was God? Claims, “Blasphemy,” and Historical Evidence

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm your host, Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Dr. Mikhail Del Rosario. He is a professor of theology at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and he is the author of a new book, Did Jesus Really Say He Was God? He's also the host of a podcast called The Apologetics Guy, and I'd encourage you to check that out. It's on the Christianity Today network, as I understand it. But today we're going to be talking about his book, Did Jesus Really Say He Was God? And so, Mikhail, welcome to the show. Really happy that you can come on and talk through this important topic. Yeah, thanks so much, James. I appreciate the invitation. So you're kind of coming at this topic from an apologetic standpoint, and I will say in my backgrounds in biblical studies, theological studies, this is one of those where it's sort of surprising to me that people still don't see that Jesus claimed he was God. You know, I think, you know, going through all the different education levels and listening to some of those scholarly conversations, it's difficult to believe that people still have this question. So talk a little bit about what prompted you to write this book and why you feel this question is still relevant for today. Yeah, you know, there was a personal story that I tell, a personal experience that I had where I was talking to this woman after a church event one day, and she began to raise this idea of where we ever got this idea that Jesus is God or even claimed to be God. And so she was like, Why even believe Jesus is God if he never even said he was God himself? We started looking at some verses in the Bible, like in John where he says, I and the Father are one, and where he says, If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. These kinds of very explicit claims. But then she changes from a literary kind of question, where in the Bible does Jesus say he's God, to a historical question. Yeah, but did Jesus really say he was God? Like if it's just in John, which was written later on in the 80s or the 90s, why don't we see any hint of a divine claim in the earlier gospels and the synoptics, especially in Mark? And so we began to talk about that. And it's just surprising to me that we have so many Christians now who, at least here in America, are actually doubting and don't even believe that Jesus is God in some cases. I was really surprised by this study that LifeWay and Ligonier Ministries did where they found that 43% of self-professed evangelical adults in America who went to church regularly, they agreed with the statement, 43% of them did, saying that Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God. 43%. Really crazy percentage. Yeah, really crazy. And that was evangelical findings, as I recall. Is that correct? That's right. They pulled 3,000 people and they said that you could actually increase that to 53% if you count people who went to church regularly but wouldn't call themselves evangelicals. So it's still, it's amazing. So I think that anecdote of just the people that I meet and that one lady, there's a broader group of people who are now being affected by reading skeptical scholarship where they're being made to question the Bible or they're trying to fact-check the Bible and say, yeah, but did Jesus really say that? So we've got to be able to engage on a historical level when we have those questions. You know, did you find in scholarship, I guess when I was kind of coming up through seminary, I was around for the Jesus seminar or the aftermath of the Jesus seminar where people were, you know, using different colored beads to decide whether or not Jesus said it or not. When we look at skeptical scholarship today, is it kind of the same sort of question in the gospels? Is, is the question, can we trust the veracity of these sayings? Can we trust the veracity of these accounts? And how do we determine whether Jesus said it or not? Is that always what's sort of the same question that's being driven behind these kind of narratives and in the scholarship, I suppose? Yeah, corroboration is really the name of the game. So it's not looking at the Bible as the word of God. We need to be able to not to only be able to appeal to inspiration or to inerrancy when we engage with people who see the Bible differently. But they would ask questions like, how do we really know that we can, that the Bible is giving us accurate history, that what we're reading in the Bible is sourced in history or for some people, can we even know history at all? Is there, is there truth out there that we can know? So, I mean, it can get really philosophical like that as well. But yeah, taking a look, not as the whole book, like, okay, the gospel of Mark, is that historical? But rather, how about this saying? What about that event? How much corroboration is there for this event or this saying in the life of Jesus? So there are rules that historians use to try to be able to, really the point is to come to the table with people from a Jewish