Early Christian Beliefs About Christ’s Divinity

Ignatius, Epistles of Ignatius Direct teaching

Whosoever, therefore, declares that there is but one God, only so as to take away the divinity of Christ, is a devil, and an enemy of all righteousness.

Gregory Thaumaturgus, A Sectional Confession of Faith Direct teaching

and in one Lord Jesus Christ, true God, that is, Image of the true God, Maker of all things seen and unseen, Son of God and only-begotten Offspring, and Eternal Word, living and self-subsistent and active.

Novatian, Treatise Concerning the Trinity Direct teaching

The same rule of truth teaches us to believe, after the Father, also on the Son of God, Christ Jesus, the Lord our God, but the Son of God— of that God who is both one and alone, to wit the Founder of all things, as already has been expressed above.

Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho Direct teaching

For Christ is King, and Priest, and God, and Lord, and angel, and man, and captain, and stone, and a Son born, and first made subject to suffering, then returning to heaven, and again coming with glory, and He is preached as having the everlasting kingdom: so I prove from all the Scriptures.

Victorinus, Commentary on the Apocalypse Supporting witness

therefore the word of Christ affords immortality, and by immortality affords divinity.

Gregory Thaumaturgus, A Sectional Confession of Faith Direct teaching

But if they say, "How can there be three persons, and yet only one Divinity?" we will give this reply: There are indeed three persons, since there is one person of God the Father, one of the Lord the Son, and one of the Holy Spirit. And yet there is only one Divinity, since the Son is the Image of God the Father, who is One. That is, He is God of God. In the same way, the Spirit is called the Spirit of God, and that by nature according to the very substance, not by a simple participation in God. And there is one substance in the Trinity. This is not also the case with things that are made. For there is not one substance in God and in the things that are made, because none of these is God in substance. Nor indeed is the Lord one of these in substance. But there is one Lord, the Son, and one Holy Spirit. And we also speak of one Divinity, one Lordship, and one Sanctity in the Trinity, because the Father is the Cause of the Lord, having begotten Him eternally, and the Lord is the Prototype of the Spirit. For in this way the Father is Lord, and the Son also is God. And of God it is said that God is a Spirit. John 4:24

Lactantius, The Divine Institutes Supporting witness

For in that he said that He wrought wonderful deeds, by which He especially claimed faith is His divinity, he now appears to assent to us, when he says the same things in which we boast.

Gregory Thaumaturgus, A Sectional Confession of Faith Supporting witness

1 Corinthians 8:6 and there is a divinity hereditary in the Son, as it is written, The Word was God;

1 John 5:20 Direct teaching

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

Romans 9:5 Direct teaching

To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

John 1:1 Direct teaching

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 20:28 Direct teaching

And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD and my God.

Novatian, Treatise Concerning the Trinity Direct teaching

...em to consider His divinity, so that they might believe Him to be God, desiring to overcome their unbelief concerning His divinity by omitting for the time being any mention of His human condition, and by setting before them His divinity alone. If Christ is man only, how does He say, "I proceeded forth and came from God," when it is clear that man was made by God, and did not proceed forth from Him? But in the way that, as man, He did not proceed from God, so the Word of God proceeded, of whom it is said, "My heart has uttered forth a good Word." And because it is from God, it is rightly also with God. And since it was not uttered without effect, it rightly makes all things: "All things were made by Him, and without Him nothing was made." But this Word, by whom all things were made, is God. And, as he says, "the Word was God." Therefore God proceeded from God, because the Word that proceeded is God, who proceeded forth from God. If Christ is only man, how does He say, "If any man keeps my word, he shall not see death forever"? Not to see death forever! What is this but immortality? But immortality is the companion of divinity, because divinity is immortal, and immortality is the

Novatian, Treatise Concerning the Trinity Direct teaching

...y will be said to have been predestined before this predestination of Christ to glory. And on those terms Christ is found to be lower than other men, although He is actually found to be better and greater, and more ancient than the angels themselves. Either then let all these things be set aside, so that Christ’s divinity may be destroyed; or if these things cannot be set aside, let the heretics attribute Christ’s proper divinity to Him.

Novatian, Treatise Concerning the Trinity Supporting witness

... subject, and, so to speak, set in motion a whole forest of passages about that showing of Christ’s divinity. But I have not so much taken up the task of speaking against this particular heresy as of explaining the rule of truth concerning the person of Christ. However, although I must hurry on to other matters, I do not think I should pass over this point. In the Gospel, the Lord declared His majesty when He said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up again." Or again, in another place and on another subject, He says, "I have power to lay down my life, and to take it up again; for this commandment I have received from my Father." Now who is it that says He can lay down His life, or can Himself take up His life again, because He has received this from His Father? Or who says that He can raise up again and rebuild the destroyed temple of His body, except because He is the Word who is from the Father, who is with the Father, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made; the imitator of His Father’s works and powers; the image of the invisible God; who came down from heaven; who testified to what He had seen and heard; who came not to do His

Novatian, Treatise Concerning the Trinity Supporting witness

Therefore let it be considered whether He is God or not, since His authority has so affected some, that, as we have already said above, they have thought Him God the Father Himself, and have confessed the divinity in Christ with such impetuosity and effusion — compelled to it by the manifest divinity in Christ — that they thought that He whom they read of as the Son, because they perceived Him to be God, must be the Father.

