The Deity of Jesus Christ

by Greg Williamson © revised 2013

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations

are from the New Living Translation (NLT)

Introduction

In general, the word "deity" refers to "the rank or essential nature of a god." When capitalized, it usually means "God" or the "Supreme Being."[1] The belief that there is one God is known as monotheism; the belief in more than one God (that is, the belief in several gods) is polytheism; the belief that everything is God is pantheism; the belief that there is no God is atheism; and the belief that God (or ultimate reality) cannot be known is agnosticism.

As a monotheistic religion, biblical, orthodox Christianity teaches that there is one God. What sets it apart from its Jewish cousin, however, is the belief that rather than a simple unity, the one true God is a triunity composed of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in which Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God, both fully human and fully God.

In many ways, the deity of Jesus Christ is the defining issue of the Christian faith - of any religious faith or belief system, for that matter. If Jesus was, as orthodox Christians claim, God in the flesh, then he is the unique Son of God and the only Savior of the world.

If Jesus really is God and he made exclusive truth claims, it is fatally foolish to either a) ignore his teachings or b) write Jesus off as just one more in a long line of religious teachers. In fact, as noted by others and as immortalized by C. S. Lewis in his Mere Christianity, a close examination of the evidence leaves room for only one of three conclusions: Jesus was a lunatic, Jesus was a liar, or Jesus was the Lord God. If Jesus really is God, then he deserves not merely our admiration but also our complete adoration and our total allegiance.

Challenges to Jesus' Deity

From the Start

The deity of Jesus has been challenged from the very beginning. Some of the religious leaders of his day wanted to kill Jesus because they believed his claims to equality with God made him guilty of blasphemy - which, of course, would have been true if he in fact were not equal with God (Matthew 9:2-3; John 5:18; 10:31-33). And while the fact of Jesus' many incredible miracles could not be denied, nonetheless some sought to discredit him by attributing his miracle-working power to Satan instead of God (Matthew 12:22-24).

The orthodox belief that Jesus is fully human and fully God was spelled out explicitly in the early centuries of Christian history in response to a number of unbiblical teachings or "heresies." It is both interesting and informative to recall that the first major heresy to arise within the Christian faith - "docetism" (the view "that Christ only seemed to have a human body and suffer and die on the cross"[2]) - had to do with the denial of Jesus' humanity rather than his deity. While never completely free of detraction, the orthodox understanding of Jesus' two natures taught in Scripture and preserved in the creeds went relatively unchallenged for several centuries until the time of the Enlightenment (17th-18th centuries) with its enshrinement of "Reason" and its corresponding emphasis on the "historical Jesus." According to Enlightenment philosophy, Jesus was a merely human "prophetic moralist and religious reformer" whom later followers sought to deify.[3] One end result of such thinking is the declaration that the New Testament (NT) is filled with "myths" that were meant to be taken symbolically and not as historical fact.[4]

Liberalism

In America the first major challenge to orthodox Christology came in the form of Unitarianism as early as 1710. Unitarianism affirms monotheism but rejects the deity of Christ (and the Trinity).[5] Around the beginning of the 20th century came the liberal Protestant effort to radically "redefine the nature of Christ."[6] This was accomplished by a) redefining "deity" and b) stressing Jesus' humanity. While they accepted Jesus as the founder of Christianity, liberals claimed that he was divine only in the same sense - but to a greater degree - as every other human being. And so to their way of thinking, "Jesus had called people to believe with him, rather than in him. Consequently, authentic Christianity should not require belief in statements about Christ's deity, but call for an imitation of his humanity."[7] The conservative response to this overemphasis on Jesus' humanity was a major reassertion of - some would even say an overemphasis on - his deity, with the virgin birth becoming the touchstone of orthodox Christology. Since the latter part of the 20th century, secularism, existentialism, process theology, liberation theology, and feminist theology have all sought to radically redefine the biblical, orthodox understanding of the deity of Jesus Christ.

The Divine Man

It is worth noting that some contemporary critical scholars have compared Jesus to the "Divine Man," which is "an alleged type of religio-philosophical hero, legendary or historical" within the Greek world who was "characterized by moral virtue, wisdom and/or miraculous power" such that he was "held to be divine."[8] According to this theory, Gentile Christians fabricated the miracle stories of Jesus in order to present him as the ultimate Divine Man, superior to the Greek heroes with whom he competed for the people's affection and allegiance. In point of fact, however, Jesus had much more in common with the (Jewish) Old Testament (OT) prophets, especially Moses, than he did with any of the variety of Greek so-called Divine Men. While it is possible to see some parallels between the miracle stories of Greek heroes and those of the gospel writers, such parallels can also be found in the OT and reflect a general style of storytelling more so than a particular genre of literature. Moreover, Jesus' primary purpose is very different from his alleged Greek counterparts, in that he came to offer himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world and to usher in a new age in God's plan to redeem a lost and dying world.[9] It is no coincidence that the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) focus most of their attention on the last week of Jesus' life, and all the gospels include Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.

