It's hard to believe that even though the Bible, taken in totality, is clear
on the subject of Jesus's Deity there are those who still deny it to this
day. Many cults and antichrists deny this essential doctrine. I offer this
for believers.

May God bless,
Carl
website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/

---

DEITY OR DECEIVER - Jesus Christ According to the Scriptures
- by G. Richard Fisher

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,'
saith the LORD. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.'" So says
Yahweh through the prophet Isaiah (55:8,9).

Evangelicals recognize that when it comes to the deep truths of the
essence and character of God we are totally dependent on the revealed Word
of God and not our feelings or the unaided human mind.

Louis Berkhof in his Systematic Theology discusses the difficulty
of completely understanding the Trinity and the Deity of Christ and gives
some historical perspective on man's attempt to grasp these truths. He
shows that the age of reason brought a diminishing of trust in Scripture
and moved men toward total
dependence on human reasoning. He states it thus:

"But from the last part of the eighteenth century on this doctrine
was made the butt of persistent attacks. The Age of Reason set in, and
it was declared to be unworthy of man to accept on the authority of
Scripture what was clearly contrary to human reason. That which did not
commend itself to this new
arbiter was simply declared to be erroneous. Individual
philosophers and theologians now tried their hand at solving the problem
presented by Christ, in order that they might offer the Church a
substitute for the two-nature doctrine. They took their starting point in
the human Jesus, and even after a century of
painstaking research found in Jesus no more than a man with a divine
element in Him. Schleiermacher spoke of a man with a supreme
God-consciousness, Ritschl, of a man having the value of a God, Wendt of a
man standing in a continual inward fellowship of love with God, Beyschlag,
of a God-filled man, and Sanday, of a man with an inrush of the divine in
the sub-consciousness; -- but Christ is and remains merely a man.
To-day the liberal school represented by Harnack, the eschatological
school of Weiss and Schweitzer, and the more recent school of
comparative religion, headed by Bousset and Kirsopp Lake, all agree
in denuding Christ of His true deity, and in reducing Him to human
dimensions. To the first, our Lord is merely a great ethical teacher;
to the second, an apocalyptic seer; and to the third, a peerless leader to
an exalted destiny. They regard the Christ of the Church as the creation
of Hellenism, or of Judaism, or of the two combined. To-day, however, the
whole epistemology of the previous century is called in question, and
the sufficiency of human reason for the interpretation of ultimate
truth is seriously questioned. There is a new emphasis on revelation"
(pg. 316).

The Deity of Jesus and the related doctrine of the Trinity are perhaps
the most difficult doctrines in the entire range of Scripture. These
issues have to be approached prayerfully and reverently not like the old
preacher who bragged that he could "unscrew the inscrutable."

The tri-personality of God is totally and exclusively a truth of
revelation and lies above the realm of natural reason. John Calvin had a
humble approach to the Scripture. He said he accepted everything that
was in the Word of God even if it was beyond his comprehension and
reason. In Calvin's Institutes
(3:23.4) he states emphatically, "monstrous indeed is the madness of men,
who desire thus to subject the immeasurable to the puny measure of their
own reason." We therefore recognize our own mental limitations and bow
before the Word of God.

In Loraine Boettner's Studies in Theology, he addresses the
tri-personality of God and reminds us, "We do not presume to give a full
explanation of it. We can only know as much of the inner nature of the
Godhead as has been revealed in the Scripture" (pg. 74).

In approaching the doctrine of the Deity of Christ we must remember
that it is the finite dealing with the infinite. Let's remember that
though we can touch the earth we cannot embrace all of it. To think that we
can fully understand all there is to know about God is like trying to put a
lake in a bucket! God asked
Job "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the
Almighty unto perfection?" Can we put a lake in a bucket?

For our feeble minds to have a full explanation of the nature of God is
like asking a second grader to pull an "A" in advanced physics. Turning to
Boettner's Studies in Theology again we find helpful words on page 125,
"We must distinguish between apprehension and comprehension. We can
know what God is, without knowing all He is... Most people will admit for
instance, that they do not understand Einstein's theory of relativity; yet
few will be so bold as to declare it irrational. We do not understand how
such a vast amount of energy can be locked up within the atom; but the
recently developed atomic bomb proves beyond doubt that it is there.
Unless God were too great for our full intellectual comprehension, He
would surely be too small to satisfy our spiritual needs. But while
the doctrine of the Trinity presents a mystery, it does not present a
contradiction."

