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In this episode, Trent Horn shares four simple but powerful ways to defend the divinity of Christ when talking with Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, or anyone who denies that Jesus is truly God.
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Trent Horn (00:00):
Most faithful Christians will tell you Jesus Christ is fully man and fully God. But in a conversation with a Muslim or Jehovah’s witness, they might stumble when asked to prove this from the Bible. So in today’s episode, I’ll share with you my four favorite ways of showing Jesus as God when I’m in these kinds of conversations. But a few caveats before we continue. First, don’t forget to like this video, subscribe to our channel and support us at Trenthornpodcast.com to help us create even more great content. Second, these aren’t knocked down arguments so don’t go into a conversation with overconfidence like you have an indestructible proof for Christ divinity. These are meant to help you in average conversations when someone asks, where does the Bible say Jesus is God, or why should I believe Jesus is God? Remember that critics always have something to say in response to an argument, but these are four good ways to get started and I find the replies to these arguments aren’t overwhelmingly strong or confusing to engage.
(00:55):
And finally, there are some fan favorite verses that won’t make today’s list, but not because they’re bad. This includes the famous opening of John’s gospel in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. This is great evidence for the deity of Christ, but a regular person might have a hard time wrapping his head around the concept of Jesus being God’s word and a seasoned critic might try to trip you up on the absence of the definite article in Greek in the passage and try to say that it means Jesus is a God and not the almighty true God. Once again, it is a good piece of evidence for Jesus’s divinity, but today I’m going to share four simple but still effective ways to demonstrate that important doctrine starting with number one, John 20:28. Instead of focusing on the beginning of John’s gospel, I like to focus on the end of it.
(01:41):
Here’s the passage and context. Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and see my hands and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not be faithless but believing.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” The proof comes not so much from what is said by Thomas, but by what is not said by Jesus. In the New Testament, whenever an apostle is mistaken for God, the apostle corrects those who are worshiping him. This includes Paul and Barnabas being worshiped in Acts 14 and Revelation 19:10, where the apostle John falls at the feet of an angel to worship him, but the angel tells him, “You must not do that.
(02:31):
When Herod a gripa, the grandson of Herod the great who tried to kill Jesus when he was a baby. When he gave an address to the people of Tire and Sidon, they shouted in response, the voice of a God and not of man.” Luke then tells us immediately an angel of the Lord smoked him because he did not give God the glory and he was eaten by worms and died. But in John chapter 20, Jesus did not correct Thomas and he did not tell him to give God the glory instead. Also, no angel smoked Jesus for receiving Thomas’s worship. That’s because there was nothing for Jesus to correct. And if that’s the case, then we should imitate Thomas and not be afraid to address Jesus Christ as our Lord and God as well. Now, some Unitarians who deny the Trinity say Thomas was just so overcome with joy, he didn’t know what he was saying.
(03:17):
But in other scripture passages, we are told explicitly when the apostles say something they don’t mean. After Jesus’ transfiguration, for example, Peter says impulsively that he will build tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. In response to this exclamation, Luke describes Peter as not knowing what he said. While Mark says that Peter did not know what to say for they were exceedingly afraid. Unitarians also can’t say that Thomas was merely making an exclamation, like how some people say, “Oh my God, when they’re surprised.” Even in the Jehovah’s Witness’s new world translation of the Bible, John 2028 says, “In answer, Thomas said to him, My Lord and my God. So Thomas didn’t merely exclaim my Lord and my God. He said it to Jesus because Jesus is his and our Lord and God. In 1989, the founder of Catholic answers Carl Keating debated an apologist for Iglesiana Cristo, a Unitarian religion like Jehovah’s witnesses that emerged in the Philippines in 1913.
(04:16):
When he presented John 2028, the apologist he debated Jose Ventelasion claimed that Thomas was just wrong about all of this. Did Jesus tell that to Thomas? Don’t do that. I’m just a man. No, he did not. Because he’s not just a man, he is God. Now he said, why don’t you believe I’m Thomas? Because Thomas was wrong. In order to get around this verse, some critics, including Ventelasion, go back a few verses earlier to John 2017. When Jesus told Mary Magdalene, “I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.” All right. Well, how can Jesus be God if he calls another person God? Well, Jesus can do that because God is one infinite act of being, not one solitary person. Moreover, if one of these divine persons such as the son became man and possessed a fully human nature, then as a man, he would give worship to the father and recognize the father is his God.
(05:14):
So there’s nothing contradictory in Jesus being the God ma who prays to the Father and recognizes that the Father is his God. But notice that even in his exchange with Mary Magdalene, Jesus makes a distinction between my father and your Father and my God and your God. Instead of just saying our God or our Father. This implies that God is a father to marry Magdalene and the apostles in a different way than he is a father to Jesus. Specifically, they and us have God as an adoptive father. As Romans 8:15 says, “Whereas Jesus has the Father as his true Father because he is the only begotten son of God,” as John 1:18 says. Number two, Titus 2:13. Here’s the context of the verse. “For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions and to live sober, upright and godly lives in this world awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
(06:20):
Those who claim Titus 2:13 does not call Jesus God say the passage should be translated this way. The appearing of the glory of our great God and of our Savior Jesus Christ. This would mean only the title of Savior belongs to Jesus, not great God, but there’s two things we should consider. First, although it’s true humans can be saviors in a limited sense in the Bible, only God can save humanity from sin, which is the salvation being talked about in this verse. And second, a good case can be made that both terms apply to Jesus based on a similar construction in two Peter 1:11, which says this. “So there will be ritually provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Most critics would connect Lord and Savior in that verse to Jesus Christ so there’s no good reason not to connect the similar titles of savior and great God to Jesus Christ in Titus 2:13.
