Dan Olinger

Part 1: Like No One Else | Part 2: Deity 1 | Part 3: Deity 2 | Part 4: Deity 3 | Part 5: Deity 4 | Part 6: Deity 5 | Part 7: Deity 6 | Part 8: Deity 7 | Part 9: Deity 8 | Part 10: Deity 9  | Part 11: Humanity 1 | Part 12: Humanity 2 | Part 13: Humanity 3 

Why did God the Son become human, just like us? I think there are several reasons. 

First, the Scripture had prophesied the incarnation, and God’s Word must be fulfilled. Now, obviously, this is not the primary reason; God would not have prophesied the incarnation for the sole or even foundational purpose of fulfilling an otherwise random prophecy. But it serves as a reminder that God is true, faithful, and reliable, and he does keep his promises. This teaches us, therefore, about his character, and it also assures us that he will keep his other promises as well. 

Second, by becoming man, the Son positions himself as the Second Adam, the un-Adam, so to speak, who does perfectly what Adam failed to do—or undoes what Adam did, if you will. As Adam had an agreement with God to obey him, an agreement that he did not keep, so Christ enters the same arrangement of obedience, and as a man, keeps it. The incarnation is in many ways a new beginning, a second chance, and a successful one at that. 

A key passage that addresses this idea is Romans 5.12-21, and especially verses 12 and 19: 

¹²Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. … ¹⁸Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.  ¹⁹For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. 

Third, the Son became man in order to substitute himself for us. The best substitute for anyone or anything is something that is from the same class of things, and so Jesus becomes human in order to stand in the humans’ place (He 2.16-17). 

By far the most important element in this substitution is the paying of the death penalty for sin. As God, the Son cannot die; it is not part of his nature to die. But as man, he can (Php 2.8; He 2.9). And so, though under no compulsion to do so, God the Son became man—eternally—to rescue us from our own failure. 

There is a fourth reason, and this one is by far the most difficult to understand. The Bible says that one of the results of the incarnation is that he now sympathizes with us: 

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted (He 2.18). 

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (He 4.15). 

Of course, if we know that someone has also experienced our pain, then we find it easier to believe that he will sympathize with our pain. We see that principle worked out in human experience all the time. 

But here’s why I say that this is hard to understand. Does God have to experience something in order to understand it? Does the Father, who has never experienced being human, sympathize less well with us than the Son? 

We can’t say that; the Father and the Son are One, and the Father is perfect just as the Son is. 

Well, then, is this sympathy that the Son has for us just an exercise in accommodation? Does God know that we’ll more strongly believe that he sympathizes because the Son has been (and continues to be) human? In this just a little trick to help us believe? 

We can’t say that, either. God does not pretend just so we’ll believe. 

In some way, far beyond our understanding, God the Son sympathizes with us because he is one of us. That’s what the text says, and that’s what we must believe, even if we don’t understand. 

That sort of thing happens all the time in theology. 

Next time, we’ll start into the really puzzling stuff. 

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Part 15: Unity 1 | Part 16: Unity 2 | Part 17: Unity 3

Part 1: Like No One Else | Part 2: Deity 1 | Part 3: Deity 2 | Part 4: Deity 3 | Part 5: Deity 4 | Part 6: Deity 5 | Part 7: Deity 6 | Part 8: Deity 7 | Part 9: Deity 8 | Part 10: Deity 9  | Part 11: Humanity 1 | Part 12: Humanity 2 

In the previous two posts we’ve established that Jesus’ existence as a historical person is a reasonable belief. We turn now to the biblical evidences for his humanity—that is, that he is just as human as you and I are. 

We note that he began his earthly existence in the normal human way: he was gestated for nine months in the womb of his mother, and he was born through the normal process, through the birth canal. Paul writes that he was “born of a woman” (Ga 4.4), and we have multiple accounts of his mother’s pregnancy and delivery (Mt 1.18-25; Lk 1.26-56; 2.1-7). 

It’s worth noting that this is very different from the “birth” accounts of some of the gods or founders of other religions. He did not arrive, like Athena, fully grown, from Zeus’s forehead (Hesiod, Theogony, 929a), or, like Aphrodite, from sea foam (ibid, 176), or, like Dionysus, from Zeus’s thigh, or, like the Japanese Momotaro, from a giant peach. His birth was normal. 

