What is Meant by the Deity of Christ ¹

CHRISTIANS will not be prepared to weather the increasing storm of wide-spread denial of the Bible and of the Christian Faith unless they understand with mind and with heart what is meant by "the deity of Christ." Many do not understand how vitally important are the controversies to-day over this question, and how deeply significant the truths are for our own Christian lives. Peter tells us that angels desire to look into the mystery regarding the sufferings and the glory of our Lord Jesus, and then says to us Christians that we should gird up the loins of our mind, while setting our hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Our Lord himself knew the truth that he must leave with his followers, — the question above all questions that would divide men. After he had lived intimately with his disciples, after they had heard his teaching and watched his miracles, when he was about to reveal his coming passion and resurrection, and just before he was revealed in his glory to three of the disciples on the Transfiguration Mount, at this time of crisis he asked the disciples that supremely important question, in its twofold aspect: "Who do men say that I the Son of man am?" And then, "But who say ye that I am?" And it was the question that Jesus asked his enemies also. After he had answered all the questions of the scribes and Pharisees, and the time came when "they durst not any more ask him any questions," it was then that he asked them his one question: "What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?"

When Peter, speaking for the disciples and therefore for the Christian church of all time, gave his Lord the answer that the Father in heaven revealed to him, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," our Lord instantly let them know that upon this rock, His own Deity, his Church was to be built.

Well has the great Adversary of Christ in the contest for the world understood the rock on which the Church is built. It is not surprising, then, that in these last days the assaults of the enemies of God — unconscious enemies, many of them, but all guided by an Enemy who is definitely conscious of what he wishes to do — should be hurled against this rock, the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. The modern Higher Criticism, which from its beginning has centered about the Old Testament, as Dr. James Orr constantly emphasized "tends again to concentrate itself in the New Testament, and supremely about the Central Figure there— Christ Himself. This result was inevitable." Many scholars have pointed out this oncoming attack against the New Testament by the same guns that have sought to shatter the Old. Thus the prophecy of our Lord is confirmed, that the person of Christ is the question of all questions that have to do with the Bible and with life.

Is there a distinction between "the deity of Christ" and "the divinity of Christ"? A generation ago, and even more recently, the discussion concerning our Lord's Person centered about the term, "the divinity of Christ." And many who take the Bible view of Christ still speak of the divinity of Christ, and mean by it just what is meant by His deity. The word deity comes from the Latin word, "Deus," meaning God, the word divinity from the Latin word meaning "divine." The Romans frequently used these words interchangeably in referring to their heathen divinities, and in their root meaning they are closely connected. Now to-day, many who call themselves Christians are ready to affirm that they believe in the divinity of Christ, but not his deity; and by this they mean that Jesus was divine as all men are divine, His divinity not being essentially different from that of other men, though he was closest to God of all men. Because of this widespread acceptance of "the divinity of Christ" on the part of those who deny that his relation to God was essentially different from that of all other men, the expression "deity of Christ" came into current use. However, it is not the words that are used, but the meaning that is given to the words that is important. And to-day we have those avowing their belief even in the deity of Christ who do not take the Bible view of his Person.

According to the full Bible revelation, the deity of Christ means the Godhood of Jesus, that the historical Jesus revealed in the four Gospels was the Messiah or the Christ promised in the Old Testament, and that this Jesus is Jehovah-God, one with the Father, who has all the qualities and prerogatives and powers of the one and only God. All of this is involved in the term "the deity of Christ."

There is a strong prejudice in our day against "theological" discussions, and some tell us that this question of the deity of Christ is "theological," and has caused endless controversy which is not really important for the plain Christian. But to understand the deity of Christ does not mean that a Christian need understand all the theological statements that have been made regarding it. The reason for the long controversies is that man cannot ex plain by reasoning how Jesus is God, or why he is God, or how there can be Three Persons in the Godhead. But by faith we can believe the fact that Jesus is God. If by faith we believe that he is, though we cannot explain how or why, we mean that he can do what God can do; he can forgive sins, regenerate' us, cleanse us from sin, answer our prayers, work miracles for us, raise us from the dead, unite us with God eternally. What has the world to say to this conception ? What do Christian teachers say? What does our life say?

Modern "science," modern literature, modern philosophy, utterly reject the deity of Christ. If the miracle of the deity of Christ were accepted, it would overturn all the fundamental conceptions of modern thinkers, as represented in our great university centers of learning. This does not mean that our Faith conflicts with scientific fact, but there is an irreconcilable conflict with the prevailing current theories in science, art, and philosophy. These represent the wisdom of men" that is to be brought to nought by "the foolishness of God." What is this foolishness? God on the Cross, crucified by men The thought is revolting to those who do not believe; but is the power of God unto salvation to all who do believe

Still more important for us Christians is the denial of the diety of Christ by thinkers within the Christian fold.

Mr. Pace, in his cartoon entitled "Judas," in The Sunday School Times of May 19, quoted an extract from the sermon of a minister in a supposedly evangelical church. Referring to the Bible view of Christ which he says for nineteen centuries has given Him a place of "gloomy grandeur," the minister continues: "At last the brave have come, have questioned and explored, and we know that he was a man even as Lincoln, even as you and I. That his soul was divine as our souls are potentially. Capricious Gods and miracles flee before the oncoming modern man.

