Chapter 6

The Full Deity of Christ — The Biblical Witness

Why This Chapter Matters

If we are going to argue, as this book does, that physicalism cannot account for the Incarnation, we first have to be sure about who became incarnate. The whole problem only bites if the One who took on flesh in Mary's womb was truly God — not a glorified angel, not an exalted prophet, but the eternal Son who shares the divine nature with the Father and the Spirit. So before we look at what Christ assumed (His complete human nature, body and soul, beginning in Chapter 7), we need to look squarely at who assumed it.

There is no way to do justice to the New Testament's witness to Christ's deity in a single chapter. So in this condensed edition I will pick three texts and walk through them carefully — John 1:1–14, John 8:58, and Philippians 2:6 — then mention several others briefly. After that, we will engage Loke, Hurtado, and Bauckham on the historical question of when Christians began to worship Jesus as God, and finally show why this chapter is essential setup for the book's argument against physicalism.

John 1:1–14: The Word Was God, and the Word Became Flesh

Let's start where John starts. The opening of his Gospel is almost certainly the most important Christological passage in the Bible:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–3, 14, ESV)

The Greek behind "the Word" is logos (λόγος). John has chosen this word with care. As New Testament scholar Craig Keener notes, logos was a brilliant choice for a Christology that is both fully divine and yet distinct from the Father, since the term already had rich background in both Jewish wisdom literature and Hellenistic philosophy.¹ John picks up this loaded word and applies it to Jesus.

Three small Greek phrases in verse 1 carry the weight of orthodox Christology. First, "in the beginning" (en archē, ἐν ἀρχῇ) — an unmistakable echo of Genesis 1:1. Whatever the Word is, He is already there at the beginning of all things; He stands on the Creator's side of the divide. Second, "the Word was with God" (pros ton theon, πρὸς τὸν θεόν). The preposition pros here suggests face-to-face intimacy: the Word and the Father are personally distinct. Third, "the Word was God" (theos ēn ho logos, θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος). The Word is not another god alongside God; the Word shares the very nature of God.

Now, an objection comes up constantly here. Jehovah's Witnesses and others argue that because theos in the predicate ("the Word was God") lacks the definite article, it should be translated "a god" — the Word was divine, but not the God. This reading traces back, in essence, to Arius in the fourth century.² But it doesn't hold up. As Loke explains, citing James Dunn, the absence of the article on theos here simply reflects standard Greek grammar — theos is the predicate, not the subject. (Notice that when Thomas confesses Jesus as "my Lord and my God" in John 20:28, the article does appear on theos, which makes nonsense of any "downgrade" reading of 1:1.)³

Then comes verse 14. "And the Word became flesh" — kai ho logos sarx egeneto (καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο). John doesn't say the Word appeared as flesh, or indwelt flesh, or seemed to be flesh. He says the Word became flesh. The same Word who was God in verse 1 has become human in verse 14.

What does "flesh" (sarx, σάρξ) mean here? It does not mean simply "meat" or "physical body" in some narrow biological sense. As Joshua Farris notes, "flesh" is shorthand for full human nature — it stands for the whole of what it means to be a creature like us.⁴ This will matter for the rest of the book. If "flesh" meant merely "a body without a soul," then John 1:14 itself would push us toward something close to Apollinarianism — the heresy that Christ took only a body, not a complete human nature. The church has always read this verse, rightly, as affirming the assumption of a complete humanity. We will develop that case in Chapter 7.

John 8:58: "Before Abraham Was, I Am"

Move forward in John's Gospel to chapter 8, and we come to one of the most stunning self-identifications in all of Scripture. Jesus is debating his Jewish opponents about Abraham. They mock Him: "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?" Jesus replies:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58, ESV)

The Greek is prin Abraam genesthai egō eimi (πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί). Notice the strange grammar — "before Abraham was, I am" — not "I was." Jesus is not just saying "I existed before Abraham." The phrase "I am" (egō eimi) is the Greek translation used in the Septuagint for the divine name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14: "I AM WHO I AM."

