is jesus god : an argument - b. b. warfield, d.d

8/14/2019 Is Jesus God : An Argument - B. B. WARFIELD, D.D.

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BT 215 .18 1912 c.lIs Jesus God


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UvVOCT 12 I

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COPYRIGHT, 1912, BYAMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY


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This book is published incommemoration of the cen-tennial of the founding ofPrinceton Theological Sem-inary, CELEBRATED ON MAY 5,6, 7, 1912.


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CONTENTS.PAGEDoes the Christian Church Teach the Deity

of Christ? 9By Ricnk Bouke Kuiper.Has the Christian Church Always Taught

the Deity of Christ? 23By Daniel Stephanus Burger Joubert.Do the New Testament Writers Teach theDeity of Christ? 43

By Harm Henry Mecter.Do the Evangelists Represent Christ as Him-

self Teaching His Deity?First Essay 61By Johannes Daniel Roos.Second Essay 74

By Frank Mackey Richardson.Did Jesus Teach His Own Deity?First Essay 82By William Arthur Motter.Second Essay 96

By William Nicol.Is Christ God?First Essay 114By Gerrit Hoeksema.Second Essay 136By Luther Moore Bicknell.


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INTRODUCTORY NOTE.This little volume offers a constructive ar-

gument for the Deity of Christ. It owes itsorigin to an attempt by the members of aclass in Princeton Theological Seminary, dur-ing the session of 1911-1912the CentennialSession of the Seminaryto give a reasonedanswer to a series of inquiries. These, takenin sequence, raised the salient questions whichevery one must face who undertakes to in-vestigate historically the evidence for theDeity of Christ. These inquiries, in their or-der, were :

1. Does the Christian Church teach theDeity of Christ?

2. Has the Christian Church always taughtthe Deity of Christ?

3. Do the New Testament writers teachthe Deity of Christ?

4. Do the Evangelists represent Christ asHimself teaching His Deity?

5. Did Jesus teach His own Deity?6. Is Christ God?


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Introductory Note.A considerable number of essays were pre-

sented on each of these topics. Those hereprinted were selected because they seemed tofit well into one another, and together to pre-sent a solid argument for the ultimate con-clusion. Naturally, the essays should be readconsecutively and with regard to their relationto one another, that their force may be felt.As the importance of the topics increases pro-gressively, it has been thought well, while butone essay is printed on each of the earlier, toprint two on each of the later of them. Thisentails some slight repetition, but it is hopedwill be found to add strength to the generalpresentation of the argument.

It is with great confidence that I place theseessays by a company of earnest young men,seeking (and finding) the truth, before alarger public than that for which they wereprepared, asking for them a candidI scarce-ly need ask an indulgentreading.

Benjamin B. Warfield.Princeton Theological Seminary,


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DOES THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHTEACH THE DEITYOF CHRIST?By Rienk Bouke Kuiper.

Before a satisfactory answer can be givento this question it is necessary to define someof its terms. What is meant by "the Chris-tian Church" ? Not the "holy catholic church"of the Apostles' Creed which includes thewhole body of Christ of all times and lands asone spiritual organism; our question is con-cerned only with the present. Again, we haveto do with the Church in its visible aspect; be-cause of our inability to say who are and whoare not members of the invisible Church, wecan successfully investigate the teaching onlyof the visible Church. We must also hereface the question which very naturally presentsitself, Can a Church that denies the deity ofChrist be called Christian ? It is evident thata negative answer to this question at this stage


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io Is Jesus God?of the discussion would at once destroy thewhole problem. For if only that Churchwhich teaches the deity of Christ is truly Chris-tian, then of course the Christian Churchteaches the deity of Christ, or else there is noChristian Church. We are constrained there-fore to take the term Christian Church simplyin its conventional sense. It includes the wholebody of those who are members of any insti-tution called a Church which professes to be,not Jewish, Mohammedan, or pagan, butChristian.The term "deity of Christ" must next be

defined. There is little or no question as towhat the earliest followers of Christ, the earlyChurch, and in fact orthodox Christianityof succeeding times, have meant when thedogma has been confessed. What has beenmeant is clearly and unambiguously statedin the ecumenical creeds. It is confessedthat Christ is the only begotten Son ofGod, his Son therefore in a sense inwhich no other being can possibly be called.God's Son, perfect God, of the substance ofthe Father. To put the case briefly, the termdeity of Christ in its historical meaning im-


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Is Jesus Godf iiplies nothing less than the unity of substanceof the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. Hewho accepts the deity of Christ in this senseconfesses that Christ is God in that sense inwhich there is but one God. This meaning weshall attach to the term in the attempt to an-swer our question. We need not defend our-selves for so doing. On the contrary, any-body who wishes to attach any other sensewhatsoever to the term needs to defend hiscourse of action. The phrase, the deity ofChrist, has a historical meaning, and if any-body desires to deny the dogma in this senseand yet wishes to maintain it in a modifiedsense, he should, we believe, for the sake ofveracity, invent another formula to give ex-pression to his view of the person of Christ.From what has just been said the transition

to the problem proper is easy. There aretheologians at the present time, not a few ofthem within the pale of the Church, who holdmodified views concerning Christ's deity ordivinity, or possibly deny the doctrine alto-gether. In the Appendix to Hastings' Dic-tionary of Christ and the Gospels A. S. Mar-tin treats of "Christ in Modern Thought"


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12 Is Jesus God?and distinguishes between the Christ of specu-lation, the Christ of experience, and the Christof history. The Christ of speculation is de-nied pre-existence, sinless birth, resurrection,divine authority and sole mediation. Yet he iscalled the Son of God, but in the same sensein which men are sons of God. The Christ ofexperience, to a large extent a product of theRitschlian school, is admitted to be divine, butnot in the old dogmatic sense. His divinity issaid to consist in the fact that his will was inperfect harmony with God's and that in themoral sphere he displayed the highest divineattributes. The Christ of history is muchmore openly denied all divinity. He is strippedof supernaturalism and all the emphasis isplaced on his true humanity. The secret ofhis success is said to lie in his psychologicaluniqueness, i. e.> in his unequalled goodnessand greatness. But he is not divine. Wecannot forbear calling attention here to someof the fine phrases which William AdamsBrown uses in his Essence of Christianity,when he speaks of Jesus Christ as the centralfigure of Christianity. He calls God theFather of Christ, but only after he has called


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Is Jesus Godf 13him the Father of us all in seemingly the samesense in the immediately preceding sentence(p. 313). Again he says: "Sonship takes ona larger meaning. . . . We still recognizeman's littleness, . . . but the recognition losesits terrors as in Christ we perceive what manmay become." These words may be inter-preted, no doubt, in an orthodox sense; but dothey not tend greatly to obscure the uniquenessof Christ's Sonship?

Finally we must call attention to the Uni-tarian movement. The phrase "the purehumanity of Jesus" covers a variety of con-victions. Some Unitarians are almost Trin-itarians, approaching Christ on the divineside and affirming, though in an unorthodoxsense, his pre-existence, uniqueness, sinless-ness, etc. Others contemplate the humanside, and believe that he was naturally bornand endowed with qualities and gifts differingin degree and not in kind from those which allmen enjoy. All this makes it clear that thereare men today who deny the deity of Christor accept the doctrine only in an unorthodoxsense; and it is an undisputed fact that someof them are in the Church.


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14 Is Jesus God?The question now arises whether the teach-

ing of these individuals or even groups can besaid to be that of the Christian Church. Webelieve that the answer must be an emphaticnegative. To substantiate our conviction weshall dwell first of all on the attitude of theChurch toward deniers and modifiers of thedoctrine of the deity of Christ, and thereuponcall attention to the positive confession ofChrist's deity by the Church.

First, attention must be called to the reac-tion among the theologians themselves againstthe denial of Christ's deity. We may referhere to such men as Kunze, Steinbeck, Braig,Hoberg, Weber, and Esser, A. M. Fairbairn,and Forsyth. After all, however, the teach-ing of the Church is not determined by a fewtheologians, but we must give heed to the ex-pression of its faith by the Church as a whole,which includes comparatively unlearned menas well as theologians, laymen no less than theclergy. Now is the Church being influenced toany considerable extent by denials and modi-fications of the doctrine of Christ's deity? Webelieve not. Take for example the attempt toget at "the historical Christ." This example


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Is Jesus God? 15is a fair one for there are no truths which morereadily gain assent or are more firmly retainedthan those of an historical order. Thereforealso they are most within the grasp of thepopular mind and can be expected to touch theinstincts of popular faith. Has, then, the so-called historical Christ succeeded in displacingthe so-called dogmatic Christ? Evidently not.The average church member of today, justas his father and grandfather, still derives hisview of the person of Christ from the writingsof the Evangelists and the Apostles. Now itis precisely the integrity of the Gospels andEpistles as a reliable source of informationand the validity of the claims which Christmade for himself which have been attacked bythose who wish to present to us the real Christof history. It is evident therefore that theyhave not persuaded the Church to take asmuch as the first step away from the super-natural Christ.

