Does Jesus Claim to be God?

Theological Letters

Greetings subscribers! Last week, I kicked off a trio of letters on anthropology, deification, and asceticism, having posted Part 1 on Theological Anthropology. I plan to post Part 2 next Sunday, but I wanted to interject today with a letter unexpectedly prompted by a post on X (formerly Twitter).

A relative of mine, “Eleanor,” reached out to me on behalf of someone else, “Céline,” who was troubled by a post she had seen on X. The Tweet (what is it called on X?) challenged Christians to produce a passage in the New Testament where Jesus declares that he is God. Being unable to find such a declaration, Céline was troubled and reached out to Eleanor, who was no more capable of finding such a passage. Hence, the message was passed along to me.

As you can see in the letter, I ask if Eleanor might pass along the link, so I can offer aid in the conversation. (I have yet to receive the link.) But in the interim, I weigh in on why they will find no such passage in the New Testament if the claims of Nicene Trinitarianism are true.

One note before jumping in: This letter presumes a basic understanding of Nicene Trinitarianism. If a reader is unfamiliar with such basics, or needs a refresher, then I would point readers to my essay, “Understanding Nicene Trinitarianism.”

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Dear Eleanor,

I saw your message on behalf of Céline. If you send me the link to the actual post, I may reply there. But for now, I’ll simply respond to you, and you can pass this along to her, if you’d like.

The question is not as simple as it appears. To see why, you would need to understand Nicene Trinitarianism, along with related issues of causal metaphysics and Greek grammar. Understanding such things makes clear why Christ would never say such a thing. Incidentally, this is why theology should not be done on social media in soundbites directed at short attention spans.

Throughout the New Testament, the word “God” (θεός, transliterated theos) may appear with the definite article — ho theos (ὁ θεός), or “the God” — or without it, theos, or “God.” With the definite article, The God refers to a person, and this usage is reserved for God the Father. Without the definite article, God is used as a predicate, identifying the nature of the subject in question — “Jesus is God” or divine, akin to saying, “Katherine is human” or “Lassie is canine.”

Here, you can already see in the grammar the Trinitarian distinction between the three persons and their common nature:¹ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons but share a common nature, God — just as you, me, and Céline are distinct persons but share human nature.

Now, there's no lack of New Testament passages that identify Jesus as God, using theos (no definite article) as a predicate to describe the nature of Jesus — that is to say, Jesus is God, or divine, or of the same nature as The God, his Father. See, for example, John 1:1, 20:28, Romans 9:5, Titus 2:13, Philippians 2:5-8, Hebrews 1:8, 2 Peter 1:1, or John 1:18. What you do not find — and would never find, in either biblical literature or in the writings of the Greek-speaking Church fathers, who were abundantly clear about the divinity of Jesus — is a reference to Jesus as The God, since this term was used exclusively as a reference to the Father. And Jesus is not the Father.

The simplest proof is the Nicene Creed itself, where it begins, “I believe in one God, the Father.” The Creed does not say, “I believe in one God, the Holy Trinity” or “one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Rather, The God confessed is the Father.²

Of course, the Creed goes on to confess belief in the Son, who is of the same nature as the Father: That is to say, Jesus is divine in the same way the Father, who begat him, is divine — just as I am human in the same way that my father, who begat me, is human.³ This confession, of course, was the very point of the Arian dispute that sparked the Council of Nicea (and then Constantinople),⁴ which wrote the Creed.⁵ And in the Creed, you see the consistent linguistic tradition of the New Testament and the Eastern Church fathers: The God is the Father, but Jesus, too, is God (or divine), having the same nature as his Father, who begat him.

Now, why this linguistic convention? Why say that Jesus is God but use The God in reference to the Father alone?

The answer goes to the very same point of Trinitarian theology we discussed yesterday.⁶ The Father is the first principle or fount of divinity. He is the one who has divinity from no one and exists in himself (aseity is the Latin term for this), and as such, the Father is the first principle or fount of divinity — The God.⁷ From him comes the two other divine persons, the Son (whom he begets) and the Spirit (whom he outbreathes or spirates). And these other persons share the same nature as their source, just as any son who is begotten shares the nature of his paternal source — dogs beget dogs, cats beget cats, humans beget humans, and God begets God.⁸

Despite the equality of nature amongst the persons, there is importance to the causal order — the Father being unbegotten, the Son being begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeding from the Father. To the ancient mind, the causal order carries a certain priority or headship. In the original human family, there is a causal order that reflects the hierarchy of the family: Adam, the first man and principle of humanity, is the one from whom Eve proceeds and by whom Cain is begotten.⁹ This causal order carries with it a certain priority with Adam as the head or patriarch of the first family. And so it is in the Holy Trinity. The Father, being the fount of divinity from whom the others come, has paternal headship and priority. This is why the Trinity reflects this patriarchal structure, the Father commanding and the Son and the Spirit obeying. And such is the reason the title, The God, is reserved for the patriarchal head of the Holy Trinity, the Father.