Did Jesus' opponents catch what He was doing? Look at the very next verse: "So they picked up stones to throw at him" (John 8:59). This is exactly the response prescribed for blasphemy. Loke notes that the "I AM" sayings in John echo YHWH's self-reference in passages like Isaiah 43:10, and the reaction in John 8:58–59 confirms the audience understood Him to be claiming truly divine status.⁵ They didn't reach for stones because Jesus said something impressive; they reached for stones because they understood Him to be claiming the unutterable name of God for Himself.

Some critics reply that egō eimi just means "I am he," with no divine overtones. But the immediate context makes this hard to sustain. Jesus contrasts His own existence ("I am") with Abraham's coming-into-being ("Abraham was born") — placing Himself on a different metaphysical level than the patriarch. And His opponents, who knew the Old Testament better than most modern readers, heard a divine claim and reacted accordingly.⁶

Philippians 2:6: In the Form of God

Our third passage takes us out of the Gospels and into the earliest layer of Christian writings — Paul's letters. Philippians 2:5–11 contains what many scholars believe is a hymn or confession that Paul is quoting from earlier Christian tradition. That makes it especially valuable for our purposes, because it reflects Christian belief from the very first decades after the resurrection. Here is verse 6:

...who, though he was in the form of God [en morphē theou hyparchōn, ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων], did not count equality with God [to einai isa theō, τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ] a thing to be grasped... (Phil. 2:6, ESV)

I'm not going to do a full exegesis of the whole kenosis hymn here, because Chapter 15 is where we tackle it head-on, including the meaning of ekenōsen ("emptied himself") in verse 7. For now, I want to focus on what verse 6 tells us about Christ's pre-existence and deity — the foundation for everything that follows.

The crucial phrase is en morphē theou — "in the form of God." Some older interpreters tried to read morphē as roughly equivalent to eikōn ("image"), so the verse would describe Christ as a second Adam who was "in the image of God." Contemporary scholarship has decisively rejected this. As Loke summarizes, the lexical evidence shows morphē consistently refers to a form or appearance that genuinely expresses an underlying nature — and the parallel with morphē doulou ("form of a servant") in verse 7 makes the Adamic reading impossible. When verse 7 says Christ took the "form of a servant," nobody thinks Paul means Christ was something other than a servant. So when verse 6 says Christ was in the "form of God," we should take that with equal seriousness: Christ truly possessed the divine nature.⁷

There's an even stronger argument here. Verse 7 says Christ "was born in human likeness" — language pointing to the beginning of His existence as a human being. So whatever it means for Christ to be "in the form of God" in verse 6, it has to refer to something before He became human. As N. T. Wright and Gordon Fee both argue, this rules out reading en morphē theou as a description of Christ's earthly humanity, since that would create a contradiction with verse 7. The pre-existent Christ must already have possessed divine nature before the Incarnation.⁸

Bart Ehrman has objected that the word harpagmos ("a thing to be grasped") implies Christ was reaching for something He didn't yet have — that is, equality with God. On Ehrman's reading, verse 6 actually denies that Christ was equal with God in His pre-existent state.⁹ But this runs into serious problems. As Roy Hoover and N. T. Wright have shown, Paul's construction (a double accusative with harpagmos) is best understood idiomatically as "taking advantage of" — the meaning being that Christ did not regard His already-possessed equality with God as something to exploit selfishly. He chose instead to humble Himself.¹⁰ This reading also fits much better with what Paul writes elsewhere. In 1 Corinthians 8:6 — written before Philippians — Paul already places Christ on the Creator side of the Creator–creature divide, alongside the Father, in a stunning Christological re-reading of the Shema.

