Jesus' divinity and the oneness of God

Conclusions about the divinity or otherwise of Jesus invariably walk in lockstep with, and are usually founded upon, opinions as to the oneness of God. To gain an appreciation of the difficulties involved in dealing with Jesus' divinity one must be familiar with this issue. All agree, without exception, that both Testaments teach the existence of only one God. Nine passages in the Old Testament contain the words "I am God"; two of these (Is. 45:22; 46:9) add words to the effect that there is no other God. The words "one God" appear in the Old Testament in Malachi 2:10 and in the New Testament in the following passages: Mark 12:32, Rom. 3:30, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, 1 Tim. 2:5, James 2:19. Some writers call upon the Shema (Deut. 6:4) as evidence of one God; however, as Karen Armstrong explains, the passage means that Yahweh alone, the God of Israel, is to be worshiped (1994, p. 53) rather than meaning that only one God exists. (Of course, her interpretation may not be correct, but it illustrates that the verse is open to various interpretations.) The misuse of the Shema in no way undermines the validity of all the other passages that unambiguously proclaim, "There is one God".

Having all agreed with the above proposition, the fun then begins. You see, the New Testament, in using such titles as "Son of God" (Matt. 8:29 and others) in reference to Jesus, seems to suggest that Jesus was God. If He was God, and He had a Father in heaven who was God, doesn't that make two gods? Just before his martyrdom, Stephen declared "Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!" (Acts 7:56), appearing to make Jesus divine but separate from the "main" God. The book of Revelation ascribes salvation to both "God" and the "Lamb" (7:10), and pairs God and the Lamb together variously about seven more times.

Modern Judaism solves the problem very neatly — it rejects Jesus as an impostor and the New Testament as worthless, thus upholding Old Testament monotheism (belief in the existence of one God).

Islam has an opinion, too, and, like Judaism, rejects the divinity of Jesus:

They misbelieve who say, "Verily, God is the Messiah the son of Mary"; but the Messiah said, "O children of Israel! worship God, my Lord and your Lord"; verily, he who associates aught with God [e.g. Jesus], God hath forbidden him Paradise, and his resort is the Fire. They misbelieve who say, "Verily, God is the third of three"; for there is no God but one. (Koran, The Chapter of the Table).

Some Christians solve the problem of how one God comes in more than one form by taking “God” to be a collective noun, like forest (with more than one tree), flock (of more than one bird), team (with more than one member), or even “one flesh” consisting of a husband and wife, so that you can have one God who consists of more than one being. They often define God as actually being a family with two members, pointing out that terms such as “father” and “son” are exactly what you would expect if their theory were correct. These believers see no problem, then, in the concept of more than one God Being, and openly speak of the Father and Jesus as such. The best term to describe this belief system is “bitheism”. (This position treats the Holy Spirit as an emanation proceeding out of God and not actually a part of God.) Some who ostensibly accept the Trinity treat Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three separate beings (see below); however, classical Trinitarianism rejects such a view (known as “tritheism”).

These believers see no problem, then, in the concept of more than one God Being, and openly speak of the Father and Jesus as such.

Unitarianism rejects the concept of more than one divine being and reconciles the belief in one God with the problem of Jesus by denying divinity to Jesus; on this point it is in agreement with Judaism. It diverges from Judaism in that it treats Jesus as God's created, saving agent or deputy.

All these positions contain a degree of logic, though some are more coherent than others.

Rarely stated explicitly, but always at work behind the scenes in the thinking of Jews, bitheists, and Unitarians is the hidden premise that Jesus and His heavenly Father were two separate beings. Orthodox Christianity deals with the problem very differently by averring that one God Being alone exists, but that He comes in three "parts" (analogously speaking) known in Trinitarian formulae as "persons" (sometimes called "hypostases") of which Jesus, under the moniker "Son", was one "person". However, few mainstream Christians or, often, their ministers, understand what this "three-in-one" formula actually means since the term "person" did not mean, when the doctrine was formulated, the same thing it means today. Hence, some, Unitarians in particular, view the Trinity doctrine as idiotic nonsense, seeing it as suggesting that one being can be three beings — a patent logical absurdity! However, once one understands what is meant, the doctrine is inherently logical. As Alister McGrath says, "The vocabulary associated with the doctrine of the Trinity is unquestionably one of the biggest difficulties to students" (1994, p. 249). He points out that the word "person", for example, has a different meaning in two statements that are both considered true in orthodox Christianity:

1. God is three persons.
2. God is a person.

Both statements are absurd if one applies the everyday meaning of "person" to them. But once one understands what is meant by "person" in each case, some objections will melt away. The famous "three persons, one substance" formula pertaining to God, even if one disputes the Trinitarian doctrine, becomes as inherently logical as the other positions once the meaning of "person" is apprehended. As McGrath says, "The English word 'person' derives from the Latin persona, which originally had the meaning of a 'mask'" (p. 209).

