30 Dec 2021

'Gods' as judges: Jesus

After I posted 'Gods' as judges: Calvin and Zylstra, someone alerted me to this passage in the gospel of John:

The Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of these do you stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we stone you but for blasphemy; because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken), do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? (John 10:31-36)

Jesus here quotes from Psalm 82:6: "I say, 'You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men, and fall like any prince.'" John's account here appears to suggest that Jesus interpreted the "gods" in this text to refer not to mythological members of a divine council or to demonic spirits, but to human creatures. Thus Calvin and Zylstra draw on Jesus' own interpretation of the text.

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