This is the third in a series exploring the question of whether the early Christian Church believed that Jesus of Nazareth was God. I have been exploiting the text of Fr. Raymond E. Brown, SS’s book Jesus God and Man: Modern Biblical Reflections, where Fr. Brown, one of the most respected biblical scholars of the 20th century, discusses Biblical texts that seem to imply that Jesus was not God, and other texts where the use of the title “God” for Jesus is questionable, including texts that Fr. Brown rejects as using the title of “God” for Jesus and others that he thinks more than likely use the title “God” for Jesus. I’ve also used other sources to bolster the argument one way or the other. Today, I will consider those texts that Fr. Brown believes clearly speak of Jesus as God.

Texts Where Jesus Is Clearly Called God

Fr. Brown writes that there are a number of texts that imply that Jesus is God, and I’ll look at those texts later. But in this section, he wants to focus only on those texts that “explicitly use theos of Jesus.”

Hebrews 1:8-9: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever, the righteous scepter is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness beyond thy comrades.” Here the author of the Letter to the Hebrews quotes Psalm 45:6-7, according to the Septuagint, when speaking of Jesus. There are scholars who translate this verse as “God is your throne for ever and ever.” But Fr. Brown looks to the previous verse in the Septuagint, which reads: “Your weapons, O Mighty One, are sharpened.” Parallelism would require that the next verse read: “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” The fact that the translation of the psalm in the Septuagint is a mistranslation doesn’t effect this conclusion for Hebrews. Fr. Brown concedes that the author of Hebrews may have intended the title as applicable to Jesus as Messiah, but he is convinced that the author of the letter could not have missed the implication of quoting the psalm in such a way that he or she identifies Jesus as God.

John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Fr. Brown concludes that the first use of “God” here is obviously a reference to the Father. In this use, the author of the Gospel uses the Greek phrase ho theos. But in the second use of “God” does not, there is only theos, without the article ho. As such, some have translated this text as: “The Word was divine.” Fr. Brown thinks that too “weak.” Others have translated it: “What God was, the Word was.” This is better, Fr. Brown says, but less elegant that “the Word was God.” It may simply be that the author of the Gospel left off the article ho when writing “the Word was God” to distinguish the Word from the Father. In any case, this is a second text that Fr. Brown identifies as clearly calling Jesus “God.”

John 20:28: “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!'” Fr. Brown identifies this verse as “the clearest example in the New Testament of the use of ‘God’ for Jesus.” Here, Thomas applies two titles to Jesus that were exclusively used of God in the OT: “Lord” and “God.” In Psalm 35:23, for instance, the psalmist sings: “My God and my Lord.” Fr. Brown wonders if the use of the titles “Lord” and “God” so explicitly for Jesus may have been an effort to counter the claim of Emperor Domitian that he was dominus et deus noster, “Lord and God of all.”

Fr. Brown concludes that, in three clear examples and in five others where the probability is high, Jesus of Nazareth is called “God” in the NT. This does not mean that Jesus is God. What it means is that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus was God, as the NT writings are nothing if not a testimony of the faith of the early Christians. One may believe they are the inspired word of God or not. No one can discount that they are testimonies to the faith of the early Christians. Every serious scholars concludes that all of the NT writings, with the possible exceptions of 2 Peter and Jude, are first century creations. So, the testimony of the NT is the testimony of the Church in the first century.

In the next part of this series, I will consider those NT passages where Jesus claims to be God by claiming to do what only God can do.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.