background, from an atheist background, from a Christian background, whatever, and be able to have a conversation about the things Jesus really said and did, even if we don't see eye to eye on what the Bible is. And how do you establish some of that corroboration? Because my understanding is that there, there are pretty scattered references to Jesus. And a lot of what we find in the gospels is going to be very specific. These are sort of day-to-day stories of the type that wouldn't necessarily have been even of interest to people who are writing broader histories. You know, so when you talk about corroboration, what is that, what does that mean? What's that historical method look like? Yeah, so corroboration is the name of the game. So it's kind of like when you are a lawyer preparing a case, there are rules, the rules of evidence. Well, there are kind of rules of evidence in doing historical inquiry as well. So one of them is multiple attestation. You may have heard of multiple attestation before. That's just the idea that it's really a common, common sense kind of thing that if you have more than one witness telling you something happened, even if they're not explaining it exactly the same way or using the same details, it increases the probability in the minds of historians that that thing really happened, whether it's a car accident with five witnesses or whether you're looking at something in, in ancient history, it's better to have more than just one witness. So, for example, Jesus claimed to forgive sins. For example, we have that in Mark chapter 2 in the healing of the paralytic where he says to the man, son, your sins are forgiven. But so that's a story that we also get later in Matthew 9 and in Luke 5. But then just the idea of Jesus saying your sins are forgiven. There's another time in Jesus' life where if you remember the woman who anointed his feet, the lady with the alabaster jar, Luke 7, what did he say to her? Your sins are forgiven. So historians will say, okay, I mean, there's probably something to that. Jesus probably said something like this. It's not just one time that we have this in the tradition. So Jesus saying your sins are forgiven is pretty solid. And so using the gospels, even outside of Christian circles as corroborating evidence is a fairly standard historical exercise. So if I'm looking at Matthew, Mark and Luke and I'm saying, or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, right. All three of those. And maybe even into the later epistles, those kinds of things where we're finding resonance between those texts and, and shared stories between those texts that lends to that cooperative evidence that you're talking about. It doesn't have to be sort of outside. We don't have to go to Josephus or Philo or, you know, those kinds of arenas. That's a really good point to make because for some people who don't regularly engage in these kinds of conversations or read historians, they might say, well, the Bible is just one book. And so, you know, cross-referencing Mark with, oh, well, this coheres with what we see in John or in Philippians or something. They're not going to understand that, but historians who actually do work in classics and ancient history understand the Bible is a collection of ancient documents. And even within the gospels, we have sources. Luke, for example, even says he uses sources. So that's where historians will say, okay, let's look at this saying, let's look at this theme in the life of Jesus, not only miraculous healings, but healing the lame, for example. Okay, there's more, there's corroboration there. So thinking of pretty specific that way as well. Very interesting. I, I don't know whether I would have thought that cooperation would work that way. It makes intuitive sense because, you know, you have obviously Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that are written about the life of Jesus. And maybe they're using the same sort of sources. You know, Luke is using sources and they, they may, it seems like they have a lot of common material. And so that lends

to three people who saw something happen at a party, they wouldn't use all the exact same words. And when we do see them using the exact same words, like your sins are forgiven, wow, that was a very important saying that was preserved because that's just how he said it. And so we have some things like that where you can get Jesus' words exact. Very interesting. So where do you think, I mean, obviously there's the influence of sort of the critical scholarship that's raising this question that Jesus even claimed to be God. And I think we probably want to separate between people who are claiming that Jesus isn't God and whether or not Jesus himself claimed to be God. Those seem to be two different things. Obviously, they're connected, but I think we want to draw a distinction between those. So where is the question of, did Jesus ever claim to even be God, really coming from? Are there specific factors, assertions, ways of understanding that are driving that question forward into more popular thought? Yeah, well, I think that when