Deity of Christ

Definition

The deity of Christ 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).

"The doctrine of redemption is the distinguishing doctrine of the Bible. The person and work of the Redeemer is therefore the great theme of the sacred writers. From the nature of the work which He was to accomplish, it was necessary that He should be at once God and man ... From the beginning to the end, therefore, of the sacred volume, from Genesis to Revelation, a God-man Redeemer is held up as the object of supreme reverence, love, and confidence to the perishing children of men." Charles Hodge¹

"Since the Second Person of the Trinity is truly divine — that is, truly God, existing in the same glory as the Father and the Spirit — when He reveals Himself to us in His human nature, He is, by His human nature, revealing the glory of the Trinity to us."²

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states Christ's deity in the same paragraph as his humanity and their union:

"The Son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity, being very and eternal God, the brightness of the Father's glory, of one substance and equal with him who made the world, who upholdeth and governeth all things he hath made, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man's nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin ... so that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion; which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man."³

This paragraph makes three claims at once. Christ is "very and eternal God," not a lesser or derivative deity. That deity precedes and continues through the incarnation: the Son "did ... take upon him man's nature" at a specific time, so the humanity is added and the deity is not. And the two natures stay "distinct" while "inseparably joined together in one person," which rules out both dividing Christ into two persons (see Nestorius) and blending his natures into one, the question Chalcedon settled.

Biblical Basis

Paul calls Christ Son of Man "according to the flesh" and Son of God "according to the Spirit" (Rom. 1:3-4). John 1 opens with the same claim in stronger terms: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). Placing the Word "in the beginning," alongside God, puts him on the Creator's side of the Creator-creature distinction rather than describing a principle within creation.⁴ The same Word "became flesh" (John 1:14): the incarnation is the eternal Word taking on flesh, not the arrival of a separate, God-like being.

Paul's kenosis hymn argues the same point from the other direction. Christ, "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant" (Phil. 2:6-7). The "emptying" is Christ exchanging the outward form of God for the form of a servant at the incarnation, not divesting himself of deity; at his exaltation he receives back "the glory that ... he already had before" (John 17:5), which only makes sense if he possessed it beforehand and never actually lost it.⁵

Paul states the conclusion directly: "For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Col. 2:9, ESV). John records Jesus applying the language of oneness with the Father to himself: "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). His hearers took this as a claim to deity and charged him with blasphemy "because you, being a man, make yourself God" (John 10:33). The same exclusive title Scripture gives the Father elsewhere is given to Christ: "the true God" (John 17:3; 1 John 5:20).

The Old Testament's "Angel of the LORD" also speaks and acts with divine authority while remaining distinct from the LORD who sends him (Ex. 3:2-6; Judg. 13:21-22).⁶ Not every Old Testament appearance of God involves this figure, and not every "Angel of the LORD" passage needs to be read the same way,⁷ but the New Testament identifies an already-active, pre-existent Christ in Israel's history (John 8:56; 1 Cor. 10:4, 9; 1 Pet. 1:11), which is the basis for reading at least some of these appearances as Christophanies.⁶

Historical Development

In the patristic period, the fourth-century Arian controversy turned on one question: what does it mean to confess Jesus Christ as God? Arius held that only the Father is unbegotten, so the Son, though before all worlds, was brought into being and is therefore not eternal or consubstantial with the Father, a "second God" in a subordinate, created sense.⁸ The Council of Nicaea (AD 325), completed at Constantinople (AD 381), answered with a specific formula: the Son is "begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father" (ὁμοούσιον τῷ πατρί). "Begotten" and "made" mark different kinds of origin: the Son shares the Father's own being, rather than standing in the same relation to the Father that a creature stands to its Creator.⁴ Athanasius, Nicaea's chief defender, read the unity Christ prays for in John 17 ("that they may be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you," John 17:21) as a unity of essence between Father and Son, distinct in kind from the unity believers have with God and each other.⁹

A different error divided Christ rather than demoting him. Nestorius held the eternal Son to be distinct from "the son of David who was born of Mary," denied Mary the title theotokos ("God-bearer"), and described the union of God and man in Christ as a moral union rather than a true one.⁶ The Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) answered that Christ is one person in two natures, "without division or separation and without confusion or change."¹⁰

Later controversies went back to denying Christ's eternal deity outright. The Samosatians, the Photinians, and the Socinians all held Christ to be, in the end, "only a mere man"¹¹ (see Socinianism and Alternative Views, below, for what these positions actually held).

Reformed theology also had to explain how the infinite Word could take on a finite body without ceasing to be infinite. John Calvin's answer, later called the extra Calvinisticum, holds that the Son "descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin's womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning."¹² A related question is how Christ's deity relates to his suffering. Gregory of Nazianzus's classical formula answers it by predicating suffering of the human nature alone: Christ is "passible in his flesh, impassible in his Godhead" (see Impassibility of God).¹³

Alternative Views

Stated here in their own terms, before the confessional response to each in Objections and Responses below.

