The Bible Book

192 THE DIVINITY OF JESUS

stilling storms (as God does in

Jonah when the prophet runs

away to sea).

Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s

Gospels also report incidents in

which several religious leaders

understand Jesus to be claiming

divine status. Most famously, the

night before His crucifixion, Jesus

faces a trial before a large group of

religious leaders. They demand to

know if He is the Christ, the Son

of God. Jesus affirms that He is,

saying they will see Him “sitting

at the right hand of the Mighty

One, and coming on the clouds

of heaven” (Matthew 26:64).

The Apostle Paul, preaching

across the Roman Empire after

Jesus’s death, writes that Jesus is

divine. He refers to Jesus as God

twice in his letters and calls Jesus

“Lord,” a Hebrew term for God. Paul

anticipates John’s teaching that all

things are created through Jesus

(1 Corinthians 8:6) and insists that

Jesus possesses every attribute of

divinity (Colossians 1:19, 2:9), such

as omnipotence, eternality, and

omnipresence.

John’s evidence

The Gospel of John provides the

most explicit case for Jesus’s

divinity. After healing a man on

the Sabbath day, Jesus answers the

rabbis’ criticism by equating God’s

work with His own, calling God His

Father, and making Himself equal

with God. In another dispute, Jesus

states that “before Abraham was,

I AM,” thus making a claim to

preexist Abraham (John 8:58).

The rabbis understand these

words, but deny their truth, and

pick up stones to kill Jesus for

blasphemy. Later, when pressed

to declare if He is the Messiah,

Jesus says, “I and the Father

are One” (John 10:30), echoing

Deuteronomy 6:4—“Hear O Israel,

the Lord our God, the Lord is

One”—but replacing the second

“Lord” with “I and the Father.”

Humanity

Spatial,

temporal

existence, subject

to birth, life,

and death

Omnipresent,

eternal, infinite

existence, with

power over

life and death

Deity

Fully man, fully God

St. Simeon

Eight days after His birth,

Mary and Joseph present

Jesus for circumcision at the

Temple in Jerusalem. Luke’s

Gospel tells how an elderly

priest, Simeon, who was

longing for the coming of

Israel’s Messiah, is in the

Temple courts that day (Luke

2:25–35). God had promised

Simeon that he would not die

until he had seen the Messiah.

Led by the Holy Spirit, Simeon

takes the infant Jesus in his

arms and blesses Him. In

Simeon’s Song, he praises

God for keeping His promise,

both to him and to Israel.

He identifies Jesus as the

salvation for both Israel and

for the world.

Simeon’s expectation

echoed the universal scope

expressed by Isaiah, who talks

of the Israelites being a “light

for the Gentiles” (Isaiah 49:6).

Salvation would come first

to the Jews, but would not

be for them alone. God’s

plan was to save people from

all nations. The praise in

Simeon’s Song anticipates

an important theme in Luke’s

Gospel and in Acts—the

salvation of the wider world.

The Chalcedonian

Creed asserts that

Jesus Christ has

two natures—

human and divine.

Each is complete

and distinct,

yet “not parted

or divided” into

two persons.

Christ was not ... a being

half human and half not,

like a centaur, but both

things at once and both

things thoroughly, very

man and very God.

G.K. Chesterton

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THE GOSPELS 193

The Christ the Redeemer statue

on the Corcovado mountain in Rio

de Janeiro was built in the 1920s,

reputedly in response to a rising

tide of godlessness in the city.

The supreme act in support of

Jesus’s claim to be divine is His

resurrection. After His execution

by the Romans for being a rebel,

Jesus’s resurrection would have

stood as God’s vindication of

Jesus’s words and deeds. When

Thomas finally sees the resurrected

Jesus, he addresses Him as “My

Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

The incarnation

Jesus of Nazareth is a man who

eats and sleeps, yet He also claims

to be God. Affirming these two

ideas together is the doctrine of the

incarnation: the Word becoming

flesh. Some early teachers tried to

resolve this paradox by saying

Christ was fundamentally human,

but had been “adopted” as God’s

Son. Others, affirming the genuine

deity of Jesus, taught that He only

“seemed” to be human. Yet others

insisted that Jesus could really be

God because He was the Father in

disguise. Later teachers affirmed

the humanity and deity of Jesus,

but struggled to find a consistent

explanation for how He could be

both. In the 5th century some

teachers affirmed that Jesus had a

human body and soul, but that the

divine Word took the place of His

human spirit. Others taught that

the human and divine had merged

in Jesus, and that He was neither

purely divine nor human.

In 451 ce, Church leaders at

the Council of Chalcedon in Turkey

affirmed that Jesus possessed two

natures, one divine and the other

human, in His one person. Each

of these natures was complete,

not lacking any attribute proper

to being either divine or human.

The Chalcedonian Creed became

the affirmation of the incarnation.

The doctrine of the incarnation

arose as a recognition of the

validity of Jesus’s claim to be God;

an assertion vindicated by His

resurrection. Yet it also protected

Christianity from the possibility of

a fatal internal contradiction. Jesus

accepted worship as God from His

followers and commanded them

to trust in Him for their salvation.

If Jesus were not God, then His

followers were guilty of idolatry,

an offense for which there was no

atoning sacrifice under the Law of

Moses. But worship of and trust in

Jesus would not be idolatry if Jesus

were God, and salvation in His

name would not be blasphemy. ■

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