somebody says, where did Jesus say he's God or did Jesus really say he was God? We want to ask a question back, kind of what do you mean by that question to unpack it and see where they're coming from. Some people have a theological problem with it and say, if Jesus didn't claim to be God the Father, then he didn't claim to be God. And that's a misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, for example. Or they believe that being a man is the opposite of being God. So if we see Bible verses where Jesus gets tired, he gets hurt, well, he sleeps, how can he be God, right? So sometimes it comes from a theological misunderstanding or a theological problem. Sometimes it comes from historical questions like, if Jesus really said things like, I and the Father are one, like we see in John, then why don't we see these exact kinds of claims in the synoptics as well? I think they're there, they're just implicit, and we shouldn't confuse the directness of a claim with the existence of a claim. So I could say, I'm married, that's a very direct statement. I could also say, we just celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. That's an implicit claim to be married without saying it explicitly. I could just even wear a wedding ring and without even saying anything, I'm acting like a married person. I'm speaking like a married person. And that's what Jesus did. He was acting like God. He was speaking like God. And the scribes, the theologians in the audience, they understood it. So I think we need to find out if our friend who's asking these questions, are they pushing back because they have a theological misunderstanding or they have a historical question about corroboration? Okay, that's helpful. You take sort of an interesting approach to it in your book, and I really like the approach you've taken. You kind of look at this as, how would Jesus' enemies have viewed what he was saying? Which I think is sort of really historically compelling. Watching the reaction of people who are going to disagree with you gives you a sense of whether you're saying the right thing or the wrong thing. And how they understood it is actually pretty crucial to understanding the claims that Jesus is making. And so you focus in on basically just two narratives within the gospel accounts in Mark. And so talk to me about why you took that approach specifically, and then we'll dive in a little bit and talk a little bit about these two texts and how you understand them to help people understand, hey, Jesus really is here claiming to be God. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Yeah, well, I suppose there's a couple reasons why. One, I just haven't seen anybody else do it. I think it's kind of a gap. Like, I wouldn't know why. Nobody else has thought to write a whole book just looking at those two. Now, you could write a much bigger book than I did. But I just chose two scenes to see how Jesus' enemies understood what he was saying. Because here's the thing. Sometimes skeptics will say, well, of course Jesus' disciples would believe that. They're his disciples. Of course his friends would think this. They think Jesus is great. Well, they just deified him and they just loved him so much. They turned him into this deity. Well, what about the people who didn't want to follow Jesus? What about the people who called him a blasphemer? Jesus wasn't just a Mr. Rogers character, you know, going around with these happy sayings about loving your neighbor. He was a highly controversial figure. Why did he end up on the cross? Which, by the way, is another rule of evidence or criteria of authenticity. If we see a scene or an event or a saying in Jesus' life that helps us understand how it is Jesus ended up on the cross, we're going to pay attention to that as historians because it helps us explain something that's the bedrock, historical bedrock, one of the most well-attested things about the historical Jesus that he was crucified. And so, yeah, so I chose that because, one, nobody that I have seen has done that. And, two, what stands behind this book is actually my dissertation research for my doctoral program at Dallas Seminary. And there's a little thing called originality. And so you have to do something that you find out there's a gap in the research here. Why hasn't somebody looked at this? And so I'm going to look at that. Yeah, yeah. Always fun coming up with a dissertation topic and trying to figure out what the plethora of scholarship came before you haven't done. But I actually, you know, in looking through, so I got to look through the information that IVP sent me about your book. And then I went back and read through those different chapters in Mark. And I think the one that I found, now both of them were interesting, but I think the one that connects with what you just said, that Mark chapter 14, where Jesus is being sort of grilled. He's being questioned about who he is and what he's done. And, you know, they're looking for an excuse to either release him or crucify him. And his words ultimately lead to the latter, right? And so that's one of those scenes