Mad or God?: Jesus: The Healthiest Mind of All

By Pablo Martinez and Andrew Sims

Imagine someone with a mind so healthy that he doesn't need to see a psychiatrist. Ever.

Yet that person runs the gauntlet of taunting, mockery and false accusations. People turn against him. Friends disown and desert him. He stands alone.

Amazingly, two thousand years after his death, the taunts still fly. Films and books appear with fresh accusations and oh-so-convincing arguments.

How can this man be discredited and silenced for once and for all? More to the point, can he?

As psychiatrists, we need to speak up. Enough is enough.

Shadow us as we examine what we believe to be the most fascinating mind in all of history.

Dare you imagine a different reality? And what will this mean in practice?

Jesus had greater influence than any other person who ever lived. Yet atheistic detractors often portray him as insane or deranged. Claims gather momentum. Often they are left unchallenged.

Is there any basis for such claims? The authors, respected psychiatrists, consider Jesus's words, actions and teaching, and use fascinating insights from psychiatry to make an assessment.

We need confidence to weigh up the evidence and reach robust conclusions. The authors enable us to articulate a strong defence of Jesus's mental health. They help us dispel doubts, affirm our faith and present a captivating portrait of Jesus.

Foreword by John Lennox
Part 1 Showing that Jesus was not mentally ill
1 The mind of Christ through a psychiatrist's eye
2 Out of his mind - was Jesus psychotic?
3 A man of sorrows - did Jesus suffer from any other mental disorder?
Part 2 Showing that Jesus had a health mind, proved by the coherence of his words and deeds
4 The test of his character - and the crowds were amazed
5 The test of a consistent life - what evil has he done? I find no crime in him
6 The test of meaningful relationships - encounters that transformed lives
7 The test of adversity - lessons without words in suffering
8 The test of influence - his power to change people
Epilogue The test of his claims - who do you say I am?

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP
• Release date: Jul 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781783596065

Pablo Martinez

Trained as a medical doctor and psychiatrist, Pablo Martinez works at a Christian hospital in Barcelona. He has also developed a wide ministry as lecturer and counsellor. A former President of the Spanish GBU (the equivalent of the UCCF), he is still deeply involved with student ministry. He is a former Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Spanish Theological Seminary, and has spoken several times at Spring Harvest.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Exploring a life story is exciting: like starting a journey to an unknown land. This book is a journey through the life of Jesus from a psychiatric perspective. We invite you to join us for a trip with nine stops. Each stop becomes a test to evaluate specific facets of his character.

In the first part (chapters 1–3), the journey takes us through terrain that may sound quite new to you. Our aim is to offer evidence that Jesus’ mind suffered from no mental illness. By the end of the third stop you will see that Jesus was not just normal in terms of mental health, but significantly above normal.

Then, following the logic of C. S. Lewis’s ‘trilemma’, we will embark on the second part of our journey. We now move from the negative to the positive: if Jesus was not mentally deranged, then we need to prove that he was indeed a man endowed with an extraordinary mental stability and an unquestionable moral uprightness. So the purpose of the second part (chapters 4–9) is to provide evidence that Jesus appears before us with the ‘healthiest mind of all’ and the most balanced and righteous life.

On this journey we will not be covering properly the second option of the Lewis trilemma: ‘he would be the devil of hell’. The issue of Jesus’ moral goodness would require a whole book in itself. Nevertheless, human beings are a unity, and the moral and the emotional cannot be separated into isolated compartments. This is why we will often refer to this option too, because Jesus’ uprightness asserts itself vigorously in a natural way as we consider his life and his work.

The stops in the second part of our trip will allow us to contemplate the person of Jesus through five different windows: his character, his life (the coherence of his words and deeds), his relationships, his reaction to adversity and his influence on people. These various perspectives provide us with an accurate assessment of a person’s stability. By the end of the journey we will reach the conclusion that no mentally sick person, or no evil man, would ever have been able to speak or behave in the impeccable and influential way that Jesus did, unless he really was what he claimed to be: God.

What luggage do you need for this trip? The conclusion above requires not only intellectual acceptance, but personal commitment. This is why your luggage can be summarized in one simple word: trust. Trust is the personal background from which we see the Jesus of our study.

But why is trust a key prerequisite? We believe that Jesus is not merely an object of scientific research that you can dissect in the laboratory of so-called scholarly studies, but a person with whom you can establish a relationship. The starting point for any relationship is a minimum level of trust. In the study of Jesus, intellectual persuasion, rational analysis based on arguments, is important, but it is not enough. For this reason we have deliberately chosen the world of faith. We believe – and have experienced – that faith (trust) opens the eyes of our understanding. The more you believe, the more you are enabled to see. So in the background of our approach, ‘seeing is believing’ becomes ‘believing leads to seeing’.

Trust has also determined the sources that we have used: the Gospels.

¹

They are the natural source for any study on the character of Jesus. We believe that ‘the Gospels can and should be accepted . . . at least as an honest attempt to say what happened’.

²

From the first chapter you will discover that Jesus has always been an object of controversy. Why does he not leave anyone indifferent? Why does he provoke such opposite reactions? The reason lies in the question he asked his disciples: ‘Who do you say I am?’ It is not a naive question springing from mere curiosity. Jesus wants people to define themselves in the light of his claims and character. ‘The fact of Christ is not just a fact of history; it has become also a fact of conscience . . . We had thought intellectually to examine him; we find he is spiritually examining us.’

³

If Jesus’ claims are true, then it is not enough to be ‘amazed at him’, as many of his contemporaries were, because he wants not to be admired, but to be followed.