But neither has the Church lent its ear tothose clever theologians who have tried andare trying to give a new meaning to the term,the deity of Christ. The very fact that theyare using old, well-established terms to intro-


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1 Is Jesus God?duce their new ideas may be called an admis-sion on their part that they have not yet gainedtheir point. It is a perilous undertaking tojudge motives, but does it not seem that somepresent-day theologians are trying to gain ac-ceptance for their views of Christ's person un-der cover of the term "divinity of Christ,"just because they know only too well that in noother way will they ever succeed in introduc-ing their ideas into a Church which still clingstenaciously to the true deity of Christ? Andwhat, it may be asked, does the averagechurch member know of a deity of Christwhich is no deity but perhaps only a very highkind of humanity? Men are still too straight-forward, too unsophisticated, to mean any-thing by the deity of Christ except that Christis God.And what is the Church's attitude towardUnitarianism? On more than one occasion

when a gathering has been held of representa-tives of different Christian denominations,the Unitarians have been excluded becausethey deny the deity of Christ. In these casesthe Church, at any rate some Churches, af-firmed that denial of Christ's deity excludes


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Is Jesus God? 17from the Christian Church. In Hastings' Dic-tionary of Christ and the Gospels under thearticle "Divinity of Christ" the Unitariansare spoken of as deniers of the doctrine. Thearticle concludes with these words: "Unita-rianism has at all times failed to lead. TheChurch has never become a prey to the nar-rower reason and limited emotions of theUnitarian schools."When we deny that the Church has been ledto abandon the doctrine of the deity of Christ,we do not say that it does in every case rejectfalse teachings on this point as vigorously asit should. If it did, there would not be a sin-gle individual in the Church who openly de-nies Christ's deity. It is indeed a deplorablefact that it is possible for men who do notbelieve in Christ's deity to retain their placesin Christ's Church. We may not adopt thewell-known device of the ostrich with refer-ence to this fact, nor may we make light of itunder cover of a superficial optimism. Still,though it may be, and is, true, that the Churchshould more eagerly oppose errors in this re-spect, it would be difficult to say how theChurch could more clearly in a positive way


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1 Is Jesus God?affirm its belief in Christ's deity than it does.To this we now call attention.The Christian Church, Roman Catholic and

Protestant, professes in the Apostles' Creed tobelieve in Jesus Christ, the only Son of Godthe Father. In many parts of the ChristianChurch this creed is accustomed to be sol-emnly repeated on every Sabbath. Two thingsare here emphasized: that Christ is the Sonof God, and that his Sonship is unique; viz.,that he is the Son of God in a sense in whichno one else can be called a son of God. Thathe is the Son of God means that he is God.We cannot dwell at length on the supernaturalcharacter of Christ which is strongly affirmedin the immediately following articles of thiscreed. Suffice it to say that it cannot be pre-dicated of any being who is anything less thandivine. Just think, for example, of the judg-ment of quick and dead ascribed to him, whichis the work of God alone. And what clearexpressions of Christ's deity are to be foundin the Nicene and so-called Athanasian creeds,which though not so well known as the Apos-tles', are yet recognized by many Churches asauthoritative. Again how clearly Christ's


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Is Jesus God? 19deity is affirmed in the separate creeds of theChurches, Reformed, Lutheran, and others.Nobody doubts this. In view of the confes-sion of Christ's deity in these creeds of partsof the Church and the clear confession of itby the whole Church in the Apostles' Creed,it cannot be doubted that the Church teachesChrist's deity.But not only in its creeds does the Church

confess Christ's deity. It does so in its songs.It speaks thus:

"Forbid it, Lord, that I should boastSave in the death of Christ, my God."

And here especially does the unity of spirit ofthe whole Church of Christ appear. To quotePrincipal Fairbairn: "The high Anglicanpraises his Saviour in the strains of Luther andIsaac Watts, Gerhardt and Doddridge; thesevere Puritan and Independent rejoices in thesweet and gracious songs of Keble and Faber,Newman and Lyte; the keen and rigid Pres-byterian feels his soul uplifted as well by thehymns of Bernard and Xavier, Wordsworthand Mason Neale, as by the Psalms of David.And this unity in praise and worship which so


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20 Is Jesus God?transcends and cancels the distinctions of com-munity and sect, but expresses the unity offaith and fellowship of heart in the Son ofGod."Then think of the divine honor which the

Church assigns to Christ. We shall mentionbut a few of the most apparent ways in whichthe Church honors Christ as God. It praysto him just as it does to the Father, and indoing so it assumes that he is omniscient, omni-present, and omnipotent; in fine it ascribes at-tributes to him which manifestly belong onlyto God. Every time the benediction is pro-nounced upon the congregation the Churchmakes Christ equal to God. He is mentionedalongside of the Father without a hint at sub-ordination. Yes, "the grace of our LordJesus Christ" is spoken of even before "thelove of God the Father," not, to be sure, be-cause Christ is placed above the Father, butbecause he is not inferior to him. And when-ever the sacrament of baptism is administered,the doctrine of the Trinity, which makesChrist the Son of God and therefore himselfGod, is pronounced over him who throughbaptism is declared a member of the Christian


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Is Jesus God? 21Church. Whenever therefore the Church re-ceives a new member it confesses its belief inChrist's deity.And does not the Church finally confess that

Christ is God when it teaches men to flee tohim and in its prayers itself goes to him forthe forgiveness of sins? To be sure we areaccustomed, and rightly so, to ask God to par-don our sins for Christ's sake, and even whenwe do this we confess that man cannot freehimself from the guilt of sin, but that he needsthe sacrifice of God's own Son. But how muchmore emphatically does the Church confess itsfaith in Christ as God when it instinctivelyflees to him personally with its burden of guiltand urges others to do the same! For thedoctrine that only God can forgive sins is notpeculiarly Rabbinical or Jewish, it is rooted inthe universal consciousness of man. Every-body who feels the burden of his sins weigh-ing upon him instinctively flees to his God orhis gods for deliverance. This applies to thepagan as well as to the Christian. And hecannot rest until he feels in the depth of hisheart that God has declared him free fromall guilt. The principle underlying the ques-


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22 Is Jesus God?tion of the Jews: "Who can forgive sins butGod only?" is correct, and everybody whoknows what sin is, knows this also. Every-body therefore who asks Christ to forgive hissins thereby expresses faith in his deity. Itis said that the Christian Church is tending torelegate dogmas to the background in favorof ethics and morality. This is true; and itis quite possible, and even likely, that thistendency will cause many to lose sight of theimportance of Christ's deity. We can safelyeven go so far as to say that it is already hav-ing this deplorable effect. This fact is indeeda sad one. Yet we need not be disheartened,for so long as the Holy Ghost truly convictsmen of sin, they will feel the need of a divineSaviour.When Peter had confessed: "Thou art theChrist, the Son of the living God," Jesus re-plied: "Thou art Peter; and upon this rockwill I build my church, and the gates of hellshall not prevail against it." These words ofthe Saviour have to the present time not failedof fulfillment. The Church today believes andteaches the deity of Christ. The gates of hellhave not prevailed against it.


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HAS THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHALWAYS TAUGHT THEDEITY OF CHRIST?

By Daniel Stephanus Burger Joubert.The question, What think ye of Christ? has

been variously answered through the ages.Humanitarians say that Christ is a man andnothing more. Arians say that though he wasa creature, he is more than man. The Chris-tian Church has through the ages given butone answer, namely, that he is both God andman. It is to the former element in this an-swer that we have to give our attention, toshow that at all times the Christian Churchhas consistently taught the deity of Christ.That this has been the firm belief of theChurch all along may be shown in two ways.For a belief may be professed either by stat-ing it in terms or by acting in a manner thatnecessarily implies it. And there is after allno essential difference between the expression

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Is Jesus God? 2 5surrender, by which all serious theists, whetherChristian or non-Christian, are accustomed toexpress their relationship as creatures to theAlmighty Creator." Moreover this worshipof Jesus was never protested against in thechurches as something new, something un-heard of, something detracting from thehonor due to God. Neither was there ever atime when he was invoked simply as a saint.This adoration of Jesus began in his earthly

life, continued after his ascension, and has be-come the inheritance of succeeding ages. Asan infant he was worshipped by the wise men.The leper worshipped him, saying, "Lord, ifthou wilt, thou canst make me clean." Theman who was born blind confessed his faith inthe Son of God and accompanied it by an actof worship: "And he said, Lord, I believe,and he worshipped him." Thus also at Jesus'sascension the disciples worshipped him. Nosooner had Christ ascended on high than hebegan to draw all men unto him. This attrac-tion was not only assent to his teaching butadoration of his person. As Liddon says:"No sooner had he ascended to his throne thanthere burst upward from the heart of his


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26 Is Jesus God?Church a tide of adoration which has onlybecome wider and deeper with the lapse oftime."

