I’ve written two books alleging that church fathers got it wrong about Jesus being God and God being three co-equal and co-eternal Persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit, called the “Trinity.” Some initiates to Christian faith may read that and think I’m denying the existence of these three or something like it. No.
Jesus Never Says in the Gospels He Is God
Just read all four of the New Testament gospels and look for Jesus claiming to be God. You will not find it. Moreover, twice Jesus was accused of something like that, in John 5 and 10, and both times he denied it. Furthermore, the Bible never says God is three persons. Moreover, the word “trinity” is not in the Bible. Rather, the Bible often says that God is “one,” meaning the God of Abraham, the God of the Bible, whose name is YHWH, which is usually written and pronounced “Yahweh,” is a single individual whom Jesus taught his disciples to call “Father.”
Thus, according to the Bible, God is the Father, and there is no one else who is God according to Isaiah the prophet. Indeed, the Johannine Jesus said of “my Father” that he is “the one who alone is God” (John 5.44). Jesus also said in his high priestly prayer to God the Father right before he was arrested and then crucified, “Father, … this eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (17.1, 3).
According to Christianity and the New Testament, Jesus is the Jewish Messiah whom God promised in the Old Testament to send to Israel. He died for our sins and arose from the dead, and if we truly believe this and make Jesus Lord of our lives, God forgives us of our sins, makes us a child of God and member of his kingdom, and promises to give us eternal life to dwell with him and Jesus forever. That is the Christian gospel. I tell about this in my book, The Gospel Corrupted: When Jesus Was Made God.
The first three gospels of the New Testament, called synoptics, are similar in their reports of Jesus’ life and sayings. But the Gospel of John is different from them. It has several statements that historical-critical scholars have believed are not historically reliable. Thus, they dismiss this gospel as an unreliable source for learning of the true Jesus of history. They assert that Jesus is never identified as God in the synoptics, but he is identified as God numerous times in the Gospel of John. Since this differs from the synoptics, they conclude that the Gospel of John is wrong, that Jesus was not God.
Trinitarians Say Jesus Is God and God Is Three
Trinitarians Christians, which I was for twenty-two years, believe these historical-critical scholars are right about the Gospel of John identifying Jesus as God. And they believe this is correct, that Jesus is indeed God, because this gospel is historically reliable in presenting the true Jesus of history.
I believe that both historical-critical scholars of the New Testament and Trinitarians are wrong in saying the Gospel of John identifies Jesus as God. NO IT DOES NOT! In my larger book on this subject, The Restitution: Biblical Proof Jesus Is Not God, I devote a hundred pages to showing that the Gospel of John is historically reliable and that it never identifies Jesus as God.
Archaeology in John’s Gospel Shows Its Reliable
A new and substantial book has just been published entitled Archaeology, Jesus, and the Gospel of John: What Recent Discoveries Show Us. I’m not going to review it because I haven’t read it yet. Its editor is Paul N. Anderson, a well-known Johannine scholar. The book has over two dozen contributing chapters, many by other Johannine scholars. These people are in the forefront of what is being called by some The Fourth Quest for the Historical Jesus. By far the most extensive investigation of a historical person has been going on about Jesus of Nazareth for the past 250 years which is called The Quest for the Historical Jesus. It has has three stages. In this century, what some regard as a new and Fourth Quest has been going on, and these authors are part of it. In this book, their thesis is that there is much more archaeological evidence in the Gospel of John to substantiate its historical reliability than in all three of the synoptics combined. This is evidence that the Gospel of John should not be dismissed as historically unreliable.
Scholar and Church Bishop John A. T. Robinson
I said all of this in my book The Restitution, published in 2008. But these scholars still believe that the Gospel of John identifies Jesus as God. I think that this supposed Fourth Quest eventually will develop into a reexamination of the theological content of the Fourth Gospel and that many will conclude that it does not identify Jesus as God. I also said this in my book. And the main New Testament scholar that I cited multiple times about this was John A. T. Robinson. This Brit was a bishop in the Anglican Church and a leading New Testament scholar during the 20th century, an unusual combination, indicating his expertise. He had an orthodox view of Jesus as to him being Savior and Lord, but he alleged that the church, including his Anglican Church, has been wrong and that the Bible does not say Jesus is God.
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