In this post I will be citing from the late liberal, critical [N]ew [T]estament scholar James D. G. Dunn’s book Jesus According to the New Testament, published by William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2019. The reason for citing this work is because Dunn did not hold to the inerrancy or infallibility of the Holy Scriptures, but thought that they contained errors and historical exaggerations/embellishments. As such, his views in regards to the NT teaching on the Deity of Christ should carry more weight for opponents of Christianity since they are not the rantings of some fanatical inerrantist or fundamentalist. All emphasis will be mine.
PAUL
The fact that Paul spoke of the Spirit as “the Spirit of Christ,” as we saw in Romans 8:9, and equally could speak of “the Spirit of God,” as in Romans 8:14, should not pass without comment. For it means that Paul could think of the Holy Spirit as Christ’s Spirit. Jesus was not simply the Messiah who was anointed by the Spirit of God, but that anointing power of God had become so identified with the one anointed that the Spirit of God could be understood as Christ’s Spirit. Paul’s letter to Rome was written in about the year 56 or 57, and presumably this was not the first time Paul had so identified the Spirit of God with Christ. Which means that well within thirty years of Jesus’s ministry, death and resurrection, God’s Spirit was being thought of as “the Spirit of Christ.” Similarly in Philippians 1:19 Paul expresses his confidence that “the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ” would ensure his deliverance. And the implication of the fact that Jesus’s distinctive “Abba! Father!” prayer quickly became the distinctive prayer of Paul and his fellow Christians, understood as inspired by the Spirit (rom 8:16-17; Gal 4:6-7), should not be missed.
What had happened here? Is it simply that Paul was so confident that Jesus had been anointed and empowered by God’s Spirit, so that Christ’s ministry attested the character of the power that had inspired? In which case it was as easy to say Jesus’s Spirit as it was to say God’s Spirit. Was it thus that the Christian concept of God as Trinity first came to expression? Whatever the precise historical details, it cannot be insignificant that Paul so identified the power of Jesus’s mission with the Spirit of God that he could quite naturally speak of the power as the Spirit of Christ. Indeed, as we saw in 2 Corinthians 3:12-18, he could identify “the Lord” both with Jesus and with the Spirit. We cannot, of course, infer that Paul had conception of God as Trinity. But it cannot but be significant that he could speak of the same spiritual reality equally in terms of the Lord, Christ, and the Spirit. Here again Christian theologizing owes an incalculable debt to Paul. (127-128)
As we have seen, Paul does not hesitate to speak of Jesus as Lord. Of course, he was well aware that kyrios (Lord) was the Greek translation of the Hebrew, “Yahweh.” But what is striking is that he was quite happy to take references to Yahweh and refer them to the Lord Jesus–as in Romans 10:9-13, citing Joel 2:32: “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Very striking too is the fact that Paul draws on one of the strongest monotheistic passages in the whole Bible–Isaiah 45:21-23–and uses its final acclamation, “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear,” in his great hymn of praise to Christ (Phil 2:6-11). And in Romans 9:5 Paul’s Greek (or punctuation) can be taken as Paul referring to Christ as God “who is over all.” Paul certainly saw God as fully acting in and through Christ. He freely applied references to Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible to Christ. “In him,” he did not hesitate to assert in another hymn, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:19). Indeed, the hymn begins by hailing Christ as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,” in whom “all things in heaven and on earth were created,” “created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col 1:15-17). WOW! How can we refrain from acknowledging that Paul saw in Christ the agency of creation itself. It looks very much, then, that Paul was so convinced that God had acted through Christ that he did not hold back on some occasions from identifying Christ with God. (133-134)
… Titus 2:13, however, raises the intriguing question whether the writer was already willing to speak of Jesus as God (“our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”); or should we rather translate “the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ”? The issue is perhaps clarified when we take the full phrase, “the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior”–Jesus’s coming being seen as the manifestation of the glory of the one God. The parallel with John 1:14 (“we have seen his glory …”) suggests that both the Pastorals and John were moving in the same direction in their appreciation of the significance of Jesus.
