McDowell exhibits a credible apologetic and existentialist resolve, despite his early years as a forceful skeptic and iconoclast. In expository statement: After the childhood disillusionment and anti-religious radicalisms of early college, he suffered from elegiac feelings for his misconduct and raised his antithetical philosophy to a higher plane. His apologetic religion is designed to reaffirm messianic truth and establish constancy in redirecting modern rebellion toward purposeful living. He questions our progress by comparing scientific proof with legal-historical verification: science is based on repeatable demonstrations that prove the same conclusion, and his view of a less substantive metaphysics is based on legal-historical immutability.
McDowell proposes the proposition: What makes Jesus so different from the Mohammedan, Buddhist, and Confucian character? Jesus was divine according to his statement in John 5:16-18, ‘My Father works here, and I work.’ (regarding the healing of the leaf) He is equal to God when he said: ‘I and my Father are one’. (John 10:30) The Greek scholar AT Robertson interprets the ‘one’ as neuter and indicates not one in person, but in essence. This definition of God’s essence is duplicated in McDowell’s definition of Jesus: omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, self-existence, and eternally lived essence.
Only in Mark 14:62 did Jesus answer the question.”Are you the Christ…?“He said,” am.” However, the qualities of McDowell’s Jesus in the above ‘proposition’, last sentence, must be qualified to gain knowledge in intellectual or academic logic; for, ancient deity and omnipotence is one thing, omniscience and omnipotence. ancient or modern omnipresence is another Jesus did not know when the Parousia was going to occur, this deficit eliminates omniscience, without a doubt many in the Heaven and Earth complex were not aware of his divinity, crucifixion or resurrection, much less those of high Europe, the vast Asia, Africa, the South American Societies, North Americans Inhabitants of tipis and igloos, Pacific Islanders and among Australian Aboriginal wanderers Decidedly, this deficit eliminates the omnipresence No, it was not a world spectacle but rather an affair isolated community.Even the Roman emperor did not know it, but in hindsight, and although the event happened within his own Empire.
Still, to be considered by responsible exegetes, any claim directed at Jesus’ quality as God is strictly opinion, of course; and any conclusion of deity is drawn from the repertoire of individual consciousness only. Still, in the historical exposition, indirectly, as in many other incidents, Jesus established his divinity to first-century enthusiasts through recorded deeds and statements. But it was Jesus’ defiance of the Sabbath work restrictions that caused resentment and condemnation among the Temple authorities, in John’s example. Accused of blasphemy of Mosaic principles and opposition to the authority of the Temple, Jesus sealed his fate and promised the fulfillment of prophecy, both as a messianic contender and as one being conditioned for enthronement.
McDowell exaggerates the omnipresent and omniscient messianic qualities. Shouldn’t the debut of the isolated Messiah, in a small corner of the world, create some curiosity about omnipotence and omniscience in the rest of the world?
Regarding biblical truth, McDowell posits that the 20th century mindset is of the dubious nature of propositions unless they can be scientifically proven. Scholars FF Bruce and William Albright are said to testify to the reliability and honesty of the Bible. And the discovery of the John Ryland Papyri manuscript (AD 130), the Chester Beatty Papyri (AD 155), and the Bodmer Papyri II (AD 200), support later manuscript translations. Sir Frederic Kenyon, a renowned authority, concluded: ‘both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be considered finally established’. However, legal-historicity is defined as intelligent faith, its veracity comes only in repeated documentation.
So we, as exegetes, could conclude that faith is the qualifying vehicle that encompasses legal-historical precedence. Such a statement disregards any requirement to qualify humanistic extensions. Due to its simplistic nature, faith is outside scientific and historical-legal opinion. Faith is belief without qualification and exhibits indifference to semantic antipodes. With undemanding acquiescence to traditionalist parallels, anyone can announce the ontological existence of a personal God. In this regard, Immanuel Kant made an indubitable observation when he deduced: ‘No man has the intellect to deny another individual’s declaration of God’. Real! God’s declaration is entirely private and isolated in individual mental processes. Whether two or three Homo sapiens can imagine exactly the same God is a matter of debate. In any case, the intelligentsia is absent when one tries to impose on another a private character of God. We must conclude, then, that the existence of God and the fulfillment of the Messiah must be relegated to legal-historical auspices and can never be raised to scientific conclusion.
McDowell leans toward the preterist discipline when he acknowledges that the parousia must ‘come while the temple in Jerusalem still stands’. This is of great importance when we realize that the temple was destroyed in AD 70 and has not been rebuilt since. Even if another one had been built (not rebuilt), it would not be The temple. The actual Messiah depended on the standing temple to qualify the completion of the Parousia. If the parousia did not complete the messianic purpose in the existing generation of the first century, then McDowell and other modernists are forced to admit one of two possibilities: either God was ineffective, or the followers of the modern faith mistake the time frame of the parousia! parousia!
When the most compelling Christian epitome enters a church building, he plays an existentialist role. As Professor McDowell once responded to a college student, who when asked what constituted a Christian, without thinking said, ‘Anyone who enters church becomes a Christian.’ McDowell replied: ‘Does walking into a garage make you a car?’ This, I believe, is the greatest truth in McDowell’s exposition.