But, as we all know, his birth was abnormal as well; he was born of a virgin. That abnormality was prophesied, first and obliquely in Genesis 3.15, where he is called “the seed of the woman” (a very unusual phrasing), and then directly in Isaiah 7.14, which reads, “A virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” 

Skeptics have alleged that the Hebrew word translated “virgin” here actually means just “young woman,” and on that basis the RSV famously translated it that way. Without going into all the technical details (there is some breadth to the Hebrew word), I would note that the translators of the Septuagint about 250 BC rendered the Hebrew word with the Greek parthenos (as in “Parthenon”), which unambiguously means “virgin,” and their professional knowledge should be worth something. (As Jewish scholars before the time of Christ, they were clearly not trying to set the stage for Jesus’ birth.) Further, Matthew, writing under inspiration, chose to use the Septuagint’s rendering, rather than translating the allegedly ambiguous Hebrew word directly so that he could correct the alleged error in the Septuagint. Matthew’s account, I would argue, settles the question. 

By the way, there’s one more prophecy of the virgin birth, given by an angel to Mary just before she agreed to the conception (Lk 1.34-37). Mary asserts her virginity and asks how she could become pregnant, and the angel ascribes the conception to a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit. 

So yes, Jesus was born of a virgin. But everything else about his acquired nature is completely human. Like other humans, he has human ancestors; we have two genealogies, one of Joseph, his stepfather (and thus only Jesus’ legal ancestors [Mt 1.1-17]), and the other of Mary, his biological mother (Lk 3.23-38). And long after his death, his “beloved disciple,” John, pauses to make the point emphatically that he was not a phantom: 

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; ²(For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) (1J 1.1-2). 

We touched him, he says. And as he writes, sixty years after Jesus’ death, he remembers that touch as though it were yesterday. 

Human. Entirely, completely, comprehensively. Just like you and me. 

One further point. 

I would suggest that he is more human than you and I are, because he is sinless. 

Wait. Doesn’t that make him less human? 

I can see how we might feel that way, but a little further thought supports my claim. 

We, sinful humans, are not the original design; we’re defective copies. Adam, the original, was created sinless, as was Eve, his wife. That’s the original blueprint. Sinfulness is not inherent to full humanity. 

We’re busted. But Jesus, the sinless one, is the way humans were designed to be. More human, if you will. 

Now, all this raises a question. 

Why did Jesus become a human? 

We’ll address that next time. 

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Part 14: Humanity 4 | Part 15: Unity 1 | Part 16: Unity 2 | Part 17: Unity 3

Part 1: Like No One Else | Part 2: Deity 1 | Part 3: Deity 2 | Part 4: Deity 3 | Part 5: Deity 4 | Part 6: Deity 5 | Part 7: Deity 6 | Part 8: Deity 7 | Part 9: Deity 8 | Part 10: Deity 9  | Part 11: Humanity 1 

We’re examining the historical evidence that the man Jesus lived in Israel in the first century, and we’re excluding from that evidence—for the moment—the Bible and writings derived from it, such as the writings of the Church Fathers. 

In the previous post we noted a couple of references in the first-century Jewish historian, Josephus, one of which we identified as not completely from Josephus’s pen, and therefore not entirely valid. We also noted a reference in Tacitus’s Annals. Both Josephus and Tacitus were unbelievers and therefore not inclined to give Jesus undeserved historical weight. 

I think it’s reasonable to acknowledge the historicity of Jesus on the basis of just these two references. 

But there are others. 

I would point you to this article, which lists some (but not all) of them. Let me share a few here. 

Lucian of Samosata was a 2^nd-century satirist, author of The Death of Peregrine, in which he writes, 

“The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day,–the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account. … They … deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws” (11-13). 

Lucian, like Josephus, was an unbeliever, and, like Tacitus, a hostile one. But he accepts Jesus’ life as a fact. 

Mara bar Serapion was a Syrian philosopher, imprisoned by the Romans, who wrote a letter to his son during his imprisonment. In it he writes, 

“What advantage did the Athenians gain by murdering Socrates, for which they were repaid with famine and pestilence? Or the people of Samos by the burning of Pythagoras, because their country was completely covered in sand in just one hour? Or the Jews by killing their wise king, because their kingdom was taken away at that very time? God justly repaid the wisdom of these three men: the Athenians died of famine; the Samians were completely overwhelmed by the sea; and the Jews, desolate and driven from their own kingdom, are scattered through every nation.” 

Mara does not name Jesus, but he speaks of a “king” whom the Jews killed just before the fall of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jews. And he parallels this king with Socrates and Pythagoras, who were certainly historical characters. There’s some uncertainty about the date of Mara and his letter, but some would put it in the 1^st century, shortly after the fall of Jerusalem; others as late as the 3^rd century. 