Having said all that, we do not want to diminish the personal experience
that we as believers can enjoy with Christ. A child may enjoy the
comfort, love and personal presence of a parent and yet not fully
understand everything about that parent. The relationship and
fellowship of the child and parent are real and
vital even though there are gaps in the child's comprehension. Within the
limits of our feeble minds and as far as language will permit and with
the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit (guarding against extremes,
errors and heresies which unaided reason has produced in the past) we
have the right to grasp and
attempt to understand the revelation God has given of Himself. Revelation
in the Scriptures must be the final court of appeal.

We will look at the Source of our belief, the Scriptures for our belief
and a summary of our belief.

THE SOURCE OF OUR BELIEF:

Please note: we are absolutely dependent on divine revelation in the
Scriptures. We must be ready to receive what God has seen fit to reveal and
only that. Gilbert Chesterton quipped that if lost on a desert island, the
one book he would want and need was a book on ship building. When building
good doctrine we need God's book.

Boettner addresses the core of the issue:

"... either the Christian doctrine of the Trinity must be true or the
Scriptures are self-contradictory; either the Scriptures recognize more
Gods than one, or Christ, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit is
that one God.

All the ascriptions of holiness, eternity, life, immutability,
omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, creation, providence, raising
the dead, judgment of all men, prayer and worship due to Christ most
clearly teach His Deity. Such attitudes of mind if directed toward a
creature would be idolatrous" (Studies in
Theology, pg. 87).

Yes, the source of our belief is Scripture.

THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR BELIEF:

All through the New Testament attributes of Deity are repeatedly
ascribed to Christ. These attributes are applied to Jesus not in an
oblique or general sense but in a way that could only be attributed to God
alone.

When we say Deity of Christ we are saying that Jesus was always,
fully, completely God in every sense. That in Him is all the fullness of
the Godhead bodily.

We will look at samplings of Scripture that attribute the attributes
of God directly to Jesus Christ.

1. The attribute of holiness (God is absolute holiness).
John 6:69 - "He did no sin."
1 Peter 2:21 - "He who knew no sin."
2 Corinthians 7:26 "Holy, guileless, undefiled, separate, from
sinners."
John 8:46 - "which of you convicts me of sin?"
And even the demons bore witness in Mark 1:24 - "you are the Holy One."

Jesus takes to Himself and is given characteristics of absolute holiness.

2. The attribute of eternity.
John 8:58 - "Before Abraham was, I Am."
Colossians 1:17 - "He is before all things."
Isaiah 9:6 - In messianic prophecy Jesus is called the
"everlasting Father."
Micah 5:2 - "He is from everlasting." Jesus is the King of the
Ages! He is the Rock of Ages.

3. The attribute of life.
John 11:25 - "I am the resurrection and the life."
John l4:6 - "I am the way, the truth and the life."
John 10:28 - "I give unto them eternal life."

4. The attribute of immutability.
Hebrews 13:8 - "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever."
Hebrews 1:11-12 - "The heavens shall perish but thou
continuest, they shall be changed but thou art the same."

Christ is immutable -- unchanging in nature. He may change His program or
His activities in various dispensations but He does not change in His
essence or character.

5. The attribute of omnipotence.
Matthew 28:18 - "All authority is given to me."
Revelation 1:8 - "I am the Almighty."
John 5:25 - "The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live." Jesus Christ
has power over life and death!
Isaiah 9:6 states prophetically that Jesus is El Gibbor. "The
Mighty God."

6. The attribute of Omniscience.

Matthew 9:4 - "Jesus knowing their thoughts."
John 2:24-25 - "He knew all men... He knew what was in man."
John 18:4 - "Jesus therefore knowing all things that should come upon
Him."

Jesus knew the future, predicted His own death and
resurrection. Time and eternity are open to His omniscient view.

7. The attribute of creative power.
John 1:3 - "All things were made by Him."
Colossians 1:16 - "In Him were all things created."
Hebrews 1:10 - Directly applying words spoken of Jehovah in the Old
Testament to Jesus. The writer says, "Thou Lord in the beginning did lay
the foundation of the world, the heavens are the work of thy hands."

Add to the above the fact that Jesus claimed authority to forgive
sins and in doing so He assumed one of the prerogatives of God.