The DaVinci Code

On the popular level, innumerable books, motion pictures, and television programs continue to directly or indirectly challenge the belief in Jesus' deity. For example, at the time of this writing, Dan Brown's best-selling novel The DaVinci Code has been released as a major motion picture directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks. While Brown asserts that the story is fictional, he also maintains that it is based on fact - i.e., the "fact" that Jesus was a mere human being who married one of his followers, Mary Magdalene, and fathered a child by her. Jesus' divinity, it is alleged, was fabricated and has been kept secret by the Roman Catholic Church in the grandest hoax and most intriguing conspiracy ever concocted. Many skeptics have used The DaVinci Code to confirm their suspicions, while more than a few Christians have had their faith seriously shaken by it. Any number of coinciding trends help to account for the popularity of the book and its heretical assertions, including:

Widespread ignorance regarding the Bible, the NT, and Church history.
Pluralism, in which "[d]ifferent groups of people disagree over their understanding of truth, goodness, reality, and the nature, purpose and goal of human life."[10]
Syncretism, which is the combining or blending of different, often opposing, belief systems.
A deep-seated distrust of all authority in general and religious authority in particular, to include institutional or "organized" religion.
A conspiracy mindset.

Claims of Deity

Son of God

The idea of divine sonship is first seen in the OT, where it refers to angels, the nation of Israel, and the king. In the case of the latter two, to be God's son is to belong to him; to serve him; and to experience his "love, mercy, protection, and gifts." For the king in particular, to be God's son is to be given God's ruling authority and to play a vital role in God's covenant with King David (aka the Davidic covenant).[11] As we move into the NT, we see Jesus presented as the preeminent Son of God, both sharing and surpassing connections with Israel and the kings. "Jesus' sonship is on one level a successful replay of Israel's sonship. But whereas the sonship of Israel and of her kings was fraught with tension and disobedience, Jesus lives up to the full stature of the image of an obedient and faithful Son on intimate terms with the Father."[12]

While in the NT every true Christian is presented as a member of God's family, sonship is preeminently associated with Jesus. Jesus' sonship is often linked with the resurrection, leading some scholars to conclude that Jesus was not born the Son of God but became such only after his resurrection. As reflected in the gospel records, there was a significant shift in the mindset of Jesus' followers before and after his resurrection. However, the gospels clearly and repeatedly assert that Jesus was God's Son before the resurrection and, in some mysterious way, even before his earthly existence. This is clearly seen:

from his preincarnate existence as the Word (as reflected in John's gospel, Jesus "always had a personal existence with God that was of the same quality and purpose in this preexistence in heaven as it was during his lifetime on earth"[13]) to his being born of a virgin
from his multitude of miracles to his crucifixion
from his resurrection to his exaltation and promised future return.

In the gospels we see Jesus routinely addressing God as Abba, Father, and this filial relationship includes:

intimacy with God (often through prayer)
obedience to God's will (including serving and suffering)
and uniqueness (Jesus "speaks of ' my Father' and ' your Father,' but never ' our Father' [the ' our' of the Lord's Prayer (Mt 6:9) is what the disciples are to say]"[14])

There is also the claim that when the apostle Paul spoke of Jesus as the "Son of God," he was drawing from pagan traditions with which his Gentile audience was familiar. For example, occasionally a man would be referred to as a son of a god because of some exceptional quality, ability, or accomplishment ("the heroes of traditional Greek mythology [were] often referred to as sons of Zeus"[15]). As a title, however, "son of god" was reserved for the Roman emperors (and the pharaohs of Egypt[16]). But besides the fact that Paul's customary way of referring to Jesus is as "Christ" or "Lord" rather than as God's Son, Paul's Jewish background combined with his disdain for pagan religions would have prevented him from tying Jesus' divine sonship to the pagan ideas and practices current in his day.[17] A summary of Paul's Christology leads to the conclusion that "Paul saw Jesus as participating in God's attributes and roles, as sharing in the divine glory and, most importantly, as worthy to receive formal veneration with God in Christian assemblies. ... Paul's references to Jesus as the 'Son' of God meant that Jesus possessed a unique standing, status and favor with God."[18]