where you do see a reason for him to move toward crucifixion. I'm getting my shuns mixed up. Toward crucifixion. Is that part of the reason you chose that passage, Mark chapter 14? Well, this is one of the most explicit parts where he's really forcing a confrontation, you know, at the beginning of going into Jerusalem with the triumphal entry and kicks off the Passion Week. And now he is being asked directly, tell me, Caiaphas says, the high priest, are you the Messiah, the son of the blessed? Are you the Christ, right? And Jesus says, I am. But he'd just stop there. He said, and you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of the power and coming with the clouds of heaven. Now, there's so much to unpack there that we don't typically think about if you just, you know, hear it during Easter time or something. But Jesus is combining Daniel 7 and Psalm 110. And this son of man imagery, Jesus always makes it definite, by the way, the son of man. That's what, we call that a dissimilarity in the criteria of authenticity. It's not exactly like in the Old Testament, but it's not exactly like in the church either because we don't worship Jesus as the son of man. There's not a lot of worship songs that you probably know that worships Jesus as the son of man. And so it's always on the lips of Jesus, but he's combining these two texts, Daniel 7 and Psalm 110. And in Daniel 7, the son of man is given all authority. All the nations of the world will worship him and his kingdom will be unstoppable. Who's this guy? He looks like a human being, but he has transcendent qualities. And then he's riding on the clouds as well. Only a deity does that. In Psalm 110, many Jews, when the monarchy didn't come back, they began to see this as pointing to the ultimate eschatological king. In fact, Jesus even poses a riddle to people. How can David call his descendant, his Lord, when he is his descendant, right? And so he's putting these two things together and he's making a claim to have authority to judge in heaven and to judge, in fact, the representatives of God on earth. And that's exactly what they're thinking when they cry blasphemy. Like, and who are you? And you're going to judge us? Like, how dare you, right? That's the whole vibe. So it's because of that, that whole, the palpability of just the offense there in that scene, everything comes to a head right at that. It's a pivotal scene in Jesus' life. And it's interesting that they would have reacted so strongly to

behavior of some sort, but it doesn't necessarily point directly to someone exactly like Jesus, right? When Jesus comes, he's now obviously analogous to that son of man, but he's an instantiation of son of man that nobody seems to be expecting. Is that a fair way to characterize it? Yeah, I don't think that Jesus is actually saying, I am that son of man in Daniel 7, but he's using that idea to show more about who he is. So he's taking something that's already in the Jewish contemplation. Again, one like a son of man, you always see this one like a son of man, but Jesus always makes it definite like a title almost. The son of man. That's right, the son of man. And there's no evidence in the text that he changed the topic right in the middle of this examination. He wasn't talking about some third party. They knew it's not any old son of man, it's Jesus. He is a son of man who's coming back again and he's like, you can do what you want with me, but there'll be another trial one day and you guys won't be judging me at that one. Well, the fact that they identify that as blasphemy suggests that sometimes the way we read it, which is could be rather plainly, right? We see all these different references to Jesus calling himself the son of man at various other places, but in this instance, it becomes a problem. This combination of elements in Mark 14 really does become a problem for the Jews. Now they're looking for an excuse, which I don't think matters quite so much at this moment, but the fact that they label it blasphemy and not something else really does tell us something about what Jesus is claiming here. Yeah, and that blasphemy, sometimes people will say, well, where's the blasphemy? Because it's not blasphemy to call yourself the Messiah. And that's true, but Jesus didn't just say, I am the Messiah. He ups the ante more, he says, and you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power coming with the clouds of heaven. And to them, here's the thing again, as 21st century people, we might not say that's not how I would claim to be God. That's not how anybody would claim to be God. But Jesus is operating in a very different world, a very different culture and context. And that's why I love looking at his enemies. They were not misunderstanding anything he was saying here. They knew exactly what he was saying. And so the blasphemy actually could be a combination of things, really. It could be even just saying that you're going to judge the representative of God on earth, that you're going to judge the Jewish leadership. Like that could be considered blasphemy. Making yourself too close to God