Licona and Martin: A Dialogue on Jesus' Claim of Divinity

Risen Jesus

In this episode, Dr. Mike Licona and Dr. Dale Martin discuss their differing views of Jesus’ claim of divinity. Licona proposes that “it is more probable than not that Jesus claimed to be God in some sense.” He bases this on the fact that the earliest Christians, those most plausibly connected to the apostles, held this view and that the best explanation is that Jesus said so himself. Licona cites passages equating Jesus with God and Jesus using “Son of Man, divine and co-equal with God, as his preferred way to refer to himself. Dr. Martin concedes that Jesus may have claimed divinity in some sense but not as orthodox Christians conceive. Instead, references to him as the “Son of Man” are claims to messiahship in a human or angelic sense, subordinate to God the Father. Martin claims that the orthodox Christian belief in Jesus’ divinity arose after his death in the second and third centuries, for if this had been taught by Jesus directly, the New Testament would not contain such a messy assortment of ideas about if, in what sense, and when Jesus became divine.