Week 11 -- Heightening Christology: Jesus Model of Living to Lord and Savior

According to the recent lectures and knowledge amassed from my Catholic high school education; Jesus’ persona became more and more divine as the years after his death progressed.

This conjecture (ooh big word) makes all the more sense to me as I contemplate it. Automatically I think of other various religions I have studied in my comparative religions courses. During those classes I noticed often that the originators of many religions began as normal people surrounded by extraordinary circumstances. Yet as the literature that surrounds their deeds grows more distant the deeds and the person them self seem all the more extraordinary.

 I’ve read of many examples of this phenomena, for example the Siddhartha Buddha, he never claimed to be anything more than human, neither did his followers although they considered him in the highest regards and an enlightened human being. Yet in the years following his death subsequent followers became accustomed only with the oral tradition of his incredible wisdom and slowly his identity became detached from humanity and placed slightly above. This occurred in Buddhism to a slight degree but not so far as to place him on the level of a deity, something not condoned by the religion.

I certainly feel that this could apply to Jesus while I am not bringing into question his divine nature nor his noble mission or self sacrifice, I do feel that the tendency of people to elevate leader to uber-human levels still applies. The evidence lies (as discussed in class) within the Gospels, as we look back at the Chronology of the four Gospels, the Christology of Jesus certainly rises reaching the utmost height in John’s Post and even Pre- Easter Jesus.

In the case of Christianity the elevation of Christ come with a purpose, a purpose that grows as the religion of Christianity developed out of the “Jews For Jesus” movement as one of my high school teachers affectionately called the Jewish sect that held growing popularity of the disciples teachings.

Ultimately my point is simply that even if Jesus were a mere mortal, to put it in a cliché manner, I find that the development of his divinity make sense and does not come to a surprise that as years passed Jesus became viewed more God-like than the humble teacher that is described in Mark.

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