Murray Harris’ Defense of Christ’s Deity

One verse beyond all others in the New Testament affirms that every divine attribute is found in Jesus: “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col. 2:9). Paul does not say simply “the plenitude of Deity,” but “the entire fullness of Deity.” He emphasizes that no element of that fullness is excepted. Whatever is characteristic of God as God resides in Christ. This includes both God’s nature and his attributes. In the Greek text the verb lives (present tense) and the adverb translated “in bodily form” are not found side by side but are separated, which suggests that two distinct affirmations are being made: that the entire fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ eternally and that this fullness now permanently resides in Christ in bodily form. Thus, Paul implies both the eternal deity and the permanent humanity of Christ.

Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him. (John 12:41; see Isa. 6:1-3)

They [the Israelites] drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. (1 Cor. 10:4)

One of the constant refrains found throughout the Old Testament is summed up in the psalmist’s words: “You, O LORD, are the Most High over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods” (Ps. 97:9). The early Christians attributed the same universal supremacy to Jesus. Peter affirms that Jesus “has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand-with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him” (1 Pet. 3:22). Paul states that “Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living” (Rom. 14:9). And John observes that Jesus is “the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5). But not only is Jesus supreme over all heavenly beings and all earthly beings, whether dead or alive. He stands in authority and rule over the entire universe, animate and inanimate. He is “over all” (Rom. 9:5) and is “before all” (Col. 1:17) with regard to both time and status. In these two verses, the Greek for “all” is ambiguous, for it may be masculine (“all persons”) or neuter (“all things,” animate and inanimate).

[God’s mighty strength,] which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church.

The first verse of the Prologue (1:1-18) to the Fourth Gospel is clearly triadic: each of the three clauses has the same subject (“the Word”) and an identical verb (“was”; Greek en). The Greek term translated “Word” is logos, which includes the idea of reason as well as speech, so that, as one commentator puts it, “Christ is declared by the Apostle to be the Inward and Expressed Thought of the Eternal Mind.”¹⁷ Although Jesus Christ is not explicitly mentioned until verse 17, the evangelist clearly assumes that the Logos is none other than Jesus Christ, the “only Son” (John 1:14, 18).

The verse makes three separate affirmations about the Word: he already existed when creation and time began (v. la); he was always in active communion with God the Father (v. 1b); he was always a partaker of deity (v. le). The thought of the verse moves from eternal preexistence to personal intercommunion to intrinsic deity. In the third clause, “the Word was God,” the word theos (“God”) lacks the Greek definite article, which in this case indicates three things: that “God” is predicative, not the subject; that the proposition is nonreciprocating, so that while it is true that “the Word was God,” it is not true that God in his totality was the Word; that the term theos describes the nature of the Logos rather than identifying his person. Jesus as the Logos is personally distinct from the Father (v. 1b) yet is one with the Father in nature (v. 1c).

There is an important textual variant in John 1:18. Instead of reading monogenes theos (“the only Son, God”), many manuscripts read ho monogenes huios (“the only Son”). But the majority of text critics agree that monogenes theos was the original reading. Some English translations render this phrase by “the only begotten God” (New American Standard Bible) or “God the only Son” (New International Version, New Revised Standard Version). The use of monogenes elsewhere in the New Testament and the word order of the Greek suggest that we should follow the lead of the New American Bible (second edition) and several commentators and translate the phrase by “the only Son, God,” where the word God explains who “the only Son” is. This is how I arrived at the rendering preferred above–”the only Son, who is God.” John’s point in the verse is that, although no person on earth can claim to have gained knowledge of God as he is in himself, Jesus Christ, the only Son, has accurately and fully revealed God to humankind, since he himself is God by nature and intimately acquainted with the Father by experience.

On occasion Thomas’s statement has been interpreted as an exclamation that expresses his praise to God for the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus: “Praise be to my Lord and my God!” Fatal to this interpretation is the phrase said to him (i.e., Jesus) (eipen auto), which is clearly parallel to the surrounding verses: “He [Jesus] said to Thomas” (v. 27) and “Jesus said to him [Thomas]” (v. 29). What we have in verse 28 is not an ejaculation made in the hearing of Jesus but an exclamation actually addressed to him. In effect Thomas is saying, “You are my Lord and my God.” He recognized that Jesus, now alive from the dead, was supreme over all physical and spiritual life (“Lord”) and one who shared the divine nature (“God”).