In the first days of the Christian Churchthe Christians were known as "those whocalled upon the name of Jesus Christ." Prayerto Jesus was the devotional act which espe-cially characterized the Christian. Stephen'slast cry was a prayer to Jesus. The wordswhich Jesus addresses to the Father are byStephen addressed to Jesus. At his conversionSaul of Tarsus surrendered himself to Christas the only and lawful Lord of his being."Lord, what wilt thou have me do?" he cried.Thus we see that the worship paid to Jesusin apostolic times was that worship which isdue to God alone. This worship of Jesus washanded down to succeeding ages and has be-come an integral part of the spiritual life ofthe Church.Coming now to the early fathers, we find

that they refer to the worship of our Lord asa matter beyond dispute. Ignatius asks theRoman Christians to put up litanies to Christthat he might attain to the distinction of mar-tyr. Justin protests to the emperor that the


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Is Jesus God? 27Christians worshipped God alone, yet he addssignificantly that the Son and the Spirit sharein the same reverence which is offered to theFather. In the so-called second letter ofClement we also find the words: "Brethren,we ought so to think of Christ as the Son ofthe living God, as of the judge of the quick andthe dead." Clement of Alexandria in one of histreatises says: "Believe, O man, in Him whois both man and God; believe, O man, in Him,the living God, who suffered and is adored.''Origen reports Celsus who wrote against theChristians as saying: "The worship of Christis fatal to the Christian doctrine of the unityof God, while they offer an excessive adorationto this person who has lately appeared in theworld. How can they think that they commitno offence against God, by giving these divinehonors to his Son?" Christ was not only be-lieved to be divine and adored as divine, butit was clearly taught that he was divine. TheAnte-Nicene "rules of faith" as they are foundin the writings of Irenasus, Origen, Tertullian,Cyprian, are in essential agreement with theApostles' Creed as it appears in the fourthcentury. They all confess the divine-human


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28 Is Jesus God?character of Christ as the chief object of theChristian faith, but this is done in ordinarypopular style, not in the form of doctrinal,logical statement. The baptismal formula ofthat period also maintains strictly the NewTestament practice of combining the Son withthe Father and the Spirit.Hymns have always been a popular instru-

ment for the expression of religious feelingand worship; and from the earliest years ofChristianity they were consecrated to thehonor and worship of Christ. Eusebius quotesthe following: "The psalms and hymns ofthe brethren, which from the earliest days ofChristianity have been written by the faithful,all celebrate Christ, the Word of God, pro-claiming his divinity." Of these early hymnsof the Church some remain to this day as awitness to Christ's divinity. Such are theGloria in Excelsis which was the daily morn-ing hymn of the Eastern Church, the Tersanc-tus, the hymn of Clement of Alexandria tothe Divine Logos. Pliny writing to the em-peror says: "It appeared that on a stated daythe Christians met before daybreak and sanga hymn to Christ as God." This is not a mere


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Is Jesus God? 29vague report but a definite answer elicited fromseveral persons in cross-examination. Thevalue of these hymns, teaching the deity ofChrist, is clearly shown by the conduct of Paulof Samosata. He banished them from hischurches because he did not wish to confesswith the Church that the Son of God had de-scended from heaven. He held Christ was amere man; that he was from below and raisedto divine rank.Next we come to the witness of the martyrs

who preferred death to replacing Christ bythe emperor in their worship. The death-cryof many a martyr shows us the divine honorpaid by the Christians to Christ. Here wehave part of the prayers of two. Felix anAfrican bishop cries: uO Lord, God of heavenand earth, Jesus Christ, to Thee do I bend myneck by way of sacrifice, O Thou who abidestforever." Polycarp exclaims at his martyr-dom : "For all things, O God, do I praise andbless and glorify Thee, together with theeternal and heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy well-beloved Son, with whom to Thee and theHoly Ghost be glory both now and forever."Someone has said, "Thus it was that the mar-


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30 Is Jesus God?tyrs prayed and died; their voices reach usacross the intervening centuries, but time can-not impair their moral majesty or weaken theaccents of their strong and simple conviction."This worship of Jesus by the martyrs is fullof the deepest elements of worship; nothingshort of a belief in the absolute divinity ofJesus could justify such worship.

In the second place, we wish to show howthis belief in the deity of Christ was expressedin living terms by the early Church eitherthrough its prominent leaders or in the coun-cils of the whole Church, when attacked byadverse criticism and heresies. Such a doc-trine as the deity of Christ could not at firstbring peace to the earth; it could not helpbringing division. "It could not help dividingfamilies, cities, nations, continents, and itwould have utterly collapsed when confrontedwith the heat of opposition it provoked had itnot descended from the Source of all truth."We may say that the ecclesiastical developmentof this fundamental dogma started fromPeter's confession (Mat. xvi., 16), "Thou artthe Christ, the Son of the living God," andJohn's doctrine of the incarnate Logos (John


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Is Jesus God? 31L, 14), "And the Word became flesh anddwelt among us." This central truth ofChrist's divine person and work is set forth inthe New Testament writings, however, not somuch in the form of a logically formulateddogma, as of a living fact, an object of faithand a source of strength. And the mind ofthe Church required for a season to meditateupon and try to grasp what this implied.

Theological speculation on the Person ofChrist began with Justin Martyr and was car-ried on by Clement of Alexandria and Origenin the East, and Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Ter-tullian in the West. It would have been im-possible for these fathers and the Christianworld to have drawn from the teachings ofthe evangelists and the apostles any other con-clusion than that Christ was more than man,God manifest in the flesh. The Gospels spokeof his incarnation, his sinlessness, his miracu-lous power; they testified to his eternal pre-ex-istence, and his ascension to his former glory.With this the earliest teachers of the Churchwere content. When they asserted that Christwas uboth human and divine, born and unborn,God in the flesh, life in death, born of Mary


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32 Is Jesus God?and born of God," they entered into no furtherspeculation on the point. This could not, how-ever, always remain so. The doctrine ofChrist's deity was openly attacked. The firstto deny it were the Ebionites, the Nazarenes,the followers of Artemon, and the Alogi.The earliest of these were the Jewish-Chris-tian Ebionites. To them Jesus was simply aman on whom for his piety the Spirit of Goddescended at his baptism, qualifying him forthe Messiahship. But they remained merelya sect and disappeared about the fifth century.To their denials the orthodox fathers, the lead-ers of the Christian Church, among otherthings opposed the declaration of John thatthe Logos became flesh. But as was natural,their opinions were as yet somewhat vague andeven in some instances erroneous. Moreover,we have to remember that the course of his-toric development in Theology is from popu-lar statement to scientific statement. Theirindividual insight was not sufficient to enablethem to arrive at those careful scholastic defin-itions to which the Church was guided by thecollective wisdom of ecumenical councils afterperiods of long and painful conflict. Jerome


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Is Jesus God? 33says: "It may be that they erred in simplicityand that they wrote in another sense or thattheir writings were gradually corrupted by un-skillful transcribers, and certainly beforeArius was born they made statements incau-tiously which are open to the misrepresenta-tions of the perverse."The doctrine of the Church has, in all itsstages of development, been accompanied byrationalistic hesitation and in the third centurythe Church was once more called upon to up-hold the eternal deity of Christ. This move-ment was the rationalistic Monarchianismwhich found its full development in Paul ofSamosata. He held that Christ was a mereman, was from below, and from man becameGod. This view the Church decidedly reject-ed and Paul's views were condemned at aSynod held in 269 A.D. But the Monarchiancontroversies in the third century were butpreludes to the great struggle of the Ariancontroversy in the fourth century. The Ante-Nicene Christology although passing throughmany abstractions, loose statements, uncertainconjectures and speculations, nevertheless inits main current flowed steadily towards the


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34 Is Jesus God?Nicene statements, and this the Arian strugglefully brought out. The doctrine that theChurch contended for in this great strife, al-though not theologically formulated, lay inthe faith of the Church from the very begin-ning as involved in its confession. The aimof those who defended the Church doctrineswas the defence of the vital points of the faithand not a mere strife about words, as some ofher opponents would contend. Their appealwas always to Scripture and to continuous tra-dition. "The Little Labyrinth," for example,written at the commencement of the third cen-tury, in refuting the Unitarians of its daythe Artemonitesmakes its appeal to Scrip-ture, to the teaching of earlier writings, toChristian psalms and hymns. "Perchance,"it says, "what they allege might be crediblewere it not that the divine Scriptures contradictthem. * * * For who knows not the works ofIrenaeus and Melito and the rest in whichChrist is announced as God and man? What-ever psalms and hymns were written by thefaithful brethren, from the beginning cele-brate Christ as the Word of God, assertinghis divinity." The opinions of Arius were


