Thanks to Cliff for this link.
Bono: Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: he was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn't allow you that. He doesn't let you off that hook. Christ says: No. I'm not saying I'm a teacher, don't call me teacher. I'm not saying I'm a prophet. I'm saying: "I'm the Messiah." I'm saying: "I am God incarnate." And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet, we can take. You're a bit eccentric. We've had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don't mention the "M" word! Because, you know, we're gonna have to crucify you. And he goes: No, no. I know you're expecting me to come back with an army, and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. At this point, everyone starts staring at their shoes, and says: Oh, my God, he's gonna keep saying this. So what you're left with is: either Christ was who He said He was—the Messiah—or a complete nutcase. I mean, we're talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson. This man was like some of the people we've been talking about earlier. This man was strapping himself to a bomb, and had "King of the Jews" on his head, and, as they were putting him up on the Cross, was going: OK, martyrdom, here we go. Bring on the pain! I can take it. I'm not joking here. The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me, that's farfetched …Posted by tripp at August 24, 2005 11:24 AM
The whole article is pretty cool. It comes from Xanity Today (http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/interviews/2005/bono-0805.html). The article is an excerpt from a book in which Bono's friend,Michka Assayas, interviews him.
Posted by: Frank at August 24, 2005 04:49 PMYeah. Too bad that Jesus never said "I am God Incarnate," and that he did refer to himself as a prophet. I happen to believe what the Nicene Creed says about Jesus as well as the christological claims that are made for Jesus in the canonical gospels and the rest of the NT. But I think that Bono's "mad, bad, or God" line here (which I imagine he took from C.S. Lewis) is misleading at best, and has been a source of profound misunderstanding between non-Christian Jews and Gentile Christians.
And, by the way, lots of people claimed or were claimed by their followers to be a or the messiah and weren't crucified for it. The thing that made Jesus' claim border on blasphemy was that Jesus claimed that the God of Israel anointed him to do some seriously shocking things, like sit down for spontaneous dinner parties with crowds of complete strangers without asking questions about whether the food or the hands passing it along were pure, and like teaching that "anyone who does not hate father and mother ... cannot be my disciple."
I love Bono's music and his politics, but I'm glad that he doesn't claim to be a biblical scholar or theologian.
Posted by: Sarah Dylan Breuer at August 24, 2005 09:46 PMI'm with Sarah there. Where exactly does Jesus himself claim to be the Messiah and god incarnate?
There were many, many men who did claim to be the Messiah around the time of Jesus; as Sarah points out, that's not exactly the mark of death. But Jesus said and did plenty of things that were very "un-Jewish," if you take the gospel accounts as history, and as such doesn't really fit the traditional definition of the Messiah. you know scripture far better than I do, of course--but I'd always understood that the term "messiah" was applied exteriorly, by the apostles and followers, as they tried to mash the square peg of Christ's teachings into the round hole of Jewish tradition and philosophy.
It seems like Bono's paraphrasing of Christ's commentary on his own divine nature has lost something in the translation here.
Posted by: CaTHY at August 28, 2005 03:54 PMFrom Matthew 16:
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
14They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
15"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
16Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ,[b] the Son of the living God."
17Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.
The version in Mark (probably the oldest) skips Jesus' speech and just says he told them not to tell anyone. But you'd think that either way, if he wasn't claiming to be messiah he was certainly leading them on.