by taking his divine prerogatives for yourself, whether it's saying, son, your sins are forgiven, like in Mark chapter 2, and only God can forgive sins. Or who has the right to judge? Only God has the right to judge. Actually, forgiveness and judgment are just two sides of the same coin. And so Jesus has the right to forgive, he has the right to judge. And they're like, yeah, you're making yourself too close to God. You are acting like God and you're speaking like God. And it is true, in fact, that Jesus would in fact be a blasphemer if he wasn't God as he claimed to be. Yeah, I know there were a lot of messianic pretenders who came along. You mentioned, you know, it wasn't blasphemy to claim to be the Messiah. Do you have any insight into some of the messianic pretenders that would have come before Jesus who weren't doing these things that Jesus was doing, who weren't claiming to be the son of man, who weren't claiming to be, you know, in other words, you could thread the needle and claim to be the Messiah without actually claiming to be God. And without being, you could be shown a false Messiah without being called a blasphemer. Yeah, that's right. So, first of all, if you end up on the cross, you're supposed to conquer Rome, Rome's not supposed to conquer you, okay? So that was a tough sell, right? That's why some people began to, you know, how could he possibly be the Messiah? And so, yeah, the Messiah figures that came before or after Jesus, none of them ever claimed to forgive sins, for example, never claimed to judge the sins of the whole world. Even luminaries like Adam or Moses or Enoch, people who Jewish texts would imagine as possibly being deified in some way or having a role in the judgment by God's own invitation, maybe for a limited time being able to sit with him in heaven. None of those people ever went around telling people, one day I'm going to judge the sins of the whole world. Or, going around saying, I can forgive sins and forgiving people's sins third party, like, by third party, I mean, if I did something against you, I could ask you to forgive me, but I can't ask you to forgive me for something I did to my son or something, right? To a third party, yeah. That's right. And there's nothing like that in Greco-Roman miracle workers or Jewish priests or prophets. And so it really is, he's acting like God, he's speaking like God, he's claiming to have divine authority that no human being who is a mere human being could have. Now, he happens to be a human being who is also God. And that's where you got to decide, as Jesus says, who do you say that I am? But I think that's crucial. I mean, I think that if we start to lose the idea that Jesus actually claimed to be God, there's no then, there's almost not even a crux for a decision. It's just sort of like you're left with this guy who was reasonably good. You hold the whole liar, lord, and lunatic, right, that I remember from my, you know, beginnings in apologetics, right? You sort of lose it. Because if he didn't actually claim to be God, then he can just be a good guy, you know, in some way, shape, or form. And his teaching could be vaguely interesting, but not necessarily authoritative. But that's never the picture we really get of Jesus. And I think this notion of blasphemy in Mark 14 really draws that out. And you see something similar in Mark 2, which is the other passage you treat, which is in dealing with the forgiveness of sins, like you said, those are two sides of a different coin. Judgment and forgiveness. You're essentially judging in a good way when you're forgiving sins, judging in a bad way when you're condemning people. So how does that Mark 2 one play into your overarching argument? Yeah, this is fascinating to take Mark 2 and 14. They're kind of like bookmarks of Jesus' ministry because you have the earliest miracle story in the earliest gospel in Mark chapter 2. And here he's claiming to have divine authority on earth to forgive sins. He says, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He tells the guy to get up and walk, and he walks. They call him a blasphemer in that scene, remember? He says, he calls himself the Son of Man. They call him a blasphemer. He points to vindication, and then the guy is healed, showing that it really did work. Even though you can't see sins being forgiven, you can see the man getting up and walking, right? But he's doing a similar thing in Mark 14. He uses the Son of Man. They call him a blasphemer, and he's pointing to vindication. And that vindication is his resurrection. Now, if you have authority in heaven to judge sins and on earth to forgive sins, that is a claim to have authority in heaven and on earth. And it's a mirrorism for all of reality. And so you look in the opening chapters of Mark, Jesus has authority over nature, over demons, disease, and death. Who does that in all these different areas? And so it's the claims of Jesus that actually fill the resurrection with theological meaning, if you think about it. Here's another reason I wrote the book, is going to apologetics conferences, speaking at these apologetics