McGrath goes on to say that, "The development of the meaning of persona is a fascinating subject in its own right". Persona referred to a mask worn by actors in a play, and came to carry the connotation of "a role in a play" (p. 209). Hence, in the Trinity doctrine, one being can appear in more than one role yet still be one being. One composite being can "consist of" distinct "parts" with distinct roles, in the same way a single computer has a keyboard, a monitor and a CPU.

Hence, in the Trinity doctrine, one being can appear in more than one role yet still be one being.

That many, if not most, Christians see the Trinitarian position as proposing three beings in one demonstrates lack of understanding, which in large part can be traced to ecclesiastical inertia (in making no attempt to correct any errors or to update the doctrine and its associated terminology to make it user-friendly), rather than proving the doctrine itself wrong. Misunderstanding goes back a long way — Jean Fouquet's painting, "The Blessed Virgin and the Trinity", depicting the three "persons" as literal persons shows that confusion goes back to at least the fifteenth century.

	Jean Fouquet, The Blessed Virgin and the Trinity, McDannell & Lang, Heaven: A History

That the doctrine was used by medieval Christendom as a litmus test of godliness which, if failed, sometimes meant an agonizing death for the "heretic", should be seen as a witness against the institution of that time, not against the concept of one God with various "masks". To reject the idea because of its misuse amounts to guilt by association. High school courses in logic and clear thinking warn against that mistake.

Who is right?

Which of these solutions best meets the problems raised?

The bitheistic model that presents one God as two beings appears to face an insuperable obstacle; if One God consisted of basically equal and separate entities, whenever either spoke on behalf of the single unit He would, if using language that is to be meaningful to his hearers, have used the plural first person pronoun “We” rather than the singular “I”. True, Jesus spoke on a few occasions of His heavenly Father and Himself as “We” (John 14:23; 17:11), but this manner of speaking is to be expected if Jesus, as God in the flesh (for the sake of the argument), were to be referring to both Himself in the flesh and God in heaven. However, nowhere in the Old Testament does either of the supposed members of one God say anything like, “We are God and there are no others”. If the notion that one God actually is two or three beings was true, then Yahweh would have revealed themselves to Moses as, “We are that we are”, not as “I am that I am” (Ex. 3:14).

Some might object and say that God had not revealed His “twoness” (or threeness) in Old Testament times, and that this duality was to be kept secret until Jesus came to reveal the “other” member/s of God. However, this idea cannot be sustained; to say “I am the Lord and there is no other” (Is. 45:5) amounts to a falsehood if, in fact, there was another. And besides, the notion that Jesus came “to reveal the Father” has no New Testament support.

The bitheistic position is to be applauded for upholding the divinity of the Savior of all mankind, but to be regretted for envisaging two God beings. (The same comment can be applied to the tritheistic position which envisages three God beings.)

As for the Unitarian position, though one admires the passion felt by Unitarians to uphold the uniqueness of the One True God, their stance, in addition to falling short with respect to the philosophical points raised earlier, paints them into some not-so-pretty corners. Unitarianiasm ends up putting some strange spins on various Scriptures. The Unitarian view is to be commended for maintaining the existence of one God, but to be rejected for denying divinity to the Savior of all mankind.

In one respect, both positions share, together with the standard Jewish view, failure by omission. Though all three present God as all-mighty, all-powerful, all-blessed, all-knowing, and all-wise, none of them seems to appreciate the richness, the complexity of God's nature. The new insights into God presented in the New Testament in the person of Jesus Christ make the Old Testament hints of such splendor begin to truly blossom. Both Isaiah 40:18 and Deuteronomy 4:15-18 tell us that the Holy One of Israel, the Father of Jesus Christ, is like nothing else in the created order or like anything made by man; these words plainly imply that He is "bigger" and more complex than anything we know, including even the universe itself and the Internet. They certainly do not portray God as paler or simpler than anything we are familiar with. The New Testament insights provided by passages such as John 1:1, which speaks of "the Word" being "with God" and "being God", add to Isaiah's and Moses' image of the incomprehensible richness of the Divine Holy One of Israel, the one God in all of heaven and earth. Unwittingly, through opposing the Trinitarian view of one multi-faceted God, Unitarianism strips away God's glorious complexity, fostering the impression of God as a powerful but no-frills stick-God while bitheism renders Him down to a pair of stick beings. (For an elaboration of this point, see "What does God look like?)

In our limited mental capacity, we naturally tend to envisage God as a "simple" being — at least, no more complicated than we are ourselves, just much bigger, stronger and better. Yet such a misconception can be easily shown to fall short of the reality of God. David confessed his utter inability to grasp the dimensions of God's capabilities (Ps. 139:6); why, then, should we object to speaking of the "mystery" of God's very being?