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Is Jesus God? 35condemned by a council held at Alexandria, butthis only brought about a greater controversyand soon the whole Christian Church was in-volved in the strife. Constantine tried by hisindividual efforts to settle the dispute, butwhen this failed he summoned a council of thewhole Christian world to decide the matter.The struggle brought clearly out certain ten-dencies working in the Church and compelledthe Church formally to reject them and de-clare in living form its belief in the eternalGodhead of Christ.The Arian heresy denied the strict deity of

Christ, that is his co-equality with the Father,and taught that he is a subordinate divinity,different in essence from God (heteroousios),pre-existing before the world yet not eternal,for there was a time when he was not. Hewas himself a creature of the will of God,made out of nothing, who created the presentworld and became incarnate for our salvation.In other words, the Arians were creature-wor-shippers, no less than the heathen. Anotherparty, the semi-Arians, held a middle groundbetween the orthodox and Arian views andasserted the "homoiousia" or similarity of es-


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36 Is Jesus God?sence of the Son with the Father. This was avery elastic term and might be contracted intoan Arian or stretched into an orthodox senseaccording to the tendency of the man who heldit. Athanasius the father of orthodoxy andthe three Cappadocian fathers, Basil, Gregoryof Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, de-fended the homoousiathe essential onenessof the Son with the Father, or in short hiseternal divinity, as the cornerstone of thewhole Christian religion. The question whichAthanasius and his party contended for was inthe words of Harnack, "Is the divine beingwho has appeared on the earth and has unitedman with God, identical with the highest beingwho rules heaven and earth, or is he a halfdivine being?" That was the decisive ques-tion in the Arian controversy.We should remember that what the Churchasserted here as its belief was not something

new, but what had always been the faith of theChurch. Athanasius always appealed to thecollective testimony of the Church in supportof the doctrine he was defending. BishopAlexander too says that he was "consciousthat he was contending for nothing less than


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Is Jesus God? 37the divinity of Christ, the universal faith ofthe Church." This doctrine triumphed in thecouncils of Nice in 325 and Constantinoplein 381, and since then it has stood the test ofthe ages and has in essence been incorporatedinto all the great creeds of the ChristianChurch. It is thus expressed in the NiceneCreed: "We believe in one Lord, JesusChrist, the only begotten Son of God, begottenof the Father before all worlds, God of God,Light of Light, very God of very God, begot-ten, not made, being of one substance withthe Father, by whom all things were made,who for us men and for our salvation camedown from heaven and was incarnate by theHoly Ghost of the Virgin Mary," etc.Looking back at the result, we see that the

relation of Nice to the teaching of the apos-tles and evangelists is that of an exact equiva-lent translation of the language of one intel-lectual period into that of another. The NewTestament writings had taught that JesusChrist is Lord of nature, of men, of heaven,of the spiritual world and the like. Whentherefore the question was raised whetherJesus Christ was or was not of one substance


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38 Is Jesus God?with the Father, it became evident that of twocourses one must be chosen. Either an affirm-ative answer had to be given or the NewTestament teachings had in some way to beexplained away. The Nicene fathers only af-firmed in the philosophical language of thefourth century what Jesus and the apostles hadtaught in the popular dialects of the first cen-tury. They by no means enlarged it. TheNicene council did not vote a new honor toChrist which he had not before possessed.They objected to Arianism, that it was some-thing entirely new. Thus the Church definedthe limits of Catholic orthodoxy; and laterecumenical councils confirmed these decisionsand for a long time no controversies arose onthis subject. During a period of fifteen cen-turies no large number of real believers inChrist's divinity have objected to the Nicenestatement. The Church of the middle agesconfined itself to a defence of the Nicene doc-trine and the strict emphasis laid on his divin-ity throughout the middle ages has been con-tinued in the churches of the Reformation.

In conclusion, we note two movementswhich have strongly denied the deity of Christ


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Is Jesus God? 39in more recent times. They have affected theChurch as a whole very little. When thedoctrine of the Church has been attacked inthis respect there have always been men whohave ably defended the eternal Godheadof Christ as laid down at the Council ofNice.The first of these movements is Unitarian-ism, and here the words of Shedd will suf-fice: "It was a less profound form of errorthan Sabellianism and Arianism which in thefirst centuries had compelled the theologianto employ his most extensive learning and hissubtlest thinking. As a consequence it hasbeen and is still confined to but a very smallportion of the Protestant world. Had Uni-tarianism adopted into its conception of Christthose more elevated views of his nature andperson which clung to Sabellianism and evento Arianism, it would have been a more influ-ential system. But merely reproducing thelow humanitarian view of Christ which wefound in the third class of Anti-Trinitariansof the second and third centuries, the Unitar-ian Christ possessed nothing that could lift themind above the sphere of the merely human


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40 Is Jesus God?and nothing that could inspire the religious af-fections of veneration and worship."The second movement is the somewhat indi-

rect attack on the divinity of Jesus made inseveral Lives of Christ. We mention onlytwo,Renan and Strauss. Strauss in hisLeben Jesu regarded Jesus as merely "theidea of the identity of God and man and themission of humanity built upon Messianicpromise." Renan entirely abandoned Christ'sdivinity and while speaking of him as onewhom his death had made divine, treated himfrom the viewpoint of an amiable Rabbi.These denials provoked strong reaction. Menlike Neander, Ebrard, Lange, ably defendedthe truth of the Christian confession on thispoint. But the great masses of people in theChristian Church were left untouched by theseattacks; they only made men who had foundin Christ a Saviour indeed love the old faithbetter, and with increased fervor respectPeter's great confession, "Thou art the Christ,the Son of the living God."The times demand of us a vigorous reasser-

tion of those fundamental truths of the Churchwhich are likewise the very foundation of the


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Is Jesus God? 41gospel system. We close with the words ofJohn Stock: "The mythical account of Strauss 1Leben Jesu, the unreal and unromantic Christof Renan's Vie de Jesus, and even the merelyhuman Christ of Ecce Homo can never workany deliverance in the earth. Such a Messiahdoes not meet the yearnings of fallen humannature. It does not answer the pressing query,'How can man be just with God?' It sup-plies no effective or sufficient agency for theregeneration of man's moral powers. It doesnot bring God down to us in our nature. Sucha Christ we may criticise and admire as wewould Socrates, or Plato, or Milton, or Shake-speare, but we cannot trust him with our salva-tion, we cannot love him with all our hearts,we cannot pour forth at his feet the homageof our whole being, for to do so would beidolatry. A so-called savior whose only powerto save lies in the excellent moral preceptswhich he gave and the pure life which helived, who is no longer the God-man hut amere-man, whose blood had no sacrificial aton-ing or propitiatory power in the moral govern-ment of Jehovah, but was simply a martyr'switness to a superior system of ethics, is not


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42 Is Jesus God?the Saviour of the four Gospels or of Paul orPeter or John. It is not under the bannersof such a Messiah that the Church of God hasachieved its triumphs. The Christ of the NewTestament, of the early Church, of universalChristendom, the Christ the power of whosename has revolutionized the world and raisedit to its present level and under whose guidancethe sacramental hosts of God's redeemed areadvancing and shall advance to yet greatervictories over superstition and sin, is Im-manuel, God-with-us, in our nature, whoseblood cleanseth from all sin, and who is ableto save even to the uttermost all who comeunto God through Him."


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DO THE NEW TESTAMENT WRIT-ERS TEACH THE DEITYOF CHRIST?By Harm Henry Meeter.

In order to prove that the New Testamentwriters teach the deity, or in other words, theGodhead of Christ, it is not absolutely neces-sary to quote from each New Testamentbook. For, certain writers being authors oftwo or more books, testimony taken from thefourth Gospel, for example, will prove that thewriter of John's Epistles taught Christ'sdeity; testimony taken from the third Gospelwill prove that the author of Acts taught it,etc.