Pliny the Younger, imperial governor of the Roman province of Bithynia in the early 2^nd century, wrote a letter to the emperor, Trajan at the time, asking for advice on how to deal with the Christians there. He writes that they worshiped Christ “as though he were a god” and that some eventually denied him and worshiped Caesar (Book 10, Letter 96). Pliny of course objects to their regarding Jesus as a god—in his practice that’s a capital offense—but he does not question his historicity. 

Suetonius, the Roman historian of the early second century, wrote The Lives of the Caesars, short biographies of the caesars who had lived up to his time. As we know, Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome; Priscilla and Aquila were part of that exile (Ac 18.2). Suetonius writes that “the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus,” a fact that motivated the exile. Skeptics will of course argue that “Chrestus” is not Jesus, but there is broad consensus among historians, religious and secular, that Jesus is the one being referred to. 

There is more evidence, but this series is getting pretty long. For more depth, consider a couple of helpful relevant books: 

Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Eerdmans, 2000). 262p

Craig Evans, Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies: A Guide to the Background Literature (Hendrickson, 2005). 539 p

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Part 13: Humanity 3 | Part 14: Humanity 4 | Part 15: Unity 1 | Part 16: Unity 2 | Part 17: Unity 3

Part 1: Like No One Else | Part 2: Deity 1 | Part 3: Deity 2 | Part 4: Deity 3 | Part 5: Deity 4 | Part 6: Deity 5 | Part 7: Deity 6 | Part 8: Deity 7 | Part 9: Deity 8 | Part 10: Deity 9

Waaay back at the beginning of this series I listed 3 propositions that we would be demonstrating here:

1. Jesus is God
2. Jesus is Man
3. Jesus is both

So far we’ve reviewed the clearest evidence that Jesus is God; it’s time now to turn to the second proposition, that he is man.

You might think that’s too obvious even to investigate. But there have been those who denied Christ’s humanity, and as we’ll see, his humanity is every bit as important as his deity, though less controversial. We do the truth no favors if we highlight the deity of Christ but ignore his humanity.

I’m going to begin with the very basic fact of the incarnation: there was once a human being who walked on this earth, whose name was Jesus (bar Joseph) of Nazareth. There are also those—not many, but a few—who would deny this as well.

Is Jesus just a fable, like Hercules or Rip van Winkle or the boy who cried wolf?

It’s a question worth answering.

It’s a historical question, one we should answer the way a historian does, by looking at the various historical documents (and perhaps artifacts) available to us.

For the moment I’m going to exclude the Bible, since we’ll be getting to that later. I’m also going to exclude all of the Christian writings throughout church history, because they’re based on the Bible. It’s historically noteworthy, of course, that this allegedly mythical person has incited such a flood of literature, but for now we’ll focus on very early secular records.

Josephus, the first-century Jewish writer and collaborator with the Romans, mentioned Jesus in two passages. I think one of them was later edited by a Christian to make it sound as though Josephus was a believer, and I would view that edited version as spurious. We have it as Antiquities 18.3.3; if you’re interested, you can read more details here and even more here (free login required).

There’s a second passage in Josephus that appears genuine. In Antiquities 20.9.1 Josephus describes a trial of James, “the brother of Jesus who was called Christ,” before Ananus the high priest and the Sanhedrin. This reference is significant because it’s off-handed; neither Josephus nor the Sanhedrin were addressing the question of the historical Jesus, but were just assuming it as fact. Their focus of interest was the historical James. Given that this is a first-century account of an earlier first-century event, at which the historical existence of Jesus was assumed without controversy, this is a noteworthy testimony.

Another first-century writer, Tacitus, in his Annals.15.44, describes Nero’s response to the fire at Rome in AD 64. He notes that many citizens suspected Nero himself of having set the fire—to which he responded this way:

Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices,​ whom the crowd styled Christians.​ Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus,​ and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue.

This seems to be a genuine reference particularly because Tacitus is not friend of the Christians; he would have no interest in giving their Messiah undeserved historical authenticity.

Those few who deny the historical existence of Jesus will typically dismiss these historical references outright as “copyists’ errors” or “interpolations.”* While I’m happy to grant that the first reference in Josephus is deeply suspect at best, there is no scholarly historical evidence for dismissing the others.

And in any case, there are other secular references. We’ll get to them next time.

* The essay linked here includes some other arguments that are demonstrably inaccurate or weak. That’s outside the scope of this series, but scholarly responses are readily available. If you want to wade into those weeds, please let me know.

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Part 12: Humanity 2 | Part 13: Humanity 3 | Part 14: Humanity 4 | Part 15: Unity 1 | Part 16: Unity 2 | Part 17: Unity 3