This article is a response to several professors at Boston College who deny that the Apostles and Paul believed in the divinity of Christ.
Recent waves of critical scholarship from within and without the Church have argued that St. Paul and the Apostles did not believe in the divinity of Christ. They claim the doctrine is so theologically advanced that it must have originated later.
Obviously, this is a faulty assumption if Christ taught his divinity. We can’t go back in time to see what Christ said, but we can check Scripture to see what the Apostles believed. If the earliest Apostles believed in Christ’s divinity, then the only plausible source is Christ himself.
The first place to start is Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Even the most critical scholars agree that the letter is written by Paul and that it is early; long before a doctrine of Christ’s divinity could’ve emerged out of legend. In Philippians, Paul writes, “therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:10-11).
This passage is actually a riff on Isaiah 45:23, where God says that “to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess.” Clearly, Paul is applying language to Jesus that a faithful Jew would only apply to God. The resolution is that Jesus is God.
The rest of Philippians 2 picks up on this same theme. Paul writes: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5-11).
The Greek work for form, underlined above, is the same word and form for both Jesus as servant and Jesus as God. Jesus literally had the form of a servant, so the same reading needs to be applied to Jesus literally having the form of God.
The plain reading of the text also requires treating Jesus as having the same status as God. Paul is exalting Christ’s humility while on earth. This only makes sense if Jesus is God. It would not be sensible to commend someone for being humble merely because they didn’t try to rise above their station. A general isn’t humble merely because he doesn’t start a coup. The only way to be humble is to not exercise a privilege that is rightfully yours; in this case it is Godhood.
Furthermore, the Greek for the word translated as “grasp” above also has a different connotation in the original. Rather than grasping like the devil at a divinity he doesn’t possess, the word for grasp Paul uses can be more accurately translated as “Jesus did not treat equality with God as something to be exploited or taken advantage of.” Paul is describing the fact that Jesus is God, but chose not to exploit that power while on earth.
Clearly then, this passage of Philippians points towards a Pauline belief in the divinity of Christ.
If Paul believed this, where did he get the idea? The Acts of the Apostles describes Paul being initiated as Christian by the Apostles. As a Jew strongly against heresy, Paul would not have believed that Christ is God unless the Apostles explained that Jesus is. Therefore, the Apostles too must have believed in the divinity of Christ.
Philippians is not an exception from the rest of Paul’s letters, the other epistles, Revelation, and the Gospels. All of these books consistently present Jesus as God by the same methods. They repeatedly apply words of deity that only were used of God in the Old Testament. The only reason Philippians features in this article is because its authorship and early date are uncontested, not because it is anything special theologically. Scripture is clear: the Apostles believed in Christ’s divinity.
Featured Image Courtesy of AngMoKio via Wikimedia Commons
Nick Letts is a former “radical atheist” who converted to Protestantism as a senior in High School, and then converted to Catholicism as a Junior in college. He studies philosophy in the Morrissey College, and loves nothing more than to curl up with a good book. He is engaged to his lovely fiancée Katherine Brown.
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