The flavor of what is being said here is supported by Revelation's glorious promise of the believer's ultimate blessing — to see God's "face" (22:4), that is, all of Him. It will take all of eternity to see all God's glory; that's why this promise forms the very heart and core of eternal life. Do we possibly imagine that God Himself is less majestic and multi-faceted than the universe He has created? No; God is much "bigger" than the universe. He has to "humble" Himself to bother with it (Ps. 113:6).

This article is intended as neither a thorough explanation nor critique of the difficult doctrine of the Trinity. Suffice it to say for our purposes that the “Trinitarian method” faces fewer problems than the other views in reconciling scriptural assertions that only one God exists with its teaching that, for instance, Jesus had been with the Father before His incarnation and that the Holy Spirit is also somehow “of God”. Seeing God as a single complex being composed of various “parts” or “functions”, including an “in-built” high priest consisting of the raised and glorified Jesus Christ and including the Holy Spirit is logically defensible, whereas both Unitarianism and bitheism/tritheism face serious problems over the issue of God's oneness, though for very different reasons. What many anti-Trinitarians fail to realise is that the Trinitarian God is one, not three! Trinitarianism is monotheistic. Willy-nilly, anti-Trinitarians oppose the concept that the One God, Maker of heaven and earth, the Holy One of Israel, could be a complex Being with multiple “parts”.

The Trinitarian position “officially” recognizes that the Holy Spirit, referred to directly two times in the Old Testament (Ps. 51:11, Is. 63:10-11) and alluded to in numerous other places, should be seen as somehow an integral part of the “God equation”. So-called “strict monotheism” generally sidesteps the question of the relationship of the Holy Spirit to God, while bitheistic interpretations treat the Holy Spirit either as merely a euphemism for divine power or as an emanation flowing from God but not actually part of God. (That the Holy Spirit is in some real manner actually a part of God is evidenced by its powers of intellect; see Romans 8:27 [Morris 1988, p. 329] and Acts 2:4.)

The various components of God cannot be teased apart. God doesn't consist of parts in the same way that a computer consists of keyboard, monitor and CPU, which can be dismantled. The analogy often used to give at least a conceptual grasp of the complex oneness of God is that of a flame. One flame consists of light, heat and gas — you cannot tease them apart. Were one able to somehow remove the gas, for instance, you would no longer have a flame.

Is “the Trinity” right on the mark?

Having espoused the Trinitarian method as facing fewer problems than the other methods of dealing with the “problem” of Jesus Christ (and the Holy Spirit), a disclaimer needs to be made. This author believes that the Trinity doctrine requires a major overhaul; after all, who believes that a formula hammered out about fifteen hundred years ago by mere mortals in an attempt to encapsulate the greatest of all mysteries — the very essence of God — could possibly have nailed it down hard for all generations to come? (See the blog “Trinity or Quadrinity or…?”)Anybody who has tried to read up on the doctrine finds his head quickly beginning to spin. For instance, who can really understand philosophical discussions on Perichoresis, which deals with the interdwelling of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father? Indeed, some writers suggest that formal logic disproves the Trinitarian formula. (See, for instance, Martinich's "Identity and Trinity", The Journal of Religion, April, 1978.) The details of the doctrine come from philosophical reasoning rather than from exegesis of Scripture.

Further, the notion that the “Father” and the “Son” constitute two of three eternal “components” or “functions” (“persons”) of the one God strikes this author as having little biblical support. Specifically, what biblical support can be found for the dogma that “Father” and “Son” are eternal distinctions in the Godhead — always were and always will be? They, together with the Holy Spirit, are mentioned in Matthew 28:19, but that verse proves nothing about the essential nature of the Godhead. Were it not for John 1:1, which we will get to shortly, it could probably be said that the idea has no biblical support.

Though this author fully embraces the notion that the Holy Spirit is truly divine, an integral part of the "One God equation", with powers of intellect (Rom. 8:27), little support can be found that it constitutes a third distinction in the Godhead along with Father and Son. Over and over God speaks in the Scriptures about "My Spirit", even promising to pour it out upon the people of Israel (Is. 44:3). This consistent construction suggests that God "possesses" the Spirit (whatever that may mean) rather than that the Holy Spirit makes up a third "equal" component. The Holy Spirit is also capable of "speaking" (1 Tim. 4:1), yet nowhere does one find the Holy Spirit speaking of "My Father" in the same way that "God" speaks of "My Spirit". And nowhere does God speak of "My Father" or "My Son" as He does of "My Spirit". It seems to this author that the Trinitarian formula fails to adequately deal with the data.