Once you see this, you can understand why the objector is looking for something you would never find, if Nicene Trinitarian theology is true. — And to be clear, the question is plainly challenging whether traditional Trinitarian theology is true. Plainly, an objector who points this out is contesting the confessional understanding of Christ as the divine Son, begotten of the Father before all worlds. — Yet, the question reveals that the objector doesn't understand Nicene Trinitarian theology. For he asks, If that's true, then why don't we find this? But the “this” he’s looking for does not follow from Nicene Trinitarianism; rather, it contradicts it. If Trinitarianism were Sabellian (i.e., there is one person, The God, and he shows up with various masks that are mere personifications of this one fellow), then we might expect to find Jesus saying, I am The God. But under Nicene Trinitarianism, he never would. For he would be saying, I am the Father. But he is not.

The fact that most people don’t understand this point is why folks are so easily troubled by the lack of a direct statement by Jesus, declaring, “I am God,” and it’s also why the passages where Christ indicates his divinity slip by their gaze. For example, in John 8:58, Jesus says that before Abraham was I am (Greek: ἐγώ εἰμι, transliterated egō eimi). In response, the Jews pick up stones to execute him because they recognize that he is invoking the Tetragrammaton (i.e., the holy name of God, Yahweh [יהוה], revealed to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14). Grammatically, Jesus would say I was (ἤμην = ēmēn), if he was simply claiming to exist before Abraham, but he is plainly invoking the divine name, claiming divinity. (This is especially significant because, according to the Trinitarian theology of the Greek fathers, the theophanies, or Old Testament appearances of God in anthropomorphic form, are all the Son of God, not the Father. In other words, the Son is the one who revealed himself to Moses and the other patriarchs of old.)¹⁰

This, of course, is not the only time that the Jews understood Christ to be claiming divinity and, therefore, took up stones to kill him for blasphemy. In John 10:30-3, for example, he states plainly that I and the Father are one, and the Jews pick up stones to kill him, explaining the reason: He claimed to be God — not the Father but divine (no definite article).

Also in the gospel of John (20:28-9), Thomas reacts to the resurrected Christ by declaring him divine — My lord and my God — and rather than rebuking him, Jesus points out that Thomas believes because he has seen, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. In other words, he accepts and affirms the divine attribution.

These are far from the only examples. Jesus frequently refers to himself as “The Son of Man” (e.g., Matt 8:20, 9:6, 17:22-23, 24:27, 25:31-32; Mark 2:28, 10:45, 14:62; Lk 19:10, 22:69-70). While this title can be used in reference to man in the generic (this being how God speaks to Ezekiel, for example), Jesus is plainly not using it in the generic but to himself in the specific — of his Messianic role and his future return in glory. For that reason, it’s evidently a reference to the Son of Man in Daniel 7, who was understood to be a Messianic figure who was also divine, given that he ascends to the Most High. The high priest plainly understands this to be a claim to divinity at Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin, since he tears his clothes at the blasphemy. Jesus is asked directly if he is the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One (i.e., the Son of God). Jesus answers, again, with the Tetragrammaton, I am, promptly punctuating the point with, “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (see Mark 14:61-64).

Again, many modern readers miss this use of the Tetragrammaton, but it’s plainly intended to be read this way. For example, when Jesus is arrested in John’s gospel and they ask if he is Jesus of Nazareth, his response is I am, and John dramatically punctuates the point by noting that the words cause the soldiers to fall over (see John 18:4-6). Plainly, John, who unquestionably ascribes divinity to Jesus in the prologue of his gospel, is trying to highlight these invocations of “I am” as declarations of his divinity — and the declaration was anything but subtle to his Jewish hearers.

My point is simply this. The contemporary impulse to want Jesus to say, “I am God,” reflects a contemporary and anachronistic form of monotheism, with virtually no understanding of what Nicene Trinitarianism really teaches, the underlying nuances of the teaching, or how that teaching is carried over into Greek grammar. The contemporary ear, having little grasp of such things, hears that Jesus is God and asks, If that’s true, why doesn’t he just say so? But to the readers of the gospels and the New Testament, who understood that The God is the Father, and Jesus is not the Father, understood that he would not, nor should say, I am The God. And yet, he nonetheless declares his divinity in no uncertain terms: Be it in his declarations that God is his Father, or in saying he and his Father are one, or teaching that if you've seen him, you've seen the Father, or in his invocation of the Tetragrammaton, or in his declarations that he is the Son of Man who will be revealed to be at the right hand of his Father and appear again in glory. And this is precisely why the New Testament writers do not hesitate to say he is God, using this predicate to identify his divinity. As Thomas declared and Christ affirmed, he is Lord and God. I hope that clears things up.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jacobs

—

Nathan A. Jacobs, PhD

Scholar in Residence of Philosophy and Religion in the Religion in the Arts in Contemporary Culture Program (RACC)
Vanderbilt University, Divinity School
http://nathanajacobs.com
https://vanderbilt.academia.edu/NathanAJacobs

P.S. In case you're rusty on Nicene Trinitarianism and need a refresher on some of these points, I recommend my essay, “Understanding Nicene Trinitarianism.”

