Can you show me Jesus' claim to be God outside the gospel of John? The gospel of John was a radical motion in Christian theology, and many christians at the time it was composed did not accept its authority.
Think about it, John was writeen between 90 and 120 CE, and every one of Jesus' "I am" statements are found in that book alone. In fact, John himself puts forth the theology that forms the very core of modern Christian theology. The question is, why do these important 'claims of Jesus' appear only in one of the four gospels? Why didn't Mark, Matthew or Luke feel them to be as important as you, yourself Karma2Grace, feel them to be?
Why should we trust John, when he is in such obvious conflict with the other gospels? For example, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all portray Jesus' cleasning of the Temple as the act which instigates his crucifixion. John however, disagrees, and places the cleasning in the very beginning of Jesus' ministry. To John, Jesus is crucified for raising Lazarus, an event unique to John's gospel.
Or why is that John portrays a divine Jesus, when the other gospels give us human portraits? The humanity of Jesus is very clear in the other gospels, where Jesus is working on God's authority, for the "people praised the Lord that God had given such authority to men.", as said in Matthew. In Luke Jesus is so distraught about dying that he sweats blood and cries out on the cross, "My God! Why have you forsaken me!"....yet the Jesus of John doesn't overtly use the term death. The Jesus of John is very much beyond notions of death, and avoids that term. When he dies he says 'it is finished'. He does not feel abandonded as the other gospels suggest.
And nearly every single gospel disagrees about when Jesus himself took upon the authority of God:
- Paul believes that Jesus became the messiah after his death, as he says of Jesus: "Who, through the spirit of holiness, was declared with power to be the son of God by his ressurection"
-The gospels disagree, and Jesus' sonship is proclained in Peter's confession of the Christ, whereas to Paul, this was a post-ressurection event.
- note that to Paul, the pre-ressurected Jesus is virtually absent. He is concerned with the risen Christ alone, for to him, this is when Jesus became the Christ. Paul wrote these letters in the 50's to early 60's
- Mark, written in 69-70 CE feels that Jesus recieved his sonship at his baptism (Mark begins with the baptism)
- Matthew and Luke (80-90 CE) believe that Jesus was born with it (Both begin with a birth narrative)
- Finally, John (90-120 CE) feels that Jesus always was (...In the beginning the word was with God)
See the progression of theology? Why should we trust the gospels as reporting history, when each author obviously had an agenda: to portray Christ in a certain manner. Again, this is typical of the ancient world, but by modern standards of history, the gospel don't match up.
Also, even early orthodox Christians had interesting feelings about the Gospel of John: Origen, an early Egyptian father of the Church states that "John doesn't tell the truth literally, he tells it spiritually"
