Deity of Jesus

The deity of Jesus is considered an essential doctrine and is a central non-negotiable belief within Christianity. Also known as the "divinity of Christ," this doctrine asserts that Jesus Christ was and is the Son of God incarnate. As the apostle Paul stated, "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Col. 2:9; ESV).

"Now the Christian meaning of the term "deity of Christ" is fairly clear. The Christian believes that there is a personal God, Creator and Ruler of the universe, a God who is infinite, eternal and unchangeable. So when the Christian says that Jesus Christ is God, or when he says that he believes in the "deity of Christ," he means that that same person who is known to history as Jesus of Nazareth existed, before He became man, from all eternity as infinite, eternal and unchangeable God, the second person of the holy Trinity." J. Gresham Machen, What is the Deity of Christ?

"Possibly we do not always fully realize the nature of the issue here brought before us. Here is a young man scarcely thirty-three years of age, emerged from obscurity only for the brief space of three years, living during those years under the scorn of the world, which grew steadily in intensity and finally passed into hatred, and dying at the end the death of a malefactor : but leaving behind Him the germs of a world-wide community, the spring of whose vitality is the firm conviction that He was God manifest in the flesh. If anything human is obvious it is obvious that this conviction was not formed and fixed without evidence for it of the most convincing kind. The account His followers themselves gave of the matter is that their faith was grounded not merely in His assertions, nor merely in the impression His personality made upon them in conjunction with His claims, but specifically in a series of divine deeds, culminating in His rising from the dead, setting its seal upon His claims and the impression made by His personality." B. B. Warfield, The Lord of Glory: A Classic Defense of the Deity of Jesus Christ, p. 301

Multimedia

Books

  • Bowman and Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ. Kregel, 2007.
  • Bird et al., How God Became Jesus: The Real Origin's of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature. Zondervan, 2014.
  • Morgan and Peterson (eds), The Deity of Christ. Theology in Community. Crossway, 2011.
  • Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Eerdmans, 2005.
  • Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity. Eerdmans, 2008.
  • Tilling, Paul's Divine Christology. Eerdmans, 2015.

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External links