What the Early Church Believed: The Divinity of Christ

The witness of Scripture

• Jesus' opponents sought to kill him because he called God his Father, making himself equal to God (John 5:18).
• Asked about Abraham, Jesus said that before Abraham came to be, "I AM" (John 8:58), applying to himself God's personal name (Exodus 3:14). His hearers understood and picked up stones to throw at him (John 8:59).
• Thomas called him "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28).
• Paul says Christ Jesus was in the form of God yet did not regard equality with God something to be grasped (Philippians 2:6); he chose humble human form though he could have remained in equal glory with the Father.
• "The First and the Last" is an Old Testament title of the Lord (Isaiah 44:6; cf. 41:4; 48:12). Revelation applies it directly to Jesus three times (Revelation 1:17; 2:8; 22:12-13). The last passage also gives Jesus the title "the Alpha and the Omega," which Revelation earlier applies to the Lord God (Revelation 1:8).

The witness of the early Church

• Ignatius of Antioch (110) repeatedly calls Jesus Christ "our God."
• Aristides (140) says Christians acknowledge God in the only-begotten Son and in the Holy Spirit.
• Tatian (170): God was born in the form of a man.
• Melito of Sardis (177): Christ, being God and perfect man, showed his deity through his miracles.
• Irenaeus (189) calls Jesus Christ "our Lord and God and Savior and King," and says he alone is in his own right God and Lord.
• Clement of Alexandria (190): the Word alone is both God and man, quite evidently true God.
• Tertullian (210–216): Christ's two origins show him as man and as God; Father, Son and Spirit are each God, yet there are not two gods.
• Origen (225): though he was God he took flesh, and having become man he remained God.
• Hippolytus (228): the Word is from God and therefore is God; Christ is God over all.
• Novatian (235) argues from John 17:3 that Christ joined himself to the Father because he wished to be understood as God.
• Cyprian (253): one who denies Christ is God cannot become his temple.
• Gregory the Wonderworker (265): the Son is God of God, true Son of true Father.
• Arnobius (305) and Lactantius (307) affirm that Christ is God, and Lactantius explains that Father and Son are not two separated gods.
• The Council of Nicaea I (325) confesses the Son as "true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father" and anathematizes those who say there was a time when he did not exist.
• Patrick of Ireland (452): Jesus Christ is the Lord and God in whom we believe, who will judge the living and the dead.