NTS New Testament Studies
ODCC Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone
OTP Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols., ed. J. H. Charlesworth
PNTC Pillar New Testament Commentary
RB Revue Biblique
SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series
SVTP Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha
TCGNT Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, by B. Metzger and B. Ehrman
TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Kittel
TDOT Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. J. Botterweck et al
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
ZECNT Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
A Trinitarian View
Jesus, the Divine Son of God
Charles Lee Irons
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous nineteenth-century New England Unitarian minister and father of transcendentalism, was a confessed non-Trinitarian. He dismissed the deity of Christ as the post-apostolic church’s “noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus.”1 My interlocutors, Dixon and Smith, while no doubt differing with Emerson on many points, presumably would agree with him here. In this essay, I take up the challenge of demonstrating that the deity of Christ is not an exaggeration, but the sober claim of Jesus himself and a core part of the apostolic proclamation.
Thesis and Definition
Before I attempt to sketch the biblical case for the deity of Christ, I need to explain more carefully what I mean by it. The terms “deity” or “divine” can be used in different senses. When the founder of Rome died, he was hailed as “the divine Romulus”2, but the ancient Romans did not view Romulus as an eternally preexistent, divine being. He was regarded as an ordinary man who, because of his greatness as the founder of Rome, was taken up into heaven to join the pantheon of the gods after his death—a strictly postmortem affair called apotheosis. But this is not at all what the church means when it confesses the deity of Christ. Indeed, the church could not mean that without abandoning monotheism. Rather, the church confesses that Jesus Christ is eternally divine and belongs on the divine side of the Creator-creature distinction. He is not a man who became a god, but the Son of God who became man.
It is important to set the ontological deity of Christ within a broader web of doctrines defined with increasing precision by the church in the first four ecumenical councils. The following statement encapsulates the church’s historic understanding of the person of Christ:
The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, 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 (The Westminster Confession of Faith VIII.2).
The historic Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation are interconnected and inseparable. I will be focusing on just one (extremely important) part of the web. By “the ontological deity of Christ” I mean that his career has three stages. First, he is the eternally preexistent Son of God, possessing the same divine nature as the Father; there never was a time when he did not exist as the divine Son.3 Second, he became man (“took upon him man’s nature”) when he was born of the Virgin Mary, and so in his earthly ministry he was the Son of God incarnate, both divine and human. Third, after he completed his redeeming work as the incarnate Son and Messiah, God exalted him at his right hand and gave him divine honor fitting for one who is eternally divine. I believe this is what the New Testament teaches, and that is what I will try to show in what follows.
Jesus is the Son of God
The apostles confessed and proclaimed that Jesus is the Son of God. Next to “Christ” and “Lord,” it is one of the most common christological titles in the New Testament. It occurs in various forms: “my Son,” “the Son,” “the Son of God,” “his Son,” and so on. Some variant of the title appears twenty-two times in Matthew, eleven times in Mark, fourteen times in Luke, twenty-seven times in John, seventeen times in Paul’s epistles, twelve times in Hebrews, and twenty-four times in the epistles of John. The designation occurs in every New Testament author except James and Jude. We cannot examine all of these instances, but as seen in Table 1, there are five key moments in the earthly life of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels where the declaration of Jesus’ status as God’s Son is made. Actually, only Matthew has the “Son of God” title in all five, but even Mark and Luke record these five events even if they use the explicit title less consistently.
Table 1. Five Significant “Son of God” Moments in the Synoptic Gospels4
| Matthew | Mark | Luke | |
| The Baptism of Jesus | 3:17 | 1:11 | 3:22 |
| Peter’s Confession | 16:16 | [8:29] | [9:20] |
| The Transfiguration of Jesus | 17:5 | 9:7 | 9:35 |
| Jesus before Caiaphas | 26:62–66 | 14:61–64 | 22:67–71 |
| The Centurion at the Crucifixion | 27:54 | 15:39 | [23:47] |
Whether it is the voice of God the Father from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son” at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration, or Peter confessing, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” or Jesus before the high priest Caiaphas being charged with blasphemy and condemned to death because he claimed to be the Son of God, or the centurion at the scene of the crucifixion confessing, “Truly this was the Son of God!”—in all five key moments, the declaration of Jesus’ divine Sonship has the aura of being utterly significant and decisive.
But it was not limited to what others said of him. Jesus understood himself to be “the Son of God” as well. There are three passages in the Synoptic Gospels that make this extremely likely from a historical point of view. The first is the one where Jesus is reported as praying to the Father: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt 11:27 || Luke 10:22).5 The second is Jesus’ implicit self-reference in the parable of the wicked tenants: “He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son’” (Mark 12:6 || Matt 21:37 || Luke 20:13). The third is the statement in the eschatological discourse of Jesus, “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32 || Matt 24:36). Even scholars who do not accept the authenticity of Jesus’ more explicit claims to divine Sonship in the Gospel of John are prepared to accept the authenticity of these three sayings in the Synoptic Gospels.6
“Son of God” Much More Than “Messiah”
“Son of God” has a fair claim to being central to Jesus’ identity, both in his own self-consciousness