There may be some question as to what ismeant by "teaching" the deity of Christ. Ifthat be understood to mean that the NewTestament writers purposed to make clear totheir readers in so many words that Christ isGod, then it may seriously be questionedwhether any New Testament writer, with the43


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44 Is Jesus God?possible exception of John,who mentions itas part of his purpose,taught the deity ofChrist. For in the very few passages that canat all be said to approach the form of a defin-ition of Christ's divine nature, for example,Romans ix., 5 and certain passages in thefirst chapter of Hebrews, the author plainlyaims, not at a definition of Christ's deity, butat something ulterior to that. On the otherhand, the term "teach" can be understood tomean that the writings of the New Testamentembody certain statements, from which bylogical conclusion it follows that the writersthemselves held Christ to be God. In thislatter sense, I assume the term to be meanthere. If it is taken in this sense, then thereis an abundance of evidence to prove that theyall held Christ to be God, that they could nothave said what they did say had they not heldthe deity of Christ, that the deity of Christ asa tenet was interwoven with the very warpand woof of their religious teachings, funda-mental to them, in fact a presupposition fromwhich all started out.To begin with, there are passages in theNew Testament that in one way or another


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Is Jesus God? 45directly ascribe deity to Christ. Thus it isplain that the Synoptistswhich we treat to-gether because it is generally conceded thatthey are in general harmony as to the portraitthey give of Jesushold the deity of Christ,from the fact that they record God the Fatheras saying at Christ's baptism : "Thou art mySon in whom I am well pleased" (Matt, iii.,17 ; Mark i., 11; Luke iii., 22) ; and again onthe Mount of Transfiguration: "This is mybeloved Son, hear him" (Mark ix., 7; Lukeix., 35). That it is the metaphysical Sonshipwhich is here witnessed to is plain from thestatements made in the same connection. TheHoly Spirit and the Father are associated withChrist at baptism. Of Christ it is said : "Thisis my Son," obviously in contradistinction toall others, God's "beloved One," the One "inwhom God is well pleased," and men are ad-monished to "hear him." Again, a belief inChrist's deity is evident from the numerouspassages recorded by the Synoptists, whereJesus speaks of God, not as our Father, butspecifically as "my Father," indicating aunique relation in which he stood to God. Es-pecially is this plain from the passage in


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46 Is Jesus God?Matthew xi., 27, and the parallel one in Lukex., 22, which places Christ on an equality withGod the Father: "All things are deliveredunto me of my Father, and no man knoweththe Son but the Father; neither knoweth anyman the Father save the Son, and he to whom-soever the Son will reveal Him." It is need-less to say that, when the Evangelists speakof God the Father's testimony, or of Christ'stestimony to his own deity, they silently sub-scribe to that testimony as embodying theirown opinion.John opens his Gospel with a direct testi-

mony to the deity of Christ, for he begins bysaying: "In the beginning was the Word, andthe Word was with God, and the Word wasGod." In fact, if we may take John at hisword, his whole Gospel (chap, xx., 21), andhis First Epistle as well ( I. John v., 13), werewritten with the purpose that his readersmight believe "that Jesus is the Christ, the(metaphysical) Son of God." And this state-ment regarding his purpose is borne out in thewhole of the Gospel and of the First Epistle,by the titles given to Christ. Such are, for ex-ample, "Son," "the Only Begotten," "the Son


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Is Jesus God? 47of God," the One "who is in the bosom of theFather." John's belief in Christ's deity isfurther plain from passages where Christ'soneness with the Father is emphasized. Sig-nificant here is the criticism of the Jews (x.,33) in regard to Jesus' calling God hisFather. When Jesus asserted that he and theFather are one, the Jews sought to stonehim, and they gave as a reason that theystoned him not for any good work, but be-cause of blasphemy, whereas he, being a man,made himself God. This statement is a plainproof of how the Jews, how the men ofChrist's time, and of how the Evangelistsconceived of it, when Jesus spoke of God asspecifically his Father. No other interpreta-tion can be given than that they conceived ofhim as divine, as God.

This direct testimony to the deity of Christ,taken from the Gospels, is strengthened bystatements found in Paul's writings. Of thesewe can mention but a few.

In Romans viii., 32, we read that "Godspared not His own Son, but delivered himup for us all." Obviously here the Son, aswell as God, stands outside the category of


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Is Jesus God? 49point. Therefore these words must refer toChrist.

Philippians ii., 6, is no less conclusive proofof how Paul conceived of Christ. We readthere: "Who, being in the form of God,thought it not robbery to be equal with God.. . . " And "form" here can imply nothingless than that he possessed the whole of thequalities which constitute God. Only so ex-plained can it have meaning that becauseChrist was in the form of God, he did notneed to think it robbery to be equal with God.And so conceived this passage leaves no roomto doubt that Paul thought Christ divine.Of the many proof-texts in Hebrews I will

cite merely one. In i., 8, the writer, quot-ing an Old Testament passage, ascribes deityto the Son by saying: "Unto the Son hesaith: 'Thy throne, O God, is forever andever. 1 "

Peter likewise ascribes deity to Christ,when, in his great speech in Acts ii., 34, hesays: "For David is not ascended into theheavens, but he saith himself: 'The Lord saidunto my Lord: Sit thou on my right handuntil I make thy foes thy footstool.' " Here


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50 Is Jesus God?Peter quotes the same Old Testament passageto which Christ had reference when heproved to the Jews the deity of the Messiah.It admits of no doubt, therefore, it seems tome, that Peter, in appropriating that text asembodying his own opinion, meant to ascribedeity to Christ. So also in the tenth chapterof Acts, verse 36, Peter calls Christ "Lord ofall." This he could not say if he did not thinkChrist divine.

In James and Jude, epistles themselvesshort, the passages which point to the deity ofChrist are necessarily few. But even there itseems to allow of no doubt that Christ wasconceived of as divine. In the opening versesof his epistle James, in styling himself "aservant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ," bycoordinating these two, places Christ on anequality with God. And, speaking in chapterii. of the Lord Jesus Christ, he calls him utheLord of glory." The idea of the term glory isnot merely to attribute glory to Christ, forglory, placed in apposition to Christ, signifiesrather Christ, whose being consists in glory.Now such can with difficulty be said of Christwithout accounting him to be God himself.


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Is Jesus God? 51In like manner the epistle of Jude contains apassage which, although it does not directlycall Jesus God, yet presupposes it. We readin the fourth verse: "Our only Master andLord Jesus Christ." The word only is sig-nificant. If Jesus Christ is our only Master(Despot), then to the Jewish mind of Jude,Christ must be God, for in the end God wasthe only Master whom a Jew could recognize.From this review of the New Testament

writings it appears that each of the NewTestament writers, in some form or other,directly ascribes deity to Christ. Numerousother texts might have been cited as corrob-orative testimony. But this evidence, gainedfrom passages in which deity is directly as-cribed to Christ, can only be subsidiary. Forthere is far stronger evidence in other factsrecorded in the New Testament; besides theinterpretation of even the strongest passagesdirectly ascribing deity to Christ is alwayssubject to debate, the critics who are not will-ing to concede Godhead to Christ interpretingthem in their own way.

Further proof of Christ's deity I find then,first, in the divine attributes ascribed to him.


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52 Is Jesus God?We have an epitome in Colossians ii., 9. Paulsays: "In him dwelleth all the fulness of theGodhead bodily." Christ is said to be eternalas God. John says: "In the beginning wasthe Word and the Word was with God, andthe Word was God." Christ to him was "theAlpha and Omega, the Beginning and theEnd." "Before Abraham was, Christ is."To Paul Christ, who had lived and died atJerusalem, is "the first-born of every creature."To the author of Hebrews, "Jesus Christ isthe same yesterday, today, and forever." Sotoo Christ is omnipresent. To John, thoughhe is walking on the earth, yet he is "in thebosom of the Father." He is the "Son ofMan, which is in heaven." To Matthew,though he has ascended up to heaven, Christis with his Church "even unto the end of theworld." To Paul (in Ephesians i., 23,)Christ "filleth all in all." Christ is unchange-able. The author of Hebrews tells us that,though heaven and earth shall wax old as agarment, Christ will remain the same. Christis represented as omniscient. The Synoptistsrepresent him as knowing what is in the heartof man, as knowing what Peter had answered


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Is Jesus God? 53the taxgatherers, as knowing step by step whathis life's course would be. Christ is all-power-ful. To Paul he is "the Power of God andthe Wisdom of God." The Evangelists por-tray him as having command over the powersof nature ; the sea and the winds are under hiscontrol.

Another proof of his deity is the part heis said to take in the divine works. He takespart in the work of creation. According toJohn, "all things were created by him." Paulcalls him "the beginning of the creation ofGod." He participates in the work of Prov-idence. For, according to Colossians i., 17,"by him all things consist." According toHebrews i., 3, "he upholds all things by theword of his power." His wonders even areexpressive of his deity; for, unlike the proph-ets, who also performed wonders, Christ per-formed them in imitation of the Father (Johnv., 21), "For as the Father raiseth up fromthe dead and quickeneth, even so the Sonquickeneth whom he will." Christ, while onearth, forgave sins. And "who can forgivesins but God alone?" He shall come, accord-ing to the Evangelists and II. Peter, to judge


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54 Is Jesus God?the world as its Lord, which he could not doif he stood not to it in the relation of Creatorto creature.The Evangelists, Paul, and the author of

the Hebrews make him the direct object ofthe Christian's prayer. This they could notdo if they thought him not God, for only inhis Godhead can we find ground of prayerunto him. Divine honor is also given him inmaking him the object of the Christian's faith.In John xiv., I, Jesus tells his disciples that,as they believe in God, so also they shall makehim the object of their faith, or, as somewould have it, Jesus tells them he is the ob-ject of their faith just as God is. And of thisfaith in Jesus Christ almost all the NewTestament writers speak. In so doing theygive testimony to the deity of Christ. Christit is on whom Christians, according to Peterand Paul, are told to build their hope fortime and eternity. From him, according toPeter, Paul, John, and Jude, Christians ex-pect grace. Now how were this possible ifChrist were mere man, exalted to heaventhough he be? What grace can be had fromthe saints in heaven, from Abraham or moth-


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Is Jesus God? 55er Mary, for whom connection with those onthis earth is practically severed?Again, a proof of Christ's deity is the activepart he now is said to take in the work ofsalvation. The mystical union of believerswith Christ, symbolized by the figure of thevine and the branches in John xv., and sooften spoken of in Paul's epistles, implies as anecessary presupposition that Christ is divine,and would be robbed of its meaning if we,in a rationalistic way, understood it to signifyunion merely with Christ's teachings. Johnrecords Jesus as saying (John xiv., 23,) that,if any man love Christ, the Father and hewill dwell in their hearts. Christ, who hasdied and departed from this earth, is repre-sented in Corinthians (I. i., 4-9, 30, 31, xv.,45), as the source of Spiritual Life, as a life-giving Spirit. He is said in Galatians ii., 20,to dwell in us, as God is said to dwell in hispeople. By him (Ephesians ii., 1-6) we arequickened from the dead to spiritual life; andat the sound of his voice, as Paul has it, atthe last day all men will be called forth fromthe grave. Such statements cannot be madewithout an implication of Christ's deity.


