The Human Jesus? Part 1 of 2.

What is the one thing that sets Christianity apart from world religions? Here’s a hint from Matthew 16:13-17

¹³ When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?"
¹⁴ So they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
¹⁵ He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
¹⁶ Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
¹⁷ Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.

This is a note I receive concerning the Trinity I included in one of my studies.

The Human Jesus

On the subject of the Trinity,
I recommend this video:
The Human Jesus

Take a couple of hours to watch it; and prayerfully it will aid you to reconsider "The Trinity"

Of course, the doctrine I presented in my study was taken directly from the scriptures – both Old and New Testaments. Click here to view. The person of Jesus is a topic that has always been debated, and will always be debated among world religions. As the Bible is pushed out of its place in the church, the line blurs between Christianity and other religions, making room for ecumenical beliefs and a single world religion. This is something the Bible indicates as a fulfillment of the great falling away as foretold in prophecy.

To deny the person of Christ is necessary for agreement among world religions, but is detrimental to true faith. “Who do you say that I am?” is the question that divides the redeemed from the world. According to Jesus, this is an answer that reveals the work of the Spirit in our lives. We can only declare him as lord of our lives by the Spirit (1 John 4). Of course, when we declare him as Lord, it is to truly make him lord, not to just give lip service. Since the Bible tells us that Jesus is the Lord who came down from heaven (1 Corinthians 15:47), and he existed in the form of God prior to taking on the role of a bondservant in human form (Philippians 2:5-8), and Jesus himself stated that he shared the glory of God before the foundation of the earth (John 17:5), it should be evident that we cannot remove the divinity of Christ without departing from the scriptures.

Since Fuller has presented this as an authoritative movie, I thought it good to watch it and answer some of its claims. Once I saw that the video was produced in coordination with Fuller Theological Institute, I already knew where it was going. Fuller is a school that seeks to unite Christian, New Age, and pagan religions into one. Obviously, this is not possible if you hold to Jesus as the source of salvation, since all these religions reject that notion. New Age and pagan religions welcome the idea that Jesus was a mere man who became great through human effort, since this allows them to be a god unto themselves. This also explains why The Human Jesus claims that believing in his divinity is the backdrop for martyrdom. I’ll point out a few things on the movie in a moment, but in case you aren’t aware of the stance of Fuller and their paganistic beliefs, here is a short insight in their leaders, both past and present. Afterward, we’ll look at some of the main points of the movie.

Paul Jewett was Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Seminary. In 1975 he published Man as Male and Female. In the book Man as Male and Female, Fuller professor Paul Jewett admits that he has been influenced by modern biblical criticism and claims that the Bible contains error because it was written by men:

“Historical and critical studies of the biblical documents have compelled the church to abandon this simplistic view of the divinity of Scripture [the traditional doctrine that the Bible is the Word of God without error] and to take into account the complexity at the human level of the historical process by which the documents were produced. Instead of the simple statement, which is essentially true, that the Bible is a divine book, we now perceive more clearly than in the past that the Bible is a divine/human book. As divine, it emits the light of revelation; as human, this light of revelation shines in and through the ‘dark glass’ (1 Cor. 13:12) of the ‘earthen vessels’ (2 Cor. 4:7) who were the authors of its content at the human level” (Jewett, Man as Male and Female, p. 135).

Of course when the Bible refers to us ‘seeing through a glass darkly’, it is not referring to the Bible as a weak emittance of light. It is referring to man’s limited ability to see the eternal. He has taken passages that refer to man’s limits and falsely applied them to mean the Bible’s limit and unreliability. The foreword of Paul Jewett's book was written by Virginia Mollenkott, chairman of the Department of English at William Paterson College in New Jersey.

In 1994, Virginia Mollenkott wrote a the book, 'The Divine Feminine: The Biblical Imagery of God as Female', Mollenkott calls God the “One Mother of us all” (p. 19) and suggests that the Lord’s prayer might be addressed to “Our Father/Mother who is in Heaven” (p. 116).

This is clearly an attempt to recreate God in man’s image rather than accepting what God has revealed about himself to us in scripture. In 1978 she co-authored (with Letha Scanzoni) the book entitled Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? In this book Mollenkott praises her own homosexuality as a divine gift and denies that homosexuality was condemned in the Bible. As a practicing homosexual, she has a clear motive for denying the authority of scripture.

