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Course 9 · Lesson 1.2

Jesus fully divine: names, works and worship

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 9 outline

Module 1: The Person of Christ in Scripture

  1. Jesus fully human in the Gospels and letters
  2. Jesus fully divine: names, works and worship
  3. The incarnation in John, Philippians and Hebrews
  4. The questions Scripture leaves for later theology

Module 2: The Christological Controversies

  1. Early errors: docetism and ebionitism
  2. Arius and Apollinarius: is the Son a creature, is the mind missing?
  3. Two schools: Antioch and Alexandria
  4. Nestorius and Cyril of Alexandria
  5. Eutyches and the Tome of Leo

Module 3: Ephesus and Chalcedon

  1. The Council of Ephesus in 431 and the title Theotokos
  2. The Chalcedonian Definition of 451, phrase by phrase
  3. Hypostatic union explained: one person in two natures
  4. Those who did not accept Chalcedon: Oriental Orthodox and the Church of the East

Module 4: Christology After Chalcedon

  1. The later councils: two wills and one person
  2. The communication of properties and the suffering of God the Son
  3. Kenosis and the knowledge of Christ
  4. Modern challenges to Chalcedon and replies

Module 5: The Work of Christ: Atonement, Resurrection, Ascension

  1. Atonement in Scripture: images and metaphors
  2. Ransom and victory: Christus Victor
  3. Satisfaction and penal substitution
  4. Moral influence, recapitulation and healing
  5. The resurrection and the ascension of Christ

Module 6: The Holy Spirit in Scripture and the Early Church

  1. The Spirit in the Old and New Testaments
  2. Early Christian views of the Spirit
  3. The deity of the Spirit: Basil, Athanasius and Constantinople
  4. Procession of the Spirit and the filioque

Module 7: Gifts of the Spirit and Sanctification

  1. Gifts in the New Testament: Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4
  2. Gifts across the traditions: cessationist, continuationist and Pentecostal views
  3. Sanctification in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant thought
  4. The fruit of the Spirit and the discernment of spirits

All courses

Program / Course 9: Christology and Pneumatology / Lesson 1.2

What you will learn

  • Identify the main titles the New Testament gives Jesus and what each suggests.
  • Explain how the works attributed to Jesus point beyond ordinary human activity.
  • Describe why the worship of Jesus by early Christians is important evidence.
  • State the main alternative readings and the strongest objections to the traditional view.

The big idea

The New Testament does not say, in one sentence, “Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity.” That language came later. What it does is attach to Jesus names that the Old Testament uses for God, ascribe to him works that belong to God, and describe the first Christians worshipping him, while still holding that there is one God. The church’s later teaching of his divinity was an attempt to say clearly what these texts already implied. Historians and believers still disagree about how early and how clear the claim was.

Key terms

Divinity
Being God, or sharing the nature of God. In Christian teaching the Son is fully God, not a lesser being.
Monotheism
Belief in one God. Ancient Judaism and Christianity both hold to it.
Kyrios
The Greek word for Lord. It can mean sir or master, but the Greek Old Testament also uses it in place of the divine name.
Son of God
A title with several possible meanings in the Bible, including Israel, a king, and a unique Son. Its force depends on the passage.
Son of Man
Jesus’s most common way of speaking about himself in the Gospels. It can mean simply a human being, and it echoes a figure in Daniel 7.
Logos
The Greek word for Word, used of Christ in John 1. It also carried meanings of reason and speech.
High Christology
A way of speaking about Christ that stresses his divinity, as opposed to describing him mainly as a teacher or prophet.

Background

The first Christians were Jews. They prayed the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4), and they did not think they were adding a second god. That is what makes the New Testament evidence so striking. Within a few decades of his death, Jews were praising Jesus in language that, in their setting, was normally reserved for God.

