Did Nazarenes Believe Jesus Was God?

In the ancient Church, all the way until the Middle Ages, Nazarene was used to describe those Christian sects that maintained the observance of the Old Law but also accepted the divine Sonship of Christ, his Virgin Birth, and his Resurrection. It is clear that they all accepted that Jesus is the Son of God. Whether, given the imprecision of the formulations of earlier times, they professed his full equality with God the Father in the mystery of the Holy Trinity would be hard to establish.

In any case, the Fathers, including St. Augustine and St. Jerome, and of course the ever-vigilant St. Epiphanius, all are aware of this sect’s continued existence in Palestine and in Asia Minor. The word Nazarene is used now also of modern Christian denominations that flow originally from aspects of the Methodist movement. These have nothing to do with the Judaising traditions of the ancient Nazarenes. To this day Jews and Muslims tend to call Christians “Nazarenes” in Aramaic and in Arabic.

So the name has a certain renewed nobility in these past years since Islamists have killed so many Christians for their faith as “Nazarenes.”