The title “Savior” is much more prominent in the Pastorals than in the earlier Pauline letters, and is used equally of Christ as it is of God–especially in Titus: “God our Savior” (Titus 1:3; 2:10; 3:4) and “Christ Jesus our Savior” (Titus 1:4; 2:13; 3:6)… (136)
PETER
The clear sense of Christ as the medium through whom worshipers can draw near to God, whose resurrection is the ground of their confidence and hope, and who preeminently brings glory to God, could hardly be clearer. Also noticeable is the fact that 1 Peter could use the title “Lord” EQUALLY for Jesus (1 Pet 1:3; 3:15) AND FOR GOD (1 Pet 1:25; 3:12), so that the reference in 1 Peter 2:3 and 13 can be taken either way without concern. And the fact that 1 Peter is the only New Testament writing apart from Paul that uses the phrase “in Christ” (1 Pet 3:16; 5:10, 14) should not escape notice. And it is 1 Peter which includes the thought that between his crucifixion and resurrection Jesus descended into hell to minister there (1 Pet 3:18-19), a rather puzzling reference which was included in the Apostles’ Creed but was not retained thereafter. (164-165)
Notably, Jesus is referred to REGULARLY as “our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 1:2, 8, 14, 16) or “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 1:11; 2:20; 3:18). And, RATHER STRIKINGLY, the letter opens with a reference to “the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 1:1). The writer seems quite ready to refer to the climax of history as “the day of the Lord” (2 Pet 3:10) and as “the day of God” (2 Pet 3:12)… (173)
JOHN
If John’s elaboration of the claims that Jesus is Israel’s long-expected Messiah, and is indeed the Son of God, was striking; even more so is the wholly new claim in the opening paragraph of the Gospel. The astonishing claim is that Jesus not only spoke the word of God, as had the prophets of old, but was the Word of God! It is one of the features of John’s Gospel that immediately catches the attention–that John begins not with the first phase of Jesus’s ministry (as had Mark), nor with his birth (as had Matthew and Luke), but with the Logos/Word as the divine agent or medium of creation. In his bolder reflections Paul had come close to this (as in Phil 2:6 and Col 2:9). It is only with John, however, that we see in precise words the concept of incarnation, of Jesus as the incarnation of God’s creative agency specifically articulated as never before–and with an unexpected boldness in his opening words.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.… He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.… He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.… From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. (John 1:1-18)
It is hard for those who have been long familiar with this passage to appreciate just how exceptional it was when first written. The Word or Logos was of course familiar to both Jew and Greek. Those familiar with the Hebrew Bible would think, for example, of
Gen 15:1 “The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision.”
Ps 33:6 “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.”
And of course, they would think particularly of the prophets to whom “the word of the Lord came” on many occasions–as in
Isa 55:11 God says, “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose.”
Jer 2:4 “Hear the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob.”
For those more familiar with Greek thought, the idea of the logos spermatikos, the seed-logos, the creative energy behind the world, and seeded within the human individual, would be nothing new. For John it would no doubt have been familiar that logos could refer both to the word unexpressed and the word expressed. How better to use it than to underlie the significance of Jesus: Jesus as the embodiment of the mind and intention of God, as himself expressing what hitherto had been expressed only in the words of the inspired prophet. What was only implicit in creation was now expressed clearly. In other words, John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” was something totally unexpected and now, making a wholly mind-blowing claim: that Jesus, as God’s Word, has expressed what was hitherto the inexpressible and has made the unknown known.
We should not fail to note the significance of John’s formulation in his claim that it is the Word of God that has been incarnated as Jesus. Not just the creative power of God. Not just the saving acts of God that have delivered Israel in the past, but the word of God, the creative and saving power of God IN A RATIONAL FORM that would engage human intelligence and answer human puzzles and inquiries. The wonder of John 1:14 is that its claim engages the human readers and responds at every level of their being, the word-expressing mind not least. (62-64)
Somewhat surprisingly, the thought of Jesus as the Word of God incarnate is not taken up or followed through in the rest of John’s Gospel–suggesting to some that the prologue (John 1:1-18) was a later edition to the Gospel, as composed by John or by the group around him. Somewhat However, in Jewish thought there was a more familiar way of speaking of God’s interaction with his creation and his people. This was the figure of divine Wisdom, familiar at the time of Jesus particularly in the wisdom literature of Israel’s Scriptures.
Prov 3:19 “The LORD by wisdom founded the earth.”
Prov 8:27, 30 Wisdom cries out: “When he established the heavens, I was there. … Then I was beside him, like a master worker.”
Sir 24:1, 23 “Wisdom praises herself, and tells of her glory in the midst of her people. … All this is the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the law that Moses commanded us.”
Bar 3:9-4:2 “Hear the commandments of life, O Israel; give ear, and learn wisdom. … She [Wisdom] is the book of the commandments of God, the law that endures forever. All who hold her fast will live, and those who forsake her will die. Turn, O Jacob, and take her; walk toward the shining of her light.”
The point should not be missed, that the incarnation of Wisdom in the flesh of Jesus was foreshadowed by the embodiment of Wisdom in “the book of the covenant” with Israel, “the commandments of God.”
In John there are many echoes of what was said of Wisdom. For example:
Wis 9:17-18 “Who has learned your counsel, unless you have given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high? And thus … people … were saved by wisdom.”
John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Sir 15:3 “She [Wisdom] will feed him with the bread of learning, and give him the water of wisdom to drink.”
Sir 24:21 “Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more.”
John 4:14 Jesus says to the woman at the well, “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Prov 9:5 Wisdom’s invitation: “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.”
Sir 15:3 “She [Wisdom] will feed him with the bread of learning, and give him the water of wisdom to drink.”