events, I often notice a kind of classical model going through the whole event where you might start out with arguments for God's existence, you might talk about the problem of evil, and then jump straight to a talk on the resurrection. But I found that there's a gap there because the resurrection is just not the resurrection of anybody, it's the resurrection of Jesus, and it is a vindication of the claims that he made about himself to have divine authority to be the one who is the forgiver of sins and the one who judges. And so if you look at Mark, or sorry, in Acts chapter 2, that is the very first Jewish apologetic for Jesus as Lord and Messiah. And Peter is pinning it on the resurrection and ascension of Jesus as vindication of his claims. In fact, in Acts chapter 2, he's even quoting the exact same text that Jesus alluded to in front of Caiaphas, Psalm 110. And he says, let all Israel know that God has made this Jesus Lord and Messiah. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through

gravitating toward was this idea that other people had been resurrected. Lazarus had been resurrected. Elisha resurrected the widow's son, the Old Testament. So resurrection wasn't as unique as we might think. It was important, but it wasn't only Jesus who'd ever been resurrected. But it was only Jesus who had been resurrected, ascended into heaven, and was glorified and seated at the right hand of the Father. It's those three things that sort of put Jesus on this different level from everyone else and demonstrate that it's not just when Lazarus is raised, you're not vindicating Lazarus, right? It's the whole sequence of events that happen with Christ that demonstrate that everything he claimed was true and really demonstrate him to be the way, the truth, and the life. And we don't have any other instances of any human being being resurrected, ascended, and glorified other than Christ. And so it's really an interesting point I think you're making that leaping automatically to just the resurrection without some of these other components around them. And I think especially looking at Acts 2, we lose a little something there. We definitely lose a piece of the apologetic that we need to really demonstrate, hey, this was early Christian belief. This is what they thought happened after the resurrection. Kind of fascinating stuff. Well, let me ask you another question. I know you teach theology, and so I'm wondering how some of this has sort of woven its way into the classroom. How do you, you know, you work in a Moody Bible Institute. You're teaching undergraduate students, I assume, mostly undergraduate students. And so, you know, you're looking out at the next generation of pastors, ministry leaders. People are going to be really serving in the church. You're also seeing this sort of movement away from a deep conviction about Jesus being God. How do those things connect for you? What does it change for the way that you present theology to the students that you're teaching? How do you think about that from more of a pastoral perspective to say, you're going to be going out into this sort of context? What do you need to be armed with? I think all roads, all apologetics roads can lead to Jesus. So whether you're starting out with questions about the existence of God or the problem of evil or religious pluralism, whatever it might be, I always like to drive the conversation back to Jesus and to the claims of Jesus and who Jesus is. And there's actually a very attractive way to do that because at least for the most part, people are still pretty positive about Jesus. They might have a different idea of who Jesus is than the Bible presents. But I think many people are happy to talk about Jesus and to ask people what their perception of Jesus is. And it might even be a way to build a bridge with somebody, say a Muslim friend or a Jehovah's Witness who wants to talk to you about Jesus and kind of compare what they believe with what the Bible teaches about Jesus. Or for those who say, I'm not religious, but I like history, to go that route and talk about the historical Jesus. But I like to show how Jesus actually is where we're driving to. So rather than kind of getting sidetracked into, well, now I'm kind of stuck here in a very high worldview level discussion about whether God exists or not. I want to drive it straight to Jesus. And let's talk about who Jesus is, who he claimed to be, and the vindication of his claims to be God through the resurrection. Because that can get you to the gospel pretty fast. Yeah. It's just fascinating to think that we're going to be sending people out to minister in churches where there are a lot of congregants, a fair number of congregants based on that state of the church, I believe, is this that you're referencing there from Ligonier and Lifeway. Or no, State of Theology report. Excuse me. State of Theology report. Where people don't really believe that Jesus was God or potentially that he even claimed to be God. And that's where I think, you know, when I saw your book in the IVB catalog, I was like, this is a great question because there are so many little areas of conversation that even I get into about where does Jesus really claim to be God? And there are aspects, you know, like you could go to the stilling of the storm, right, really is. It has this very similar tone to it, like you're referencing Daniel 7 and you know Psalm 110. But that story has a very similar feel to it where this is sort of alluding back to Old Testament claims about what God can and can't do, who can really still the winds and the waves. Well, that's God. That's a divine reference. But it's not exactly Jesus claiming it. And what I really like about yours is you actually focus in on these areas where he does claim it. