The Deity of Christ (in the Early Church)

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opponents of this doctrine allege it was the invention of church history. In making such claims, they often point to historical developments in the fourth century—contending that belief in the Trinity began under Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea.

The cult of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (also known as the Watchtower Society) makes the claim:

“The testimony of the Bible and of history makes clear that the Trinity was unknown throughout Biblical times and for several centuries thereafter.”

“For many years, there had been much opposition on Biblical grounds to the developing idea that Jesus was God. To try to solve the dispute, Roman emperor Constantine summoned all bishops to Nicaea. . . . Constantine’s role was crucial. After two months of furious religious debate, this pagan politician intervened and decided in favor of those who said that Jesus was God. . . . After Nicaea, debates on the subject continued for decades.Those who believed that Jesus was not equal to God even came back into favor for a time. But later Emperor Theodosius decided against them. He established the creed of the Council of Nicaea as the standard for his realm and convened the Council of Constantinople in 381 C.E. to clarify the formula. That council agreed to place the holy spirit on the same level as God and Christ. For the first time, Christendom’s Trinity began to come into focus.” – Should You Believe in the Trinity? (Brooklyn: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1989). A detailed response to this Watchtower booklet can be found in Robert M. Bowman, Jr., Why You Should Believe in the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993).

However, as Nathan Businitz has stated, “In keeping with the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura, evangelical Christians are rightly convinced that the truth of any doctrine must be established and grounded in the Scriptures. The authoritative basis for sound doctrine is the Bible, not church history. Consequently, evangelicals ultimately embrace the doctrine of the Trinity, not because it is affirmed throughout history, but because it is revealed in the Word of God.”

We believe in the Trinity because the Bible teaches (1) There is only one God and (2) God exists as three distinct Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each of Whom is equally and fully God.

However, if we ask the question “Did the Early Church Believe in the Deity of Christ?” (which is of course, a key component of the doctrine of the Trinity) the answer is unquestionably “yes” as the article below shows. Nathan Businitz writes:

Ask your average Muslim, Unitarian, Jehovah’s Witness, or just about any non-Christian skeptic who has read (or watched) The Da Vinci Code, and they’ll try to convince you the answer is no. From such sources we are told that the deity of Christ was a doctrine invented centuries after Jesus’ death — a result of pagan influences on the church in the fourth century when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion.

Emperor Constantine, in particular, is blamed for being the guy who promoted Jesus to the level of deity, a feat of cosmic proportions that he managed to pull off at the Council of Nicaea in 325. As Dan Brown put it (through the lips of one of his literary characters): “Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea. . . . By officially endorsing Jesus as the Son of God, Constantine turned Jesus into a deity who existed beyond the scope of the human world, an entity whose power was unchallengeable” (The Da Vinci Code, 253).

So how can believers answer such allegations?

The best response, obviously, is to demonstrate from Scripture that Jesus is God. We can be confident that the early church affirmed Christ’s deity (and that we should do the same) because the New Testament clearly teaches that truth. The biblical case can be made from many places. Without going into detail in this post, here is a small sampling of texts that teach the deity of Christ: Isaiah 9:6; Matt. 1:23; John 1:1, 14, 18; 20:28; Acts 20:28; Rom. 9:5; 1 Cor. 1:24; 2 Cor. 4:4; Php. 2:6; Col. 1:15–16; 2:9; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:3, 8; 2 Pet. 1:1; 1 John 5:20.

But what about church history outside of the New Testament? Did the early church fathers affirm the deity of Jesus Christ? Or was it only after the fourth century (and the Council of Nicaea) that Christian leaders began to articulate their belief in God the Son?

Though it’s not an exhaustive list, here are 25 quotations from a number of ante-Nicene church fathers demonstrating their belief in the deity of Jesus Christ (with portions underlined for emphasis). These early Christian theologians all lived before the time of Constantine and the Council of Nicaea. As such, they provide incontrovertible proof (from post-New Testament history) that Constantine was not the first person in church history to affirm this doctrine. Rather, the early church embraced the truth that Jesus is God from the time of the apostles on.

1. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 50–117): For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived by Mary according to God’s plan, both from the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit. (Ignatius, Letter to the Ephesians, 18.2. Translation from Michael Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 197)

2. Ignatius (again): Consequently all magic and every kind of spell were dissolved, the ignorance so characteristic of wickedness vanished, and the ancient kingdom was abolished when God appeared in human form to bring the newness of eternal life. (Ibid., 19.3. Holmes, AF, 199)

3. Ignatius (again): For our God Jesus Christ is more visible now that he is in the Father. (Ignatius, Letter to the Romans, 3.3. Holmes, AF, 229) Continue reading →

Election and Evangelism

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stormsIn an article entitled “Election and Evangelism: Friends, Not Foes” Dr. Sam Storms writes:

When I hear people object to the doctrine of unconditional election they don’t typically direct my attention to a particular passage of Scripture that they believe teaches conditional election. Instead, they insist, for example, that unconditional election is inconsistent with any meaningful call to evangelistic outreach. “Why should I preach or share or in other ways make known the gospel of Jesus if God has already determined from eternity past who will ultimately be forgiven and granted entrance into the eternal kingdom? Why should I put my life at risk in taking the gospel to foreign, unreached people groups if God is finally sovereign over who does and does not believe?”

I understand the reason for this kind of thinking and I do not take it lightly or casually dismiss it as the misguided musings of a typical Arminian. Our Arminian brothers and sisters have a genuine concern for the integrity of gospel proclamation and intercessory prayer for the lost souls of the world. And so must we who identify as Calvinists.

What I find especially interesting is that instead of answering such questions in the sort of straightforward way we might prefer, the NT authors prefer to describe evangelistic fervor and the unqualified universal appeal of the gospel alongside and in virtually the same breath with the reality of divine sovereignty. It never seems to strike them as in the least inconsistent or contradictory to affirm both truths side by side.

One of the places we see this is in the ministry of Jesus himself. In Matthew 11:25-26 Jesus declared: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” He then tells us that “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).

This is precisely at the point where some assume Jesus’s next words would be something like this: “You who are elect, and you only, I now invite to believe in me and follow me. After all, why would I extend such an invitation to those whom the Father didn’t give me in eternity past? They alone are the ones for whom I will lay down my life and the only ones whom the Father, through the Spirit, will draw to faith in me” (see John 6:37-40, 64-65).

But much to the surprise of everyone, Jesus immediately extends this universal and indiscriminate appeal: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Evidently there was no conflict in the mind of Christ between, on the one hand, the sovereign and distinguishing choice of the Father to grant knowledge of the Son to some but not others and, on the other hand, the universal offer of eternal life and spiritual rest. You and I may wrangle over the two, insisting that the truth of one necessarily precludes the truth of the other, but Jesus had no such problem.

Yet another place where this dual emphasis is found is in the words of the apostle Paul to Timothy. He exhorts his young spiritual son to remember Jesus as risen from the dead in spite of the fact that he, Paul, is “bound with chains as a criminal” (2 Tim. 2:9). The reason for this is that although the messenger is in jail the message continues to flourish and spread. Then he says this:

“Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).

Paul believes that some hell-deserving sinners have been chosen by God; they are his elect people. He also knows that the only way the elect can enter into the experience of salvation “with eternal glory” is through conscious faith in Jesus. Therefore, he is determined to endure incredible pain and hardship and even imprisonment so that he might spread the truth of the gospel everywhere. The fact that people are “elect” does not lead him to say: “Whoo! That takes a load off my mind. I can ease off the gas pedal of gospel proclamation and stop praying so fervently for people now that I know with certainty that God has chosen some for eternal life. Furthermore, I can stop behaving in the sort of way that leads to chains and imprisonment.” No, instead he confidently persists in preaching and willingly embraces suffering precisely because he knows that such are the means by which God will bring the elect to saving faith in Christ.

Some might assume that if the doctrine of election didn’t lead him to cease praying and preaching then surely his belief in the necessity of praying and preaching would lead him to reject the doctrine of election. But that’s not what happened. At no point does Paul or any other NT author reason like this: “Well, if I have to preach the gospel for people to be saved I can only conclude that there is no such thing as unconditional election. The only thing that counts is that people make a choice.” Instead, Paul is determined to endure great suffering and hardship precisely “for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain” salvation (2 Tim. 2:10a).

