368: The Illegitimacy of Jesus: Mark Crego

A Thoughtful Faith - Mormon / LDS

Mark Crego and I met around eight years ago, fellow sojourners in the quest to understand our shared faith in the LDS church. We had a similar curiosity about the spiritual life and consequently we both completed a Masters degree: He in theology and me in ministry. Having taken a Christian formation path we find ourselves similarly interested in the necessity of the divinity of Jesus. Was he literally, biologically the Son of God? Neither of us think so.

This conversation is not new. Jane Schaberg is one scholar who tackled the question front on, and she paid dearly for it. Mark and I come to similar conclusions, that the divinity of Jesus has more to do with claims of power, authority and Empire than it has to do with biology. For Mark and I, the illegitimate, fatherless Jesus who God chose as his son is a far more spiritually enlivening and plausible alternative.