Jesus' Deity Among The Earliest Christians: Some Examples

“[In ancient Jewish thought] God alone brought all other beings into existence. God had no helper, assistant or servant to assist or to implement his work of creation. God alone created, and no one else had any part in this activity. This is axiomatic for Second Temple Judaism….Isa. 44:24; 2 Enoch 33:4; 4 Ezra 3:4; Josephus, C. Ap. 2.192. Even Philo’s exegesis of Gen. 1:26 (De Opif. Mundi 72-75; De Conf. Ling. 179) is only a minor qualification of this denial: he insists that God acted alone in the creation of all things except humanity, and holds that the plural in Gen. 1:26 involves subordinate co-workers of God so that, while good human actions may be attributed to God as their source, sins may not….there is no suggestion anywhere in the [Second Temple Jewish] literature that principal angels or exalted patriarchs participate in the work of creation.…The Second Temple Jewish understanding of the divine uniqueness does not define it as unitariness and does not make distinctions within the divine identity inconceivable. Its perfectly clear distinction between God and all other reality is made in other terms, which in this case place God’s Wisdom unequivocally within the unique divine identity….The key to the way in which Jewish monotheism and high Christology were compatible in the early Christian movement is not the claim that Jewish monotheism left room for ambiguous semi-divinities, but the recognition that its understanding of the unique identity of the one God left room for the inclusion of Jesus in that identity. Though such a step was unprecedented, the character of Jewish monotheism did not make it impossible. Moreover, it was not a step which could be, as it were, approached gradually by means of ascending christological beliefs. To put Jesus in the position, for example, of a very high-ranking angelic servant of God would not be to come close to a further step of assimilating him to God, because the absolute distinction between God and all other reality would still have to be crossed. The decisive step of including Jesus in the unique identity of God was not a step that could be facilitated by prior, less radical steps. It was a step which, whenever it were taken, had to be taken simply for its own sake and de novo. It does not become any more intelligible by being placed at the end of a long process of christological development. In my view, the New Testament evidence is best explained if this step was taken very early as the fundamental step on which all further christological development then rested.” (Richard Bauckham, God Crucified [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999], p. 12, n. 12 on p. 12, pp. 17-18, 22, 28)

"Already for him [Paul] the eternal Son of God had become a real man in space and time, in Judaea, and only a few years previously. This is a quite incredible and revolutionary message, without analogy in the ancient world!" (Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000], p. 151)

“While disciples often revered their teachers (though many also felt free to disagree respectfully with them in time), even among Greeks first-generation students rarely turned their teachers into gods, at least in the pre-Christian period. Neither Plato (who was quite interpretive) nor Xenophon deified Socrates, nor did they appeal to his resurrection and continuing presence. How much more implausible is it that Jewish monotheists would do so? That we hear of no early Christian reaction against such teaching in the period between Paul and John – that is, during the era from which most or all of our NT comes – suggests that a common understanding developed from something in Jesus’ own life or teaching, before or after the event of the resurrection….That a first-century Palestinian Jewish movement would within its earliest decades already hold a consensus that their founder rose from the dead and was divine Wisdom is remarkable, considering that we have no comparable evidence for the deification of other first-century Jewish messianic figures. It seems that something distinctive within the movement, rather than merely following a common first-century Jewish social pattern, produced this consensus. It is difficult to comprehend how, without the authority of Jesus’ teaching, so many monotheistic Jews in the early church would have simultaneously come to emphasize Jesus’ divine character, and, while debating circumcision, food laws, Jerusalem’s authority, and other points, fail to have deeply divided over this aspect of Christology.” (Craig Keener, The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, Vol. 1 [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003], pp. 301-302, 308)

