Sir: It is not true as Mr A. N. Wilson
says (`The Kitty Kelley of Galilee', 8 June) `that nowhere in the New Testament is it stated that Jesus claimed to be God'. Jesus' reported words include 'he that hath seen me hath seen the Father' (John xiv 9) and even more startlingly, 'Before Abraham was, I am' (John viii 58), the latter with reference to God's words to Moses, `i AM THAT I AM' (Exodus iii 14). Again, Luke (x 22) has Jesus say 'All things are deli- vered to me of my Father; and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.'
Nor is it true as Mr Wilson says that 'you would be hard put to find one [professional theologian] who believed that the historic- al Jesus claimed to be a divine being'. I have known many theologians who so believe, including some among my Durham colleagues.
The historical problem of Christ's divin- ity arises in part because from the first it was insisted that Jesus was also fully human, and because He is generally de- picted in the Synoptic Gospels as using other titles, like that of the mysterious semi-divine Son of Man from the Book of Daniel. Many scholars therefore deny that the words cited above from John and Luke are historical reportage. Biblical scholars also differ about these matters, however, because some of them hold that historical evidence involving su- pernatural claims must be rejected a priori on the modern secular historicist criteria which exclude such claims in principle. Thus no report of a miracle or claim to be divine could be true, however strong the evidence for it. Believers and non- believers alike therefore judge the evi- dence that Christ is God not only by its intrinsic strength but according to the assumptions that they bring to it, secularist or otherwise, and in the light of the rest of what they believe.
This is also true of Mr Wilson, whose sceptical historicism about Jesus is quite properly influenced if not dictated by his anti-religious world view; but this leaves the traditional understanding of Christ in as theologically and academically respect- able a position as Mr Wilson's more radical secularist one.
Sheridan Gilley
Department of Theology, University of Durham, Abbey House, Durham
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