As for the Father-Son distinction, surely some clear indication of this distinction would be given in the Old Testament. After all, the Holy Spirit is mentioned often — three times as “Holy Spirit”, a number of times as "My Spirit", four times as “Thy Spirit” and 14 times as “the Spirit of God”. Yet the notion of Father and Son doesn't appear. Some appeal to Proverbs 30:4:

Who has ascended into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if you know?

Establishing a doctrine of eternal distinctions in the Godhead on the basis of this passage would not be wise. The context shows that the writer is saying, “Name a man who has been up to heaven or come from there. Be specific — give us his son's name, too, so we can look it up in the genealogical records to see if any record of a human being visiting heaven exists.”

Does John 1:1 really support the concept of an eternal distinction in the Godhead between Father and Son? It says,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Erickson reflects the thinking of many as to the Trinitarian implications of this passage:

The prologue… contains material rich in significance for the doctrine of the Trinity… Here also we find the idea that while the Son is distinct from the Father, yet there is fellowship between them, for the preposition pros does not connote merely physical proximity to the Father, but an intimacy of fellowship as well (1985, p. 332).

True, this verse tightly links Jesus Christ with God in some critical way that maybe nobody fully understands. But does it support the notion of Father and Son as eternal distinctions? Does it prove the Trinity formula? Probably not. For one thing, oh how easy it would have been for John to say, “In the beginning was the Son, and the Son was with the Father, and the Son was God” if such a distinction was what he was on about. Second, if this verse has Trinitarian meaning, then one should be able to happily replace the first subject (“Word”) with either of the other two “persons”. Thus, one should be able to confidently say, by extension, that, “In the beginning was the Father, and the Father was with God, and the Father was God”. Recasting the passage that way begins to present some problems, does it not.

Another passage appears to this author to present the Trinitarian formula with a serious problem. Jesus said,

Do you not believe that I am in the Father , and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works (John 14:10).

The Trinitarian formula says that while Jesus was on the earth, God in heaven “consisted of” Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (It certainly does not teach that the Son ceased from His heavenly existence and was turned into a man.) Jesus Christ on earth, in Trinitarian thought, was an “instantiation” (manifestation) of the Word/Son in heaven. Were this the case, then surely Jesus would have said, “The Word/Son who dwells in Me, He does the works”.

It seems more logical to take the terms “Father” and “Son” to refer, respectively, to God in heaven and God in the flesh during the period of the Incarnation. They are terms appropriate to the miracle of God's dwelling among men as a man rather than to the essential and eternal economy of the Godhead. Jesus was an earthly “sample” of God in heaven. Thus, while the Trinitarian method is helpful in illustrating the richness of God's very nature, the Trinitarian formula needs to be thoroughly reexamined and, if necessary, modified or dropped. However, the anti-Trinitarian assertion that it is somehow evil or diabolical is unwarranted.

Having said this, one most recognize the potentially enormous significance of the fact that John 1:14 tells us not that “God became flesh” but that “the Word became flesh”, providing a compelling piece of evidence in support of the Trinitarian distinction of persons (as understood in Trinitarian usage rather than everyday usage) in the Godhead. The problems associated with either supporting or denying the Trinitarian formula are highly technical and very difficult; simple logic therefore suggests to this author that nobody's salvation depends on getting it just right. What is important is acknowledging that the agent of our salvation, Jesus Christ, the “Word in flesh”, was no mere mortal to whom God gave limitless help but was, in fact, very God indeed. Our salvation depends one million percent on the grace and work of God, not on the supreme efforts of a man.

Jesus + God = one being

Before we consider scriptural evidence for the divinity of Jesus, let's grapple with the chief error of Judaism, Unitarianism and bitheism alike — the false assumption that Jesus on earth constituted a separate being from His father in heaven, and that, likewise, the resurrected and glorified Jesus Christ in heaven is a second being. That Jesus was (and is) a distinct Being from His heavenly Father is taken as a self-evident truth. Truth is, Jesus, both then and now, was not and is not a separate being at all, but an integral part of the One True God. This conclusion is perfectly logical if one accepts two premises:

1. Only one God exists;
2. The historical Jesus was God in the flesh;
3. Therefore, Jesus and God cannot be two separate beings.

The logic here comes close to reversing Unitarian reasoning, which argues:

1. Only one God exists;
2. Jesus was a second being;
Therefore, Jesus cannot be God.

Rather than impartially looking at those passages that ascribe divinity to Jesus Christ, Unitarians, locked into the unproven premise that Jesus and God are two separate beings, are forced to read Jesus-as-God passages with a jaundiced eye. Unitarians would do well to break this conceptual lock — that Jesus and God are two separate beings — and take a conceptual leap. Jesus in the flesh (and Jesus glorified now) was an integral, ever-existing “piece” of the one God.