Was Thomas’s cry an extravagant acclamation, spoken in a moment of ecstasy when his exuberance outstripped his theological sense? Not at all. John records no rebuke of Jesus to Thomas for his worship. Jesus’ silence is tantamount to consent, for Jews regarded the human acceptance of worship as blasphemous. Indeed, Jesus’ subsequent word to Thomas, “you have believed” (v. 29a), implies that he accepted Thomas’s confession of faith, which he then indirectly commends to others (v. 29b). Moreover, John himself has endorsed Thomas’s confession, for it stands as his last and highest affirmation about Christ immediately before his statement of purpose in writing the Gospel (vv. 30-31).

In the first five verses of Romans 9, Paul is expressing his sorrow and anguish at the failure of the majority of his fellow Jews to embrace the salvation found in Christ. To explain why his grief was so intense, Paul lists the incomparable privileges that belonged to the Jews, the consummate privilege being that “from their ranks came the Messiah as far as human descent is concerned” (v. Sa, my translation). At this point in the verse some editors of the Greek text and some translations put a semicolon or period, which has the effect of making the last part of the verse a doxology addressed to God the Father: “God who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen” (Revised Standard Version). However, considerations of the word order in Greek make it much more natural to regard the final words of the verse as a description of or doxology to the Messiah, Jesus Christ (as in the New Revised Standard Version cited above). What the apostle Paul is affirming at the end of Romans 9:1-5 is this. Despite the fact that most of his fellow Jews have rejected their Messiah, Jesus Christ is in reality supreme over the whole universe, animate and inanimate, and, what is more, as God by nature, he is and always will be the object of worship.

There has recently been a stunning reversal of scholarly opinion about this verse, a verse that is crucial in any consideration of Paul’s view of Christ. In the two standard texts of the Greek New Testament (the Nestle-Aland text, now in its twenty-sixth edition, and the United Bible Societies text, now in its fourth edition), the editors have reversed their earlier punctuation that made verse 5b a doxology to God and now prefer the punctuation that makes verse 5b a description of or doxology to Christ (“the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever”; or, “the Messiah, who is God over all, blessed forever”). This remarkable change of interpretation is reflected in the New Revised Standard Version cited above.

Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1 may be considered together, since both use a stereotyped formula, “God and Savior,” in reference to Jesus. This was a common formula in first-century religious terminology, used by both Palestinian and Diaspora Jews in reference to Yahweh, the one true God, and by Gentiles when they spoke of an individual god or a deified ruler. In all of these uses the expression God and Savior invariably denotes one deity, not two, so that when Paul and Peter employ this formula and follow it with the name Jesus Christ, their readers would always understand it as referring to a single person, Jesus Christ. It would simply not occur to them that “God” might mean the Father, with Jesus Christ as the “Savior.”

Hebrews 1:8 is a quotation of Psalm 45:6, where, at his wedding, a king of David’s line is exuberantly addressed as “God” because he represented God to his people and because he foreshadowed the coming royal Messiah, who would perfectly realize the dynastic ideal as described in the psalm. In the first two chapters of Hebrews the author is demonstrating the superiority of Jesus over angels, first as the Son of God (1:5-14), then as the Son of Man (2:5-18). The contrast between 1:7 and 1:8 is not only between the transient service of angels and the permanent dominion of the Son but also between the impermanence of angelic form and the divinity of the Son’s person. They are at one time “winds,” at another, “flames of fire” (1:7), whereas his person is divine. Only one who fully possesses the divine nature could be appropriately addressed as “God” by God the Father. The superiority of Jesus to angels does not reside simply in his having distinctive titles, such as “Son” (1:5) or “firstborn” (1:6a), in his being the object of angelic worship (1:6b), or in his being the unchangeable Lord of creation (1:10-12) and God’s exalted co-regent (1:13). It is also seen in his belonging to a different category of being that of deity. The address O God that was figurative and hyperbolic when applied to a mortal king in Psalm 45 is applied to the immortal Son in a literal and true sense in Hebrews 1.