In instituting the Lord's Supper, Jesus made it plain that He would shed
His blood for "the remission of sin." He is the Lamb of God who "takes
away the sin of the world." No wonder Thomas fell before the risen Christ
and said "Lord of mine - God of mine" (Literal translation of John
20:28). Thomas believed it
and we believe it!

Princeton theologian Benjamin B. Warfield observed that the
recognition of Christ as God was a mark of a Christian for the early
church (Christianity and Criticism, pg. 372).

THE SUMMARY OF OUR BELIEF:

In John 5:18, "The Jews sought the more to kill Him because He had not
only broken the Sabbath but said that God was His father making Himself
equal with God." When Jesus called Himself "Son of God," the Jews
understood perfectly what He was claiming. They understood clearly the
oriental sense of His claim and equated it with blasphemy of the worse
kind. Our western mind filter blocks our understanding of this crucial
passage. Let's let Boettner explain and clarify:

"To our occidental type of mind the terms 'Father' and 'Son' carry with
them, on the one hand, the ideas of source of being and superiority, and
on the other, subordination and dependence. In theological language,
however, they are used in the Semitic or oriental sense of sameness of
nature... What underlies the
conception of sonship in Scriptural speech is just likeness; whatever
the Father is that the Son is also... It happens, oddly enough, moreover
that we have in the New Testament itself what amounts almost to formal
definitions of the two terms Son and Spirit and in both cases the stress
is laid on the notion of
equality and sameness. In John 5:18 we read 'On this account, therefore,
the Jews sought the more to kill him, because not only did he break the
Sabbath, but also called God his own Father making himself equal with
God. The point lies, of course, in the adjective 'own.' Jesus was, rightly,
understood to call God 'his
own Father,' that is, to use the terms 'Father' and 'Son' not in a merely
figurative sense, as when Israel was called God's son, but in the real
sense. And this was understood to be claiming to be all that God is. To be
the Son of God in any sense was to be like God in that sense; and to be
God's own Son was top be
exactly like God, 'to be equal with God'" (Studies in Theology, pp.
112-113).

Boettner further drives home the point again with these words: "Thus we
find that the divine and original ideas of fatherhood and sonship in
sameness of nature" (pg. 114).

Our primary reason for accepting the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus
Christ is because it is clearly revealed in Scripture. A clear
understanding of the Scriptures pertaining to this doctrine leaves us with
no other choice. We are under no obligation to fully and completely
explain it, only to accept it.

The Bible everywhere applies the attributes of God to Jesus without
apology. As well, Jesus claimed Deity for Himself and accepted worship.
He let people worship Him! If Jesus taught, so as to lead us to worship Him
and exalt Him as God, and He is not, then the inescapable conclusion is
that He has constructed a huge system of idolatry.

The compelling words of C.S. Lewis make for a fitting summary and
conclusion:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that
people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral
teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one
thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things
Jesus said would not be a great
moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level of a man who
says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must
make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a
madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at
Him and kill him as a demon: or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord
and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being
a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not
intend to" (Mere Christianity, pp. 55-56, emphasis added).

It's hard to believe that even though the Bible, taken in totality, is clear
on the subject of Jesus's Deity

day. Many cults and antichrists deny this essential doctrine. I offer this
for believers.

May God bless,
Carl
website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/

---

DEITY OR DECEIVER - Jesus Christ According to the Scriptures
- by G. Richard Fisher

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,'
saith the LORD. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.'" So says
Yahweh through the prophet Isaiah (55:8,9).

Evangelicals recognize that when it comes to the deep truths of the
essence and character of God we are totally dependent on the revealed Word
of God and not our feelings or the unaided human mind.

Louis Berkhof in his Systematic Theology discusses the difficulty
of completely understanding the Trinity and the Deity of Christ and gives
some historical perspective on man's attempt to grasp these truths. He
shows that the age of reason brought a diminishing of trust in Scripture
and moved men toward total
dependence on human reasoning. He states it thus:

