Christianity sprang from a profoundly monotheistic Judaism but, from its very beginnings, the earliest Christians were certain Jesus was God incarnate. In fact, at first they did not even have the name Christian; it was given to them precisely because of their views of who Jesus was. I am well aware that not everyone will concede my point but what I have to say now aims directly at proving it so please bear with me.
So how did a bunch of monotheistic Jews rapidly come to regard Jesus as the Son of God? The answer is basically that they had seen him in action. In saying that, I include his Resurrection even though, strictly speaking, that can only have been an act of God. It was also because of what he said of himself.
With John the Baptist in prison, his disciples were at a bit of a loss as to what to do. They kept in touch with John and he told them to ask Jesus if he was “the one who is to come or should we look for another” (that is, was he the Messiah)? Jesus told them to tell John what they saw him doing as he healed diseases, cast out evil spirits, cleansed lepers, gave sight to the blind and made the lame walk. All of this was exactly what Isaiah had said the Messiah would do.
You say, “Fine but the Messiah was not God.” Not to the Jews, no, but be patient here. Consider the question of how Jesus did all this. By the way, he did indeed do it. As I have shown (see my 2/23/16 post The Inadvertent Evidence for the Miracles of Jesus) the Gospel accounts make no sense in terms of motives and behavior unless Jesus was in fact doing miracles. And miracles are evidence of the presence and power of God. That is of course why and how the ministry of Jesus stirred up the Jewish populace as it did. It implied both that he was “the one who [was] to come” and that he was uniquely connected to God. He exercised and displayed the power of God.
The earliness of the belief that Jesus was God incarnate is widely doubted (mostly by academics) but is easily defended. The books of James and Jude provide unexpected and much overlooked evidence here. By their language, styles and perspectives, both are obviously examples of Jewish Christianity. Historically, James (the Just) was effectively the first bishop of Jerusalem (see my 12/27/25 post James the Just). Jude was his brother. That is to say, these books reflect early Christian thought. James begins saying, “from James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Jude begins, “from Jude, servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those whom God has called, who live in the love of God the Father and in the safe keeping of Jesus Christ.” Interestingly neither of them claimed to be a brother of Jesus.
These are standard letter greetings of the time but they are also inadvertent evidence of belief in Jesus as God incarnate. Firstly, note that both of these brothers of Jesus group Jesus with God the Father as if it is an obvious and unquestionable pairing. Secondly, Jesus is specified as the Messiah (Christ). Additionally, here, and in some other parts of the two epistles, Jesus is called Lord. Now, Lord is the usual translation of Yahweh (I am) in Hebrew and of Kyrios in Greek. It is a title for God himself. James then uses kyrios not only of Jesus in 1:1 but then clearly of God in 1:7, 3:9, 4:15 and 5:4,10 and 11. Jude uses it of God in verse 9 and also verse 14. Lastly, James and Jude both often refer to God as Father echoing Jesus’ own typical language about God. Thus, the seemingly straight forward greetings of the epistles are loaded with the implication that these men, the formerly unbelieving brothers of Jesus, now understood him as God incarnate, God in human form.
Additional evidence comes from Jude’s benediction; “Now to the one who can keep you from falling and set you in the presence of his glory, jubilant and above reproach, to the only God our Savior, be glory and majesty, might and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all time, now, and for evermore. Amen.” It sounds all the themes we have already noted except God as Father. It adds the comment, “before all time, now, and for evermore” in reference to Jesus! That is not the sort of remark one could conceivably apply to a human being. It is an, almost out of hand, statement of eternal existence applicable only to God. As I have said, the early church clearly believed Jesus was God incarnate.
With the later increasing influence of Gnosticism, the humanity of Jesus came to be an issue but the question could not even arise for the disciples and early Christians who had interacted with the obviously human Jesus. So, the only question the early church had cope with was who Jesus was with respect to God. Greek and Roman culture happily elevated all sorts of very human characters into deities. Indeed, their gods were barely distinguishable from humans anyway. So many of them were killed at one time or another that being mortal was not much of a human distinctive. To the Jewish Christians of the early church that was all just pagan and repugnant nonsense. Far from making it easy to make Jesus into God incarnate, it made the idea objectionable on further grounds. So why and how could they have so swiftly moved to God incarnate?
The earliest indication comes from Peter’s discourse at Pentecost (Acts 2:36) mere weeks after the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus where he said, “Let all Israel then accept as certain that God has made this Jesus who you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” Lord here is the sacred name of God so Peter was equating with Jesus with the Messiah and God. Peter was arguing that the Resurrection reveled Jesus as both God and Messiah.