The testimony of Revelation

Naturally, Unitarians have some ammunition to fire in their contention that Jesus and God are two separate beings or they would not hold the position. The New Testament often speaks of "God" and "Jesus Christ" together. You often see words similar to those Paul uses in Romans 1:7: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ". To a dedicated Unitarian or bitheist such passages can be read no other way than as proof positive of two beings.

But they can be read quite differently, and equally validly, without any violence being done to commonsense. If a Catholic congregation were to receive a missive from Rome which began, "Greetings from the Vatican and from Pope Sixtus the Fifth", they would intuitively understand the reference to the Pope as an "integral part" of the much larger institution.

A favorite text of many Unitarians is John 17:3:

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

This passage is meant to prove that God is God and Jesus is Jesus, supporting the "strict monotheistic" position taken by Unitarians by removing Jesus from the God equation. Similarly, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:6 that "there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things. and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.". The use of "and" in this sentence could convey the idea that God the Father is one being and Jesus the Lord is another being. But the conjunction "and", more in Greek than in English, often simply connotes two different ways of saying much the same thing rather than expressing the idea of plurality. The classical New Testament case is the reference to Jesus as "King of Kings and Lord of Lords". The mere possibility that the same form of expression is being used in John 17:3, for instance, takes away its value as a proof text for Unitarianism. To non-Unitarians, John 17:3 reads as evidence that Jesus is God!

To non-Unitarians, John 17:3 reads as evidence that Jesus is God!

That the Lord Jesus Christ is being portrayed as essentially the same as God the Father in 1 Corinthians 8:6 is strongly conveyed by the attribution of nearly identical roles to them both — "of whom are all things" and "through whom are all things". That the term "Lord" applies to God is evident by its use in Revelation 4:8-11 — please check it for yourself. Paul is not, in Corinthians, suggesting that "God" makes Being number one while "Lord" makes Being number two.

Possibly the strongest support for the essential oneness of God and Jesus Christ can be found in a fact alluded to earlier — the pairing of "God" and "the Lamb" in a number of passages in Revelation. We have already noted that 7:10 ascribes salvation to each. One could read this as describing two beings who work harmoniously together to save, but one can equally well read it as showing that Jesus Christ was an incarnation of God, sent to bring salvation. Another passage (7:17) shows the Lamb leading saints to living waters and God wiping away their tears — the close association of function suggests essential oneness of being.

Other God-and-Lamb passages fairly unambiguously portray them as one being: God and the Lamb are New Jerusalem's single temple (21:22); "… the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light." (21:23); and there will be one throne "of God and of the Lamb" (22:1; 22:3).

The miracle (and mystery) of the Incarnation

We have already quoted a couple of well-known passages from Isaiah foretelling an utterly astounding event — that the Almighty God would be born as a baby! Though Jewish commentators reject Christological interpretations of these passages, Matthew certainly doesn't (Matt. 1:23). We should not construe this event to mean that heaven was emptied and God magically turned into a man, or even that one of the "persons" (using Trinitarian language) changed address. God did not lose any of His essence, but He did do something He had never done before.

Understanding how God could be born flesh lies beyond human ken, in the same way that much of the Creation eludes human understanding, but the concept itself should not prove difficult to grasp at all! When you ponder the revelation that God created the entire universe yet is so "big" that it cannot contain Him (2 Chron. 2:6) the problem of the Incarnation becomes more manageable. God is in touch with every atom in the universe and controls every cubic inch of it at every instant. When you consider the implications of the truth that God (through Jesus) continues to sustain the universe (Heb. 1:3), that He calls every star in the heavens by name (Is. 40:26), that He monitors the hatching and demise of sparrows (Matt. 10:29) and knows the number of hairs on the head of every person, you begin to realize that entering flesh would present no challenge to Him. Naturally, to human beings who came into contact with this Incarnation of God, He would appear like a "being" in His own right. But He was not a separate God being; by the process of birth he became a fleshly, earthly presence of God in heaven. He was no more another being than was the earthly presence of God found in the Most Holy Place of the temple in the form of a dense cloud of brilliant darkness another being.

But He was not a separate God being; by the process of birth He became a fleshly, earthly presence of God in heaven.

Let's frame this thought as a rhetorical question. If God could present Himself in the garden of Eden to Adam and Eve looking like a human being (as we can presume) without vacating heaven in the process (Gen. 2:16), can God also in some mysterious way actually enter flesh, through a human birth process, while at the same time remaining intact in heaven? I don't see the latter idea as being any harder to grasp than the former. In so doing, a human being came into existence, but that human being was not a separate being from His heavenly "counterpart", or "Father". Inasmuch as that human being could die, God "tasted death" without ceasing from existence. Some may brand such statements doubletalk. Not so; they are a way of expressing a difficult concept in understandable terms.

