40 Tough Questions About the Nature of Jesus
Most Christians believe that the divinity of Jesus is an absolutely closed case. At Nicaea, Arius lost the argument, the ancient church took a vote and that’s that. Therefore, anyone who questions whether Jesus is “very God of very God” or possesses two natures (human and divine) should be driven from the communion of saints as an arch-heretic, right? Well, maybe not. There are still many unanswered questions about the nature of Jesus on the pages of the New Testament itself. Here are 40 questions aimed at the cocksure dogmatist who thinks the Bible’s Christology syncs up neatly with his or her foregone conclusions.
1. Jesus always speaks of God as a being other than himself. In fact, he even calls the Father "the only true God" (John 17:3). Don't these words sow confusion and lead people away from the orthodox view of Christ's Godhead?
2. The New Testament says that God sent Jesus (Gal. 4:4), raised Jesus (Acts 13:34), anointed Jesus (Acts 10:38), glorified Jesus (1 Pet. 1:21). The early church clearly believed that God was one who acted upon Jesus? And isn't this far different than affirming that God really was Jesus?
3. Why does the New Testament so often give Jesus names that include the words "of God"? Lamb of God, Son of God, Christ of God, Priest of God. If someone is "of God," doesn't that usually imply that one is distinct from God?
4. Wouldn't it be strange to say that the Father is "of God"? Or that He, as Jesus' Father, is the "Father of God"?
5. Why do the epistles so often refer to "God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Philemon 3, e.g.)? Doesn't the word "and" denote a distinction between Jesus and God, making them two beings? Doesn't the phrase "Paul and Silas" tell us with absolute certainty that Paul is not Silas and Silas is not Paul? Why does this law of language not apply to God and Jesus?
6. If Jesus is God as much as the Father is, and if we are children of God, why does Scripture never refer to us as "children of Jesus" or "children of the Son"? Why is the Father -- and only the Father -- considered our divine Parent?
7. Don't references to Christ being at "the right hand of God" (Heb. 10:12, e.g.) confuse the issue if Jesus is himself God?
8. The New Testament everywhere speaks of Jesus as being subordinate to and dependent on God for life (John 5:26), the ability to perform miracles (Acts 10:38) and render judgment (John 5:30). How can this be if Jesus is the Almighty God?
9. Paul wrote that "the head of Christ is God" (1 Cor. 11:3). He clearly believed Jesus to be under the authority of God. Did Paul, then, believe that Jesus was himself the God of Israel?
10. Paul also taught that the subordination of Jesus will extend into the eternal state (1 Cor. 15:20-28). Could Paul have possibly believed Jesus to be equal with God throughout all eternity?
11. If Phil. 2:5-7 teaches the doctrine of kenosis -- that is, the Second Person of the Trinity left heaven, laying aside the exercise of his divine attributes -- why are none of these ideas stated explicitly in the text? There's nothing about a pre-existence in heaven (that's assumed) and nothing about Jesus actually being God in prehistory (that's also assumed). Shouldn't a text purported to be the grand explanation of the myriad "subordination" texts be plain and unequivocal itself?
12. If an early Christian congregation had every book in the canon except Philippians, would that congregation have been at a loss to explain Christ's subordination?
13. When Jesus said, "My Father is greater than I" (John 14:28), wasn't he giving his hearers a strong impression that he and the Father were not co-equals?
14. In the Lord's Prayer, why did Jesus teach his followers to pray to the Father alone (Matt. 6:9)? Why not to the Son?
15. The New Testament tells us that the Jews bitterly opposed the new faith because it allowed converts to set aside circumcision and kosher laws. But if the earliest Christians also taught that Jesus is Yahweh, wouldn't that tenet have been the primary controversy? Where are the New Testament references to Jewish outrage against the early Church for presenting the crucified Christ as God Himself?
16. If Jesus is the "one mediator between God and men," (1 Tim. 2:5) who is the "one God" spoken of in the text? Is it Jesus himself? Is it the Trinity, which includes Jesus as a divine Person?
17. Isn't a mediator, by definition, a third party? Jesus, as a sinless human being, mediates between sinful humanity and a holy God -- this makes sense. But how does Jesus mediate as a third party between God and sinful humankind if he is one of the parties himself?
18. If Jesus was God, why didn't he know the time of his coming again (Matt. 24:36)? Why was this information known only to the Father if Jesus himself was equally all-knowing?
19. If Jesus had a human nature and a divine nature, does that mean he simultaneously had perfect knowledge and limited knowledge? Isn't this a completely unintelligible idea?
20. Did the immortal God actually die when Jesus was crucified? If so, how could this be theologically possible? Isn't deathlessness an inherent property of deity? If only Christ's humanity died on the cross, doesn't this contradict the popular idea that he "had to be God" in order to die for our sins?
21. Paul wrote that "for us there is one God, the Father, ... and one Lord, Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 8:6). In other words, Jesus is our one Master and the Father is our one God. But doesn't it militate against the prevailing christology to identify the Father as our "one God"? In the same way, doesn't Paul's reference in Eph. 4:6 to "one God and Father of all" also seem to teach that the Father alone is God?
