The New Testament, Church history, and theological reasoning unanimously claim that Jesus is God: The following provides a model for how to communicate this well.
For further context, this summer marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and its confession of Christ’s divinity, which continues to be something that needs remembering and defending.
Christ’s Deity in the New Testament
Divine Identity
In 1 Corinthians 1:31, Paul quotes Jeremiah 9:24, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” However, Paul does something that, unless Jesus is God, would be blasphemous. When he quotes Jeremiah 9:24, he substitutes the name “Yahweh” with the Greek “Lord” (Kurios), a title with which Jesus is identified throughout 1 Corinthians.[2]
Paul calls Jesus Lord over a dozen times in 1 Corinthians. For instance, in the opening of the letter, he writes, “Call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:2-3). Paul intentionally replaces Yahweh with a title for Jesus in 1 Corinthians 1:31, clearly considering the two to be interchangeable. Paul could have replaced Yahweh with the Greek word for God (Theos), as Matthew does in Matthew 4:4. That he doesn’t avail himself of this option further emphasizes the point: he believes Jesus is Yahweh.
Later in Corinthians Paul writes, “Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6). Commenting on this verse, Michael Kruger writes, “What is noteworthy…is that Paul has now included the Lord Jesus Christ within the Shema, even using the same word (“Lord”) to describe him. Paul is not adding Jesus to the godhead, as if there were now two gods, but rather he is including Jesus in the divine identity of Yahweh.”
The same logic is at play in Romans 8:9: “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” For Paul, the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ. Again, Jesus is included in the divine identity.
1 Corinthians (50s AD) and Romans (50s AD) were written decades before John’s Gospel (80s or 90s AD) and centuries before the Council of Nicaea (325 AD).
Divine Actions
Equally compelling, the New Testament authors attribute works to Jesus that are only performed by God. For instance, Jesus is credited with creating all things: “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…” (Colossians 1:16). God is the creator of the universe. Jesus created the universe. Therefore, Jesus is God.
Jesus is also said to forgive sin: “And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ’Son, your sins are forgiven.’ Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ‘Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’” (Mark 2:5-7). Indeed, only God can forgive sins. By claiming to have the authority to do that which only God can do, Jesus is claiming to be God. Hence why they accused Him of blasphemy.[2] Colossians (60s AD) and Mark (50s AD) were both written before John as well.
Suggesting the New Testament does not identify Jesus as God before John is like saying someone doesn’t identify Bruce Wayne as Batman because he only says Bruce Wayne responds to the Bat signal, drives the Batmobile, defeats the Joker, and owns Wayne Enterprises.[3]
Christ’s Deity in Church History
Outside Scripture, the best source of information we have on what the apostles and early church believed is the writings of the early Church Fathers, those church leaders who succeeded the apostles. Consider two representative quotations from Polycarp and Ignatius, both disciples of John:
“And to us with you, and to all those under heaven who will yet believe in our Lord and God Jesus Christ and in his Father who raised him from the dead.”[4]
“By the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our God; even unto the church which is in Ephesus, worthy of all felicitation: abundant greeting in Christ Jesus and in blameless joy.”[5]
It is clear from these quotations, which could be multiplied dozens of times, that the early church believed Jesus was divine. It is sometimes suggested that the divinity of Jesus was imposed on the church by Constantine. This couldn’t be further from the truth. These two quotations, for instance, are from roughly two hundred years prior to the Council of Nicaea (325 AD).
Constantine convened and attended the council, but he did not influence its beliefs. The belief that Christ is divine was the majority position by a wide margin. Of the 323 bishops present, 318 voted in favor of the following language with which to identify Christ: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”[6]
The bishops were upholding the position that had been handed down to them in the Scriptures and the writings of the earliest Church Fathers, not inventing a new doctrine. The minority position, Arianism, which claimed that Jesus was the first created being, was the late development.
Arianism was soundly defeated at the council, but it did not die quickly. Its proponents, chiefly Eusebius of Nicomedia, gained more political influence than their opponents. As such, it was the Arians who attempted to use political power to impose their views on the Church (often by exile or threat of death).
Eusebius, who was initially exiled for his support of Arius, won back Constantine’s favor. He had close ties with Constantine’s son (Constantius II) and sister (Constantia). The tables were decidedly turned in the Arians’ favor post-Nicaea, as Constantine and his family ended up promoting the Arian cause.
Men like Athanasius, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nazianzus defended orthodoxy during this period. Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria’s preaching, pastoral letters, books, and ecclesiastical diplomacy were crucial to the Nicene cause. Basil, the bishop of Caesarea, helped orchestrate doctrinal unity among the bishops and priests by providing trinitarian language that the Nicene party and the Semi-Arian party could agree on (one ousia and three hypostases).[7] Gregory of Nazianzus helped rally the people to Nicene orthodoxy through his preaching as the Bishop of Constantinople.
Constantinople would be the city where Nicene orthodoxy ultimately prevailed in 381 AD. The Council of Constantinople reaffirmed the divinity of Christ, confirmed His full humanity, and more clearly affirmed the divinity of the Spirit. The council’s decision had the support of the orthodox emperor, Theodosius, who had made Christianity the official religion of the empire the previous year.
So What? Theological Reasoning
Why does it matter if Jesus is divine? The primary motivation for the systematic formulation of the doctrine of Christ was to safeguard the doctrine of salvation. If Jesus wasn’t fully man and fully God, then, it was argued, he could not save us.
Jesus had to be fully man because it was mankind that had broken God’s law and been sentenced to death. Jesus had to be fully God because only God can choose to pay off a debt that He is owed, and only God has the funds needed to pay off the infinite debt we owe Him. Moreover, Jesus had to be God because God promised He would be the one to fulfill the covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15:17).[8]
Denying Jesus’ humanity puts us in a position where our judicial sentence still needs to be carried out. Denying Jesus’ divinity puts us in a position where he lacks sufficient funds to cover our debts. It also makes God a liar, as He wouldn’t have fulfilled His promise in Genesis 15 if Jesus weren’t God.
So, our salvation depends on Jesus being divine. And our effectiveness as evangelists often depends on our ability to persuasively defend the deity of Christ. In a culture where individuals like Alex O’Connor are questioning the very foundation of our faith, it is important to be able to graciously articulate that which we hold to be true.
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