Not all of God

Though we have seen passages that show that God and Jesus Christ are essentially one Being, we should not construe this fact to mean that they are identical. This truth may be hard to grasp; theologians have difficulty expressing it, even those who normally write in plain English. One such, Carson, says, "This Word-made-flesh, himself God, is nevertheless differentiable from God, and as such is intimate with God." (1991, p. 135). Let me put it as simply as possible — God is bigger than Jesus ever was or ever will be. Jesus the man "encapsulated" not the entirety of God but merely a portion of the Infinite One, a portion described in John 1:1 as "the Word" who had eternally been "with God".

God's earthly presence in Jesus did not constitute God's totality any more than the glory of God in the temple did. That Jesus carried within Him "full" divinity is attested to in such sayings as, "For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. 2:9), yet simple logic shows He was not all of God. Jesus was on earth, and His Father was "in heaven". Jesus was not some "shrunken version" of the totality of God. God has infinite degrees of an infinite number of perfect attributes that are "spread out" among who knows how many "divisions"? Not even God could compress them all, in miniature, into one fleshly body. (Saying this does not suggest a limitation on God but on the nature of flesh.)

God did not send Jesus to demonstrate to man all of His infinite attributes or to represent all of His various parts, but those needful for men and women to grasp for purposes of salvation and which were not already demonstrated by some other means. Jesus did not contain within Him all the power of God, as He said Himself that "the Father who dwells in Me does the works" (John 14:10) and that, should He choose to abandon His mission of self-sacrifice, He was dependent upon God and angels to deliver Him (Matt. 26:53). Nor did His brain contain all the infinite processing power and sheer knowledge of His heavenly counterpart — His Father had to show Him things (John 5:20). The power and sheer intellect of God are demonstrated not primarily by the miraculous acts of Jesus, impressive though they were, but by the wonders of creation (Rom. 1:20). The staggering "glory" of God, so immense that no man can see it and live (Ex. 33:20, where "face" evidently stands for "all of"; 1 Tim. 6:16), obviously was not visible in Jesus Christ. The glory that Jesus did show in full is described in John 1:14:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Bruce connects the "grace and truth" which filled Jesus with the chief attributes of God revealed in the Old Testament: "steadfast love and faithfulness" (1968, p. 20). Jesus was full of the chief attributes of Israel's God for one reason — He was an incarnation of Israel's God. Jesus' every word and deed reeked of love and faithfulness. No created being could possibly represent the very essence of God's infinite goodness.

An analogy may help. When astronauts visited the moon and returned with precious booty of moon rock, were they actually bringing the entire moon back with them? Obviously not. But would it not be correct to say that they did bring "moon" back with them, and that scientists at NASA were actually able to examine close up and handle very moon itself? The sample fully reflected some aspects of moonness, in the same way the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Jesus Christ. Jesus, a "flavor spoon" of God, reflected the fullness of the mind of God, even though, like moon rock to the moon, He was not able to reflect the entire glory of God's greatness, power and intellect.

Or we can use the computer analogy. Any part of your computer can truly be called "computerish" (the computer equivalent of divine), even though no part makes up its totality. Jesus Christ was God's "user-friendly interface" or mediator between God and man, in the same way a computer monitor interfaces between the user and the CPU.

If you were Jesus, what words found in human language would you choose when wanting to speak meaningfully of yourself and your heavenly originator? How about Father and Son?

The value of this concept of seeing Jesus Christ as an incarnation of His heavenly Father becomes particularly evident in its capacity to solve the contentious issue of Jesus' “pre-existence”. God has always existed. Jesus was God in the flesh. In that sense Jesus had a pre-existence (John 17:5, Matt. 23:37?). Yet Jesus Christ had never walked the earth before. He had never been a separate God Being with a separate consciousness; therefore the author of Hebrews could quote God as saying, “Today I have begotten You” (1:5). While He walked this earth He was not a separate being from His Father; He was an act and manifestation of God. When these facts are considered, any arguments over His preexistence become merely arguments of words and not of facts. In short, the argument becomes pointless, fruitless, unnecessary, time-wasting, in just the same way as arguing over whether or not the moon rock in NASA's labs was Moon before being brought to earth.

Likewise, once one has grasped the concept that Jesus Christ was a fleshly manifestation of God, one won't be dragged down into pointless disputations about whether or not God can die. Moon rock can be pulverized to dust without destroying the moon; the death of a mortal manifestation of God does not entail the death of God. Yet since Jesus was God in the flesh, His death means that in some real way God tasted death for man. God cannot die, but God tasted death.