This brings to an end our brief survey of these seven crucial passages. Seen as a whole, they prompt some general observations. First, the ascription of the title God to Jesus is found in four New Testament writers–John (three uses), Paul (two), Peter (one), and the author of Hebrews (one). Second, this christological use of the title began immediately after the resurrection in 30 (John 20:28), continued during the 50s (Rom. 9:5) and 60s (Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8; 2 Pet. 1:1), and then into the 90s (John 1:1, 18). Third, the use of “God” in reference to Jesus was not restricted to Christians who lived in one geographical region or who had a particular theological outlook. It occurs in literature that was written in Asia Minor (John, Titus), Greece (Romans), and possibly Judea (Hebrews) and Rome (2 Peter), and that was addressed to persons living in Asia Minor (John, 2 Peter), Rome (Romans, Hebrews), and Crete (Titus). Also, the use is found in a theological setting that is Jewish Christian (John, Hebrews, Peter) or Gentile Christian (Romans, Titus). Fourth, the three instances in John’s Gospel are strategically placed. This Fourth Gospel begins (1:1) as it ends (20:28), and the Prologue to this Gospel begins (1:1) as it ends (1:18), with an unambiguous assertion of the deity of Christ: “The Word was God” (1:1); “the only Son, who is God” (1:18); “my Lord and my God!” (20:28).¹⁸ In his preincarnate state (1:1), in his incarnate state (1:18), and in his postresurrection state (20:28), Jesus is God. For John, recognition of Christ’s deity is the hallmark of the Christian.

First, in all strands of the New Testament the term theos usually refers to the Father. We often find the expression God the Father, which implies that God is the Father.¹⁹ Also, in trinitarian formulas “God” always denotes the Father, never the Son or the Spirit. For example, 2 Corinthians 13:14 reads, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” What is more, in the salutations at the beginning of many New Testament letters, “God” is distinguished from “the Lord Jesus Christ.” So Paul’s letters regularly begin, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” As a result of all this, in the New Testament the term theos in the singular has become virtually a proper name, referring to the trinitarian Father.²⁰ If Christ were everywhere called “God,” so that in reference to him the term was not a title but a proper noun, like “Jesus,” linguistic ambiguity would be everywhere present. What would we be able to make of a statement such as “God was in God, reconciling the world to himself,” or “the Father was in God, reconciling the world to himself” (cf. 2 Cor. 5:19)?

If, then, the word God does not become a personal name for Jesus anywhere in the New Testament, what is the actual significance of the seven uses? As used of Jesus, the term theos is a generic title, a description that indicates the class or category (genus) to which he belongs. Jesus is not only God in revelation, the revealer of God (an official title)–he is God in essence. Not only are the deeds and words of Jesus the deeds and words of God–the nature of Jesus is the nature of God. By nature, as well as by action, Jesus is God. Other New Testament titles of Jesus, such as “Son of God” or “Lord” or ”Alpha and Omega,” imply the divinity of Jesus, but the title God explicitly affirms his deity.

It may help to illustrate the distinction I am making between a proper noun (in this case, a personal name), a generic title, and an official title. Consider these two sentences: Winston Churchill was a Britisher and a prime minister of the United Kingdom. John Kennedy was an American and a president of the United States. In these sentences “Winston Churchill” and “John Kennedy” are proper nouns (personal names); “Britisher” and American” are generic titles; “prime minister” and “president” are official titles. The parallel sentence relevant to our discussion would be “Jesus is God and the Revealer of God.”

First, to say that “Jesus is God” is true to New Testament thought, but it goes beyond actual New Testament diction. The nearest comparable statements are “the Word was God” (John 1:1), “the only Son, who is God” (John 1:18), and “the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever” (Rom. 9:5). So we must remember that the theological proposition “Jesus is God” is an inference from the New Testament evidence–a necessary and true inference, but nonetheless an inference.

Second, if we make the statement “Jesus is God” without qualification, we are in danger of failing to do justice to the whole truth about Jesus–that he was the incarnate Word, a human being, and that in his present existence in heaven he retains his humanity; although now it is in a glorified form. Jesus is not simply “man” nor only “God,” but the God-man.

Third, given English usage of the word God, the simple affirmation “Jesus is God” may be easily misinterpreted. In common English usage God is a proper name, identifying a particular person, not a common noun designating a class.²² For us God is the God of the Judeo-Christian monotheistic tradition, or God the Father of Jesus and of the Christian, or the trinitarian Godhead. So when we make the equation in English, “Jesus is God,” we are in danger of suggesting that these two terms, “Jesus” and “God,” are interchangeable, that there is a numerical identity between the two. But while Jesus is God, it is not true that God is Jesus. There are others–the Father and the Spirit–of whom the predicate God may be rightfully used. Jesus is all that God is, without being all there is of God. The person of Jesus does not exhaust the category of deity. So then, when we say, “Jesus is God,” we must recognize that we are attaching a meaning to the term God–namely, “God in essence” or “God by nature”–that is not its predominant sense in English.