The Witness of Other Texts

The three passages above are the most decisive, but they do not stand alone. The New Testament's witness to Christ's deity is broad and consistent. I want to mention a few more texts briefly so you can see the cumulative weight of the evidence.

Colossians 1:15–20 calls Christ "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation," through whom and for whom all things were created, and in whom "all the fullness [plērōma, πλήρωμα] of God was pleased to dwell" (1:19). Michael Wilkinson stresses that Paul is not merely saying Christ is like God; Paul is saying that the eternal Son is the very expression of the invisible God, and that the totality of divine life finds its dwelling in Him.¹¹

Colossians 2:9 intensifies this: "For in him the whole fullness of deity [theotēs, θεότης] dwells bodily [sōmatikōs, σωματικῶς]." Paul uses a strong noun here. Theotēs refers to the very essence of deity — what makes God to be God. (It is different from theiotēs in Romans 1:20, which describes divine quality more generally.) Paul is saying that the very essence of deity dwells in the incarnate Christ. And note the word "bodily." Whatever else this means, it tells us the fullness of deity has come to dwell in a body — which already presses us toward asking what kind of human nature can house the divine essence. (We will return to that question at the end of this chapter.)

Hebrews 1:1–4 describes the Son as "the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature [charaktēr tēs hypostaseōs autou, χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτοῦ]." The word charaktēr originally referred to the impression a stamp makes on a coin or seal — an exact replica. The Son is not a faded copy or a less-than-divine reflection. He is the precise expression of God's very being.¹²

John 20:28 records Thomas's confession before the risen Jesus: "My Lord and my God!" (ho kyrios mou kai ho theos mou, ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου). Both nouns carry the definite article and the personal possessive — exactly the form used in the Septuagint to address YHWH as "my Lord and my God" (cf. Psalm 35:23). Critically, Jesus does not correct Thomas. Instead, He pronounces a blessing on those who believe. If Thomas had crossed a line, Jesus would have stopped him — as Paul and Barnabas stopped the crowd at Lystra (Acts 14:14–15) and as the angel stopped John from worship in Revelation 19:10. Jesus does not stop Thomas, because Thomas is finally seeing things clearly.¹³

Titus 2:13 calls Jesus "our great God and Savior." The Granville Sharp rule of Greek grammar tells us that when two singular nouns are joined by kai ("and"), with the article on the first but not the second, they refer to the same person. So Paul (or whoever wrote Titus) is straightforwardly calling Jesus "God."

And these are only some of the texts. Other passages — Romans 9:5, 2 Peter 1:1, John 5:18, 10:30 — point in the same direction. The cumulative case is overwhelming.

Was the Highest Christology a Late Development? Engaging Loke, Hurtado, and Bauckham

This brings us to a historical objection that has gained attention thanks to Bart Ehrman. Ehrman argues that the highest Christology — Jesus as truly divine, worshipped alongside YHWH — developed gradually over decades, even centuries. On this evolutionary picture, the earliest Christians thought Jesus was a great prophet or perhaps an exalted human, and only later did the church add layers of divine claims until, by Nicaea (325), Jesus had been promoted from man to God.¹⁴

Andrew Loke, building on Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham, has shown this picture cannot be sustained. The "earliest Christology was already the highest Christology," in Bauckham's memorable phrase.¹⁵ Loke's argument runs along several lines I find compelling.

First, the worship of Jesus was already established in the very earliest Christian communities. Hurtado notes that for monotheistic Jews — and the first Christians were monotheistic Jews — the line between worshipping the Creator and worshipping a creature was the most important religious line there was. Paul condemns those "who worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator" (Rom. 1:25). Yet within the first decades, we see Christians directing genuine cultic worship to Jesus — calling on His name, baptizing in His name, singing hymns to Him, offering prayers to Him. They did not regard this as polytheism. The only coherent explanation is that they regarded Jesus as included within the unique identity of the one Creator God.¹⁶