(07:13):
There’s also more evidence for this translation in a Greek grammar rule called Granville Sharp’s rule. It basically says if you have two nouns that are not proper names and the first noun has an article in front of it, but the second does not and both nouns are connected by the word and in Greek ki, then both nouns refer to the same person. So in two Peter 1:11,” Lord and Savior are not proper names. The Greek word translated as Lord has an article, but the Greek word translated as Savior does not, and both words are connected by the word and. So we can conclude from Sharp’s rule that both Lord and Savior refer to the same person, Jesus Christ. And since Titus 2:13 has an almost identical sentence structure to two Peter 1:11, it makes sense to translate it the same way and say that Jesus is both our savior and our great God.
(08:03):
Now be careful though, you don’t want to overcrank Granville Sharp’s rule to say this is a proof beyond all doubt. Critics have found exceptions to Sharp’s rule, which requires narrowing the rule a bit. So for more on that, see New Testament scholar Daniel Wallace’s article, Sharp Radivius, a reexamination of the grandfall sharp rule. But at the very least, I find in average conversations, the comparison to two Peter 1:11 is helpful in getting someone to see what feels to be the more natural reading of Titus 2:13. Number three, Jesus’s implicit teachings about himself. Many times Muslims and other non-Christians will demand proof in the form of where does Jesus say, “I am God, worship me. ” Now you can go to passages like John 8:58 where Jesus applies the divine name of God I am to himself. But I like to take a subtler approach and show how Jesus demonstrated his divinity implicitly, which also answers critical scholars who say that belief in Jesus’s divinity was not part of the earliest traditions about Jesus.
(09:02):
For example, in the early synoptic gospels, Matthew Mark and Luke, Jesus affirmed, as he does in John, by the way, his divine identity by gathering 12 disciples who symbolize the 12 tribes of Israel. Jesus could have only called 11 disciples and allowed himself to represent one of the tribes, like the tribe of Levi, which had a claim to the priesthood. Instead, Jesus stood apart from the 12 disciples. He gathered them together in the same way that God called the 12 tribes of Israel together. So we see Jesus’s self identity and how he chooses his disciples. And in Mark chapter 12, Jesus tells a parable about a vineyard whose wicked tenets kill the servants the owner has sent. The parable is similar to other illustrations from the prophets who identified the vineyard with Israel and the servants with the prophets that Israel had previously rejected. But in Jesus’ parable, the owner’s last action is to send his son, whom the wicked tenants also kill.
(09:59):
But notice how Jesus identifies himself not with a servant of the owner of the vineyard, that is one of the human prophets, but with the son of the owner of the vineyard. And just as the son of the vineyard owner was killed because of his relationship to the father, so too would Jesus be killed because of his claim to having a unique relationship with the heavenly father in being the son of God. Finally, in Mark’s gospel, we see Jesus do things that only God can do. Like Mark two: eight where it says of Jesus, he was perceiving in his spirit that they, the religious leaders, thus questioned within themselves. Jesus knew the thoughts of their inner hearts, which one Kings 8:39 says only God can do. And in Mark 4:35- 39, Jesus calms the storm and the apostles ask, “Who then is this that even wind and sea obey him?” Well, Psalm 107 gives us the answer.
(10:51):
“Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still and the ways of the sea were hushed. And finally, we have number four, the witness of the early Christians. This isn’t a strict biblical proof, but who says we need to bind ourselves to solo scriptura? When proving Christ’s divinity to a non-Christian, any Christian should see the value in appealing to the early church’s explicit belief in Christ divinity and that this was not something that was added later like some da Vinci code conspiracy theory. In 810, Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the Ephesians about, ” Being united and elected through the true passion by the will of the Father and Jesus Christ, our God. “He also said,” For our God, Jesus Christ was according to the appointment of God conceived in the womb by Mary of the seed of David but by the Holy Ghost.
(11:43):
“30 years later, the Christian writer, Aristides wrote,” And it is said that God came down from heaven and from a Hebrew virgin assumed and clothed himself with flesh. Jesus’ divinity is also why writers like Ignatius value the Eucharist as Jesus’ true flesh that has saving effects. Ignatius writes in his letter to the Ephesians of Jesus Christ being both the son of man and the son of God and that Christians should obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undivided mind, breaking one in the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but which causes that we should live forever in Jesus Christ. Although I need to give a word of caution about appealing to the church fathers. They didn’t have a precise theological vocabulary to explain the incarnation like later Christians who lived around the time of the council of Calsadon.
(12:35):
So critics will sometimes quote mine the early fathers to say they did not believe Jesus was God or didn’t believe in the Trinity, but that still doesn’t explain these clear citations. Instead, a better explanation is that we see a trajectory of the early church refining its language to proclaim Jesus is not just a man or an angel, but that he is the God who made men and angels. Finally, we also have evidence from non-Christians that Christians believe Jesus was not just a prophet but God himself. Plenty of the Younger, the second century governor of the Roman province of Bythenia interrogated Christians who refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods. In a letter to Emperor Trajian, he observed that Christians “were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before Dawn and sing responsibly a hymn to Christ as to a God. Lucianisamusada was a second century playwright who thought Christians were gullible.
(13:28):
In his work, the passing in Paragrinis, he says Christians sinned by “denying the Greek gods and by worshiping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws.” Finally, a third century drawing called the Aleximanos Graffito shows a Roman soldier worshiping a man with a donkey head being crucified. The drawings caption reads, “Aleximanos worships his God.” If you’d like more resources on this topic, I recommend Bowman Jr. And Komazewski’s book, Putting Jesus in his place, The Case for the Deity of Christ, Brant Petri’s the Case for Jesus and my book, Counterfeit Christ. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.