Fox, Islam, Jesus ... Fail.

It looks like this claim -- which was also the subject of his senior thesis all the way back in 1995 -- is the one that has people most worked up:

I wouldn't call myself a Christian because I do not believe that Jesus is God, nor do I believe that he ever thought that he was God, or that he ever said that he was God.

http://m.npr.org/news/Books/200844275

Most Christians would say that is factually wrong.

What do the resident Bible scholars say?

 

She was Miss Minnesota in '84, finished 3rd in Miss America '85.

Wiki: Green was born to Robert and Bessie Grissam Green. She has two sisters named Barbara and Lois and two brothers named Leslie and Kenneth.[1] She won the Miss Minnesota beauty pageant in 1984, and was third runner-up in the Miss America 1985 pageant. (Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson was also a Miss Minnesota winner, and also won the Miss America title in 1989.)

 

I'm Catholic. He's the son of God.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c2a2.htm

Don't know about other denominations, but Catholics have the largest membership.

 

It is, in fact, true in the Bible that Jesus never outright said, "I am the Son of God." Many others called him that, and this evangelical-looking site explains why Jesus never says it.

https://bible.org/question/does-jesus-fact-say-he-god%E2%80%99s-son-not-just-infer-it

Why, you might ask, does Jesus not say so plainly. I think the answer is found in Matthew 16:15-17:

15 He said to them, “And who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “You are blessed, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven!” (Matthew 16:15-17).

Jesus did not want Peter and His disciples to believe He was the Son of God just because He said so. He wanted God to bring them to this conclusion, based upon the overwhelming evidence of Scripture and our Lord’s life and teaching.

That would seem to be at odds with Aslan's claim that Jesus never thought he was God. Although, if you want to parse this right, indeed, Jesus never said he was God -- he was the Son of God. That was different, because he was human, unlike God.

In the interview you posted, Aslan has some interesting things to say about the context of when the Bible was written -- after the Romans were first thrown out of the Holy Land (an event 30 years after Jesus' death), and after the Romans came back a few years later to burn Jerusalem to the ground. The argument from the likes of Aslan is that the Romans' return has a lot to do with the mindset behind the way the New Testament was written.

 

Speaking of sons of God, is Reza Aslan the son of the lion in C.S. Lewis' Narnia series?

 

I think this is right, especially since he needed them to go out and preach the Good News.

Aslan's theory is the "Messianic Secret" and his senior thesis was titled “The Messianic Secret in the Gospel of Mark”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Secret

The passage I've seen people refer to in dispute of this theory is this one:

 

A young reporter by the name of Lauren Green and truth thru Christianity:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/07/29/fox-reporter-lauren-greens-double-standard-on-r/195114

 

Mmmm-Hmmmmm.

 

Most likely because that's the talking point her producers instructed her to hammer away at during this interview. Which, frankly, is how many of the Fox babe interviews go--you can usually identify a quite specific theme that the interviewer keeps coming back to well after the question's already been adequately addressed--and usually conveying the impression that the interviewer's just following instructions.

I actually think the question is a valid point to address once: did the fact that you are converted muslim not impact your objectivity in writing this book? And I think that would be an equally valid question for a Christian writing a book critical of Islam. The problem was after he adequately answered it and she didn't seem capable of really moving on with the discussion, perhaps because she didn't feel she'd yet properly "exposed" him the way she'd been instructed. It's like she though her sole purpose in this interview was to point out that the guy was a muslim.

 

Fox interview was not worse than the snippy Katie Couric interview with Sarah
Palin but off course that interview was much celebrated.

 

The progression of the typical faux fascist noise interview:

 

Almost as surprised something like this interview got through as I was at the KTVU fiasco.