Do you think Jesus might have been misunderstood when he said that he and the Father were one?

Question

Recently in my studies of world religion I came across something that gave me an interesting idea. Some quick background: There is an Islamic philosophy known as Sufism. Many Sufi mystics during the Islamic Golden Age wrote that while meditating, they felt as though they became one with God. This was not to suggest that they believed they "were" God in the sense of having his intellect and abilities. They believed that, through meditation and by God's will, the psychic barriers between themselves and God had been broken down and their minds had become one with him, the source of all thought.

Later, a Muslim named Mansur al-Hallaj would be imprisoned and brutally executed for blasphemy: he had cried out in a state of ecstasy "I am the Truth!" (or "al-Haqq", an alternate name for Allah). Like other Sufi mystics he believed in a unification of man and God, and at the time of his death he apparently believed that he and God were one and the same. Al-Hallaj gladly accepted his fate, praying for his executioners to be forgiven and believing his death to have redemptive significance. The parallels between Jesus and al-Hallaj are quite blatant--indeed, al-Hallaj admired Jesus and held the unorthodox (for Muslims) belief that Christ was God incarnated, and no doubt this had a lot to do with why he was executed.

This got me thinking. We already know Jesus was well ahead of his time. Could it be that when he claimed to be God, he meant it in the same sense as al-Hallaj would mean it centuries later? A sense that he had achieved oneness with God through introspective practices such as meditation, rather than a literal belief that he was God in human form? This would fit with how he clearly makes a distinction between himself and God, and would explain troublesome passages of the Gospels that otherwise depict Jesus praying to himself, or claiming not to have knowledge of certain things when he should be omniscient. This obviously puts Christian theology in a whole new light. Interestingly, it solves Lewis's "lunatic, liar, or lord" trilemma neatly by showing how a perfectly sane and honest Jesus could have claimed to be one with God, without actually being one with God. Perhaps this can allow those who don't accept the divinity of Jesus to develop a greater appreciation for one of the most significant moral teachers of human history.

I don't know why I'm bothering with an honest philosophical question when the usual fare of this section is trolling and bashing each other's beliefs, but I guess I mostly want to see if anyone will reply. Like all of my questions, it is intended as a consciousness-raising exercise, but this time it's directed to Christians and non-Christians alike.

scribblo · Accepted Answer

I think you've got it about it right.  Jesus was a mystic who achieved gnosis, enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it.  He wanted other people to experience this for themselves, not deify and worship him.

Considering my own philosophy of existence, I would add that Jesus was also "God" in one other sense: a pantheistic one.  The unity consciousness experience of which you speak (at least as I've experienced it) entails not only communion with the mind of God, but along with that comes a feeling of oneness with the entire cosmos.  I understand the universe to be God's "body", so to speak, and God to be the only thing that exists.  So Jesus was, in a sense, God in human form, but no more than you and I are, or than a tree is God in tree form.

Shinigami · Answer

But the rest of the passage goes like this:  "If you have seen me you have seen the Father."

?

John 14:8-11
Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father. That is all we need."
Jesus answered, "Philip, I have been with you for a long time. So you should know me. The person that has seen me has seen the Father too. So why do you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you truly believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The things I have told you don't come from me. The Father lives in me, and he is doing his own work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or believe because of the miracles I have done."

Anonymous · Answer

Jesus did no longer lie. He pronounced his Father is the only genuine God. (John 17:3) Jesus pronounced as himself the Son of God. (John 10:36) this is genuine that Jesus did no longer say that he and his Father have been the only genuine God. to quote Jesus, he pronounced: "And this is a thank you to have eternal existence—to comprehend you, the only genuine God, and Jesus Christ, the single you sent to earth." Do you notice something in this verse the place Jesus secure himself as being the genuine God at the same time along with his Father? NO! Even Paul agreed that the daddy became the only one God. At a million Cor. 8:6, he pronounced: "yet all of us comprehend that there is merely one God, the daddy, who created each thing." So, if the daddy is the "merely genuine God "or the "merely one God," what does that spell for the trinity doctrine? That makes it a ambitious confronted lie! BTW, the place interior the Bible does it say Jesus is the comparable God as a results of fact the daddy? NOWHERE!

kim · Answer

If you read the chapter of John it is quite clear. Yes Jesus is part of the tribune God! Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be. World with out end Amen.

Lost Prophecy · Answer

Muslims know nothing about Christianity. That would be like a Christian making the claim they know more about Islam than a Muslim. But I can tell you this Islam based their beliefs about Jesus from Gnostic sources instead of Christian sources. So when a Muslim tries to explain anything about Jesus to me the first thing that comes to my mind is Gnostic.

Jesus didn't stutter and He was not misinterpreted because He was very careful with His teachings which He entrusted to His Apostles. Islam came 600 years after Christianity so whatever Mohammad or any Islamic mystic has to say about Jesus means nothing to a Catholic like myself. The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit are one and the same God, Jesus and His Father are one Being.

The same goes for Protestants, Evangelicals, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, etc. Your beliefs are based upon teachings from man. So save your breath trying to prove your beliefs to me, I'm not interested in them.

pugjw9896 · Answer

To be ' one' with another person is to agree with them...you can NEVER "BE"  that person...
A loving God would not be that confusing...But Satan would...
Jesus was the very first of his father's creatioons...
Proverbs 8; 22-31
He did not create himself...
He, Jesus, always said he was in ageement with his father...
(Matthew 24:36) “Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father.
(John 5:22) For the Father judges no one at all, but he has committed all the judging to the Son,
Complete separaton

Anyway · Answer

The sensation of becoming ONE with God is a common occurrence with Fasting, Meditation, and Hallucinogenic Drugs.

Christ was not claiming to BE God (in entirety), he was claiming to be OF (or PART of) God.  Nobody's son knows everything the father knows.  Of all the people who have ever lived and will ever live Christ Was the only Human to have lived without Sin making him the Closest Human to God.

We are also going off of translations that were made for the most part hundreds of years ago, so there can be some errors.  For instance, the word that is normally translated as RIB is actually translated as CURVE, which with the knowledge of DNA we can take to mean that God used a part of Adam's DNA to create Eve.

Bigmama · Answer

I'm a Christian for starters, I too made that distinction in the Bible. There are also several instances where he prayed to God. The moment right before death he asked God why he forgot about him. So if you add that fact on to the guest commandment then that would presumably mean that Jesus was the son of God. The first commandment its thou shall have no other gods before me. So, I
Have never seen in the Bible that he proclaimed himself to be God. He instructed us to worship God not him.

Ruth · Answer

The claim Jesus is God is made throughout the Bible.

Anonymous · Answer

Jesus is God in the flesh. 
Three of them work together.
( God, Son and Holy Spirit )

He said He was before Abraham, He is "I Am" ( God )

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Do you think Jesus might have been misunderstood when he said that he and the Father were one?

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