Was Jesus God? Let the Bible Speak

David Anguish

In 2018, the Pew Research Center released a report under the following headline and summary statement: “When Americans Say They Believe in God, What Do They Mean? Nine-in-ten Americans believe in a higher power, but only a slim majority believe in God as described in the Bible” (Pew 2018). The first paragraph reports that the number who expressed certainty about belief in God had declined in recent years while the number who said they had doubts or didn’t believe at all had grown. The two succeeding paragraphs add texture:

As I read those paragraphs, the thought occurred that here is another feature of the modern West that is similar to the first-century Greco-Roman world. As Larry Hurtado explains in his book, God in New Testament Theology, among Western heirs of twenty centuries of Christian influence, there is an assumption that the word “‘God’ usually designates … ‘the supernatural creator and overseer of the universe,’ and an implicitly monotheistic assumption frames how this ‘God’ is seen.” This “is widely taken as relatively fixed and obvious and is not an issue” (Hurtado 2010, 27). But in the world of Paul and John, where there were “Gods galore,” that was not the case.

The result of this was that, whether philosophically, socially, or politically, most first century people did not readily understand the Judeo-Christian concept of “God.” Thus, before Christians could invite people to turn to theos, they had to clarify what they meant by the word. Paul illustrates one approach to that effort in Acts 17.16–31 and implies the need for it in other settings in 1 Thessalonians 1.9–10 where he contrasts “idols” with the “living and true God.”

Hurtado also notes that “large parts of the current world” outside the West are like the ancient world in their understanding of the word “god.” But the Pew study indicates that the difference between the West and the rest is no longer as stark. This means that, as we talk with people—including many who bring our world’s "veritable cafeteria" of views with them to our church gatherings—it is increasingly likely that we will need to clarify what we mean when we urge them to believe in and grow a relationship with “God.”{1}

This cultural situation gives us much to think about. How do we understand “God”? Is our understanding based on philosophical definitions, cultural views, what we have absorbed from our church environments, or the breadth and depth of the biblical revelation? As we think about working from a common frame of reference in conversations with our cultural neighbors, do we give thought to questions we may need to ask to ascertain what they mean by “God”?

More specifically, we need to think about these questions as we talk about belief in Jesus as God. What do we mean by that? What do others think we mean? And do any of those meanings correspond to the way the New Testament depicts him as “God with us”?

In a paragraph that assumes the point made by Hurtado, N. T. Wright points in a direction that can help us be more precise:

"The God of Israel had promised to do certain specific things … and Jesus was embodying this intention.” We need not tease out the specifics of Wright’s (or Hurtado’s) view of the nature of God to appreciate the point that we should allow Scripture to provide its own definition of what it means by “God” and any claim that Jesus was God among us.

Works Cited

Larry W. Hurtado. 2010. God in New Testament Theology. Abingdon Press.

Pew Research Center. 2018. “When Americans Say They Believe in God, What Do They Mean?” https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/04/25/when-americans-say-they-believe-in-god-what-do-they-mean/ April 25. Retrieved January 27, 2025.

James Emery White. 2018. “Who is the ‘God’ People Say They Believe In?” Outreach Magazine. June 10. https://outreachmagazine.com/features/evangelism/30429-god-people-say-believe.html Retrieved January 28, 2025.

N. T. Wright. 2012. How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. HarperOne.

Notes

1. Related to this is an observation made in light of the Pew study by James Emery White. Commenting in Outreach Magazine, he noted an increasingly common use of the term “God” “in the post-Christian world,” namely, “the idea of ‘my’ God. As in, ‘That’s not the way my God thinks.’ That’s not the way my God feels’” (White 2018).

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Think about it …

“I suggest that we need to recover the sense in which the Gospels are testimony. This does not mean that they are testimony rather than history. It means that the kind of historiography they are is testimony. An irreducible feature of testimony as a form of human utterance is that it asks to be trusted. This need not mean that it asks to be trusted uncritically, but it does mean that testimony should not be treated as credible only to the extent that it can be independently verified. There can be good reasons for trusting or distrusting a witness, but these are precisely reasons for trusting or distrusting. Trusting testimony is not an irrational act of faith that leaves critical rationality aside; it is, on the contrary, the rationally appropriate way of responding to authentic testimony." ~ Richard Bauckham. 2017 (2006). Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospel as Eyewitness Testimony. 2nd ed. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 5, Kindle. Image by Peggy & Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

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Italics in biblical quotations are added by the author

Permission is granted to reprint original materials with the credit line, “Reprinted from David Anguish, 'The Berea Page,' February 3, 2025

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Blessings to all,

David

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