A physician reader of The Sunday School Times some months ago sent to the Editor a copy of a church bulletin which contained this quotation from a well-known college president: "The first glad message of Christianity is that in Jesus Christ there is completely revealed to us the character of God  . . . . No one thinks that He was the 'absolute; whatever that may mean; that he was omniscient or omnipresent, or omnipotent. So far as I know no firstrate theologian in the Christian church has ever identified Jesus Christ with Deity." The Times reader says, "I should like an explanation, since I supposed that the giants of Christianity did identify Jesus with deity."

A leader of one branch of the Society of Friends writing of "a reasonable faith," after reminding his readers that the religious Society of Friends has no written creed and that no member is authorized to State Its beliefs in a sense that makes the Society responsible, quotes the following statement in the Book of Discipline of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends: "It is the belief of the religious Society of Friends that God manifested himself in Jesus Christ, and that the spirit that was in Jesus is revealed in the human soul, and constitutes the Rock on which the Church is founded." He goes on to explain: "the same spirit that enabled Jesus to resist temptation is the possession of every human being, for there is a Light that lighteth every man that Cometh into the world." Then referring to the doctrine of the Trinity and other beliefs, he continues: "From these polytheistic theories it is a relief to turn to the idea of one true God that runs through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Let us stand firm in the faith of Jesus Christ as stated by himself, 'Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.' Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, not any other. We are on sure ground here, for to worship the one true God is religion, the other is theology. It is ^reasonable to take a stand here; we 'can no other.'"

These quotations are written by earnest men in earnest protest against the deity of Christ— the Godhood of Jesus. With Thomas,— not doubting Thomas but believing .Thomas,— we bow before Jesus, who is. Jehovah-God of the Old Testament, and cry out with full hearts, "My Lord, and my God."

These expressions of unbelief on the deity of Christ could be multiplied a thousandfold without going outside the ranks of Christian ministers of supposedly evangelical churches. The modern spirit of science and art and philosophy is leavening with evil the visible Church, and the wide-spread denial of the deity of our Lord here is a far more serious matter than in the world that does not profess Christ. Unitarianism is not so dangerous when it organizes and honestly calls itself by that name. The Unitarianism that is dangerous to-day is that which is leavening the pulpit and the pews of evangelical denominations that call themselves Christian.

The deity of Christ makes our faith an absolute and final faith. It makes necessary all the other great Truths of our faith. It is not an accident that those who waver on the deity of Christ, in the full meaning of that term, also give up other beliefs. The deity of Christ makes necessary the Virgin Birth of Christ. It makes necessary the acceptance of the Old Testament as the Word of God: and those who have sought to destroy the revelation of God in the Old Testament have not fully understood the meaning of Christ's deity.

And let it be well understood that the man who rejects the deity of Christ rejects God. It is a mistake to suppose that the Jews, or any others who to-day profess to worship the God of the Old Testament but deny Jesus, are really worshiping God If Jesus is the Jehovah-God of the Old Testament, then the Jews have rejected Him, and no man can come to the Father except through Christ. Do we begin to see something of the absoluteness of this Rock of the Christian faith, something of its supreme importance to men? It is either this or to be "without God and without hope in the world."

There is another form of unbelief in the deity of Christ that is saddest of all, and doubtless pains our Lord more than the blatant and blasphemous unbelief of those who openly reject the truth as to our Lord s Person. It is the wide-spread infidelity among even those who profess to accept Christ at his full Bible measure. One of the anti-Christian writers of our day said a true thing when he wrote: What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions upon which he habitually acts." Do we habitually act on the assumption that Jesus is God, or is it only our creed that believes in the deity of Christ? How much do we read the things that Jesus has said? How much do we read the Bible, the Book that he said testified of him, the Book which is the written revelation of God as He is the living revelation of God? How much are we hated by the world that rejects the deity of Christ? How much do we find our joys, not in the things of that world, but in the things of the heavenly places where Christ is, and where all those who believe from their heart in his deity are seated with him?

These questions are a test of the reality of our belief in his deity, and of all that that involves. If there is anything lacking in our belief, and therefore in our Christian experience, let us remember that, because Jesus is God, he can do the thing that is absolutely necessary before we can receive this Truth and make it dynamic in our lives. He can give us Himself who is the Truth. "This is the true God, and eternal life."

Professor James Stalker, M.A., D.D., Church
History, United Free Church College, Aberdeen, Scotland.

The United Free Church of Scotland, to which 1 belong, is not, I believe, looked upon as deficient in scholarship ; and I happen to have an unusually wide and intimate acquaintance with its ministers and professors, numbering in all nearly two thousand; but I do not know a single one amongst them who does not believe and teach the doctrine in question. For this many reasons might be assigned; but, in my opinion, the chief one is that our men have a thorough knowledge of what is taught in Scripture on the subject, and especially in the words of our Lord himself.

Professor George L. Roblnson, M.A,, Ph.D.,
Old Testament Literature and Exegesis,
McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago.

By the "deity" of Christ, I understand the super human, Godlike character of Jesus, which distinguishes him as unique, and different from every other person who ever lived. By his "divinity," I fear some in these days mean that he was no more divine than any other good man, except possibly to a greater degree. With such a view I have absolutely no sympathy whatever. To me Jesus was the predicted "God with us" and "Mighty God" of Isaiah 7:14; 9:6, nothing less. After every review of his life and teachings, I lay down the Gospels — the Synoptics as well as John — ready to exclaim with Thomas, "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28).

[1] An Editorial from The Sunday School Times.