1. As I explain in other places, I dislike the translation of “person” for hypostasis (ὑπόστασις), this being the term for the “persons” of the Trinity. The reason is that the term (derived from the Latin persona) is a closer equivalent to prosopon (πρόσωπον), which translates to “mask” or “face” — that is, a persona — which was the preferred language of the Sabellians. Hypostasis is more substantial than this, indicating the subject that gives concrete existence to an otherwise abstract nature — this being the meaning articulated in Basil’s (or, if you prefer, Gregory’s) Epistle 38. Some Eastern fathers, such as Gregory of Nazianzus continued to use prosopon but only when conjoined with hypostasis to make clear that they do not intend it in a Sabellian way, while others, such as Gregory of Nyssa, abandoned the term entirely. An additional problem with the term is that it carries connotations of “personhood.” But hypostasis carries no such connotations. A blade of grass is a hypostasis. Whether it has reason and self-awareness and other things we might associate with personhood is determined by the nature it has, not by whether it is a hypostasis. Hence, I prefer to refer to the “subject” or “particular subject” or “enduring subject” or “particular.” However, in this letter, I avoid muddying the waters with this point, simply accepting the common parlance of three divine Persons.

2. Lest the point is missed, I am not appealing to the Nicene Creed to establish the use of The God, ho theos, in reference to the Father. Rather, I am using it in reference to the monarchial sentiment that The God confessed is the Father.

3. Once again, I would point readers who are unfamiliar with Nicene Trinitarianism to my essay, “Understanding Nicene Trinitarianism.” However, the basics of the view, as articulated by the Eastern Church fathers, is that the Holy Trinity consists of three subjects or persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and these three subjects or persons are of the same nature, God. The analogy Gregory of Nyssa uses, which I am here employing as well, is of three human persons: Paul, Timothy, and Silvanus are three distinct subjects or persons who share a common nature, human. Such is the three-one relationship of the Holy Trinity (See Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, Quod non sint tres dii). On whether this constitutes polytheism, once again, I would point readers to my essay. For a more thorough treatment of the topic, see my essay, “On ‘Not Three Gods’ — Again,” Modern Theology 24:3 (July 2008). Or one can read Gregory of Nyssa’s own answer in To Ablabius: On “Not Three Gods.”

4. Because the Nicene Creed said today was first formulated at the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) and then expanded at the Council of Constantinople (381 A.D.), some scholars (myself included) will refer to it as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. But for brevity’s sake, I here refer to it as the Nicene Creed and to Nicene Trinitarianism.

5. For a concise overview of the Arian dispute and the concern for Christ’s divinity, see my essay, “Athanasius of Alexandria,” which I have re-posted here.

6. The previous exchange to which I refer was that Eleanor asked me how John 14:28, where Christ says, “the Father is greater than I,” squares with Christ being co-equal with the Father. My reply was this: “There are two different explanations in the Eastern fathers. The one, which I'm not a fan of, even though it's advocated by my patron Saint, is that he is speaking about his humanity. So by humbling himself to the lowly estate of a creature and taking on that nature, he makes himself suitably of the station of a creature. While I don’t think the reply is completely without merit, the other explanation, which I prefer and which is found in figures like John of Damascus, is that he is speaking about causation and headship. That is to say, just as Adam has a certain priority as both the first man from which all others come and as the head of the household or original patriarch (even though all other humans are equal in nature), so the Father is the First Principle of divinity, begetting the Son and out-breathing the Spirit, and this is also why there is a paternal headship even in the Trinity — the Father commanding and the Son and the Spirit obeying. As I said, both explanations appear in the Eastern fathers, but I favor the latter.”

7. For a thorough treatment of the begotten-not-made distinction, I recommend my essay in Religious Studies, “The Begotten-Not-Made Distinction in the Eastern Church Fathers.” This article is dense and technical, but I posted its sections here on Theological Letters, trying to thin things out a little for accessibility. So, some readers may prefer those waters instead. You can find those here: Begotten, Not Made (1 of 4), Begotten, Not Made (2 of 4), Begotten, Not Made (3 of 4), Begotten, Not Made (4 of 4).

8. Readers unfamiliar with Nicene Trinitarianism may be alarmed by this talk of causation, hearing in it that the Son and the Spirit were created or that there was a time when they did not exist. Both concerns are addressed in my essays, “Understanding Nicene Trinitarianism” and, more thoroughly in, “The Begotten-Not-Made Distinction in the Eastern Church Fathers.” On the latter piece, see note 7 above.

9. Gregory of Nysa uses this same analogy (though swapping Abel for Cain) Contra Eunomium to show the difference between formal and efficient causality — that is, even though how (efficient cause) Adam, Eve, and Abel come to be differs, what (formal cause) they are is the same, human. See Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 1.34

10. See, e.g., Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone, 56; Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 4.7; Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, 1.7; Origen, Contra Celsum, 5.53; Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos, 3.25.10-3; Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 11.3.