In this chapter, we build upon the case for the deity of Jesus Christ by thinking about the subject a little differently. This is the sort of question that can have only two answers—yes or no. Therefore, it allows us to conduct a thought experiment in which we compare two views of Jesus: that he was no more than a man (even if a very great one), and that he was God the Son come as a man. We test these views to see which one of them has the stronger claim to be true. An idea or belief to be tested to see how likely it is to be true is called a hypothesis. We commonly test different hypotheses by investigating how well each hypothesis explains all of the available evidence.
This method of testing competing explanations is used all the time in science, history, and even in the courtroom. Suppose, for example, the police find a man dead in his apartment from a gunshot wound to the head, with the gun still in his right hand. This evidence may seem to support the hypothesis that the man committed suicide. However, investigators soon discover that the man was left-handed; that there were almost no fingerprints on the gun, even though the dead man was not wearing gloves; and that a large sum of cash that he had withdrawn from the bank earlier in the day was nowhere to be found. After reviewing all of the available evidence, the detective investigating the case concludes that the man was most probably murdered. Someone who did not want to accept this conclusion might be able to come up with creative ways of explaining the evidence (for example, that the man killed himself but went out of his way to make it appear that he had been murdered), but murder would still be a far more reasonable explanation than suicide.
Philosopher of history C. Behan McCullagh calls this form of reasoning “arguments to the best explanation.” He discusses in some detail how such arguments work in historical studies. They determine whether one hypothesis or explanation better accounts for all the facts. “In particular, if the scope and strength of an explanation are very great, so that it explains a large number and variety of facts, many more than any competing explanation, then it is likely to be true.” (McCullagh, JHD, 26) This is the kind of argument we use in this chapter.
We should acknowledge that if Jesus really was God come in the flesh, such a fact would be most unusual. If Christianity is true, then God has become a man and entered human history. If Jesus was God incarnate, we should therefore be cautious about making assumptions about what he should or should not have done. For example, one might imagine that if God were to become a man, he would appear suddenly in a glorious human form like Hercules or Apollo, immediately announce himself as God, and establish a worldwide kingdom with himself enthroned in a magnificent palace. The New Testament flatly rejects such ideas, even implicitly contrasting Jesus with Caesar, as New Testament scholar James Edwards explains:
The disarming intrusion of God into the world in the birth of Jesus stands in sharp contrast to the imperial ambitions of Caesar Augustus. God does not break into the world in a world leader, Führer, or cosmic hero—all of which Caesar epitomized. God penetrates the defensive armor of the world by sending his Son as a child, not to the well-connected and established, but to shepherds who live on the precarious margins of society. (Edwards, GAL, 66)
Similarly, some skeptics argue that if God became a man in the ancient world, he should have taught modern science and introduced modern medicine and technologies. All such claims assume a position of knowing what God should do if he came to earth as a human.
On the other hand, we also ought to refrain from simply asserting that if God were to become a man he would necessarily have done it just in the way we read in the New Testament. To put the matter in this way would assume dogmatically that Christianity is true. And even if Christianity is true, it does not follow that God had no choice about how he would become human or what he would do once he was a man.
In short, to reach a reasoned conclusion about whether Jesus was and is God, we should avoid making assumptions either for or against the Christian belief. Instead, we should consider with an open mind the evidence for what Jesus actually said and did, asking whether that evidence is best explained on the hypothesis that he was no more than a man or the hypothesis that he was God incarnate.
What sorts of evidence need to be considered? Presumably, anyone who was God would have been different from other people in specific ways. At the very least, if we are to have good reasons to believe that Jesus was God, we would need to see some differences in his life that distinguish him from other people, and these differences would support the conclusion. Without prejudging what those differences should be, we can propose four categories to analyze:
(1) how Jesus’ earthly human life began;
(2) what kind of a person Jesus was (his character);
(3) what Jesus did (his actions); and
(4) how Jesus’ earthly life ended.
These are the categories we would want to consider with regard to anyone who claimed to be God. As it turns out, we have good evidence in each of these categories to support the conclusion that Jesus was God. This hypothesis accounts for all of the evidence about Jesus more completely than the hypothesis that he was no more than a man. In the rest of this chapter, we review this evidence.
If Jesus were not God incarnate, his birth would be normal, his character would exhibit a mixture of strengths and weaknesses such as we find in ourselves and others, his actions would have purely natural explanations, and death would conclude his life. But none of these conditions apply to Jesus’ life. We propose that research into the evidence supports the hypothesis that Jesus was God and explains:
(1) The uniqueness of Jesus’ entrance into human history
(2) The matchlessness of Jesus’ perfect, sinless life
(3) The wonder of Jesus’ miracles
(4) The ultimate victory of Jesus’ conquest of death
Josh McDowell, Sean McDowell. Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World.
