Chapter 5. A Trinitarian’s Colossal Efforts to Prove that Jesus is Called “God” in the NT

In the last chapter, we saw that the only true God is the Father, not the Son. That being the case, does Jesus ever call himself theos (God)? Does the Bible ever call Jesus theos? These are not trick quest­ions or flippant statements but weighty quest­ions discussed by biblical schol­ars, even trinitar­ian scholars. The fact that such questions could be raised in the first place — and debated — may surprise those who believe that the deity of Christ is an established fact above biblical investi­gation.

But to Brian J. Wright, a biblical scholar and trinitar­ian, the quest­ion of whether Jesus is ever explicitly called theos in the New Testa­ment is not an idle question but one that merits scholarly investig­ation. He examines the question — of whether Jesus is ever called theos — in a dense and lengthy essay (with 149 footnotes) which is titled, Jesus as ΘΕΟΣ: A Textual Examination. Before I summarize his key find­ings, there are three things I need to say up front:

• The author, Brian J. Wright, is a fervent trinitar­ian, and is seeking to defend trinitarianism.
• His essay constitutes the last chapter of the book, Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament, [1] edited by Daniel B. Wallace, an equally ardent trinitarian.
• Wright investigates the question (of whether Jesus is explicitly called theos) from various angles, notably that of NT textual criticism.[2] This approach has the advantage of bypassing the trinitar­ian bias of English Bibles such as ESV and NASB, thereby removing one possible layer of distortion from our examination.

Wright begins his essay with the crucial observation that “every major NT scholar” from “Aland to Zuntz” has searched the New Testa­ment for texts that explicitly call Jesus theos. This state­ment is striking when you think about it. It is an early warning that New Testament refer­ences to Jesus as theos are rare, perhaps non-exist­ent.

Wright then pours cold water on the false hope that a search for NT references to Jesus as theos is going to be “painless”. He also dismisses the fantasy held by most Christians that there are “plenty of proof passages” that refer to Jesus as theos. Wright, despite being an ardent trinit­arian, goes on to enumerate several “stumbling blocks” for those who think that Jesus is explicitly called theos (θεός, “God”) in the Bible:

This quotation ought to be read a second time and a third time, so that we may take in the gravity of the trinitarian dilemma. Every sen­tence in this excerpt is a weighty barrier against hastily con­clud­ing that Jesus is explicitly called theos (“God”) in the New Testa­ment. Wright’s last sentence tells us, further, that the “biggest problem for NT Christology” is that textual variants (i.e., conflicting manu­script witness) attend “every” passage that may po­tent­ially speak of Jesus as theos. This is a most perplexing dilemma to Wright, and he reiterates his sentiments in a footnote in which he says that it may “unfortunate­ly” be the case that all the verses which may potent­ially speak of Jesus as theos could be textually suspect.

In another footnote, Wright observes that Jesus even differentiates himself from God: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mk.10:18; Lk.18:19). Wright then points us to Bishop H.W. Montefiore’s view that Jesus is here explicitly deny­ing his own deity (a denial that would agree with John 17:3).

Wright then gathers 17 passages from the New Testament which he thinks may potentially speak of Jesus as theos (“God”). But he dismisses 10 of them up front for various reasons, keep­ing only 7 for the next round of examination. The following are the 10 dismissed passages, with my explanation of his reasons for dismissing them.

The following are the seven remaining Bible verses which Wright believes are the best candidates for providing explicit reference to Jesus as theos (“God”). We quote these verses from ESV, but in two cases also from NJB because of its notable non-trinitarian departures from ESV (the differences between the two are highlighted in boldface):

I will spare you the details, and skip over Wright’s technical discussion on these seven verses (it deals with textual-critical and other issues) and go straight to his final con­clusion. Those who want the details and know some basic Greek and textual criticism can buy Daniel B. Wallace’s book at Amazon.com (paperback, 284 pages, US$21.50).

At the end of his essay, Wright arrives at this final conclu­sion: In the whole New Testament, only in John 20:28 (“my Lord and my God”) is Jesus explicitly called theos with full certainty. Wright offers a few other less certain verses for which he says there is “no reason to doubt” that they refer to Jesus as theos despite having textual or other difficulties.

Towards the end of his essay, Wright triumphantly says that there is “at least one text that undoubtedly calls Jesus θεός in every respect (John 20.28)”.

From this and other statements, I get the feeling that Wright is not satisfied with what he has obtained for the deity of Christ from his detailed investigation. If anything, his es­say seems to achieve the very opposite by exposing the paucity of NT refer­ences to Jesus as theos.

Because John 20:28 does not suffer from any textual uncertainty, Wright goes on to conclude that Jesus is thereby called theos in this verse. He says, “John 20.28, no matter which variant or manuscript one chooses, is categor­ically secure for refer­ring to Jesus as θεός.” (p.250)

But this is a non sequitur (a conclusion that does not follow logic­ally from its premise) because textual cer­tainty by itself proves nothing but text­ual certainty. The text­ual cer­t­ainty of John 20:28 is not debated by scho­lars; in fact UBS5’s critical appara­tus has zero commentary on this verse.

Trinitarians will need to take a second step — biblical exegesis — to demonstrate that Jesus is actually called theos in John 20:28. This leads us to the next chapter.