"But from the last part of the eighteenth century on this doctrine
was made the butt of persistent attacks. The Age of Reason set in, and
it was declared to be unworthy of man to accept on the authority of
Scripture what was clearly contrary to human reason. That which did not
commend itself to this new
arbiter was simply declared to be erroneous. Individual
philosophers and theologians now tried their hand at solving the problem
presented by Christ, in order that they might offer the Church a
substitute for the two-nature doctrine. They took their starting point in
the human Jesus, and even after a century of
painstaking research found in Jesus no more than a man with a divine
element in Him. Schleiermacher spoke of a man with a supreme
God-consciousness, Ritschl, of a man having the value of a God, Wendt of a
man standing in a continual inward fellowship of love with God, Beyschlag,
of a God-filled man, and Sanday, of a man with an inrush of the divine in
the sub-consciousness; -- but Christ is and remains merely a man.
To-day the liberal school represented by Harnack, the eschatological
school of Weiss and Schweitzer, and the more recent school of
comparative religion, headed by Bousset and Kirsopp Lake, all agree
in denuding Christ of His true deity, and in reducing Him to human
dimensions. To the first, our Lord is merely a great ethical teacher;
to the second, an apocalyptic seer; and to the third, a peerless leader to
an exalted destiny. They regard the Christ of the Church as the creation
of Hellenism, or of Judaism, or of the two combined. To-day, however, the
whole epistemology of the previous century is called in question, and
the sufficiency of human reason for the interpretation of ultimate
truth is seriously questioned. There is a new emphasis on revelation"
(pg. 316).

The Deity of Jesus and the related doctrine of the Trinity are perhaps
the most difficult doctrines in the entire range of Scripture. These
issues have to be approached prayerfully and reverently not like the old
preacher who bragged that he could "unscrew the inscrutable."

The tri-personality of God is totally and exclusively a truth of
revelation and lies above the realm of natural reason. John Calvin had a
humble approach to the Scripture. He said he accepted everything that
was in the Word of God even if it was beyond his comprehension and
reason. In Calvin's Institutes
(3:23.4) he states emphatically, "monstrous indeed is the madness of men,
who desire thus to subject the immeasurable to the puny measure of their
own reason." We therefore recognize our own mental limitations and bow
before the Word of God.

In Loraine Boettner's Studies in Theology, he addresses the
tri-personality of God and reminds us, "We do not presume to give a full
explanation of it. We can only know as much of the inner nature of the
Godhead as has been revealed in the Scripture" (pg. 74).

In approaching the doctrine of the Deity of Christ we must remember
that it is the finite dealing with the infinite. Let's remember that
though we can touch the earth we cannot embrace all of it. To think that we
can fully understand all there is to know about God is like trying to put a
lake in a bucket! God asked
Job "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the
Almighty unto perfection?" Can we put a lake in a bucket?

For our feeble minds to have a full explanation of the nature of God is
like asking a second grader to pull an "A" in advanced physics. Turning to
Boettner's Studies in Theology again we find helpful words on page 125,
"We must distinguish between apprehension and comprehension. We can
know what God is, without knowing all He is... Most people will admit for
instance, that they do not understand Einstein's theory of relativity; yet
few will be so bold as to declare it irrational. We do not understand how
such a vast amount of energy can be locked up within the atom; but the
recently developed atomic bomb proves beyond doubt that it is there.
Unless God were too great for our full intellectual comprehension, He
would surely be too small to satisfy our spiritual needs. But while
the doctrine of the Trinity presents a mystery, it does not present a
contradiction."

Having said all that, we do not want to diminish the personal experience
that we as believers can enjoy with Christ. A child may enjoy the
comfort, love and personal presence of a parent and yet not fully
understand everything about that parent. The relationship and
fellowship of the child and parent are real and
vital even though there are gaps in the child's comprehension. Within the
limits of our feeble minds and as far as language will permit and with
the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit (guarding against extremes,
errors and heresies which unaided reason has produced in the past) we
have the right to grasp and
attempt to understand the revelation God has given of Himself. Revelation
in the Scriptures must be the final court of appeal.

We will look at the Source of our belief, the Scriptures for our belief
and a summary of our belief.

THE SOURCE OF OUR BELIEF:

Please note: we are absolutely dependent on divine revelation in the
Scriptures. We must be ready to receive what God has seen fit to reveal and
only that. Gilbert Chesterton quipped that if lost on a desert island, the
one book he would want and need was a book on ship building. When building
good doctrine we need God's book.

Boettner addresses the core of the issue:

"... either the Christian doctrine of the Trinity must be true or the
Scriptures are self-contradictory; either the Scriptures recognize more
Gods than one, or Christ, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit is
that one God.

All the ascriptions of holiness, eternity, life, immutability,
omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, creation, providence, raising
the dead, judgment of all men, prayer and worship due to Christ most
clearly teach His Deity. Such attitudes of mind if directed toward a
creature would be idolatrous" (Studies in
Theology, pg. 87).

