Why Jesus? Which Jesus?

The little book Why Jesus? is part of the materials for the Alpha Course. In it, Nicky Gumbel writes:

Jesus is the only man who has ever chosen to be born, and he is one of the few who has chosen to die. He said that the entire reason for his coming was to die for us. He came ‘to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45).

To say that Jesus is “the only man who has ever chosen to be born” is faintly ridiculous even on high christological terms. The only possible New Testament support for it is the idea expressed in Philippians 2:6 that he did not grasp at a certain type of being equal to God or a god, my views on which can be found here.

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Jesus past and present
I have been engaged in a very constructive conversation with Derek Flood about ‘Penal substitution and the OT narrative of judgment’. My argument has been roughly that in order to understand who Jesus was, what his intentions were, and in this particular case how his suffering might be understood… ( | 2 comments)
Did Jesus act as though he thought he were God?
Following my post on the question of whether Jesus claimed to be God it was (indirectly) suggested to me that Jesus may have communicated his sense of divine identity through his actions rather than through his words. Despite popular assumptions to the contrary, Jesus’ miracles in… ( | 56 comments)
Did Jesus claim to be God?
In his little book Is God a Delusion? Nicky Gumble (‘the pioneer of the Alpha course’) addresses Richard Dawkins’ claim that ‘There’s no good, historical evidence that Jesus ever thought he was divine’ (79-80, 127-131). It’s an old debate, of course, and neither Dawkins nor… ( | 71 comments)
Theology and the interpretation of Isaiah 53
I have, for some time, had a bee in my bonnet about the penal substitutionary atonement debate. There are those, on the one hand, who think it sits right at the indigestible core of a sound understanding of the atoning significance of Jesus’ death; and there are those, on the other, who think it… ( | 13 comments)
Shooting holes in the Son of man thesis
Following some discussion on James McGrath’s blog about the thesis of The Coming of the Son of Man, Antonio Jerez has promised to shoot the book full of holes some time in the not too distant future. To facilitate this act of wanton destruction I have copied below an initial criticism made by… ( | 1 comment)
Putting the theological cart before the biblical horse
Stephen Fowl has written a very enjoyable, lively, lucid, little book about hermeneutics called Theological Interpretation of Scripture (2009). But I’m having a hard time accepting some of the implications of his central argument, which is that priority should be given to… ( | 7 comments)
The going and coming of Jesus with the clouds of heaven
After reading a lively discussion about the ascension on James McGrath’s blog, it occurred to me that we are too quick as rationalist moderns to latch on to the question of what actually or literally or scientifically happened and can easily omit to ask what Luke understood the meaning… ( | 2 comments)