​The Divinity of Christ

During the season of Advent we are awaiting the coming of Jesus Christ. This brings the divinity of Christ into sharp focus. Here's an excerpt on this subject from The Fathers Know Best: Your Essential Guide to the Teachings of the Early Church

Another error regarding the Trinity appeared in the 300s, when a priest named Arius asserted that Jesus was not actually God but was a created being—the first of all created beings. The ensuing controversy led to the first ecumenical council—Nicaea I in 325 —which definitively taught that Christ is God and which wrote the first two parts of the Nicene Creed.

In doing so, the council was firmly grounded in Scripture. Christ’s divinity is repeatedly attested to in the New Testament. For example, in the Gospel of John we are told that Jesus’ opponents sought to kill him because he ‘‘called God his Father, making himself equal with God’’ (5:18). In John 8:58, Jesus applies to himself the Old Testament divine name ‘‘I Am.’’ And in John 20:28, Thomas falls at Jesus’ feet, hailing him as ‘‘My Lord and my God!’’—an accolade that Jesus does not rebuke.

Also significant are New Testament passages that apply the title ‘‘the First and the Last’’ to Jesus, which is one of the Old Testament titles of Yahweh: ‘‘Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god’ ’’ (Is 44:6; see also 41:4; 48:12). This title is applied to Jesus three times in the book of Revelation: ‘‘When I saw him [Christ], I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the First and the Last’ ’’ (Rv 1:17). ‘‘And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ‘The words of the First and the Last, who died and came to life’ ’’ (Rv 2:8). ‘‘Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay every one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the beginning and the end’’ (Rv 22:12–13).

This last quotation is especially significant since it applies to Jesus the parallel title ‘‘the Alpha and the Omega,’’ which Revelation earlier applied to the Lord God: ‘‘ ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty’’ (Rv 1:8).

As the following quotations show, the early Church Fathers recognized the divinity of Christ.

St. Ignatius of Antioch

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the church at Ephesus, in Asia, deservedly most happy, being blessed in the greatness and fullness of God the Father, and predestined before the beginning of time that it should be always for an enduring and unchangeable glory, being united and elected through the true passion by the will of the Father, and Jesus Christ, our God:² Abundant happiness through Jesus Christ, and his undefiled grace [Letter to the Ephesians, Greeting (C. A.D.110)].

² Note the identification of Jesus Christ as ‘‘our God,’’ in each of the quotations by St. Ignatius.

For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb of Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Spirit [ibid., 18].

The Church is beloved and enlightened by the will of him who wills all things that are according to the love of Jesus Christ our God [Letter to the Romans, Greeting (C. A.D.110)].

St. Aristides of Athens

[Christians] are those who more than all the nations on the earth have found the truth. For they know God, the Creator and fashioner of all things through the only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit [Apology 15 (C. A.D.140)].

Tatian the Syrian

We do not act as fools, O Greeks, nor utter idle tales, when we say that God was born in the form of a man [Address to the Greeks 21 (C. A.D.170)].

St. Melito of Sardis

It is not necessary in dealing with persons of intelligence to reason that the actions of Christ after his baptism are proof that his soul and his body, his human nature, were like ours, real and not phantasmal. The activities of Christ after his baptism, and especially his miracles, gave indication and assurance to the world of the deity hidden in his flesh. Being God and also perfect man, he gave positive proofs of his two natures: of his deity, by the miracles during the three years following after his baptism, and of his humanity, in the thirty years that came before his baptism, during which, by reason of his condition according to the flesh, he concealed the signs of his deity, although he was the true God existing before the ages [fragment in St. Anastasius of Sinai’s The Guide 13 (C. A.D.170)].

St. Irenaeus of Lyons

The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the Passion, and the Resurrection from the dead, and the Ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and his [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father ‘‘to gather all things in one’’ [Eph 1:10], and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Savior, and king, according to the will of the invisible Father, ‘‘every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess’’ [Against Heresies 1:10:1 (C. A.D.189)].

Nevertheless, what cannot be said of anyone else who ever lived, that he is himself God and Lord . . . may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth [ibid., 3:19:1–2].

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