This lesson sorts that evidence into three groups: names, works and worship. It also notes the places where meaning is uncertain, since a few texts that are often cited in this debate can be translated in more than one way. The goal is to see what the texts say before the later doctrine was fully worked out.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Names and titles

Several titles carry weight. “Lord” (kyrios) is applied to Jesus very early. Paul quotes a hymn in which every tongue will confess that “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:11), a verse that echoes language about God in Isaiah 45:23. The early prayer “Maranatha,” in Aramaic, means “Our Lord, come” (1 Corinthians 16:22).

John’s Gospel opens: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), and says the Word became flesh (John 1:14). At the end of the Gospel Thomas says to the risen Jesus, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). Other texts are debated. Titus 2:13 and Romans 9:5 can be read as calling Christ God, but their grammar or punctuation can be read differently, and translators differ.

Step 2: Works that belong to God

In Mark 2 Jesus tells a paralyzed man that his sins are forgiven. Some teachers of the law object: “Who can forgive sins but God only?” (Mark 2:7). The story does not say that Jesus denied the claim. The Gospels also show him calming a storm (Mark 4:39), and the New Testament says all things were made through him (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16).

Hebrews says he upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). Paul writes that in him “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Jesus is also described as the one who will judge (Matthew 25:31-32; 2 Corinthians 5:10). In Jewish thought judgment belonged to God.

Step 3: Worship

The Gospels show people worshipping Jesus, sometimes in a way that may only mean deep respect. At the end of Matthew the disciples “worshipped him” (Matthew 28:17). But Acts shows Stephen praying as he dies, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). Revelation shows heaven offering praise to the Lamb together with the one on the throne (Revelation 5:13).

Pliny, a Roman governor writing in the early second century, reported that Christians sang a hymn to Christ “as to a god.” The point for historians is that worship of Jesus appears early and is not a late invention, although they debate how to explain its beginnings.

Step 4: One God still

None of these texts abandons monotheism. Paul rewrites the Shema itself: “to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6). He places Jesus inside the identity of the one God without adding a second god.

Jesus also speaks of the Father as greater (John 14:28) and prays to him. These texts later raised hard questions, which are the subject of the Trinity course and of module 2. For now they show that the New Testament puts Jesus both with God and in relation to God.

Step 5: How scholars read the evidence

Some historians argue that devotion to Jesus as divine arose very early, within the first generation, among Jewish believers. Others argue that the claims grew gradually and that the fullest statements, such as those in John, come late. Both sides accept that the New Testament authors wrote as they did, and disagree about how to explain it. This is an active scholarly debate, not a settled one.

Believers draw their own conclusions from the same texts. Christians conclude that the later councils drew out what was already there. Jewish readers conclude that worship of Jesus departs from the Shema. Unitarian Christians and some others read the same titles as honors given to an exalted man.

  1. Which title for Jesus do you find most striking, and why?
  2. How does Mark 2:7 make forgiveness a test of who Jesus is?
  3. What is the difference between respecting someone and worshipping them in the Gospel scenes?
  4. How does 1 Corinthians 8:6 keep monotheism while including Jesus?
  5. Why might Romans 9:5 and Titus 2:13 be cited less often than John 1:1 and John 20:28?
  6. What is the strongest objection to reading these texts as claims of divinity?

Examples

Thomas at the end of John

After the resurrection, Thomas touches the wounds and says, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). Jesus does not correct him. John then says his Gospel was written so that readers may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John 20:31).

The early hymn in Philippians

Philippians 2:6-11 is often thought to be an early Christian hymn. It says that every knee should bow to Jesus and that every tongue should confess him as Lord. Bowing and confessing are things that Isaiah 45 reserves for the God of Israel.

A constructed discussion

A study group member says that Son of God just means a good person. Another points out that Israel and kings were also called sons of God in the Old Testament, but that John 5:18 says some wanted to kill Jesus because he called God his own Father, making himself equal with God. The group agrees to read each passage in its setting. (This is a constructed example.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus is true God and true man, one person, the eternal Son. It reads the New Testament titles and the worship of the early church as the basis for that teaching, while holding that the Church’s tradition helps interpret them.