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$6 Is Jesus God?Finally, Christ's deity is reflected in the life

he is said to have led. Already we see thedeity revealed in the birth-narrative. Thestory of Christ's birth is not that of a natural,but of a supernatural person, the supernaturalbeing not merely implied in the general runof the narrative, but explicitly stated. WhenLuke mentions the fact of the angel's foretell-ing to Mary that she was to be with child ofthe Holy Ghost, he records the angel as say-ing: "For this reason (*. e., just because ofthe parentage of God) , that Holy Thingwhich shall be born of thee shall be called Sonof God." The passage loses all its force, thereason ceases to be a reason, if we ascribeanything less than deity to Christ.Matthew records the angel as saying that

the child should be called Immanuel, God-with-us. As Matthew speaks of this in con-nection with the wonderful birth of Christ, itcan scarcely be doubted that he meant to as-cribe deity to Christ. For how could thatchild in itself be "God-with-us" and not bedivine? This statement of Matthew has themore force if we bear in mind that Matthewwas not educated in the doctrine of modern


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Is Jesus God? 57theology, which teaches that there is some-thing divine in each of us. Again, in verse2 1 of the same chapter, the angel says : "Thoushalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save hispeople from their sins." The angel there al-ludes to a statement in Psalm cxxx., where itis said that God should redeem Israel fromtheir iniquities. In the New Testament Jesusis substituted for God, which fact shows thatJesus was conceived of here as God.Now the record of Christ's birth as proofof his deity, though more or less debatable inso far as the Synoptic record is concerned, isfully substantiated by the testimony giventhereto by John. In the opening words of hisGospel he says that the Word which is Godwas made flesh and dwelt among us. Paul, ina similar passage in Galatians iv., 4, says:"But when the fulness of time was come, Godsent forth his Son, made of a woman," there-by testifying to the metaphysical Sonship ofthe son of Mary.

So also the account of Christ's life, as givenby the four Evangelists in common, can leadto no other conclusion than that they con-ceived of Christ as God. "No man ever lived


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Is Jesus God? 59that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ,the Son of the living God."In like manner Christ's death, which is butthe culmination of his godlike life, is expres-sive of his deity. Not as regards that deathin itself, for in so far as Christ could die hewas not God; but as to the manner in whichhe died. This already is plain from the factthat the Evangelists record Jesus as sayingthat he had power to lay down his life andpower to take it up again, a power not givento man, but a prerogative only of him, who isLord of Life. And Christ laid down his life.It was not torn from him. The manner inwhich he died, and the circumstances attend-ing, impressed bystanders so with a feeling ofhis deity that the Roman centurion exclaimed:"Truly, this was a Son of God." This state-ment has worth for us here, not so much asembodying the centurion's belief, for he couldonly conceive of this Son of God after hisheathen fashion, but for what Matthew andMark wish to bring out by it. For the state-ment clearly implies that what to the writerswas a fact impressed itself as such even uponthe mind of the Roman centurion.


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60 Is Jesus God?Christ's resurrection is another proof of

his deity. In so far as it was a resurrectionfrom the dead, it was a token of his human-ity. But especially as to the fact that God, byraising Christ from the dead, set His seal toall the claims Christ during life had made todeity, does the resurrection testify to the deityof Christ. In this manner Paul finds in theresurrection a proof of Christ's deity, whenhe says in Romans i., 4: "And declared tobe the Son of God with power, according tothe Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrectionfrom the dead."From these facts I think it is clear that theNew Testament writersall of themteach

the deity of Christ, that they could not havesaid what they did say without holding thedeity of Christ, that the deity of Christ wasnot merely an object of belief along withmany others, but formed part of the sub-stratum upon which their religious teachingswere based, was a presupposition from whichthey all started out.


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DO THE EVANGELISTS REPRESENTCHRIST AS HIMSELF TEACH-

ING HIS DEITY?First Essay.

By Johannes Daniel Roos.Our question at once clearly marks out the

field of our investigation. The immediatelypreceding paper has proved that the mass ofthe New Testament writers not only believedin Christ as a Divine Person, but also held hisdivinity as a fundamental truth which pervad-ed their minds and their writingsboth ex-plicitly and implicitlyin the portraits theyhave severally drawn of him. At this stage,however, we come in contact with moderncriticism, throwing up this difficulty,that wecannot receive the testimony of the apostles asan unbiased account, and indeed not even thatof the earlier tradition, on which their ac-counts seem partially to rest. They are preju-diced in all they have to say about Jesus, inas-

1


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62 Is Jesus God?much as he is acknowledged by them as theirLord and Master, and is believed in by themas divine.We are therefore called upon to distinguishbetween what these apostles teach concerningJesus, and what he himself has taught abouthis own Person; that is, in the Gospels to siftout the self-testimony of Jesus from the repre-sentations given of him by his followers anddevotees. We shall, therefore, in the Gospelnarratives turn exclusively to the words ofJesus himself, and hope on that foundation toprove adequately that our Lord is representednot only as having thought, but as having actu-ally taught, that he was the Messiah, theChrist, the Son of God, yea, himself God, inthe most striking and clearest terms. Thefurther question, whether what we find inthese words laid on the lips of Christ is actu-ally his own, or merely the subjective convic-tions of the evangelists attributed to him, fallsbeyond our range, and will be treated subse-quently.

Investigating then the self-testimony ofJesus, as recorded by the evangelists, we find,as a first step, that in his very earliest youth


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Is Jesus God? 63(Luke ii., 49),the only reference to thatperiod of his life, enveloped in the mists ofthe mysteriously unknown and silent, we haverecorded in the Gospelshe is clearly con-scious of his unique relation to God as hisFather. "Wist ye not," says he, "that I mustbe about my Father's business ?" It is hardlypossible that at such an early age he couldhave believed himself to be the heaven-sentSon, had he not been that in reality. Accord-ingly we find him opening his ministerial activ-ities by boldly applying to himself in the syna-gogue at Nazareth the Messianic prophecy ofIsaiah lxi., 1 ; for in Luke iv., 17 sq. we readthat after having read from this prophet thepassage : "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,because he hath anointed me to preach the gos-pel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal thebroken-hearted, to preach deliverance to thecaptives, . . . and the acceptable year of theLord," he sat down and uttered these solemnwords: "This day is this scripture fulfilled inyour ears." Moreover, not long after thispublic declaration we find Jesus at the well ofSychar, on his way to Galilee, definitely de-claring to the Samaritan woman that he is the


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64 Is Jesus God?Messiah, the Christ, when to the inquiringwoman who said: "I know that the Messiahcometh, which is called Christ," Jesus an-swered: "I that speak unto thee am he."

But by way of a stepping-stone to our finalresolution, if not part of the very foundationof the argument itself, let us try to ascertainwhether our Lord made any claim to a pre-existent state, whether he was conscious of alife beyond the soil of Palestine; thus workingup our way to a clear conception of his per-sonal oneness with the Father. Such a pre-existence of Christ is not only latent in mostof the New Testament passages having refer-ence to him, but is also explicitly and clearlytaught by the Saviour himself. In the firstplace we find Jesus, in John viii., teaching be-fore his countrymen in the temple, where theindictment of the Jews, that he made himselfgreater than Abraham and the prophets, drewfrom his lips this solemn phrase: "Verily, ver-ily, I say unto you, before Abraham was (lit.became) I am." What does this mean?Christ professes here simple existence, withoutbeginning or end. Abraham came into beingat some definite time (he became) ; our Lord


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Is Jesus God? 6$not so, he is from eternity: "I am" This thenclaims not only pre-existence, but also dis-plays a consciousness of eternal Being. The"I am" of verse 24 seems to point back to theJehovah of the Covenant of ancient Israel:"I am that I am" (Ex. iii., 14). He knowsno past or future, he is the eternal now. Thatthis is the plain sense of the words is perhapsfurther evident from the immediate hostileattitude of the Jews, who resolved to stone himfor blasphemy.

