The Deity of Christ #17

That Jesus of Nazareth is not merely a prophet or moral teacher but God incarnate — fully divine and fully human — is the central Christological claim of orthodox Christianity, distinguishing it from Islam, Judaism, Jehovah’s Witness theology, and other traditions that honor Jesus as a great teacher or prophet without affirming his deity.

The Argument

John opens his gospel with the claim that “the Word was God” and “the Word became flesh” (John 1:1-14), directly identifying Jesus with the eternal Word present at creation. Paul writes that “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9) and calls Jesus “our great God and Savior” (Titus 2:13). Philippians 2:6-7 describes a pre-existent Christ who, “though he was in the form of God,” took on human form — a text scholars widely regard as reflecting extremely early, pre-Pauline Christian belief, undercutting the claim that a divine Jesus was a late theological invention decades or centuries after his death. This high Christology is joined to functions the New Testament reserves for God alone: Jesus receives worship without rebuking it, forgives sins, and is said to judge the world.

Common Objections

The strongest historical objection is the Arian controversy of the 4th century, when Arius argued the Son was a created being, “there was a time when he was not” — a position the Council of Nicaea (325) rejected, affirming the Son as “of one substance” (homoousios) with the Father, a formula still recited in the Nicene Creed. Modern objections echo this: some argue New Testament Christology developed gradually, starting with a merely human Jesus later exalted to divine status, rather than affirming his deity from the start; defenders point to the early date of texts like Philippians 2 and the worship-language found even in Paul’s earliest letters as evidence against a late development. Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the doctrine on different grounds, generally affirming Jesus as a great prophet or exalted being but explicitly denying his equality with God the Father — making this one of the sharpest and most consequential dividing lines between Christian orthodoxy and other traditions that otherwise revere Jesus.