IS JESUS CHRIST GOD?
By Marcel Kahne
Translated by Gerald D. Woodard
(Original French text at www.idumea.org)
Since its very beginning, Christianity has been ill at ease with the divinity imposed on it by the New Testament, with a Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit. They could not have three Gods without being jeered by Jews faithful to the Old Testament teachings of a single God:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” – (Deut. 6:4)
“I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me.” – (Isaiah 45:5, 6)
The Catholic Church attempted to resolve the problem by giving the Godhead a philosophical definition by which the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were three Gods, while being only one God, a means of reconciling the Old and New Testaments containing no common sense. Others have found a much simpler solution, stating that the Holy Spirit is not a separate person from God, but simply a manifestation of the Father, and that Jesus Christ is not a divine personage. However, these are models in which the Bible simply does not fit.
The Bible sets things straight from the start of Genesis: “In the beginning God [Elohim: the Gods in the Hebrew text] created the heaven and the earth... And God [Elohim: the Gods] said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil... And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us...” (Genesis 1:1, 26; 3:5, 22)
The commentator on Genesis 1:26 in the Jerusalem Bible proposes the following explanation regarding the plural Elohim: “It is possible that this plural form implies a discussion between God and his heavenly court... Alternatively, the plural expresses the majesty and fullness of God's being; the common name of God in Hebrew is Elohim, a plural form.” However, a much clearer explanation is provided in the Bible itself:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made... the world was made by him…” (John 1:1-3, 10)
Note: The very clear meaning of this text is questioned because, in the Greek, the first statement says “the God,” while the second does not contain the article (… and the Word was with the God, and the Word was God…). This argument, however, is not founded, as the rest of the text shows that the Greek uses “theos” equally with and without the article. Verse 2: “your theos”; verse 6: “theou” with no article; verse 12: “theou” with no article; verse 13: “theou” with no article; verse 18: “theou” with no article; and verses 29, 34, 36, 50 and 52: “tou theou” with the article.
There is more. John was Hebrew and, as such, was well familiar with the practice of assigning a numeric value to words (the letters of the alphabet have a number assigned to them in Hebrew), thus underlining the direct message with an underlying message. The numeric value of YHVH is 10+5+6+5 = 26. The Hebrew for Word is “dabar” and its numeric value is 4+2+20 = 26. The Word is thus God. The value of Dabar YHVH (word of God) is 26+26 = 52, and “Ben” (Son) also has a value of 52 (2+50). The Son is therefore also God. This technique, called gematria, is seen in various places in the Bible and must not be shrugged off. It must be remembered that we cannot read a 2000‑year old text written by someone in the east based on the literary ideas of the time as though it were a modern text written by a westerner and filled with our ideas
“God… hath… spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds…” (Hebrews 1:1-2)
“But unto the Son he saith... Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands.” (Hebrews 1:8-10)
“For by him [his dear Son, verse 13] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth… all things were created by him, and for him.” (Colossians. 1:16)
It is perfectly clear: the plural Elohim in Genesis refers to at least two Gods, the Father and the Son, who were together at the time of the creation, the Father being the source of the act of creation and the Son carrying it out, as was very correctly stated by the Apostle Paul:
“…to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” (1 Corinthians. 8:6)
The Bible is thus very formal in stating that Jesus Christ is the Creator. However, it goes further: many passages attest that Jesus Christ is the Lord [YHVY, Yahve, Yahweh, Jehovah] of the Old Testament.
It goes without saying that these parallels between the Old and New Testaments are not a simple coincidence, but were intended. Those who wrote the New Testament knew perfectly well the implications of the passages in question and we can conclude that, for them, Jesus Christ and the Lord (YHVH, Yahve, Jehovah) were one. However, that is not all: Jesus Christ stated in very formal terms that he was God.
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am (Greek: ego eimi: present indicative. The New World Translation by the Jehovah’s Witnesses distorts this text by stating “I was”). Then took they up stones to cast at him... The Jews understood; they recognized the allusion to Exodus 3:14: “I am that I am”, rendered by LXX “eimi to on”.
I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. (John 10:30-36)
But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. (John 5:17-18)
Other passages are equally eloquent regarding the true identify of Jesus Christ:
When the people brought him a man who was paralyzed, before healing him, Jesus said “thy sins are forgiven thee. And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” (Luke 5:20-21)
Another way in which Jesus Christ identifies himself as the Lord is his way of referring to himself as the bridegroom: “Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.” (Matthew 9:15; Mark 2:19, see also the parable of the ten virgins). In reading this, we can but think of the practice of the Lord in the Old Testament of seeing himself as the Bridegroom and Israel as the bride (unfaithful). For instance, see Ezekiel 16: “But as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband.” (Verse 32)
Finally, when he left the eleven, he said to them: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18). He is thus all‑powerful.
There is thus no doubt regarding Jesus Christ’s claim to being God. It is clear that others considered him as such:
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:5)
The voice [that of John the Baptist] of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God... say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand… He shall feed his flock like a shepherd [I am the good shepherd, Christ said of himself]: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. (Isaiah 40:3, 9-11)
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth… and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The Lord our righteousness. (Jeremy 23:5‑6; 33:15-16)
Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)
Matthew quotes this passage in Matthew 1:23, adding the explanation: “which being interpreted is, God with us.” Significantly, he ends his Gospel by quoting Christ as saying: “and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:20)
When doubting Thomas is finally obliged to recognize that Jesus is truly resurrected, he does not hesitate to cry out: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28), showing that this is what Jesus had taught him prior to his death and that it was now confirmed to him in the most irrefutable manner.
Finally, those who claim that, by being a man, Jesus could not be God, must explain Colossians 2:9: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead”, and those who claim that Jesus did not exist prior to his birth must also explain John 8:58 and John 17:5: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”