God

While the NT most often refers to Jesus as "Christ" or "Lord," there are several passages that directly refer to him as God.[19]These include the following:[20]

Verses:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. ... No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him." (John 1:1, 14, 18)

Commentary:

And the Word was God [v. 1] (kai theos ēn ho logos). By exact and careful language John denied Sabellianism by not saying ho theos ēn ho logos. That would mean that all of God was expressed in ho logos and the terms would be interchangeable, each having the article. The subject is made plain by the article (ho logos) and the predicate without it (theos) just as in John 4:24pneuma ho theos can only mean "God is spirit," not "spirit is God." So in 1 John 4:16ho theos agapē estin can only mean "God is love," not "love is God" as a so-called Christian scientist would confusedly say.

The only begotten Son [v. 18] (ho monogenēs huios). This is the reading of the Textus Receptus and is intelligible after hōs monogenous para patros in John 1:14. But the best old Greek manuscripts (Aleph B C L) read monogenēs theos (God only begotten) which is undoubtedly the true text. Probably some scribe changed it to ho monogenēs huios to obviate the blunt statement of the deity of Christ and to make it like John 3:16. But there is an inner harmony in the reading of the old uncials. The Logos is plainly called theos in John 1:1. The Incarnation is stated in John 1:14, where he is also termed monogenēs. He was that before the Incarnation. So he is "God only begotten," "the Eternal Generation of the Son" of Origen's phrase.

Verse:

"whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen." (Romans 9:5)

Commentary:

Who is over all, God blessed for ever (ho on epi pantōn theos eulogētos). A clear statement of the deity of Christ following the remark about his humanity. This is the natural and the obvious way of punctuating the sentence. To make a full stop after sarka (or colon) and start a new sentence for the doxology is very abrupt and awkward.

Verses:

"Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." (Acts 20:28)

Commentary:

With his own blood (dia tou haimatos tou idiou). Through the agency of (dia) his own blood. Whose blood? If tou theou (Aleph B Vulg.) is correct, as it is, then Jesus is here called "God" who shed his own blood for the flock.

Verses:

"so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Thessalonians 1:12)

Commentary:

Of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ (tou theou hēmōn kai kuriou Iēsou Christou). Here strict syntax requires, since there is only one article with theou and kuriou that one person be meant, Jesus Christ, as is certainly true in Titus 2:13; 2 Peter 1:1 (Robertson, Grammar, p.786). This otherwise conclusive syntactical argument, admitted by Schmiedel, is weakened a bit by the fact that Kurios is often employed as a proper name without the article, a thing not true of sōtēr in Titus 2:13; 2 Peter 1:1. So in Ephesians 5:5en tēi basileiāi tou Christou kai theou the natural meaning is in the Kingdom of Christ and God regarded as one, but here again theos, like Kurios, often occurs as a proper name without the article. So it has to be admitted that here Paul may mean "according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ," though he may also mean "according to the grace of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ."

Verses:

"looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus" (Titus 2:13)

Commentary:

Of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ (tou megalou theou kai sōtēros Iēsou Christou). This is the necessary meaning of the one article with theou and sōtēros just as in 2 Peter 1:1, 11. See Robertson, Grammar, p. 786.

Verses:

"Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:1)

Commentary:

Of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ (tou theou hēmōn kai sōtēros Iēsou Christou). So the one article (tou) with theou and sōtēros requires precisely as with tou kuriou hēmōn kai sōtēros Iēsou Christou (of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ), one person, not two, in 2 Peter 1:11 as in 2 Peter 2:20; 3:2, 18. So in 1 Peter 1:3 we have ho theos kai patēr (the God and Father), one person, not two. The grammar is uniform and inevitable (Robertson, Grammar, p. 786), as even Schmiedel (Winer-Schmiedel, Grammatik, p. 158) admits: "Grammar demands that one person be meant." Moulton (Prol., p. 84) cites papyri examples of like usage of theos for the Roman emperors. See the same idiom in Titus 2:13.

Proofs of Deity

The NT gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are our primary source for the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. While space does not allow for an in-depth look at the NT's historical trustworthiness, suffice to say that the science of textual criticism offers ample evidence that the NT writings have been accurately transmitted to us. We can put full confidence in the fact that the NT we possess today is a completely true, wholly reliable reproduction of the original writings that, in turn, were based on eyewitness testimony.[21]