22. John 1:1-14 ("the Word became flesh") is often quoted as conclusive proof of Jesus' Godhead. But here, we read that "the Word was WITH God," which seems to as much disprove as prove the point. If this is supposed to be the clearest, most definitive text on the deity of Christ, why the ambiguity? Would we ever expect the Scripture to declare that the Father was "with God"?
23. If John's literary purpose was to present Jesus as God Almighty, why does his epilogue say, "These were written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (20:31)? Why didn't the evangelist express his desire "that you may believe that Jesus is God"? Isn't that what an orthodox person would have written?
24. The book of Acts says that "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus" (Acts 3:13). Why is the Father, and the Father only, identified as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, while Jesus is called only "his servant"? Did the earliest Christians really believe that Jesus was the God of the Old Testament patriarchs?
25. How does the saying "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30) prove that Jesus is God? Later in John's gospel, he prays that we might all be one, just as he and the Father are one (17:22). Did Jesus pray that we might all be divine members of the Godhead?
26. If Christ's saying "he who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9) proves that Jesus is God, doesn't it with equal force prove that he is the Father?
27. In Matt. 16:16, Peter makes his Great Confession: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Why is this hailed as so pivotal when it falls short of identifying Jesus as God? And why is the Father alone called "the Living God" in this text?
28. Paul wrote that "in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Col. 2:9). Isn't it one thing to say, as Paul did, that deity lives in Jesus and quite another to say that Jesus is deity? And didn't Paul also pray that we "might be filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:19)? If the Colossians texts suggests that Jesus is divine, doesn’t the Ephesians text suggest WE are divine? Why wouldn’t it?
29. The book of Hebrews says that God has made Jesus "the heir of all things" (1:2). But if Jesus is himself the Creator of all things, why would he need someone to make him the heir of all things?
30. Why is it so easy to prove from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah, but much more difficult to prove that he is "the God-Man" with two distinct natures? If the latter doctrine is necessary for salvation, why isn't it set forth more clearly and more often in the Bible? Why are we dependent on theologians to sew together detached passages of Scripture with such intricate, metaphysical reasoning? Is the truth really so inaccessible to the common man?
31. The first recorded Christian sermons to the unconverted say nothing about Jesus being God. Why not? How could the first preachers have omitted such a staggering assertion so indispensable to our redemption? Wouldn't there have been a need to present the doctrine plainly at that point? Instead, they call Jesus a man who "went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him" (Acts 10:38). How do we explain such an omission and language that could be so easily misconstrued?
32. When a rich young man called Jesus "good teacher" (Mark 10:17), Jesus said, "Why do you call me good? ... No one is good -- except God alone" (v. 18). Doesn't this sound like a disavowal of orthodoxy's claims about Jesus' deity?
33. In John 10:31-39, the Jews threatened Jesus on the grounds that he was applying divine language to himself. But instead of affirming that he really was divine, he points them to Old Testament language that "called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came" (v. 35). Then he reminded them that he was only claiming to be the Son of God (v. 36). How can this be anything but a denial of the divine status that orthodoxy has bestowed on the historic Jesus?
34. Can't the John 10:35 text ("he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came") be used to explain the rare instances in which theos (God) is applied to Jesus? What principle of interpretation forbids it? And why are these occurrences so rare when the Father is called theos HUNDREDS of times?
35. Jesus is called the "exact representation" of God's being (Heb. 1:3). Isn't there a distinction between a representation and the thing that it represents? A statue of a man is not literally the man himself, is it?
36. Often, we fail to appreciate that each of the four gospels was written as an separate, evangelistic work designed to give readers all the information they needed to become followers of the Christ. So why did Matthew, Mark and Luke write works in which scarcely anything can be harvested as proof of "God becoming a man"? If all four evangelists believed in Christ's Godhead, why did only one write anything that remotely supports such a salient point? If an early congregation had only the gospels of Matthew and Luke in their possession, would they have failed to understand who Jesus was?
37. Orthodoxy insists that God alone has the power to forgive sins, and that because Jesus forgave sins, he must be God. But didn't Jesus grant this power to the apostles (John 20:23)? Doesn't this prove that the authority to forgive sins is transferable -- at least in some manner?
38. Why do orthodox Christians cite Christ's miracles as proof of his deity? The New Testament attributes this ability to the Spirit's anointing and to the fact that "God was with him" (Acts 10:38). Many others in the Bible worked miracles, but are never given divine honors. Why is this regarded as a compelling argument?
39. Apologists for the majority view often set up "a+b=c" syllogisms to prove their point. For example, a) only God is to receive worship, b) Jesus received worship, therefore, c) Jesus is God. Or a) only God is a savior, b) Jesus is a savior, therefore, c) Jesus is God. But if we grant these arguments, why are the following not equally valid?:
a) We must serve only God (Matt. 4:10), b) God decreed that Esau should serve Jacob (Rom. 9:12), therefore, c) Jacob must be divine.
a) Only God is good (Mark 10:18), b) Barnabas was good (Acts 11:22-24), therefore, c) Barnabas is God
Doesn't this demonstrate that such arguments have no place in theology and should be discarded as sophistries?
40. Jesus was "tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet was without sin" (Heb. 4:15). But how can we draw the slightest encouragement from this if we regard Jesus as God? How could any temptation have been real to a being who, as deity, was incapable of sin?