As to whether or not Jesus did exist in some real way before the Incarnation let us consider just one crucial piece of evidence that He did. Consider these words from Jesus' own mouth:

For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has committed
all judgment to the Son… (John 5:21-22).

Jesus tells us that He, not the Father, is mankind's judge. Yet the Old Testament is very clear that God is engaged in an ongoing process of judgment that will come to fruition in a future time of judgment. (See, for example, Psalm 11:4-7 and Jeremiah 32:19). These truths cannot be reconciled with the Socinian notion that Jesus was an ordinary man who had no conscious existence prior to His earthly visitation. Scripture tells us that God has been judging mankind from the beginning, and that Jesus is mankind's judge. The only way both premises can be true is if Jesus in some way or other "was around" prior to the Incarnation. If He did not exist in some real way before being sent by the Father, He has a lot of life stories to read before He passes final judgment!

Evidence that Jesus was truly God in the flesh

In a moment we will briefly consider some scriptural evidence for Jesus' “Godness”. However, no passage can be found that explicitly says, “Don't you know Jesus was God in the flesh?”, though Matthew 1:23 comes close. Some take this silence as support for His lack of divinity. However, this fact can equally logically be used to support the contention that His divinity was fully understood by the early church and so never needed stating.

My personal reason for belief in Jesus' divinity includes a subjective element in addition to the theological statements we will refer to, an element almost as compelling as the biblical hints of His deity. When you hear Jesus speak, don't you hear the voice of authority, intelligence, knowledge and wisdom that could not possibly belong to any other than the sovereign God Himself? When you see His deeds, don't you see a Shepherd whose caring love no angel or man could ever attain to, no matter how moved by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and most certainly could not be achieved in a period of thirty years? When you contemplate the intense suffering Jesus willingly walked into, instead of calling upon heavenly chariots to whisk Him away, how can you help but be impelled to repeat the words of the Roman centurion, "Truly this was the Son of God!" Let us sing His praises, worship Him, glorify Him, love Him.

In addition, numerous things that Jesus said are totally incompatible with the notion that He was a highly-inspired yet ordinary man. Take, for instance, John 14:23:

Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him."

How could any human being make such a statement with a straight face? I mean, let's get real. I don't care how closely God led my thinking, just how much strength He gave me to live a blameless life, I can tell you that I would baulk if He told me that I was going to indwell millions of my brothers and sisters alongside Him in the years ahead. The whole idea is ludicrous.

The New Testament and Jesus' divinity

As for the New Testament, only a few passages explicitly refer to Jesus as “God” (e.g. Titus 2:13). Harris points out that,

The application to Christ of the title theos is exceedingly rare — only seven certain, very probable or probable instances out of a total of 1,315 NT usages of theos (1992, p. 274).

Those who deny divinity to Jesus should first note that such passages do exist! As for the reason why it is used so few times in relation to Jesus, a number of possible and compelling positive reasons can be given. The same reasons explain why, in a few passages such as Ephesians 1:17, the Father is called “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ” and why, in Revelation 3:12, the risen, glorified Jesus Christ speaks of “my God”. Serious students of such issues are urged to read Chapter XIII of Harris's “ultimate” book on the subject.

Some passages ascribe to Jesus attributes that are elsewhere ascribed to God (such as “grace and truth” in John 1:14), while others make a connection between Jesus and God that imply an identification with each other (such as, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” — John 14:9). Further, Jesus explains the lack of fasting by His disciples as being due to His presence among them (Mark 2:19); in the Old Testament, fasting is associated with drawing close to God (Joel 2:12). Mary called God her Savior (Luke 1:47), while a number of passages, such as Acts 13:23, specify Jesus as Savior.

Jesus said to His disciples shortly before His crucifixion, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me” (John 14:1). Unitarians may try to use this verse to “prove” that Jesus was not God by appealing to a dichotomy between God, on the one hand, and “Me” on the other. However, the whole point of this statement is to show the opposite — the disciples had known about “God in heaven” all their lives; Jesus was here instructing them to have faith in Him for the simple reason that He was in fact a fleshly manifestation of that very same God. For that reason, and that reason alone, they could pit their faith in Him in full. As Carson puts it, this saying of Jesus is, “… an invitation to extend the object of their faith beyond God as they have known him in the past to Jesus as well…” (p. 488). The Socinian notion that Jesus was inviting them to believe in Him as a man chosen by God as His agent of salvation faces a serious obstacle: the Old Testament had warned us, “Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help” (Ps. 146:3). Surely all will agree that a fundamental thrust of Scripture is that God alone is to be the object of total trust and faith.