We are aware that this journey is not free from dangers. For this reason an important word of clarification is necessary here. Although the nature and purpose of the book will lead us to focus mainly on Jesus as a man, we do not see him as only a man. Thus, we want to acknowledge from the beginning that we believe Jesus was fully God and fully human at the same time. The two-natures Christology is the context from which we write with an unhesitant commitment to this fundamental truth of historic Christianity: he was, and is, truly God and man in one person.

⁴

The danger lies in the fact that we are faced here with a supernatural and perfect synthesis, and it is not always easy to keep a perfect balance when describing these two sides of the truth. For this reason, our working assumption is not to examine Jesus as a man only, but also to dig into his claims as Saviour and Lord. Throughout the book we follow the so-called ‘Christology from below’, the inductive method which takes as its starting point that which was said and done by Jesus himself. This journey leads us progressively upwards to the highest peak (in chapter 9), where the witness of Jesus about his own person illuminates how this true man was also truly God.

Along the journey the perfect humanity of Jesus becomes the prelude that leads us to grasp the full symphony of his divinity. In our own lives, Jesus the man became one day Christ, our Lord, enabling us to affirm personally the ‘two-natures Christology’, namely, that Jesus is much more than a man; he is ‘the image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15).

If you want a glimpse of what lies ahead, it will take only a few seconds: go to the contents and read the subtitles of each chapter carefully. They are intended to summarize the substance of the book in a few memorable sentences, like milestones on the trip. Except for chapter 1, they are all literal quotations from the Bible, referring to Jesus or pronounced by Jesus himself. We hope these signposts on the journey will help you remember, and reflect on, the most essential aspects of the person of Jesus.

May your journey be filled with challenging experiences. Enjoy it, but above all enjoy the protagonist, Jesus, who said, ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’ (John 10:10).

1. THE TEST OF PSYCHIATRY: WAS JESUS MENTALLY DISTURBED?

This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what he said, or else a lunatic, or something worse.

C. S. Lewis

Jesus has had a greater influence than any other person on individuals, and on history. Indeed, 2,000 years after his death the number of his followers continues to increase. During his lifetime he met with violent hatred and a shameful death. Now his followers are still persecuted and martyred in many parts of the world, and they encounter verbal attack and discrimination in many others. For those who know Jesus, he is everything; for those who do not, all possible means have been used to discredit him.

‘He’s raving mad. Why listen to him?’ his critics have been protesting for 2,000 years, and still insist today. Some say that Jesus is mad because they do not understand him, some because they reject him, and some have just never tried or bothered to listen.

What did he really say about himself? Could it be construed as the outpouring of a madman?

Why does it matter whether or not Jesus was mentally ill?

A powerful businessman became increasingly bombastic, noisy and rude to employees, clients and shareholders. He made decisions with long-lasting consequences arbritarily and without consulting his colleagues. Others in the firm realized that he was mentally ill and tried in all possible ways to keep him from public view. They realized that his authority and power would immediately be undermined if there was even a whiff of mental illness.

Why does it matter whether Jesus was mad or not? It matters because Jesus offers meaning, trust and credibility, authority, and a relationship built on love. If the view that Jesus is mad can be substantiated, then all of these disappear. To convince us that Jesus was psychiatrically deranged, there would have to be signs suggesting one or other of three groups of mental illnesses: psychosis (considered in chapter 2), other mental illness or personality disorder (considered in chapter 3).

When Jesus said of himself, ‘I am the good shepherd’ (John 10:11), that phrase, like so much else that he said, carried many associated meanings for his Jewish hearers because of their knowledge of the Old Testament: the coming king who will free us from Roman oppression, the promised Messiah, national and personal security, and self-respect. Some accepted him, but others said, ‘He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?’ (John 10:20). When Jesus spoke, this immediately attracted his critics, often with some religious authority, to launch into accusations of madness in order to undermine his credentials.

Really the Messiah?

The claim by his detractors that he was mad was inextricably linked to the realization that Jesus was the Messiah. The first hint was made by the Magi (wise men) at the time of his birth when they came to worship ‘the one who has been born king of the Jews’ (Matthew 2:2). This was an extraordinary endorsement from heathen scholars when greeting a baby!

The expression ‘Son of God’, which implies ‘Messiah’, is first used in Matthew’s Gospel by two demon-possessed men who shouted at Jesus (Matthew 8:29). They recognized that Jesus’ healing power came from God and that he was able to heal them from madness and violence.

When Jesus enabled Peter to walk on the water and calmed the storm on the lake, the disciples said to him, with grateful conviction, ‘Truly you are the Son of God’ (Matthew 14:33). Jesus put these questions to his disciples: ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is? . . . But what about you? . . . Who do you say I am? Simon Peter answered: You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God’ (Matthew 16:13–16).

At Jesus’ trial the high priest said to him, ‘I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God’ (Matthew 26:63). In his reply Jesus accepted the claim. Finally, a centurion at the foot of the cross, in terror from the earthquake, said, ‘Surely he was the Son of God!’ (Matthew 27:54).

These witnesses came from different backgrounds and had differing opinions about Jesus, but all queried whether Jesus was indeed the Son of God, and therefore the Messiah. In Mark’s Gospel, hints that Jesus was the Messiah were linked with his imminent death.

¹

Jesus, and his disciples, claiming that he was the Messiah was not a boast, but proved to be a death warrant. For the Jewish leaders, declaring him mad was their only effective means to stop the spreading idea that he was the Messiah.

From early on in his ministry his disciples had come to realize that Jesus was ‘the Messiah’. Jesus himself believed this. He applied the Old Testament Scriptures about the ‘Suffering Servant’ and ‘God coming into his kingdom’ to himself, and, in so doing, he ‘was to court the charge of