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Who was Jesus Christ?
Mark: He was the son of man.
Matthew and Luke: He was the Son of God.
John: He was God himself.
In the Four Gospels are presented three entirely different conceptions of the Christ. In Mark he is represented as the son of human parents—the Messiah—but simply a man. In Matthew and Luke we have the story of the miraculous conception—he is represented as the Son of God. In John he is declared to be God himself. “In the beginning was the Word [Christ], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” ([i, 1]).
According to Mark Christ is a man; according to Matthew and Luke, a demi-god; according to John, a God.
Voltaire thus harmonizes these discordant conceptions: “The son of God is the same as the son of man; the son of man is the same as the son of God. God, the father, is the same as Christ, the son; Christ, the son, is the same as God, the father. This language may appear confused to unbelievers, but Christians will readily understand it.”
This is quite as intelligible as the Christian Confession of Faith, Article II of which reads as follows: “The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God, and very Man.”
“The theological Christ is the impossible union of the human and divine—man with the attributes of God, and God with the limitations and weaknesses of man.”—Ingersoll.