John 6:33 distinctly speaks of Jesus coming from heaven: “For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world”. In verse 38 Jesus says, "For I have come down from heaven…", and the reaction of "the Jews" who complained against him for this saying (vs. 42) corroborates the plain meaning of these words. Only by the most roundabout daisy-chain of reasoning can one conclude that Jesus' actual meaning was that He was an ordinary man of the earth imbued with power from heaven. Similarly, John 1:18 says that, “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him”. The plain implication here is that Jesus is unlike the rest of us mortals — He is able to faithfully declare the Father because He has "seen" Him.

The identification of Jesus Christ with the prophesied “Immanuel”, meaning “God with us” (see Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23) provides sufficient proof of Jesus' divine status. Jews, however, argue that Immanuel was a child born during Isaiah's time whose name served merely as a sign that God was with Israel, while Unitarians call upon the agency argument again — since God sent Jesus, His person is tantamount to God Himself dwelling with us. Rather than letting this verse speak for itself, Unitarian dogma informs Unitarian interpretation. All one can do is to plead with readers of this article to read Matthew 1:23 with an open mind.

One passage provides particularly strong evidence that Jesus shared deity with His Father:

Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it (Acts 2:23-24).

Just as many aspects of creation stump even the strongest intellectual powerhouses, this passage seems beyond full comprehension. Why, if it was “not possible” for death to maintain a grip on Jesus, did it require an act of God to loose death's grip? Nevertheless, leaving aside this puzzle, the revelation that death was incapable of holding onto “the resurrection and the life” surely suggests that He held an inherent immortality that the mortality of flesh could not permanently smother. Jesus Himself spoke as if He rose from the grave by His own power (John 2:19; 10:17-18), a fact wholly incompatible with Unitarian concepts.

Once one grasps the basic concept that Jesus was not a separate being from God any more than “the God” who walked in the garden of Eden in the cool of the day and who spoke with Adam and Eve, or who talked with Moses face to face was a separte being, Unitarian objections to the divinity of Jesus lose all their oomph. Yes, Jesus was a “one-off” in history; unlike the garden-of-Eden God, Jesus was literally God-in-flesh. And just as heaven was not emptied when God walked in the garden of Eden, so too it was not emptied when God was born flesh and walked among us as one of us. What a magnificent, God-glorifying mystery — Immanuel, God with us! The very thought that He could and would do such a thing should send shivers up our spines and make us drop on our knees in humble awe and adoration.

Unitarians go toe to toe with those who believe Jesus is God on most of the passages cited by the latter as conferring divinity on Jesus. Take Romans 9:5 for instance, which reads in the New King James, "… of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen." This verse may seem like a high-caliber weapon in the Jesus-is-God arsenal, but as Unitarians are wont to point out, it can be read differently. The exact wording goes, "Of them is the Christ according to the flesh the one who is overall God blessed forever. Amen." As Brown puts it,

To whom do the italicized words refer? (a) A period may be placed after "flesh," so that the following words become a separate sentence blessing God. (b) A comma may be placed after flesh, and a period after "forever." This punctuation would mean that Paul calls Christ, "God blessed forever" (1997, p. 581).

He then adds that the grammar favors the latter. But dogmatism is uncalled-for.

The serious seeker would be well-advised to do an in-depth study of the chief passages for himself. They include, in addition to those already mentioned: John 5:18, 20:28, Acts 20:28, Philippians 2:5, Colossians 1:15-20, 1 Timothy 3:16; 6:15-16, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:3, 6-8, 1 John 5:20, and 2 Peter 1:1. One wonders how anybody could read the first chapter of the letter to the Hebrews and still cling to either of the Unitarian fictions. To contend that an incarnate angel or, worse, that an ordinary man could maintain perfect sinlessness over the course of more than thirty years of constant testing is laughable. The impartial seeker will surely come to the only possible conclusion: Jesus truly was “God in the flesh”.

The resurrected, glorified Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are integral parts of the one incredibly rich amalgam that is one divine Being, one God. Looking into the new heaven and new earth, the apostle John gives us some unbelievably exciting news about what awaits us there:

And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads (Rev. 22:3-4).

We will see God in all His glory, we will see the Lamb who gave His life for us. God and the Lamb are one, with one face. Yes, we will see His face, meaning we will see Him in all His glory; what joy unimaginable.

Though Unitarians dispute both the translation and the accepted meaning of John 1:1, let us conclude by quoting it and verse 14:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus is being identified with God in some very real way. The case for Jesus' divinity is overwhelming.

A final question for Unitarians

What lies at the heart of the Unitarian mindset? The author believes that it comes down to this: To reword Cool Hand Luke's famous line, “What we have here is a failure to imagine”. Unitarians, please ask yourself this question. Is God capable of entering flesh as a human being without subtracting anything from His heavenly self? If you insist that He cannot, are you not imposing a human-contrived limitation on God? Where is your imagination? If your answer to the question is “yes”, then I say to you, “Meet Jesus Christ”. No problem.