“like John, Matthew emphasizes Jesus’ deity to monotheistic readers…An ancient Jewish saying promised God’s presence not only for ten males (the minimum prerequisite for a synagogue – b. Ber. 6ab; Meg. 23b; p. Meg. 4:4, p. 5; Reicke 1974: 121; 1QS 6.3, 6; CD 13.2-3), but for even two or three gathered to study his law (m. ‘Abot 3:2, 6; Mek. Bah. 11.48ff.; cf. m. Ber. 7:3). Here [in Matthew 18:20] Jesus himself fills the role of the Shekinah, God’s presence, in the traditional Jewish saying (which probably predates this saying, since the rabbis would not likely borrow it from Christian sources; cf. Smith 1951: 152-53; Meier 1980: 206; Barth 1963: 135; Sievers 1984). Jewish teachers often called God ‘the Place,’ that is, ‘the Omnipresent One’; Jesus is ‘God with us’ (1:23; 28:20)….Disciples baptize [as a result of Matthew 28:19] not only in the name of the Father and the Holy Spirit, whom biblical and Jewish tradition regarded as divine, but also in the name of the Son. Placing Jesus on the same level as the Father and Spirit makes even more explicit what is implicit in Acts’s ‘baptism in Jesus’ name’ (Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5; cf. 22:16) – that is, that Jesus is divine (28:19)….Jesus’ divinity is explicit in Luke’s theology of baptism in Jesus’ name, Acts 2:38 fulfilling Joel’s prophecy recorded in [Acts] 2:21….Cf. repentance ‘in the name of the Most High God’ (Jos. and Asen. 15:7); salvation ‘in the name of the Lord of Spirits’ (1 Enoch 48:7)” (Craig Keener, A Commentary On The Gospel Of Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999], pp. 67, 455-456, 716-717)

“Jesus’ response [in Matthew 21:16], again using the introductory rebuke ‘Have you never read?’ tacitly applauds their [the children’s] acclamation in light of Ps 8:2 (LXX 8:3, which is quoted verbatim). There the children are praising Yahweh, so Jesus again accepts worship that is reserved for God alone.” (Craig Blomberg, Matthew [Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press, 1992], pp. 315-316)

“Mark also believes Jesus is deity: his reapplication of the ‘Lord’ of Isa 40:3 to Jesus (Mark 1:3) can be understood in no other way. The Fourth Gospel’s independent tradition might even suggest that the Baptist used this verse to describe his own mission as preparing the Lord’s way….Mark probably had other traditions available, and could have used some of those which emphasize Christ’s deity differently, but that was not Mark’s purpose. The closest he comes is the allusion in 6:48-50 to Job 9:8-11; the coincidence of rare images in a short space (God treading the waves and passing by) is so close that Mark surely intends an allusion to that passage here, and hence an allusion to Christ’s deity….Conjoined with the oft-recognized probable allusion to Christ’s deity in the ‘I am’ of Mark 6:50” (Craig Keener, The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, Vol. 1 [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003], p. 305 and n. 225 on p. 305)

“So, in the light of the connexions with Isaiah 6:1 and 57:15, the meaning of Isaiah 52:13 is that the Servant is exalted to the heavenly throne of God. This is why, in John 12:38-41, Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 6 are brought together, and Isaiah is said to have seen Jesus’ glory, meaning that he did so when he saw the glory of the Lord in his vision in chapter 6 of his prophecy….It is certainly not accidental that, whereas in the Hebrew Bible there are seven occurrences of ani hu and two of the emphatic variation anoki anoki hu (Isa. 43:25; 51:12), in John there are seven absolute ‘I am’ sayings, with the seventh repeated twice (18:5, 6, 8) for the sake of an emphatic climax (thus seven or nine in both cases). The series of sayings thus comprehensively identifies Jesus with the God of Israel who sums up his identity in the declaration ‘I am he’.” (Richard Bauckham, God Crucified [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999], pp. 51, 55-56)

“the recognition that he [Jesus] knew ‘all things’ ([John] 16:30; 18:4; 21:17), however, should have pointed the disciples not only to Jesus’ origin but to his deity (see 1 John 3:20; comment on 2:23-25)” (Craig Keener, The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, Vol. 2 [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003], p. 1048)

“Luke may emphasize Christ’s deity less [than Mark]. Luke does not deny a view held in other early Christian circles – Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 builds on an identification of Jesus (cf. 2:38) as the Lord of Joel (Acts 2:21), thus baptism is offered ‘in Jesus’ name.’ Luke does not deny early Christian affirmation of Christ’s deity; he simply emphasizes what is most useful in his apologetic history. Luke thus provides the clearest evidence that different writers could stress different Christologies without opposing earlier Christologies in their sources.” (Craig Keener, The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, Vol. 1 [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003], p. 306)