Man’s condition is always contrary to God. This doesn’t only apply to the homosexual, but to each of us whether we have eyes to see it or not. What about men and women with sexual addictions? Is this a divine gift? Is a violent temper a divine gift? The reason for the Bible’s instruction is not to condemn, but to show the entire world of their need for redemption, so we turn our eyes to the only source of grace – Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus told the woman caught in adultery, “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more,” we are redeemed, not condemned. But we still have the command to go and sin no more. To justify our sins is to seek refuge in our own self-justification, rather than to turn to the redeemer of our souls to be made clean.

Charles Scalise is associate professor of church history and academic director of Fuller Theological Seminary in Seattle’s M. Div. program. He authored the book From Scripture to Theology: A Canonical Journey into Hermeneutics (InterVarsity Press, 1996). In this book he denies the historical accuracy of scripture, claims that Moses did not author the Pentateuch but it was written centuries later, and he challenges the infallibility of scripture throughout the book.

Siang-Yang Tan, director of the Psychology program at Fuller Seminary, was one of the attendees of the national conference on Personal Spiritual Renewal in October 1991. It was hosted by Renovare, an organization founded by Richard Foster. Speaking in the evening sessions, Foster called for unity in the “body of Christ” through the “five streams of Christianity: the contemplative, holiness, charismatic, social justice and evangelical.” He promoted occultic meditative techniques such as guided imagery and visualization. Another speaker was Renovare Steering Committee member Sister Bernard, a Catholic nun who is involved in the Buddhist-Roman Catholic dialogue. Fuller professor Tan “stressed the need to integrate psychology with spirituality” and “advocated inner healing, healing of the memories, and other occultic visualization techniques” (Christian Information Bureau Bulletin, December 1991).

Fuller / World Council of Churches

The Fuller Theological Seminary also hosted the World Council of Churches in 1995. Some excerpts from this follow:

Goddess Worship

The WCC-sponsored conference featured a standing ovation for a group of some 100 “lesbian, bi-sexual, and transsexual women” who gathered on the platform. On Sunday morning, the conferees joined in repeating a prayer to Sophia: “Our maker Sophia, we are women in your image. ... Our guide, Sophia, we are women in your image.” (Sophia is a goddess worshipped in New Age circles)

These, who claim that Jesus is merely a man and not to be worshiped, are promoting those who worship a non-existent goddess. Why don’t they discourage goddess worship? Or the worshiping of nature as shared at the council at Fuller below.

Chung Hyun Kyung spoke at the conference saying, “My bowel is Buddhist bowel, my heart is Buddhist heart, my right brain is Confucian brain, and my left brain is Christian brain. ... If you feel very tired and you don’t have any energy to give, what you do is ... go to a big tree and ask it, ‘give you some of your life energy.’”

Chung Hyun Kyung also summoned the spirits of the dead and “the spirit of Earth, Air, and Water.” Chung said, “I also know that I no longer believe in an omnipotent, Macho, warrior God who rescues all good guys and punishes all bad guys.”

So they are praying to trees for strength while, not only denying Christ, but mocking the idea of a powerful, omnipotent God.

Megatrends For Women, by Patricia Aburdene and John Naisbitt, is endorsed and sold in the Fuller library and in its online bookstore (http://fulleripac.fuller.edu/#focus). This is a blatantly New Age occultic book that challenges biblical Christianity and promotes Goddess worship. The Fuller online catalog promotes this book with the following quote:

To hell with sexism : women in religion -- The menopause megatrend --Collaborative couples -- Fashion : top down to bottom up -- The family revival -- The goddess reawakening -- Save the world : women as social activists -- Women in the new world order.

The inside cover flap has the following promotional comments:

Whether theologians or nuns or New Agers, women are transforming both religion and spirituality by rejecting the notion of a male divinity and embracing the archetype of the Great Goddess.

I point all of this out to show the foundational beliefs of the Fuller Institute and the scholars they employ to discredit the divinity of Christ. Both past and present, this theological seminary has a proven track record for dismantling the belief in the scripture, and recreating a new spirituality that masquerades as Christianity in name only. This new spirituality is critical of the Bible, only looking at scripture as a dim fraction of light that is hindered by the humans who penned the bible. They believe it is unreliable, unauthoritative, and only to be taken when it agrees with the world spirituality they follow.

As we approach this movie, keep these things in mind and realize that this is not a movie that examines scripture to determine who Jesus is. It is a movie whose makers view the Bible through the lens of pagan beliefs, and they filter out the passages that contradict their claims. The strength of their argument is not an examination of passages, but the claims of those who set themselves up as authoritative. They have substituted their own authority in place of the Bible.

Next, we’ll examine some of the claims of The Human Jesus.