I am reading Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland. Holland notes that throughout history, humans who claimed to be divine were not all that unusual. Those who accomplished great tasks (e.g. Egyptian kings, the Greek “hero-god” Heracles, Roman emperors) were considered more divine than human. [1]
At the other end of the social spectrum, Holland notes that crucifixion was used by the Romans to maintain order in the lands they controlled. Crucifixion was very effective because “no death was more excruciating, more contemptible, than crucifixion”. [2] It was a punishment fit only for slaves. Criminals were reserved for a more glamorous death—the coliseum.
What was considered scandalous by most everyone in Jesus’ time was the suggestion that any person who suffered the death of a slave, crucifixion, could possibly be considered divine.
That explains why Paul tells us: “. . .but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:23-25 ESV)
To me, the above constitutes one of the greatest arguments for the validity of Christianity. To imagine that the teachings of a crucified person would, as Holland’s subtitle states, “remake the world” is absolutely incredible and speaks of one who is divine. The historian Will Durant does not state Jesus is divine but in speaking of Christianity he states “That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.” [3] How else could this have happened other than by an action of God?
_________________________________________
[1] Tom Holland. Dominion. New York: Basic Books, 2019, pp. 5-6.
[2] Holland, p. 2.
[3] Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: Caesar and Christ, New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., p. 557.