John 6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
A striking feature should not be ignored. In Jewish thought the figure of Wisdom was feminine, the Jews realizing from early on that the divine could not be limited to a single gender. The creative power of God, expressed above all in the human species, cannot be restricted to one form of that species. “God created humankind in his image … male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). “Male and female” is the image of God. So there is no problem in John expressing the incarnation in female terms. The incarnation embodies the creative energy of God in creating male and female. The claim made in John 1:14 could be equally made in terms of Wisdom: “Wisdom became flesh” in and as Jesus. John could hardly have been bolder in his claim that everything the Jewish writers of the Hebrew Bible tried to express by their talk of the Word of God and the Wisdom of God had been summed up in Jesus, THE INCARNATE WORD, THE INCARNATE WISDOM OF GOD. (64-67)
The Christology of Revelation is somewhat surprising, though not when we recall the apocalyptic character of Revelation. The writing is introduced as “the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1:1). The writer, John, records, “the testimony of Jesus Christ,” a favorite phrase with John, including testimony “to all that he saw” (Rev 1:2). The introductory blessing is “from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Rev 1:4-5). This ease with which John refers to Jesus and God in similar language is a feature of his writing. The first hymnic passage (Rev 1:7) echoes Daniel 7:13 (“he is coming with the clouds”) and Zechariah 12:10 (“every eye will see him, even those who pierced him”). And John is the only New Testament writer apart from the evangelists to refer to Daniel’s vision of “one like a son of man” (Dan 7:13) to Jesus (Rev 1:13; 14:14). Nor should we miss the powerful self-revelation of Christ which introduces the letters to the seven churches: “I am the first and the last, and the living one, I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades” (Rev 1:17-18).
Preceding that, the vision of Revelation 1:12-16, of Jesus “with a golden sash across his chest … his head and his hair … white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes … like a flame of fire, his feet … like burnished bronze … and his voice … like the sound of many waters,” draws on the apocalyptic tradition within Judaism where the glorious angel who appears can be almost identified with God. The echoes of the visions of Daniel (7:9, 13) and Ezekiel (1:24-27; 8:2), indicated by the italicized words, are no doubt deliberate. What is striking is the contrast with such apocalyptic tradition at this point. For example, in the Apocalypse of Abraham 17:2 and the Ascension of Isaiah 8:4-5, the glorious angel refuses worship or to be addressed as “my Lord.” And, not surprisingly, Revelation follows the same tradition in regard to the interpreting angel, as is clear particularly in Revelation 19:10 and 22:8-9. In STRIKING contrast, however, Jesus IS MORE CLEARLY WORSHIPED in Revelation than anywhere else in the New Testament. The hymns to the Lamb in chapter 5 are no different in character from the hymns to God in chapter 4. And in passages such as Revelation 5:13 and 7:10 the Lamb IS LINKED WITH GOD in a common ascription of adoration…
In other words, the inhibitions about worshiping a glorious interpreting angel, which John shared with his fellow apocalyptists, he abandoned in the case of the exalted Christ, the Lamb of God.
This clearly implies that the seer’s running together of the descriptions in Ezekiel and Daniel, of God as seen in vision and of glorious angels, was no accident. His intention was precisely to say that the exalted Jesus was not merely a glorious angel or to be confused with one. The glorious angel was not to be worshiped. BUT THE EXALTED CHRIST WAS! This is of a piece with the fact, again no doubt deliberate on John’s part, that both God AND THE EXALTED CHRIST SAY, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” Nor does John hold back from referring to the exalted Christ as “the holy one,” knowing full well that “the holy one” is used frequently of God in the LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, often in the expression “the Holy One of Israel.” Similarly with his affirmation of Jesus as “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev 17:14; 19:16), a title presumably fitting for God ALONE. And some of the descriptions of the exalted Christ’s relation to the throne in the seer’s vision seem to imply that the Lamb was sitting on God’s throne (Rev 3:21; 7:17); it is “the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev 22:1, 3). This should probably be seen as one of John’s ways of acknowledging the fullest significance and status of Christ in relation to God without abandoning his more traditional monotheism. To do so without diminishing the glory of the one God was possible within an apocalyptic tradition as nowhere else, since that tradition was quite familiar with angelic agents of God who embodied the person, majesty, and authority of God. (176-178)
JAMES & JUDE
… Also here is the fact that, apart from the two references to the “Lord Jesus Christ” already cited, the two references to the hope for “the coming of the Lord” (Jas 5:7, 8), and the advice on anointing the sick with oil “in the name of the Lord” (Jas 5:14-15), the other references to “the Lord” are probably to God. That, of course, is itself of no little interest since it implies that even in what we might refer to Jesus’s own family circle, Jesus could be referred to as “the Lord” IN THE SAME WAY AS GOD WAS REFERRED TO AS “the Lord.” (159)
Rather differently from James, Jude refers to Jesus six times, introducing himself as “a servant of Jesus Christ” (Jude 1), and referring to Jesus regularly as “our Lord” (Jude 17, 21, 25), but also as “our only Master and Lord” (Jude 4)… (172)
FURTHER READING
Jesus Meets the Criteria for Deity, Addendum
The Use of Exclusive Language and the Deity of Christ [Part 1]
Muhammad – Underneath the Glorious Feet of the Lord Jesus! Pt. 1
How Good Logic Leads To A Rejection Of Islam Pt. 1
The Abuse And Misuse Of Modern Biblical Scholarship, Pt. 2a, Pt. 2b, Pt. 3
Answering Islam Blog 