How to prove that Jesus is god?

A:

Although it is generally almost impossible to prove a negative, there are three distinct ways to prove that Jesus is not the son of God, and all of them can be well supported:

1. Prove that God does not exist. Although an absolute proof is almost impossible, it is possible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that God is unlikely to exist.
2. Prove that Jesus never existed. Once again, this is almost impossible, but we do know that the Apostle Paul did not seem to realise that Jesus of Nazareth was a person who had lived in Palestine in the quite recent past.
3. Prove that references to Jesus as the Son of God were theological constructs created after his death (assuming that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person).

The earliest references to Jesus as the Son of God come from Hebrews and from Paul's epistles, which are persuasive on this, because they predate the gospels. However, Hebrewsportrays Jesus as the High Priest in heaven and therefore as the Son of God in heaven - not necessarily on earth, which we need to prove or disprove. Also, we know little about what Paul believed, and it is possible that Paul also saw Jesus purely as the Son of God in heaven, in the same way as Hebrews.

We then come to the gospels, which declare Jesus of Nazareth to be the son of God. However, we now know that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were based on Mark's Gospel, and the Gospel of John to be loosely based on Luke's Gospel. We should therefore examine what is written in the original New Testament gospel, Mark's Gospel.

In Mark's Gospel, only outsiders call Jesus the Son of God. Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man, while Peter calls him the Christ (anointed one). In Mark 3:11-12, the demons fall down and call Jesus the Son of God, but Jesus is quick to instruct them to tell no one, thus no more than an implied admission. The demons would know Jesus' divine status, but if this was a blasphemy then they were outsiders and brought no disrepute upon the Christian community. Again, at the trial of Jesus, the High Priest raises the issue in the form of a question: "Are you the Christ, the Son of God?" This cautious approach suggests that the author of Mark's Gospel knew that his readers were not yet ready for a direct assertion that Jesus was the Son of God, so only stated this indirectly through outsiders, the adversaries of Jesus. There is plenty to demonstrate that the Gospel was not a literal account of events, but does the author's caution in calling Jesus the Son of God prove that he was writing fiction when he referred to Jesus this way?