In other words, his commitment to suffer so that the gospel might spread and be made known does not mean that no one has been chosen before the foundation of the world to believe it. Rather, it means that he and others like Timothy are the ordained instrument through which God is pleased to save the elect.

Let me cite just one more example. After preaching in Corinth, Paul was opposed and “reviled” (Acts 18:6) by the Jewish community there. He left town determined to take the gospel to the Gentiles. But Jesus appeared to him one night in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people” (Acts 18:9b-10).

Paul’s response to this revelation from Christ was not to say: “That doesn’t make any sense, Jesus. If you’ve got many elect people in Corinth then they will undoubtedly come to faith in you regardless of whether or not I or anyone else preaches to them. I’ve got better things to do with my life and time than to preach unnecessarily.”

No, instead “he stayed a year and six months [in Corinth], teaching the word of God among them” (Acts 18:11). Again, we may not be able to grasp how these two truths are compatible, how the reality of unconditional election actually requires rather than precludes gospel proclamation and intercessory prayer, but God nowhere asks or expects us to. He asks and expects us to preach and pray, confident that such are the means by which he is pleased to bring his “people”, the elect, to eternal salvation in Christ.

Go and sin no more…

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john-piperDr. John Piper on John 7:53 to John 8:11:

[[They went each to his own house, look but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”]]

This message is the kind I may give once every decade or so. The reason it’s so rare is that the situation with our text is so rare. In most of your Bibles, you notice that John 7:53 to John 8:11 is either set off in brackets or is in a footnote. The reason for this is that most New Testament scholars do not think it was part of the Gospel of John when it was first written, but was added centuries later.

For example…

Don Carson, who teaches at Trinity, and is in my view one of the best New Testament scholars in the world, writes, “Despite the best efforts . . . to prove that this narrative was originally part of John’s Gospel, the evidence is against [them], and modern English versions are right to rule it off from the rest of the text (NIV) or to relegate it to a footnote (RSV).” (The Gospel According to John, 1991, p. 333)

Bruce Metzger, one of the world’s great authorities on the text of the New Testament until his death in 2002: “The evidence for the non-Johannine origin of the periscope of the adulteress is overwhelming.” (The Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 1971, p. 219)

Leon Morris: “The textual evidence makes it impossible to hold that this section is an authentic part of the Gospel.” (The Gospel According to John, 1971, p. 882)
Andreas Köstenberger: “This represents overwhelming evidence that the section is non-Johannine.” (John, 2004, p. 246)

And Herman Ridderbos: The evidences “point to an unstable tradition that was not originally part of an ecclesiastically accepted text.” (The Gospel of John, 1997, p. 286)

I think they are right. And this gives us a chance to spend a little while on the branch of Biblical Studies behind these judgments called Textual Criticism, and its implications for the trustworthiness and authority of the Scriptures. So let me summarize the reasons these scholars give for thinking this the story of the woman taken in adultery was not originally part of John’s Gospel, and then give some general thoughts about the science of Textual Criticism that helps make sense of the arguments.

Reasons This Section Isn’t Original to John’s Gospel

The evidence goes something like this:

The story is missing from all the Greek manuscripts of John before the fifth century.

All the earliest church fathers omit this passage in commenting on John and pass directly from John 7:52 to John 8:12.

In fact, the text flows very nicely from 7:52 to 8:12 if you leave out the story and just read the passage as though the story were not there.

No Eastern church father cites the passage before the tenth century when dealing with this Gospel.

When the story starts to appear in manuscript copies of the Gospel of John, it shows up in three different places other than here (after 7:36; 7:44; and 21:25), and in one manuscript of Luke, it shows up after 21:38.

Its style and vocabulary is more unlike the rest of John’s Gospel than any other paragraph in the Gospel.

Now saying all that assumes a lot of facts that many of you simply don’t have at your fingertips. And nobody expects you to. This is a hugely technical field of scholarship that at the upper levels requires not only the ability to read ancient languages, but the ability to read them in kinds of ancient handwritten scripts that are very demanding. So let me give you just enough so that you can make sense of these reasons.

The Science of Textual Criticism
The New Testament that we know was originally written in Greek. The first printed Greek New Testament—that came off a printing press—was published by Erasmus in 1516. It turned the world upside down. If you want a great glimpse of this period and the heroism it produced, read David Daniell’s biography of William Tyndale. Continue reading →