“Similarly, although the identity of ‘the Lord’ to whom Peter advises that prayer be made in [Acts] 8:22 (‘Pray to the Lord’), and the identity of ‘the Lord’ in Simon’s reply in 8:24 (‘Pray for me to the Lord’), may be seen as somewhat ambiguous, the fact that elsewhere in this scene ‘the Lord’ is explicitly identified by Luke as ‘the Lord Jesus’ (8:16) means that we may assume in the exchange between Simon and Peter throughout 8:14-25 that Jesus is in view. Furthermore, Stephen offers prayer to Jesus (7:59-60), as does Ananias (9:10-17; see esp. v. 17, where ‘the Lord’ is directly specified as ‘Jesus’). So routine, in fact, is christocentric prayer to the identity of the early Christians that they can be known as ‘those who call upon the name’ of Jesus (cf. 2:21; 7:59; 9:14, 21; 22:16). The prayer practices of the early church, therefore, highlight important christological affirmations that move beyond what was characteristic of Judaism. According to Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, Jesus is God’s coregent who dispenses the blessings of salvation to all who ‘call on the name of the Lord’ (2:14-41). In this capacity, he has become an object of devotion and a source of salvation – roles reserved only for God within Jewish tradition.” (Joel Green, in Richard Bauckham, ed., Into God’s Presence [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2001], p. 188)

“when the early Christians called Jesus kyrios, one of the overtones that word quickly acquired, astonishing and even shocking though this must have been, was that texts in the Greek Bible which used kyrios to translate the divine name YHWH were now used to denote Jesus himself, with a subtlety and theological sophistication that seems to go back to the earliest days of the Christian movement….In 1 Corinthians 8.6 Paul takes the Shema itself, the central daily Jewish prayer and confession of monotheistic faith (‘YHWH our God, YHWH is one’), and gives the two words YHWH (kyrios) and ‘God’ (theos) different referents, so that theos refers to ‘the father, from whom are all things and we to him’ and kyrios refers to ‘Jesus the Messiah, through whom are all things and we through him’….Paul elsewhere takes particular texts which refer to YHWH and uses them, without apology or even much explanation, as texts about Jesus. [Romans 10:13 cited]…Likewise, the whole theme of ‘the day of YHWH’ in the Old Testament has been transposed, in Paul and elsewhere in early Christianity, into ‘the day of the kyrios’, i.e. of Jesus, or into ‘the day of the Messiah’. [Acts 2:20, 1 Corinthians 1:8, 5:5, 2 Corinthians 1:14, Philippians 1:6, 1:10, 2:16, 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 2 Peter 3:10]…The first letter of Peter (2.3) speaks of ‘tasting that the Lord is good’, quoting, in relation to Jesus, what Psalm 34 had said about YHWH. In 1 Peter 3.15 we find a quotation from Isaiah 8.13 in which ‘the Messiah’ has been added to ‘Lord’ to make it clear that what was spoken of YHWH in this Old Testament passage is now to be understood of Jesus the Messiah….He [Paul] had, in the senses we have explored, a different kind of meeting with Jesus, but he quickly came to the conclusion which the others, too, had arrived at: that in this Jesus, now demonstrated to have been Israel’s Messiah all along, Israel’s one true god had been not merely speaking, as though through an intermediary, but personally present.” (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection Of The Son Of God [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2003], pp. 571-572, 576)