Yes, the source of our belief is Scripture.

THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR BELIEF:

All through the New Testament attributes of Deity are repeatedly
ascribed to Christ. These attributes are applied to Jesus not in an
oblique or general sense but in a way that could only be attributed to God
alone.

When we say Deity of Christ we are saying that Jesus was always,
fully, completely God in every sense. That in Him is all the fullness of
the Godhead bodily.

We will look at samplings of Scripture that attribute the attributes
of God directly to Jesus Christ.

1. The attribute of holiness (God is absolute holiness).
John 6:69 - "He did no sin."
1 Peter 2:21 - "He who knew no sin."
2 Corinthians 7:26 "Holy, guileless, undefiled, separate, from
sinners."
John 8:46 - "which of you convicts me of sin?"
And even the demons bore witness in Mark 1:24 - "you are the Holy One."

Jesus takes to Himself and is given characteristics of absolute holiness.

2. The attribute of eternity.
John 8:58 - "Before Abraham was, I Am."
Colossians 1:17 - "He is before all things."
Isaiah 9:6 - In messianic prophecy Jesus is called the
"everlasting Father."
Micah 5:2 - "He is from everlasting." Jesus is the King of the
Ages! He is the Rock of Ages.

3. The attribute of life.
John 11:25 - "I am the resurrection and the life."
John l4:6 - "I am the way, the truth and the life."
John 10:28 - "I give unto them eternal life."

4. The attribute of immutability.
Hebrews 13:8 - "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever."
Hebrews 1:11-12 - "The heavens shall perish but thou
continuest, they shall be changed but thou art the same."

Christ is immutable -- unchanging in nature. He may change His program or
His activities in various dispensations but He does not change in His
essence or character.

5. The attribute of omnipotence.
Matthew 28:18 - "All authority is given to me."
Revelation 1:8 - "I am the Almighty."
John 5:25 - "The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live." Jesus Christ
has power over life and death!
Isaiah 9:6 states prophetically that Jesus is El Gibbor. "The
Mighty God."

6. The attribute of Omniscience.

Matthew 9:4 - "Jesus knowing their thoughts."
John 2:24-25 - "He knew all men... He knew what was in man."
John 18:4 - "Jesus therefore knowing all things that should come upon
Him."

Jesus knew the future, predicted His own death and
resurrection. Time and eternity are open to His omniscient view.

7. The attribute of creative power.
John 1:3 - "All things were made by Him."
Colossians 1:16 - "In Him were all things created."
Hebrews 1:10 - Directly applying words spoken of Jehovah in the Old
Testament to Jesus. The writer says, "Thou Lord in the beginning did lay
the foundation of the world, the heavens are the work of thy hands."

Add to the above the fact that Jesus claimed authority to forgive
sins and in doing so He assumed one of the prerogatives of God.

In instituting the Lord's Supper, Jesus made it plain that He would shed
His blood for "the remission of sin." He is the Lamb of God who "takes
away the sin of the world." No wonder Thomas fell before the risen Christ
and said "Lord of mine - God of mine" (Literal translation of John
20:28). Thomas believed it
and we believe it!

Princeton theologian Benjamin B. Warfield observed that the
recognition of Christ as God was a mark of a Christian for the early
church (Christianity and Criticism, pg. 372).

THE SUMMARY OF OUR BELIEF:

In John 5:18, "The Jews sought the more to kill Him because He had not
only broken the Sabbath but said that God was His father making Himself
equal with God." When Jesus called Himself "Son of God," the Jews
understood perfectly what He was claiming. They understood clearly the
oriental sense of His claim and equated it with blasphemy of the worse
kind. Our western mind filter blocks our understanding of this crucial
passage. Let's let Boettner explain and clarify:

"To our occidental type of mind the terms 'Father' and 'Son' carry with
them, on the one hand, the ideas of source of being and superiority, and
on the other, subordination and dependence. In theological language,
however, they are used in the Semitic or oriental sense of sameness of
nature... What underlies the
conception of sonship in Scriptural speech is just likeness; whatever
the Father is that the Son is also... It happens, oddly enough, moreover
that we have in the New Testament itself what amounts almost to formal
definitions of the two terms Son and Spirit and in both cases the stress
is laid on the notion of
equality and sameness. In John 5:18 we read 'On this account, therefore,
the Jews sought the more to kill him, because not only did he break the
Sabbath, but also called God his own Father making himself equal with
God. The point lies, of course, in the adjective 'own.' Jesus was, rightly,
understood to call God 'his
own Father,' that is, to use the terms 'Father' and 'Son' not in a merely
figurative sense, as when Israel was called God's son, but in the real
sense. And this was understood to be claiming to be all that God is. To be
the Son of God in any sense was to be like God in that sense; and to be
God's own Son was top be
exactly like God, 'to be equal with God'" (Studies in Theology, pp.
112-113).