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no, I was going to say that Jesus claimed to be divine through a combination of his words and his deeds. And so sometimes they're looking for, that's sometimes the other misconception is there's only one way for Jesus to claim to be God. And if he doesn't say it in this exact way, I am God, worship me. You've maybe heard that before. Where does Jesus say I am God, worship me? Well, many Muslims might ask that question as kind of a gotcha thing. But Muslims believe Jesus is the Messiah, even though there's no quote anywhere that Jesus says, I am the Messiah. There's many ways to make that claim. And Jesus is, I mean, talk is potentially cheap, right? You could just walk in and say, hello, I'm Adonai, maker of heaven and earth, and you'll get stoned for that. But Jesus is doing the things that God does and talking like God does. Who else can claim to bind Satan and the wind and the waves obey him and he's predicting his own death and resurrection, right? And then being vindicated. So I think it's a very holistic way of seeing the way that Jesus communicated this. Let me ask one more question that kind of what you said just raised. I remembered a question I wanted to ask you. Mark 14, when Jesus is, I think it makes a reference, and I don't have the text right in front of me, but I'm recalling it makes a reference to, they tried to say that Jesus claimed that he was the temple, but they weren't in agreement about that. Am I remembering that text correctly? Well, he spoke against the temple. He spoke against the temple. Yeah, that he had some involvement in a temple disturbance was certainly true, but we don't have in the text exactly what they were saying about it. But Caiaphas says that their testimony didn't agree, which is why he just asked Jesus straight. Would that have been because, you know, Stephen gets stoned later on in Acts 7 for very similar sort of speaking against the temple sort of allegations. I don't recall them calling that blasphemy, but would that have been an initial framing, do you think, for them to try to sort of pin Jesus as a blasphemer? Yeah, that's a really good question. So there's two definitions of blasphemy that I, two general definitions of blasphemy that I talk about in the book. One is more of a legal, very specific way to commit blasphemy, which is to say the divine name in a disrespectful way. There are cases you can actually say the divine name in a respectful way and it's not considered blasphemy. It's kind of a rare thing. That's why they say son of the blessed, for example, right? Jesus even says the power, these are circumlocutions. They're ways to honor God's name without saying it. But another definition of blasphemy, the cultural definition of blasphemy, that's not the exact legal definition that's really precise that way. But speaking against the temple could be considered blasphemy. Speaking against God's chosen leaders could be considered blasphemy. And so there's a variety of cultural ways that you could be accused of blasphemy. And is that related then to this idea that if God has put it in place and you're denying it, you're actually denying him. You're saying that something God has established as good is no longer good. Is that sort of the logic of it? Yeah, in some way it represents God. So the temple, God's presence, the leaders of God or the leaders of the Jewish people are the representatives of God in some sense. And so for Jesus to say he's going to judge the sins of the council members and the high priest, that could be considered speaking against God's appointed leaders. I think it's really crucial to understand that because it's interesting to me as he's going through this little trial that, you know, the Jewish leaders, the religious leaders had sort of a stranglehold on the Jewish community because they could essentially do whatever they wanted. And if anyone questioned them, they could cry blasphemy. Whereas Jesus is just sort of sitting back and saying, no, no, no, I'll be judging you guys later. You do whatever you want to me now, but this is what's going to happen. It's sort of a fascinating dynamic and, you know, again, a claim that I suppose you could make if you were crazy, but in Jesus' case, he makes it because it's true. Yeah. The enemies of Jesus were not misunderstanding him at all. And that's a point I bring out in the book. It's a different world. It's a different.