In the second place we have the strongestof testimonies for this consciousness of a priorstate of glory from which our Lord had come,and to which he was then about to return, inhis own words (John xvii., 5) : "And now,O Father, glorify thou me with thine ownself, with the glory which I had with theebefore the world was." So clear and full ofsolemn import is this reference in the great in-tercessory prayer of our Saviour, offered upon the eve of his crucifixion, that we may passon without further comment. In a similarway, had space permitted, we might have ad-duced numerous other texts, e. g., John iii.,13; vi., 62; viii., 23, etc., all bearing on this


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66 Is Jesus God?subject, and adding weight to our argument.But these few concrete instances may suffice.It is evident that this is a truth of the greatestmoment, for if it be denied, "we have in JesusChrist at most the deification of the human,not the incarnation of the divine ; man becomeGod, not God become man." In these andsimilar sayings of Jesus, then, adequate evi-dence is supplied for his pre-existence. Inthe words of King we say: "Indeed the evi-dence of this truth is not confined to themalone, it is forthcoming in the general tenorof his teaching respecting himself. Evenwhen we do not hear his direct testimony tohis pre-existent glory, we overhear it. Hewho claims an absolute and exclusive knowl-edge of the Father, who speaks on all mattersof highest moment with an authority whichno one is permitted to question, who makesthe acceptance or rejection of himself thehinge on which the destiny of men turns, andwho presents himself as the final judge ofmankind, cannot, we instinctively feel, havean existence which reaches no further backthan Bethlehem. In him there must be, thereis, the appearance of the eternal in time." It


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Is Jesus God? 67is to be admitted, of course, that pre-existenceis not necessarily deity. On the contrary, someacknowledge Christ's pre-existence, and yetdeny his true and proper Godhead. But thisraises such grave difficulties that the positionis today generally abandoned; and moderntheologians are aware that, to vindicate theirnaturalistic view of his Person, they areobliged to make his existence begin with thenativity in Bethlehem.We go a step further, then, trying to provethat Christ also considered himself essentiallyone with the Father. For this we think wefind ample ground in our Lord's words record-ed in John viii., 42 : "I proceeded forth andcame from (lit. out of) God." This expres-sion, presupposing the pre-existence, seems,almost beyond doubt, to express his rela-tionship to the Father in such a manner asto be explicable only in terms of his trueand proper Godhead. For on closer exami-nation it will be seen that the prepositionused in the original, "with God" is not thatmeaning "from the side of," nor yet "awayfrom," but that meaning "out of," whichcan only mean out of God as the origin. The


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68 Is Jesus God?relation is therefore a highly metaphysicalone. The explanation placed on these wordsby Bishop Westcott is this: they "can only beinterpreted of the true divinity of the Son, ofwhich the Father is the source and fountain."Again in John x., 30, Christ declares: "I andthe Father are one" where, in view of his pre-ceding argument, this can only mean "one"in the guarantee of the safety of the sheep be-longing to his fold, thus a oneness not only inthe ethical sense, but a oneness of power, ofnature. Godet says: "Here the thought ofJesus rises still higher, even to the notion of aunity of nature, whence arises unity of will,power, and property."The data thus secured seem to justify us in

saying that Christ is both a distinct pre-exist-ent Personality, and substantially one withDeity. As such, therefore, being himself God,we find him claiming to be without sin. Thisclaim radiates forth from the whole tenor ofhis teaching. Compare him, for example, withhis predecessors : they all, from Moses to thelatest of the prophets, confess weakness, short-comings, and even sins. Or with his successors,amongst whom we find Paul, whom so many


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Is Jesus God? 69wish to exalt even above Christ himself, ex-claiming: "O wretched man that I am! whoshall deliver me from this body of death?" Ofall this there is not a word, not even the slight-est trace, in the teachings of Christ. He nevereven so much as hints at a distinction betweenhis official and his personal self. Nay, further,he makes morality not something relative, butabsolute, placing before his hearers the highestpossible, the perfect standard: "Be ye there-fore perfect, even as your Father which is inheaven is perfect" (Matt, v., 48). Not only,however, is our Lord's perfect sinlessness im-plicit in his words, but he even makes a directand explicit claim to it, when in John viii., 46,he positively challenges the Jews: "Which ofyou convinceth me of sin?"A second characteristic is not less strik-ing than the one just examined, and canperhaps be explained only from his sin-less nature, to wit, the attitude of superi-ority he assumes towards the Pharisees,the Scribes, the Prophets, the hallowed Jew-ish tradition, and even the inviolable law ofMoses itself. The Scribes and Rabbis alwaysappealed to prior and higher authorities; the


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70 Is Jesus God?prophetic language runs: "Thus saith theLord." But Jesus assumes all authority to him-self, and we hear him speak in such languageas this: "Verily, verily, / say unto you"; anattitude to be compared not with that ofMoses or any of the prophets, but only withthat of God himself. Accordingly we findChrist already early in his ministry claimingthe power of forgiving sins. When the sickof the palsy was brought into his presence, hesaid unto him: "Son, be of good cheer, thysins are forgiven thee." Nor did he rest con-tent with the mere uttering of these words, towhich the Scribes took objection, accusing himin their hearts of blasphemy. In the most em-phatic manner he asserts this power of forgiv-ing sins and cleansing men's hearts. For totheir unspoken censure he answers: "Whetheris easier, to say, Thy sins are forgiven; orto say, Arise, and walk? But that ye mayknow that the Son of Man hath power onearth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sickof the palsy), Arise, take up thy bed and gounto thy house. And he arose and departedto his house" (Matt, ix., 2-7).

But the culminating declarations of Christ


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Is Jesus God? 71as to his divine sonship perhaps yet remain tobe adduced. This title, the Son of God, be-comes, especially in John, Jesus' own designa-tion, constantly on his lips. In the 25th verseof chapter v. he says : "The dead shall hear thevoice of the Son of God, and shall live." Inix., 35-7, he makes the most direct statementas to this. Meeting the man whose sight hehad restored, and whom the Jews had thencast out, he asked him: "Dost thou believe onthe Son of God ?" The man answered : "Whois he, Lord?" Whereupon Jesus replied:"Thou hast both seen him, and it is he thattalketh with thee." There are many morepassages, not to mention those in which ourLord speaks of God peculiarly as "the" or"my" Father, never "our" Father, thus neverplacing himself alongside of the disciples.

But this designation is not limited to John'sGospel, as some critics would have it. TheSynoptics indeed seem to strike the keynotehere. It is perhaps met with in its fullest sig-nificance in Matt, xi., 27also Luke x., 22,which contains the same pregnant statement,only slightly changed in formwhere the verygerm of the Incarnation-mystery seems to be


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72 Is Jesus God?imbedded: "All things are delivered unto meof my Father, and no man knoweth the Son,but the Father; neither knoweth any man theFather, save the Son, and he to whomsoeverthe Son will reveal Him." What this on theface of it teaches is a complete knowledge ofthe Son by the Father, and of the Father bythe Son. The Son should thus be infinite inhis attributes to compass the boundless depthsof the Father. The mutual knowledge ofFather and Son seems to be of the same abso-lute kind; and what is more, others shall knowthe Father only in so far as the Son maythink fit to reveal Him.

It is impossible to believe that we havehere in the one the ever-living God, and inthe other a mere human being, however ex-alted he may be. It is therefore not surpris-ing to find that Christ in the closing verses ofthis Gospel claims to be a sharer in the Trinityof the Godhead. "Having declared his inter-communion with the Father, who is the Lordof heaven and earth, Jesus here asserts that allauthority has been given him in heaven andearth, and asserts a place for himself in theprecincts of the ineffable Name. Here is a


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Is Jesus God? 73claim not merely to a deity in some sense equiv-alent to, and as it were alongside of, the deityof the Father, but to a deity in some highsense one with the deity of the Father."

Finally, in this capacity Christ claims forhimself the divine prerogative of judgment.In John v., 22, he declares that "the Fatherjudgeth no man, but hath committed all judg-ment unto the Son." The climax, however, isreached in the judgment scene in Matt, xxv.,where Christ announces himself as the solejudge of all men at his second coming. Thisclearly is a distinct claim to divinity, for nowork can be more exclusively divine in its veryessence: "When the Son of Man shall comein his glory, and all the holy angels with him,then shall he sit upon the throne of his gloryand before him shall be gathered all the na-tions, and he shall separate them one fromanother, as a shepherd divideth the sheepfrom the goats." To the former the Kingshall say: "Come, ye blessed of my Father,inherit the kingdom prepared for you fromthe foundation of the world." But the latterhe shall turn from his presence with thewords: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into


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Is Jesus God? 75coming on the clouds of heaven." In Matt.xxvii., 43, we read, "He trusted in God, letHim deliver him now, if He desireth him, forhe said, I am the Son of God." The 44thverse testifies that even the robber called himthe Son of God, and Christ, as in the abovepassage, accepted the title and in this instancesealed it with his own blood.

