Who Do You Say That I Am?
This question is the fundamental question of life. Who is Jesus Christ? We have reached a point at which much of our
culture gets it wrong. I wrote in a
previous article about the “enlightened view” that Jesus was a “good spiritual
teacher,” and why that position is the only one we are not left with the option
of holding.
Once we have gotten our relativist friend or family members
to acknowledge the reality of God’s existence, they have to confront the
question of Jesus Christ. Archbishop
Fulton Sheen walks his students through a step-by-step approach to Jesus,
starting from the perspective of a nonbeliever.
First, he says, we line up side by side everyone who has
come, claiming to be from God. The
founders of the major world religions will be there. We will have Mohammad, Buddha, Confucius,
Jesus and others, and we will not hold one above another. They will all be submitted, without
prejudice, to certain tests.
The first, says Archbishop Sheen, is that if someone were to
be sent by God, we should expect that person to be pre-announced. So we ask all the claimants, “Have you been
pre-announced? Was your birth expected
before it happened? Did we know that you
were coming, what you would be teaching, how you would die, or why?”
Which has been pre-announced?
Only one can step forward. No one
knew that Buddha was coming. There were
no prophecies about the birth of Mohammed or the teachings of Confucius. But Jesus is a different story. In the Old Testament there are over 300
prophecies about the life, teachings and death of Our Lord.
At this point we do not treat the Old Testament as inspired
writings. They are merely historical
documents thus far. But it is undeniable
that these documents were written hundreds of years before Jesus of Nazareth
walked the earth. They contain these 300
prophecies about a man to be sent from God.
And these prophecies have been fulfilled in the person of Jesus
Christ. We can historically verify this
fact for many of them, looking at the information we have as merely a student
of history and not yet with the eyes of faith.
Archbishop Sheen presents this argument, from the perspective
of the nonbeliever, so that we can follow it, using only our intellect, and
analyzing only historical fact, to show that it leads to the conclusion that
Jesus Christ was pre-announced, was expected by the People of God, and must
have been sent by God.
The other claimants lined up with Christ must step aside, and
we now hold Jesus apart. Archbishop
Sheen goes through two other supports for Our Lord’s divine origin, the next
being the many miracles He performed as signs that validated His claims. Finally, as we look at His teachings, we can
see that although some of them may be above human reason, none of them are
opposed to it.
These are the types of questions and evidences our
relativistic society has to confront when it comes to Jesus Christ. To go on with conveniently conceived,
politically correct, academic approaches to the Person of Jesus without
answering the vast proofs about Who He really is, is dishonest. Many of our agnostic friends have never
really given the issue much thought, and we can do them a great service by just
encouraging them to approach the question, “Who do you say that I am?” with
humility and honesty.