Incidentally, for those who claim the Trinity is not “in” the New Testament, in the following two verses Peter connects the remission of sins by baptism in the name of Jesus with receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. He did not mention the Trinity; the word did not even exist at the time, but the concept is latent therein.
From Pentecost onward we find the church time after time avowing that “Jesus Christ is Lord.” That four word mantra encapsulated their beliefs and their message, the gospel (the good news) of Jesus the Messiah and God incarnate. The use of kyrios in reference to Jesus through out the New Testament is so frequent that making a list would be dull reading. If you aspire to such a word study, look it up in Vine’s Expository Dictionary.
Note too that Luke points out (4: 13) that Peter and John were “untrained laymen.” Astonishing theology for untrained laymen. But they had had a good teacher; so perhaps “untrained” does not apply to them after all.
Possibly the most important explanation of the church’s rapid adoption of the belief that Jesus is God incarnate is what Jesus said of himself. I have come to this last because historically this explanation has been the focus of a long and widespread assault. Thomas Jefferson famously literally took a razor to the Gospels and excised all miracles, especially the Resurrection, and anything he judged supernatural leaving only moral precepts. He admitted this left only “fragments” but he claimed they were “fragments of the most sublime edifice of morality which had ever been exhibited to man.” The liberal German theologians followed suite as did Bultmann’s form criticism and the Jesus Seminar of the twentieth century with much the same results. As I have already pointed out, the Gospels make no sense without the miracles. That’s what happens when you throw out the baby with the bath water. What remains does not “make sense.”
Jesus was confronted with a serious problem in explaining who he was not only to “the multitude” but also to his disciples. His audience was, as we have noted, profoundly monotheistic and, in addition, they had a strongly embedded view of the Messiah as a conqueror of the Romans. Then too, they were well drilled in Scriptural instructions to kill false prophets who led the people astray. Blunt explanations of just how errant their opinions were was potentially a capital offense. Consequently, where Jesus came closest to open claims of his status as the Son of God were also where he came closest to being stoned to death or otherwise killed by a mob. Oh! In fact it got him killed. The exceptions were in discourses with his disciples. These always befuddled them and, at times, drew strong objections from them.
Perhaps the earliest explicit statement by Jesus occurred in the episode of walking on water. That scene directly evoked the encounter with God of Moses on Mt. Sinai when God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock and walked past so Moses could see his back but would not see his face and die. Jesus appeared to be walking past the disciples (especially in Mark). In fear of a ghost, they cried out and Jesus responded, “I am. Do not fear.” All the translations of Matthew, Mark and John are incorrectly rendered as “It is I. Do not fear.” In all three Gospels the Greek text is just “I am,” the sacred name itself. Jesus was telling them he was God to their Moses. That calmed them down and also the wind and waves.
Chapter 8 of the Gospel of John also gives a blunt statement. The chapter contains an extended dialog of Jesus with the scribes and Pharisees in which Jesus is definite that he is the spokesman of the Father. It ends with their claim to be children of Abraham to which Jesus responds,“Before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to kill him. They had no trouble spotting a claim to be God and had to see it as blasphemy, not truth. Somehow Jesus evaded them.
A little later, (John 10:30-38) Jesus again was asked in the Temple who he was. Once again, he defined himself in relation to the Father. Eventually, he told them, “I and the Father are one.” Again, the Jews picked up stones to stone him for claiming to be God. He defended himself by quoting Psalm 82:6, “You are gods.” This slowed them down and cooled them off a little but then they decided to arrest him. Once again, he escaped them.
A last statement will have to do now. When Jesus appeared to the eleven, he showed his hands and side to Thomas so that he would believe Jesus had been resurrected. Thomas replied, “My Lord and my God.” The implications were abundantly clear.
Thus, Jesus was recognized as God by the many monotheists of the early church from its very beginnings. How then did they make sense of two, seemingly antithetical, beliefs? It took the church several centuries to reach equilibrium on the issue. The term Trinity itself appeared at least by the mid second century and may have come into use much earlier but that merely gave the church a word by which to specify an antinomy.
The Council of Nicea eventually formulated the long standing solution that Jesus and the Father are “of the same substance.” That conforms with Jesus’ claim to be one with the Father but the Trinity remains a fundamental and perhaps impenetrable mystery.
It is, nonetheless, compatible with two vastly important and fundamental prepositions of both Judaism and Christianity 1) God is personal and rational and also that 2) he created us to live in relationship to him and his creation. By the way, although Islam is also monotheistic it does not fully share those two prepositions and that has made a great difference between western culture and Islamic culture. But that will have to be the subject of a later post.