Second, Pauline texts like 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Philippians 2:6–11 — from the 50s, only twenty years after the crucifixion — already place Christ on the Creator side of the Creator–creature divide. In 1 Corinthians 8:6, Paul takes the Shema ("the Lord our God, the Lord is one") and splits it: "for us there is one God, the Father... and one Lord, Jesus Christ." This is not a low Christology slowly inching toward divinity; this is already the highest possible Christology, expressed in the very framework of Jewish monotheism.¹⁷

Third, the case does not rest on any single passage. Even granting the critic's reading of one or two contested texts, the cumulative weight of the early evidence — worship practices, prayer formulas, hymns, baptismal formulas, ethical exhortations grounded in Christ's lordship — is decisive. The later creedal formulations of Nicaea and Chalcedon were not so much additions to early belief as careful explications of what was already present in the apostolic witness.¹⁸

Why This Matters for the Physicalism Debate

Now let me make a turn that may seem abrupt. We have been doing exegesis and historical theology. What does any of this have to do with physicalism?

Quite a lot, actually. The whole argument of this book is that physicalism cannot make sense of the Incarnation. But for that argument to bite, we need to see clearly that the One who was incarnated is truly God — fully divine, immaterial, eternal, the Creator of all that is. Once we see that, a question naturally arises: What kind of human nature can be hypostatically united to a divine Person?

On the dualist view defended in this book, Christ's human nature consists of a body and an immaterial human soul. There is, if you will, a metaphysical "point of contact" between the divine nature (which is immaterial) and the human nature (which has both material and immaterial dimensions). The human soul provides what we might call a bridge — though that word is imperfect — between deity and embodied life. The fullness of deity dwelling "bodily" in Christ (Col. 2:9) does so through a complete human nature in which the immaterial divine nature is united to a body via an immaterial human soul.

On physicalism, this picture changes dramatically. If Christ's human nature is only a physical body — no immaterial soul, just neurons and chemistry — then the Son of God (immaterial, eternal, infinite) is hypostatically united to a piece of biological matter. There is no immaterial component on the human side at all. I am not arguing this makes the union logically impossible; God can do anything that is logically possible. But it makes the union metaphysically very strange in ways dualism does not. And — much more importantly — as later chapters will show, physicalism creates devastating problems at the cross, in the tomb, at the resurrection, and at the ascension. As we will see in Chapter 21, when this physical body dies, on physicalism the Son of God is no longer united to any human nature, because the only human nature He had has ceased to function. The Incarnation is interrupted. That is a Christological catastrophe.

So this chapter is doing real work for the larger argument. It shows us who came down: not a creature, not an angel, not a divine emanation, but the eternal Son who shares the very nature of God. It is the immensity of that Person — the One who was in the beginning with God, who said "Before Abraham was, I am," who was in the form of God before the world began — that makes the question of how He became human, and what human nature He took on, so utterly weighty.

Conclusion

The biblical witness to the full deity of Christ is overwhelming and consistent. From John's prologue to Thomas's confession, from Paul's pre-Christian Christological hymn in Philippians 2 to the high Christology of Hebrews 1, from Jesus' self-identification with the divine name in John 8:58 to Paul's stunning re-reading of the Shema in 1 Corinthians 8:6, the New Testament treats Jesus as truly God. This was not a fourth-century development imposed by Greek philosophers on a simpler Jewish original. It was, as Bauckham puts it, the highest possible Christology from the very beginning.

For the larger argument of this book, this matters in two ways. First, it sets the stage: it tells us who assumed a human nature in the Incarnation. Second, it raises the question we will spend the next chapter answering: what kind of human nature did this divine Person assume? If Jesus is the eternal Son of God, what He took up matters enormously — for our understanding of His earthly life, His suffering and death, His descent to the dead, His resurrection, His ascension, and His unending intercession for us at the right hand of the Father. The answer, as we will see, is that He assumed a complete human nature — body and soul. Anything less, and the Incarnation collapses.