And so, for us, we might immediately gravitate to those very explicit claims in John and say, okay, look, well, here are these texts. I and the Father are one. They pick up stones to stone him. That's pretty clear. But we might have to do a little bit more digging to understand the cultural milieu and to understand how implicit claim to work in the Gospels to understand, no, he was pretty clear to those who were listening to him. Yeah, yeah. We don't understand it quite as well, but they got it intuitively just like that. Let me ask you what may be an easy question, but I think it's sort of one that needs to be asked. Why is this issue important? You know, we've talked about a lot of fairly large proportion of evangelical audiences maybe not believing this, right? Why is it important? Why would we ever care? Well, it's important on a number of levels. One, as we mentioned, it is the claims of Jesus that fill the resurrection with theological meaning. And so the resurrection, the very first Jewish apologetic for Jesus as Lord and Messiah says that the resurrection is that vindication. So that's one way that 3,000 people got saved that day believing who Jesus claimed to be is actually true. And that's really the way many people come to faith today is just understanding slowly by slowly, one step at a time, who Jesus actually is. And then they have to come face to face with the claims of Jesus. So you mentioned C.S. Lewis, liar, Lord, and lunatic. We all have to answer the question that Jesus once asked Peter, who do you say that I am, right? Is he a liar? Is he a lunatic? Or is he really the Lord as he claimed to be? And that word Lord in our Bibles, capital LORD, is actually the Septuagint's way, the Greek translation of the Old Testament's way of translating the divine name Yahweh in the Old Testament. And so when we say Jesus is Lord, we're saying that Jesus is Yahweh. He's God. And you have to ask yourself, then Jesus is either Lord of all or he's not Lord at all. And so what areas of our lives do we still have to give over to the Lordship of Jesus? That's one way it challenges us as Christians. And then for others, if you really claim to be God and he really rose from the dead, and you can talk about the evidence for the resurrection as a second part of that discussion, then you have to make a decision because the claims of Jesus, Jesus' divine claim is a divine claim on all of our lives. It's not just a fact of history that you can acquiesce to and study and say, well, that's really interesting that Jesus claimed to be God. It affects us today. And your answer to that question, who do you say that I am, could be your connection to God and begin this wonderful life-changing relationship with God. Yeah, that's a great answer, man. Really appreciate it. Appreciate you being here today. We're out of time. Where can people find you? We'll have a link to the book and to IVP's website. This is an IVP book, and so they give us 20% discount on the book if you order it through their website. So you'll see that link and discount code in the show description. But where else can they find you, man? Yeah, they can check out my website, apologeticsguy.com. Also on social media, I'm at Apologetics Guy on Instagram. And I have a TikTok now as well, and YouTube, of course, where you can get the Apologetics Guy show. It's fascinating that you could get apologeticsguy.com, man. Kudos on that. Those are difficult to get. Well, thank you. It's a fun little story about that. I know we're out of time, but real quick, I got that name. I've never shared this on a podcast before. I got that name from a bunch of atheist Reddits because I didn't think people could remember how to spell myname.com, even though I own myname.com. But so they were saying, I don't remember who this person was, but this atheist debated this Apologetics Guy, and he said this. Or that atheist, man, he had to debate this Apologetics Guy. I'm like, huh, yeah, I'm your Apologetics Guy. Yeah, hey, why not? And sometimes people say, oh, I know a guy, you know, like I got this, you know, guy who helps me with X, Y, and Z, so I can be your Apologetics Guy. That's awesome, man. I love it. Well, we'll put those links in the show description as well. And so, man, I really appreciate you being here. I'd recommend this book to anybody listening. It really is a very good read. And I would say you get to go into more depth than we got to go in through here. There's just a lot more there. I think you wrote it really for undergraduate college students and those kind of things. So there's just a lot of depth in the research. It's very good. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the portions of it that I got from IVP to read. I really loved and just enjoyed going through this with you, man. So thanks for being on the show and appreciate you taking the time. Thanks again. All right, everybody, we'll catch on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care, everybody. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hello, hello. Gwyneth Petway here, co-host of the Your Daily Bible Verse podcast. Are you someone who loves to take a deep dive into God's word one verse at a time to explore his will for your life and desire to draw closer to him? 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