Christ is also represented as claiming su-premacy in both worlds (Matt, xiii., 4 I "42)."The Son of man shall send forth his angelsand they shall gather out of his kingdom allthings that cause stumbling and them that doiniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace offire : there shall be the weeping and the gnash-ing of teeth." Here he has a kingdom and isattended by a retinue of angels. He is to pre-side at the judgment and cast the causers ofstumbling and the doers of iniquity into thefurnace (Matt, xxv., 31-32). "But when theSon of man shall come in his glory and all theangels with him, then shall he sit on the throneof his glory: and before him shall be gatheredall the nations : and he shall separate them onefrom another, as the shepherd separateth thesheep from the goats; and he shall set the


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76 Is Jesus God?sheep on his right hand but the goats on hisleft." And (Matt, xxv., 34), "then shall theKing say unto them on his right hand, Comeye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdomprepared for you from the foundation of theworld." And in the 41st verse, "Then shallhe say also unto them on the left hand, De-part from me ye cursed into the eternal firewhich is prepared for the devil and his an-gels." "And these shall go away into eternalpunishment, but the righteous into eternallife" (Matt, xxv., 46). Here he is the su-preme Judge, sending the righteous to heavenand the unrighteous to eternal punishment.His power is supreme, he is conscious of it atall times, in fact he states it without equivoca-tion in Matt, xxviii., 18, "And Jesus came tothem and spake unto them saying, All author-ity hath been given unto me in heaven and onearth." He is the absolute Judge. In hishands is all authority. Can we think of Godbeing any more powerful? He is the finaland absolute court of all decisions.

In his great sermon on the mount Christclaimed to be the great teacher come with amessage. Seven times in one chapter does he


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Is Jesus God? 77use the form, "But I say unto you" (Matt, v.,20, 22, 28, 32, 34, 39, 44). In Matt, vii., 24,he says that it is the wise man who hears thesesayings and does them. Also Matthew de-scribes him as teaching with authority (Matt,vii., 29). "For he taught them as one hav-ing authority and not as their scribes." InMatt, xii., 8, Mark ii., 28, and Luke vi., 5,he puts aside the Jewish Sabbath and tells menunhesitatingly that he is Lord of the Sabbath.Possibly at no time is he more emphatic thanhere, and this is recorded by all the Synoptics.Further in Matt, xxviii., 19-20, "Go ye there-fore and make disciples of all the nations,baptizing them into the name of the Father,and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all things what-soever I commanded you, and lo, I amwith you always." Here all the world isto learn of his teachings; all the converted areto be baptized not only in the name of theFather and the Holy Spirit, but also in hisname ; and he is going to be present with themeven unto the end of the world. Could Godhave promised more ? Is it not an evidence ofhis own inner consciousness?


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78 Is Jesus God?Christ heals men of their sins, as in Mark

ii., 5-7, where he says to the one sick of thepalsy, on seeing their faith, "Son, thy sins beforgiven thee," and in verse 10, "that ye mayknow that the Son of man hath power on earthto forgive sins, he saith to the sick of the palsy,I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed,and go into thine house. And immediatelyhe arose, took up the bed, and went forth be-fore them all; insomuch that they were allamazed, and glorified God, saying, We neversaw it on this fashion." The Jews said thatno one save God can forgive sins. Christ notonly claimed power on earth to forgive sins,but in order to establish his claims he went sofar as to seal his claim to supernatural powerby performing this physical cure. Furtherclaims are made in Matthew, in that he canheal all our soul's diseases. "Come unto me,all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and Iwill give you rest. Take my yoke upon youand learn of me, for my yoke is easy and myburden is light" (Matt, xi., 28-30). Andagain, "All things have been delivered untome of my Father, and no one knoweth the Sonsave the Father, neither doth any one know


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Is Jesus God? 79the Father save the Son and he to whomso-ever the Son willeth to reveal Him." Lukex., 22, also records this remarkable claim aspresented by Christ. He is on a par withhis Father which is just as deep a mystery.Our eternal destiny depends upon whether weaccept or reject him. "Every one thereforewho shall confess me before men, him will Ialso confess before my Father who is inheaven, but whosoever shall deny me beforemen, him will I also deny before my Fatherwho is in heaven." Who but one that is intouch with God and holds the keys to his opin-ions can make any such claims?So far we have occupied ourselves with the

Christ that Matthew, Mark and Luke give us.We find in him a Judge of both worlds of om-nipotent power, and a teacher come from God.He offers peace and comfort to the human souland presents himself as our burden-bearer.His mystery of Sonship is as great as that ofhis Father. He is the mediator between Godand man and all nations must be taught of himand baptized in his name. Could the Synopticshave presented a more divine Christ? Couldthey have invented such complex claims ?


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80 Is Jesus God?It is admitted by all that John presents a

Christ that is God. It is our purpose now toshow that it is the same Christ that the Synop-tics portray. In his interview with Nicode-mus, Jesus expressly declares his divinity. "Hethat believeth on him is not judged, but hethat believeth not hath been judged alreadybecause he hath not believed on the name ofthe only begotten Son of God" (John iii., 1 8 )Also (verse 16), "For God so loved theworld that He gave his only begotten Son thatwhosoever believeth on him should not perishbut have eternal life." In Matthew he is pre-sented as the final and absolute Judge and inJohn he is the one to give away the mansionson high (John xiv., 1-3), "Let not your heartbe troubled: ye believe in God, believe alsoin me. In my Father's house are many man-sions: if it were not so, I would have told you.I go to prepare a place for you." He alsoclaimed to have absolute power over his ownlife. "No one taketh it away from me, but Ilay it down of myself. I have power to lay itdown and I have power to take it again.This commandment received I from my Fath-er" (John x., 18). Also he claimed that


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Is Jesus God? 8those even then that should hear his voiceshould live (John v., 25), "Verily, verily, Isay unto you, the hour is coming and now is,when the dead shall hear the voice of the Sonof God: and they that hear shall live." Alsoas in the Synoptics he is made the eternalJudge. "For neither doth the Father judgeany man, but he hath given all judgment untothe Son" (John v., 22). "Marvel not at thisfor the hour cometh in which all that arein the tombs shall hear his voice" (John v.,28) . Again in John he claims to have powerto bestow eternal life (John iv., 14). "Butwhosoever drinketh of the water that I shallgive him shall never thirst; but the water thatI shall give him shall become in him a well ofwater springing up unto eternal life."


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DID JESUS TEACH HIS OWN DEITY?First Essay.

By William Arthur Motter.The question, whether Jesus taught his

deity, is a purely historical one and must beapproached in the attitude of historical investi-gation. We must examine the evidence, andon the basis of an honest investigation drawour conclusions. We must approach the ques-tion with an open mind. To have our mindsmade up at the outset that Jesus was not Godis to approach the question with a bias whichis bound to affect our conclusions. On theother hand, our conclusions must not be col-ored by the fact that the records with whichwe deal profess to be inspired and thereforeinfallible. We approach such evidence as weapproach any other historical evidence, andaccept it for what it is worth.The question with which we are concerned

is a very important one. We have alreadyseen that from the very beginning the Chris-

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Is Jesus God? 83tian Church has believed in the deity of JesusChrist. We have also seen that the Churchhas represented Jesus as teaching his owndeity. Apart, then, from the question whetherJesus is divine, if we can show that Jesus didteach his deity we have an explanation for thebelief and teaching of the early Church; butif Christ did not teach his deity, then the Jesusof the Christian Church is not the real Jesus,and the Church of Christ has been laboringfor nineteen centuries under a great delusion.An answer to the question, Did Jesus teach

his deity? must carry us back to the Christwho walked and talked upon the earth. Weshall therefore be concerned with two ques-tions : the evidence, and its trustworthiness.An examination of the evidence reveals, in

the first place, that our only source of informa-tion for the life and teaching of Christ is theliterature of the early Christian Church, name-ly, the accounts of Jesus as found in the fourcanonical Gospels.We learn, in the second place, that thesefour Gospels were written by men who werein a position to know whereof they wrote.Two of these documents, the Gospel according


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84 Is Jesus God?to Matthew, and the Gospel according toJohn, come from men who were known tohave been companions of Christ during thegreater part of his public ministry; men whowere in a position to portray accurately thescenes in the life of Christ which they hadwitnessed with their own eyes, and to recordthe words which they had heard with theirown ears. Mark, the writer of the secondGospel, is known to have been a companionof

is jesus god : an argument - b. b. warfield, d.d

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