Orthodox

The Orthodox Church confesses the Son as God from God, of one being with the Father, and treats the worship of the church as the first witness to this faith. The liturgy addresses prayer and hymns to Christ directly.

Protestant

Most Protestant churches affirm the full divinity of Christ and argue for it from the Scriptures alone, citing texts such as John 1:1, Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1. Many evangelicals add that the claim is central to the gospel.

Jewish

Jewish tradition holds that God is one and cannot take human form, and so does not accept the claim that Jesus is divine. Jewish readers often argue that titles like Son of God and Lord had other meanings in their setting and that the doctrine grew out of Greek thought.

Unitarian and some modern scholars

Unitarian Christians and some historians read the New Testament as describing an exalted human Messiah. They point to texts where Jesus is subordinate to the Father and to the fact that the language of divinity develops over time.

Why it matters

How Jesus is related to God shapes the meaning of every other Christian doctrine, from the cross to worship to prayer. This lesson does not ask a student to accept the traditional view. It asks that the case be understood in the terms its defenders would use, and the objections in the terms their holders would use.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The church invented the divinity of Christ at Nicaea in 325.

Correction: Nicaea responded to a dispute already under way, and the creed used earlier language. The councils did settle the vocabulary. Whether the New Testament already taught the idea is a separate question, on which scholars differ, but the claim that a single council or emperor invented it is not supported by the sources.

Misunderstanding: Jesus never said he was God, so the doctrine cannot be biblical.

Correction: This is a real argument, and it deserves a real reply. Defenders point to the indirect claims in the Gospels, especially in John, and to the titles and worship in the letters. Critics reply that these are later interpretations. The disagreement turns on how the texts are read.

Misunderstanding: Every use of Lord or Son of God means divinity.

Correction: These words have a range of meanings. Lord can mean master, and Son of God was used for kings and for Israel. Their force has to be judged in each passage.

Knowledge check

Name three kinds of evidence for the divinity of Jesus in the New Testament.

The evidence falls into names, works and worship. Names include Lord, Word and Son of God, and Thomas’s confession in John 20:28. Works include forgiving sins, calming the sea and acting as creator and judge. Worship includes the hymn in Philippians 2, Stephen’s prayer in Acts 7 and the praise of the Lamb in Revelation 5.

What does it mean that a few texts are debated?

Passages like Romans 9:5 and Titus 2:13 can be read as calling Christ God, but the Greek can also be divided or punctuated differently. Responsible study notes both readings. The case for divinity does not depend on these verses alone, because other passages such as John 1:1 and 20:28 are more direct.

How does Paul keep monotheism while speaking of Jesus as Lord?

In 1 Corinthians 8:6 he echoes the Shema and says there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. He places the Lord Jesus within the one identity of God rather than adding a second divine being. Later theology tried to explain this with the language of persons and nature.

Why do historians pay attention to early worship of Jesus?

Worship is a social practice that can be dated, and the letters of Paul, which are among the earliest Christian writings, already refer to calling on the name of the Lord Jesus. If Jewish believers did this so early, it suggests that very high claims about him arose quickly. Historians disagree on how to explain this.

Think it through

  1. Which of the three groups of evidence, names, works or worship, seems strongest to you, and which weakest?
  2. What would a Jewish contemporary of Paul have found surprising about 1 Corinthians 8:6?
  3. How should a student treat a text that can be translated two ways?
  4. What does it mean to give the best form of a view you do not hold?

Independent assignment

A case for and a case against

In your own notebook, write 500 to 700 words. In the first half, build the strongest case you can from the New Testament that Jesus is divine, using at least five passages. In the second half, set out the strongest reply a Jewish or Unitarian reader might give. End with a short paragraph on which points you still find unresolved. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study