Boettner further drives home the point again with these words: "Thus we
find that the divine and original ideas of fatherhood and sonship in
sameness of nature" (pg. 114).

Our primary reason for accepting the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus
Christ is because it is clearly revealed in Scripture. A clear
understanding of the Scriptures pertaining to this doctrine leaves us with
no other choice. We are under no obligation to fully and completely
explain it, only to accept it.

The Bible everywhere applies the attributes of God to Jesus without
apology. As well, Jesus claimed Deity for Himself and accepted worship.
He let people worship Him! If Jesus taught, so as to lead us to worship Him
and exalt Him as God, and He is not, then the inescapable conclusion is
that He has constructed a huge system of idolatry.

The compelling words of C.S. Lewis make for a fitting summary and
conclusion:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that
people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral
teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one
thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things
Jesus said would not be a great
moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level of a man who
says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must
make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a
madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at
Him and kill him as a demon: or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord
and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being
a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not
intend to" (Mere Christianity, pp. 55-56, emphasis added).

It's hard to believe that even though the Bible, taken in totality, is clear
on the subject of Jesus's Deity there are those who still deny it to this
day. Many cults and antichrists deny this essential doctrine. I offer this
for believers.

May God bless,

Carl
website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/

---

DEITY OR DECEIVER - Jesus Christ According to the Scriptures
- by G. Richard Fisher

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,'
saith the LORD. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.'" So says
Yahweh through the prophet Isaiah (55:8,9).

Evangelicals recognize that when it comes to the deep truths of the
essence and character of God we are totally dependent on the revealed Word
of God and not our feelings or the unaided human mind.

Louis Berkhof in his Systematic Theology discusses the difficulty
of completely understanding the Trinity and the Deity of Christ and gives
some historical perspective on man's attempt to grasp these truths. He
shows that the age of reason brought a diminishing of trust in Scripture
and moved men toward total
dependence on human reasoning. He states it thus:

"But from the last part of the eighteenth century on this doctrine
was made the butt of persistent attacks. The Age of Reason set in, and
it was declared to be unworthy of man to accept on the authority of
Scripture what was clearly contrary to human reason. That which did not
commend itself to this new
arbiter was simply declared to be erroneous. Individual
philosophers and theologians now tried their hand at solving the problem
presented by Christ, in order that they might offer the Church a
substitute for the two-nature doctrine. They took their starting point in
the human Jesus, and even after a century of
painstaking research found in Jesus no more than a man with a divine
element in Him. Schleiermacher spoke of a man with a supreme
God-consciousness, Ritschl, of a man having the value of a God, Wendt of a
man standing in a continual inward fellowship of love with God, Beyschlag,
of a God-filled man, and Sanday, of a man with an inrush of the divine in
the sub-consciousness; -- but Christ is and remains merely a man.
To-day the liberal school represented by Harnack, the eschatological
school of Weiss and Schweitzer, and the more recent school of
comparative religion, headed by Bousset and Kirsopp Lake, all agree
in denuding Christ of His true deity, and in reducing Him to human
dimensions. To the first, our Lord is merely a great ethical teacher;
to the second, an apocalyptic seer; and to the third, a peerless leader to
an exalted destiny. They regard the Christ of the Church as the creation
of Hellenism, or of Judaism, or of the two combined. To-day, however, the
whole epistemology of the previous century is called in question, and
the sufficiency of human reason for the interpretation of ultimate
truth is seriously questioned. There is a new emphasis on revelation"
(pg. 316).

The Deity of Jesus and the related doctrine of the Trinity are perhaps
the most difficult doctrines in the entire range of Scripture. These
issues have to be approached prayerfully and reverently not like the old
preacher who bragged that he could "unscrew the inscrutable."

The tri-personality of God is totally and exclusively a truth of
revelation and lies above the realm of natural reason. John Calvin had a
humble approach to the Scripture. He said he accepted everything that
was in the Word of God even if it was beyond his comprehension and
reason. In Calvin's Institutes
(3:23.4) he states emphatically, "monstrous indeed is the madness of men,
who desire thus to subject the immeasurable to the puny measure of their
own reason." We therefore recognize our own mental limitations and bow
before the Word of God.