Arian / subordinationist. Arius held that only the Father is truly unbegotten; the Son, though pre-existent and exalted above every other creature, was brought into being by the Father's will and is therefore not eternal or of one substance with him — a "second God" in a real but subordinate, created sense.⁸

Socinian / unitarian. The Samosatians, Photinians, and Socinians held that Christ did not exist before his birth of Mary, is not consubstantial with the Father, and is, in the end, "only a mere man."¹¹ Some in this tradition granted Christ a lesser "divinity" — an honorific status — while denying him full, infinite "deity," treating the two as differing "as finite from infinite."¹¹ Because conceding that the divine name belongs to God exclusively would hand their opponents a strong argument for Christ's deity, Socinians also denied the name was proper to God alone, holding it "common to creatures, and even to idols."¹⁴ This kind of view continues in modern Unitarianism.

Moral union. A distinct position holds that the union of God and man in Christ is not a union of natures but a "conjunction," and that God's indwelling of Christ differs from his indwelling of ordinary believers only in degree, not in kind — Christ as an unusually God-conscious or God-indwelt man, rather than one who is, by nature, God.⁶ Bavinck traces this position to Nestorius and treats it as recurring in modern theology under different terms.⁶

Objections and Responses

The divine name isn't exclusive to God, so it proves nothing about Christ. Mastricht answers that Scripture calls the name God's "own name forever and his own memorial from generation to generation," reserved for God and withheld from every other being; its application to Christ elsewhere in Scripture therefore does carry the weight of a deity claim.¹⁴

Christ has "divinity" but not full "deity." The Reformed answer denies there is a scriptural basis for the distinction: Christ's divine nature "existed from eternity and is consubstantial with his Father," which is what "deity," not a lesser "divinity," means.¹¹

Claiming oneness with the Father is blasphemy. This is the charge Christ's own hearers brought against him in John 10 after he said, "I and the Father are one." Rather than treating this as a misunderstanding of a weaker claim, Mastricht affirms the hearers understood Christ correctly: he was asserting that he is "true God and consubstantial with the Father."¹¹

Christ's union with God is a moral union, differing from an ordinary believer's only in degree. Bavinck names this reduction, along with Monophysitism (collapsing the two natures into one) and Kenoticism (treating the incarnation as God divesting himself of divine attributes), as equally unacceptable: each preserves some version of Christ's importance while denying the full, eternal, consubstantial deity Chalcedon requires holding alongside his full humanity.⁶

Sources

Works consulted and cited above, all held in the Theopedia Library:

van Mastricht, Petrus. Theoretical-Practical Theology. Vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God. Edited by Joel R. Beeke. Translated by Todd M. Rester. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019.
Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume. Edited by John Bolt. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.
Heine, Ronald E. Classical Christian Doctrine: Introducing the Essentials of the Ancient Faith. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013.
Carter, Craig A. "The Biblical Character of Pro-Nicene Theology." Chap. 7 in Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021.
Barrett, Matthew. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019.
Parkison, Samuel G. To Gaze upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic,
Parkison, Samuel G. "Irresistible Beauty: Beholding Triune Glory in the Face of Jesus Christ." PhD diss., Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2021.
Hodge, Charles. "Chapter VII. The Divinity of Christ." In Systematic Theology, Volume I, 483-522. New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871.
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 8, "Of Christ the Mediator." Not itself held in the Theopedia Library; text as reproduced by The 1689 Confession.

Charles Hodge, "Chapter VII. The Divinity of Christ," in Systematic Theology, Volume I (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871), 483-484. ↩
"Allen," quoted in Samuel G. Parkison, "Irresistible Beauty: Beholding Triune Glory in the Face of Jesus Christ" (PhD diss., Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2021), 241-242. ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 8, "Of Christ the Mediator," para. 2. ↩
Craig A. Carter, "The Biblical Character of Pro-Nicene Theology," in Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), chap. 7. ↩ ↩²
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 16, "The Exalted Lord Christ." ↩
Bavinck, chap. 14, "The Only Begotten Son of the Father." ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Samuel G. Parkison, To Gaze upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024), chap. 2, "Biblical Foundations for the Beatific Vision," 24-25. ↩
Ronald E. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine: Introducing the Essentials of the Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), chap. 7, "One God the Father and One Lord Jesus Christ," 68-70. ↩ ↩²
Athanasius, Orations against the Arians 4, quoted in Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), 2:217. ↩
Heine, chap. 8, "Truly God and Truly Man," 78-89. ↩
Mastricht, 2:599. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.13.4, quoted in Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), chap. 7. ↩
Gregory of Nazianzus, quoted in Barrett, chap. 7. ↩
Mastricht, 2:144. ↩ ↩²