Arguing For Jesus' Self-Perception

Hawk recently started a thread that was partly about how to argue for and from Jesus' self-perception. Did he view himself as God? If so, what are the implications? How should we go about arguing for and from our answers to these questions? And so on.

One of the issues that came up was the validity of arguing for the historicity of Jesus' identity claims based on the general reliability of the documents that report the identity claims. And that is a valid approach and one that's sometimes neglected.

But we can, and sometimes should, appeal to more than the general reliability of the documents. We should be open to using every argument we have, though there's no need to use every argument on every occasion. It often makes sense to be selective, even highly selective (e.g., because of time constraints).

One question to ask, then, is what lines of evidence we have for Jesus' self-perception that meet multiple standards of evidence simultaneously. The more, the better. There's no need for the evidence we cite to meet multiple standards, but it is helpful.

I discussed an example in a post late last year. We have many, often significantly independent, lines of evidence that Jesus viewed himself as the messianic figure of Isaiah 9. And I've argued elsewhere (linked in the article cited above) that the figure in Isaiah 9 is God. The evidence for Jesus' identifying himself as that figure comes from all four gospels, both from Jesus' words and his deeds, in both subtle and explicit forms, with partial corroboration from early non-Christian sources, with partial corroboration from non-conservative modern New Testament scholarship, etc. I've written a lot about Isaiah 9 over the years, and I'll be discussing it further during the upcoming Christmas season. But even if we just take into account what I've already posted, I think there's a strong case that the figure of Isaiah 9 is God and that we have many, highly varied, and highly reliable lines of evidence that Jesus identified himself as that figure.

I encourage people to research the issues surrounding Jesus' self-perception, and develop arguments about the subject, in ways that take the multifaceted nature of the evidence into account. Don't just look at Jesus' words. Look at his deeds as well. Think about the Old Testament backdrop of his life and other relevant contexts. Look at the subtle assumptions and allusions in his other comments, not just his comments you're most focused on. Ask yourself if there are some ways in which the evidence is corroborated by ancient non-Christian sources or modern non-conservative scholars, for example. There will be different degrees of evidence for different conclusions, and you'll have different degrees of confidence accordingly. But it's important to gather a large amount of evidence, even if the levels of probability vary a lot.

Part of what's so significant about approaching the issues in this manner is that the cumulative effect adds to the credibility of the argument. If Jesus perceived himself in a certain way, especially if that self-identification was of a more central nature, there's a better chance accordingly that his identifying himself that way will be reflected in more places and more often. It doesn't follow that we can dismiss a claim about his self-image if there's only one line of evidence for it, it's only reflected in a couple of places, or something like that. For a variety of reasons, even the features of Jesus' alleged self-perception that are less evidenced can be credible (people aren't equally revealing of every aspect of their self-perception; our historical records are so partial; etc.). But there's especially good reason for accepting and arguing on the basis of portions of Jesus' self-perception that are evidenced in the sort of multifaceted manner I'm focused on here.