In Loraine Boettner's Studies in Theology, he addresses the
tri-personality of God and reminds us, "We do not presume to give a full
explanation of it. We can only know as much of the inner nature of the
Godhead as has been revealed in the Scripture" (pg. 74).

In approaching the doctrine of the Deity of Christ we must remember
that it is the finite dealing with the infinite. Let's remember that
though we can touch the earth we cannot embrace all of it. To think that we
can fully understand all there is to know about God is like trying to put a
lake in a bucket! God asked
Job "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the
Almighty unto perfection?" Can we put a lake in a bucket?

For our feeble minds to have a full explanation of the nature of God is
like asking a second grader to pull an "A" in advanced physics. Turning to
Boettner's Studies in Theology again we find helpful words on page 125,
"We must distinguish between apprehension and comprehension. We can
know what God is, without knowing all He is... Most people will admit for
instance, that they do not understand Einstein's theory of relativity; yet
few will be so bold as to declare it irrational. We do not understand how
such a vast amount of energy can be locked up within the atom; but the
recently developed atomic bomb proves beyond doubt that it is there.
Unless God were too great for our full intellectual comprehension, He
would surely be too small to satisfy our spiritual needs. But while
the doctrine of the Trinity presents a mystery, it does not present a
contradiction."

Having said all that, we do not want to diminish the personal experience
that we as believers can enjoy with Christ. A child may enjoy the
comfort, love and personal presence of a parent and yet not fully
understand everything about that parent. The relationship and
fellowship of the child and parent are real and
vital even though there are gaps in the child's comprehension. Within the
limits of our feeble minds and as far as language will permit and with
the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit (guarding against extremes,
errors and heresies which unaided reason has produced in the past) we
have the right to grasp and
attempt to understand the revelation God has given of Himself. Revelation
in the Scriptures must be the final court of appeal.

We will look at the Source of our belief, the Scriptures for our belief
and a summary of our belief.

THE SOURCE OF OUR BELIEF:

Please note: we are absolutely dependent on divine revelation in the
Scriptures. We must be ready to receive what God has seen fit to reveal and
only that. Gilbert Chesterton quipped that if lost on a desert island, the
one book he would want and need was a book on ship building. When building
good doctrine we need God's book.

Boettner addresses the core of the issue:

"... either the Christian doctrine of the Trinity must be true or the
Scriptures are self-contradictory; either the Scriptures recognize more
Gods than one, or Christ, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit is
that one God.

All the ascriptions of holiness, eternity, life, immutability,
omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, creation, providence, raising
the dead, judgment of all men, prayer and worship due to Christ most
clearly teach His Deity. Such attitudes of mind if directed toward a
creature would be idolatrous" (Studies in
Theology, pg. 87).

Yes, the source of our belief is Scripture.

THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR BELIEF:

All through the New Testament attributes of Deity are repeatedly
ascribed to Christ. These attributes are applied to Jesus not in an
oblique or general sense but in a way that could only be attributed to God
alone.

When we say Deity of Christ we are saying that Jesus was always,
fully, completely God in every sense. That in Him is all the fullness of
the Godhead bodily.

We will look at samplings of Scripture that attribute the attributes
of God directly to Jesus Christ.

1. The attribute of holiness (God is absolute holiness).
John 6:69 - "He did no sin."
1 Peter 2:21 - "He who knew no sin."
2 Corinthians 7:26 "Holy, guileless, undefiled, separate, from
sinners."
John 8:46 - "which of you convicts me of sin?"
And even the demons bore witness in Mark 1:24 - "you are the Holy One."

Jesus takes to Himself and is given characteristics of absolute holiness.

2. The attribute of eternity.
John 8:58 - "Before Abraham was, I Am."
Colossians 1:17 - "He is before all things."
Isaiah 9:6 - In messianic prophecy Jesus is called the
"everlasting Father."
Micah 5:2 - "He is from everlasting." Jesus is the King of the
Ages! He is the Rock of Ages.

3. The attribute of life.
John 11:25 - "I am the resurrection and the life."
John l4:6 - "I am the way, the truth and the life."
John 10:28 - "I give unto them eternal life."

