This is an introductory post to frame my quest to determine who Jesus was, and if I should pay more attention to the red letters in my bible.
Within my Christian upbringing, I was taught that Jesus was the Messiah of the old testament prophesies. In the new testament, Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man, Son of God, and in John 8:24, refers to himself as "I am he". Jesus' reference to "I am" is believed to refer back to the name that God told Moses (Exodus 3:14) to use when referring to him, "This is what you are to say to the Israelites: "I AM has sent me to you."" Although Jesus never plainly states he is God, he does say he is God's son, and in John 14:9, tells Philip, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father". If Jesus and God are not the same, they certainly behold a tethered and representative relationship.
In order to answer the question of who Jesus is, it seems prudent to first determine who God is. My resources are the Old Testament, New Testament, and several books written by past and contemporary authors.
My first foray will be into the beginning - Creationism, Big Bang, or their hybrid. Do they have something in common? The Big Bang Theory hypothesizes that the universe began as heat and dense matter, giving way to a rapid expansion, a la, big bang. The first line in Genesis states, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Logically, before "the beginning", there was God. My question for either case, is where did the matter come from? In the former case, it was just there, building up heat. In the latter case, God created it. I imagine it's possible to marry the two ideas in which God creates the conditions for the Big Bang. In either case, we either vest our faith into heat and matter's ability to create itself, or that a supreme being took nothing and created something.
A concept useful in mathematics, physics, as well as theology, or atheism, is infinity. In geometry, the equation y=1/x creates an asymptotic graph. No matter how big x becomes, y never reaches zero. Close becomes relative, it would seem. In order to partially resolve this difficult concept, we consider that y=1/∞ is basically zero. We trust that infinity exists, at least in theory so we can get on with the mathematics of Calculus and building bridges, dams, radios, and cell phones.
In the same manner that we regard infinity in mathematics, we must use it to accept our theological beginning. Deuteronomy 33:27 refers to God as being eternal, which is another way of saying he has and always will be, or that his existence is infinite. Considering the beginning as characterized by the Big Bang, we could presumably estimate the beginning by the speed of which galaxies are moving apart. Nonetheless, that doesn't allow us to duck acceptance of an infinite universe. Even if we do not believe in a supreme being, we must accept that time and space are infinite. By regarding the beginning as exemplified by the 'bang', we ignore the infinite time before, used to create the correct conditions of the expansion.
Infinity is the one thing man cannot fully grasp, since the very nature of the concept is itself not containable. We cannot produce a finite value for 1/∞, nor can we comprehend a true starting point for time. We must have faith in infinity, for it produces answers if we do.