“Despite this difference of opinion [over whether Jesus is referred to as God in Romans 9:5], arguments in favor of taking ‘God’ as an appellation of ‘Messiah’ greatly outweigh those that support the alternative. Favoring a comma after ‘Messiah’ (and thus the first option) are several stylistic arguments. First, the words ‘the one who is’ are most naturally taken as a relative clause modifying a word in the previous context (see the similar construction in 1 Cor. 11:31). Second, Paul’s doxologies are never independent but always are tied closely to the preceding context. Third, independent blessings of God in the Bible, with only one exception (Ps. 67:19), place the word ‘blessed’ in the first position. Here, however, the Greek word for ‘blessed’ occurs after ‘God,’ suggesting that the blessing must be tied to the previous context. As Metzger points out, it is ‘altogether incredible that Paul, whose ear must have been perfectly familiar with this constantly recurring formula of praise, should in this solitary instance have departed from established usage.’ Fourth, as suggested above, the qualifying phrase ‘according to the flesh’ implies an antithesis; and Paul usually supplies the antithetical element in such cases, rather than allowing the reader simply to assume it. In other words, we would expect, after a description of what the Messiah is from a ‘fleshly’ or ‘this-worldly’ standpoint, a description of what he is from a ‘spiritual’ or ‘otherworldly’ standpoint; see especially Rom. 1:3-4….Paul almost certainly does call Jesus ‘God’ in one other text (Tit. 2:13). Second, the exalted language Paul uses to describe Jesus [Romans 10:13 and Philippians 2:6 cited] as well as the activities Paul ascribes to him [Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 4:4-5, 2 Corinthians 5:10, Colossians 1:16, 3:13, and 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9 cited] clearly attest Paul’s belief in the full deity of Christ….Connecting ‘God’ to ‘Christ’ [in Romans 9:5] is therefore exegetically preferable, theologically unobjectionable, and contextually appropriate. Paul here calls the Messiah, Jesus, ‘God,’ attributing to him full divine status.” (Douglas Moo, The Epistle To The Romans [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1996], pp. 567-568)

“Is Paul actually calling Christ God here [in Romans 9:5]? The question hinges on punctuation. There is no question but that it is better Greek to regard the ho on which follows ‘the Christ’ as referring back to Christ rather than forward to theos, ‘God.’ Furthermore, whenever we find a doxology elsewhere, including in Paul, it begins with ‘blessed’ or some similar term, not with ho on. Those who want to find an independent doxology to God here are hard-pressed to explain why the doxology does not follow this normal pattern. In fact, the one real objection to Christ being called God here is that Paul supposedly does not do so elsewhere. But this is not true. He does do so in equivalent terms in Phil. 2.5-11, and furthermore when he calls Christ ‘Lord,’ he is predicating of Jesus the divine name used for God over and over in the LXX. We find Jesus called divine Lord, indeed confessed as such in Rom. 10.9, and then an OT passage (Joel 3.5 LXX) in which God is called ‘Lord’ is applied to Jesus at 10.13. Paul has christologically redefined how he understands monotheism, and 9.5 is just further evidence of the fact.” (Ben Witherington with Darlene Hyatt, Paul’s Letter To The Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2004], pp. 251-252)

“Those who dissent [against seeing Jesus as God in Romans 9:5], noting that this is not Paul’s usual terminology, nevertheless concur that a doxology to Christ as ‘God’ remains the most likely interpretation of the grammar (Hunter, Romans, 90; idem, Paul, 62-63).” (Craig Keener, The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, Vol. 1 [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003], n. 196 on p. 302)

“The marana tha invocation of 1 Cor 16:22 ‘is clear evidence that in the very earliest days the Aramaic-speaking church referred to Jesus by the title that in the OT belongs to God alone.’ In other words, the title ‘is the ascription to Jesus of the functions of deity.’” (Craig Keener, The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, Vol. 1 [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003], p. 298)

“Alluding to Isa 45:23, the hymn [in Philippians 2:10] transfers to the exalted Christ the universal eschatological homage there given to God alone (cf. Rom 14:11).” (Brendan Byrne, in Raymond Brown, et al., editors, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary [Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1990], p. 795)

“Careful study of Hebrews 1, for which we lack space here, would reveal with what care and sophistication the passage employs all the key features by which Jewish monotheism standardly characterized the uniqueness of God in order to include Jesus within the unique divine identity.” (Richard Bauckham, God Crucified [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999], pp. 33-34)

“This [2 Peter 1:1] appears to be a clear example of Jesus being called God” (Ben Witherington, in Ralph Martin and Peter Davids, editors, Dictionary Of The Later New Testament & Its Developments [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1997], p. 154)

“The ‘First and the Last’ title [applied to Jesus in Revelation 1:17] derives from Isa. 41:4; 44:6; 48:12, where it refers to God as creator of all and sovereign over history….As already stated, this [the worship of Jesus in Revelation 5] is part of the great emphasis in the book on the deity of the Lamb who is ‘worthy’ of the same worship as God….The worship of the Lamb in chapter 5 [of Revelation] parallels that of God in chapter 4, and everything said here applies to our worship of Christ.” (Grant Osborne, Revelation [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2002], pp. 95, 264, 266)