4. The attribute of immutability.
Hebrews 13:8 - "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever."
Hebrews 1:11-12 - "The heavens shall perish but thou
continuest, they shall be changed but thou art the same."

Christ is immutable -- unchanging in nature. He may change His program or
His activities in various dispensations but He does not change in His
essence or character.

5. The attribute of omnipotence.
Matthew 28:18 - "All authority is given to me."
Revelation 1:8 - "I am the Almighty."
John 5:25 - "The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live." Jesus Christ
has power over life and death!
Isaiah 9:6 states prophetically that Jesus is El Gibbor. "The
Mighty God."

6. The attribute of Omniscience.

Matthew 9:4 - "Jesus knowing their thoughts."
John 2:24-25 - "He knew all men... He knew what was in man."
John 18:4 - "Jesus therefore knowing all things that should come upon
Him."

Jesus knew the future, predicted His own death and
resurrection. Time and eternity are open to His omniscient view.

7. The attribute of creative power.
John 1:3 - "All things were made by Him."
Colossians 1:16 - "In Him were all things created."
Hebrews 1:10 - Directly applying words spoken of Jehovah in the Old
Testament to Jesus. The writer says, "Thou Lord in the beginning did lay
the foundation of the world, the heavens are the work of thy hands."

Add to the above the fact that Jesus claimed authority to forgive
sins and in doing so He assumed one of the prerogatives of God.

In instituting the Lord's Supper, Jesus made it plain that He would shed
His blood for "the remission of sin." He is the Lamb of God who "takes
away the sin of the world." No wonder Thomas fell before the risen Christ
and said "Lord of mine - God of mine" (Literal translation of John
20:28). Thomas believed it
and we believe it!

Princeton theologian Benjamin B. Warfield observed that the
recognition of Christ as God was a mark of a Christian for the early
church (Christianity and Criticism, pg. 372).

THE SUMMARY OF OUR BELIEF:

In John 5:18, "The Jews sought the more to kill Him because He had not
only broken the Sabbath but said that God was His father making Himself
equal with God." When Jesus called Himself "Son of God," the Jews
understood perfectly what He was claiming. They understood clearly the
oriental sense of His claim and equated it with blasphemy of the worse
kind. Our western mind filter blocks our understanding of this crucial
passage. Let's let Boettner explain and clarify:

"To our occidental type of mind the terms 'Father' and 'Son' carry with
them, on the one hand, the ideas of source of being and superiority, and
on the other, subordination and dependence. In theological language,
however, they are used in the Semitic or oriental sense of sameness of
nature... What underlies the
conception of sonship in Scriptural speech is just likeness; whatever
the Father is that the Son is also... It happens, oddly enough, moreover
that we have in the New Testament itself what amounts almost to formal
definitions of the two terms Son and Spirit and in both cases the stress
is laid on the notion of
equality and sameness. In John 5:18 we read 'On this account, therefore,
the Jews sought the more to kill him, because not only did he break the
Sabbath, but also called God his own Father making himself equal with
God. The point lies, of course, in the adjective 'own.' Jesus was, rightly,
understood to call God 'his
own Father,' that is, to use the terms 'Father' and 'Son' not in a merely
figurative sense, as when Israel was called God's son, but in the real
sense. And this was understood to be claiming to be all that God is. To be
the Son of God in any sense was to be like God in that sense; and to be
God's own Son was top be
exactly like God, 'to be equal with God'" (Studies in Theology, pp.
112-113).

Boettner further drives home the point again with these words: "Thus we
find that the divine and original ideas of fatherhood and sonship in
sameness of nature" (pg. 114).

Our primary reason for accepting the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus
Christ is because it is clearly revealed in Scripture. A clear
understanding of the Scriptures pertaining to this doctrine leaves us with
no other choice. We are under no obligation to fully and completely
explain it, only to accept it.

The Bible everywhere applies the attributes of God to Jesus without
apology. As well, Jesus claimed Deity for Himself and accepted worship.
He let people worship Him! If Jesus taught, so as to lead us to worship Him
and exalt Him as God, and He is not, then the inescapable conclusion is
that He has constructed a huge system of idolatry.

The compelling words of C.S. Lewis make for a fitting summary and
conclusion:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that
people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral
teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one
thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things
Jesus said would not be a great
moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level of a man who
says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must
make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a
madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at
Him and kill him as a demon: or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord
and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being
a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not
intend to" (Mere Christianity, pp. 55-56, emphasis added).