True God

The big question

Almost everyone admires Jesus. Many people call him a great moral teacher, a prophet, or a wise man who taught love and forgiveness. Christians say much more: that he is God. Is that an exaggeration that grew up after his death, or did it start with Jesus himself?

What the Church teaches

Jesus Christ is true God. He is the eternal Son of the Father, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father” (Nicaea, 325; DH 125; CCC 464–465).

How sure is this? De fide. It is the heart of the Creed.

Where it comes from

What Jesus claimed. Jesus did not go around saying “I am God” in so many words, which his Jewish hearers would have understood as a claim to be the Father. But he claimed things only God can claim:

• To forgive sins. When he forgives a paralysed man, the scribes object, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7). Jesus doesn’t correct them; he heals the man to prove his authority.
• To exist before Abraham. “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). His hearers took up stones to throw at him, because “I am” is God’s own name (Exodus 3:14).
• To be one with the Father. “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and again they tried to stone him.
• To be the judge of all, who will come on the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62). At his trial, this answer is what the high priest calls blasphemy.

What the apostles wrote. St John opens his Gospel, “the Word was God” (John 1:1), and ends it with Thomas falling before the risen Jesus: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). St Paul writes that “in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9), and calls Christ “our great God and Savior” (Titus 2:13). The early hymn in Philippians says he was “in the form of God” before he “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:6–7).

What the first Christians did. They worshipped him. About the year 110, St Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom in Rome, called Jesus “our God” in his letters. Around the same time a pagan governor, Pliny the Younger, reported to the Emperor Trajan that Christians met before dawn to sing a hymn to Christ “as to a god”. Belief in Christ’s divinity was not a later development: it is there in the earliest sources, Christian and pagan.

How theologians explain it

The Arian crisis. In the early fourth century, Arius, a priest of Alexandria, taught that the Son was the first and greatest of God’s creatures, through whom God made everything else, but not God in the full sense: “there was when he was not.” The teaching spread widely. In 325 the Council of Nicaea answered with one word: the Son is homoousios, “of the same substance”, with the Father. St Athanasius spent the rest of his life defending it, often in exile.

Why it matters. Athanasius’s main argument was about salvation. Only God can save us, because only God can join us to God. If Christ were a creature, however great, he could not give us a share in the divine life. The Catechism repeats the point: the Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (CCC 460; 2 Peter 1:4).

Not only a great teacher. Because Jesus made the claims he did, the option of calling him merely a good moral teacher is hard to sustain. A man who claimed to forgive all sins, to have existed before Abraham and to judge the world, and who was wrong about it, would not be a great teacher. Either the claims are true, or something was badly wrong with the one who made them. Christian writers from the early Church to C. S. Lewis have pressed this point. It does not prove Christ’s divinity, but it shows the choice is sharper than it first looks.

What “Son of God” means. In the Old Testament, “son of God” could mean the angels, Israel, or the king. Jesus uses it of himself in a unique sense. He is the Son, who alone knows the Father (Matthew 11:27), and the Father’s “beloved Son” (Mark 1:11). The Church reads this as a relation within God himself (Unit 3).

Philosophy bridge

Unit 3 used the distinction between nature (what something is) and person (who someone is) to state the Trinity. This unit uses the same distinction the other way round. In the Trinity, one nature is possessed by three Persons; in Christ, one Person possesses two natures (Lesson 5.3).

What the Church does not claim

• Not that Jesus became God at some point, for example at his baptism. That view, called adoptionism, was rejected. He is the eternal Son, who became man.
• Not that the Son is a lesser god. He is “true God from true God”, equal to the Father.
• Not that Jesus’ humanity was a disguise. He is as truly human as he is truly divine (Lesson 5.2).
• Not that his divinity is only a matter of faith with no evidence. The claims and deeds of Jesus, and the faith of the first Christians, are historical facts that call for an explanation.

Check your understanding

1. What did the Council of Nicaea define about Jesus Christ?

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That he is true God, the eternal Son of the Father, “begotten, not made”, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father.

2. Give two claims Jesus made that only God could make.

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Any two of: to forgive sins (Mark 2:5–7); “before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58); “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30); to come as the judge of all (Mark 14:62).

3. What evidence is there that Christians worshipped Jesus as God very early?

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The New Testament writings themselves (John 20:28; Colossians 2:9; Titus 2:13); St Ignatius of Antioch calling him “our God” around 110; and the pagan governor Pliny reporting that Christians sang a hymn to Christ “as to a god”.

4. What did Arius teach, and what was St Athanasius’s main argument against him?

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Arius taught that the Son was the first and greatest creature, but not fully God. Athanasius argued that only God can save us and join us to God, so if Christ were a creature he could not save us.

5. Why is it hard to say Jesus was “just a good moral teacher”?

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Because he made claims only God can make, such as forgiving all sins and judging the world. If those claims were false, he would not be a good teacher. Either they are true, or something was badly wrong with him.