The deity of Christ

A map of the disagreement, not a commentary. The same verses are quoted by people who do not share this conclusion. Read the paragraph, not the slogan.

The question

Historic Christianity says Jesus is truly God and truly human: not a God wearing a costume, and not a remarkable man later promoted by rumor. That sentence is the argument with several neighbors at once, and they are not making the same objection.

A fair statement of the other views

Many atheists grant a historical Jesus of some kind and doubt that he claimed what the later church claimed. On this telling, high language about divinity grew as the movement aged. The fair reply is to look at early texts and to admit which ones are doing the work, not to sneer at “legend.”

Muslims receive Jesus as messiah and prophet, born of Mary, and refuse divine sonship as an attack on God’s oneness. See Jesus in the Qur’an and the Gospels.

Jehovah’s Witnesses honor Jesus as the greatest of God’s creatures, identify him with Michael the archangel, and refuse to call him Almighty God. Their New World Translation of John 1:1 renders the end of the verse as “the Word was a god.” See John 1 and the Word.

Latter-day Saints speak of Jesus as divine and as the Son, and they mean it. Their teaching of the Godhead does not match the Nicene phrase “of one being with the Father.” See the Godhead in Latter-day Saint teaching. Calling that “they don’t believe in Jesus” is false and ends the conversation.

A Christian starting point

The confession is not that Christians found a verse with the word “God” next to the word “Jesus” and stopped. It is a pattern: the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:1–3), Thomas’s “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28), the Son as the one in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Colossians 1:19), the Son addressed as God in Hebrews 1, and the name above every name in Philippians 2.

Philippians 2 is also used by readers who stress that Jesus did not grasp at equality. Say that. The argument is about what “equality with God” and “the form of God” are doing in the paragraph, not about who can shout a verse number faster.

The Trinity is the church’s way of saying this without saying there are three gods. If the fear in the room is polytheism, go there next and define “being” and “person” before you add heat.

Scripture to open together

• John 1:1–18 and John 20:28.
• Colossians 1:15–20. Pause on “firstborn.” The word is used by Witnesses and by others as “first created.” The same paragraph says all things were created in him, which is why Nicene readers hear rank and source, not “first creature.”
• Hebrews 1:1–4.
• Philippians 2:5–11.

Keep reading

• The Trinity
• John 1 and the Word