Origen, Commentary on John Supporting witness

...ir insight into the mysteries of divinity, since the Word of God was their teacher before He became flesh. For He was always working, in imitation of His Father, of whom He says, "My Father works hitherto." On this point we may bring forward the words He addresses to the Sadducees, who do not believe the doctrine of the resurrection. "Have you not read," He says, Mark 12:26, "what is said by God at the Bush, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living." If, then, God is not ashamed to be called the God of these men, and if they are counted by Christ among the living, and if all believers are sons of Abraham, Romans 4:11, since all the Gentiles are blessed with faithful Abraham, who is appointed by God to be a father of the Gentiles, can we hesitate to admit that those living persons made acquaintance with the learning of living men, and were taught by Christ, who was born before the daystar, before He became flesh? And for this cause they lived, because they had part in Him who said, "I am the life," and, as the heirs of so great promises, received the vision not only of angels but of God in Christ. For t

Novatian, Treatise Concerning the Trinity Supporting witness

...if He were found equal, since both were not begotten, they would reasonably make two Gods, and thus Christ would have been the cause of two Gods. If He had been formed without beginning like the Father, and were Himself the beginning of all things as the Father is, this would have made two beginnings, and therefore would have shown us two Gods also. Or if He also were not the Son, but the Father were begetting from Himself another Son, then reasonably, being compared with the Father and called as great as He, He would have caused two Fathers, and thus also would have proved the existence of two Gods. If He had been invisible, compared with the Invisible, and declared equal, He would have shown two Invisibles, and thus also would have proved them to be two Gods. If He were incomprehensible, and if He had whatever other attributes belong to the Father, then reasonably, we say, He would have given rise to the allegation of two Gods, as these people pretend. But now, whatever He is, He is not of Himself, because He is not unborn. But He is of the Father, because He is begotten, whether as the Word, or as the Power, or as the Wisdom, or as the Light, or as the Son. And whatever He is

Origen, Commentary on John Supporting witness

as we might say of Christ, that by nature His arche is deity, but that in relation to us who cannot, for its very greatness, command the whole truth about Him, His arche is His manhood, as He is preached to babes, Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians Supporting witness

... about. If he is darkness, or frost, or the moist part of nature, none of these is abiding. But the Deity is immortal, immovable, and unalterable. So neither Kronos nor his image is God. And as for Zeus: if he is air, born of Kronos, whose male part is called Zeus and female part Hera, which is why she is both sister and wife, then he is subject to change. If he is a season, then he turns about. But the Deity neither changes nor shifts about. But why should I trespass on your patience by saying more, when you already know so well what each of those people has said who have resolved these things into nature, or what different writers have thought concerning nature, or what they say concerning Athênâ, whom they affirm to be the wisdom pervading all things; and concerning Isis, whom they call the birth of all time, from whom all have sprung, and by whom all exist; or concerning Osiris, after whose murder by his brother Typhon, Isis with her son Orus sought his limbs, and finding them honored them with a sepulchre, which to this day is called the tomb of Osiris? For while they wander up and down among the forms of matter, they fail to find the God who can be beheld only by reason, w

Victorinus, Commentary on the Apocalypse Supporting witness

And if any angel at all subjected to Christ can be called God, and this, if it be said, is also professed without blasphemy, certainly much more can this be fitting for Christ, Himself the Son of God, for Him to be pronounced God.

Origen, De Principiis (On First Principles) Supporting witness

6. And while we thus briefly demon­strate the deity of Christ, and (in so doing) make use of the prophetic declarations regarding Him, we demonstrate at the same time that the writings which prophe­sied of Him were divinely inspired;

Irenaeus, Against Heresies: Book III Supporting witness

And the Word of God Himself used to converse with the ante-Mosaic patriarchs, in accordance with His divinity and glory;

Irenaeus, Against Heresies: Book I Background

and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation;

Gregory Thaumaturgus, A Sectional Confession of Faith Supporting witness

...e same substance as the Father, and that the substance of the Trinity is one. That is, there is one divinity by nature. The Father remains unbegotten. The Son is begotten of the Father in a true generation, and not formed by an act of will. The Spirit is sent forth eternally from the substance of the Father through the Son, with power to sanctify the whole creation. We also acknowledge that the Word was made flesh and was revealed in the movement of flesh received from a virgin, and did not merely work in a man. And those who have fellowship with people who reject consubstantiality as a teaching foreign to the Scriptures, and who speak of any of the persons in the Trinity as created, and separate that person from the one natural divinity, we regard as aliens, and we have fellowship with no such people. There is one God, the Father, and there is only one divinity. But the Son also is God, as the true image of the one and only divinity, according to His generation and the nature He has from the Father. There is one Lord, the Son. But in the same way there is also the Spirit, who carries the Son's lordship over to the creature that is sanctified. The Son lived in the world, having

Ignatius of Antioch, Connection to Colossians 1:15 Supporting witness

Do ye all come together in common, and individually, through grace, in one faith of God the Father, and of Jesus Christ His only-begotten Son, and "the first-born of every creature," but of the seed of David according to the flesh, being under the guidance of the Comforter, in obedience to the bishop and the presbytery with an undivided mind, breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote which prevents us from dying, but a cleansing remedy driving away evil, [which causes] that we should live in God through Jesus Christ.

Gregory Thaumaturgus, A Sectional Confession of Faith Supporting witness

...Instead, He was joined to the flesh in the likeness of man, so that the flesh was made one with the divinity, because the divinity had taken on the capacity to receive the flesh in the fulfillment of the mystery. And after death was dissolved, there remained in the holy flesh a lasting impassibility and an unchanging immortality. Man’s original glory was taken up into it again by the power of the divinity, and then was given to all men through the appropriation of faith.

Novatian, Treatise Concerning the Trinity Supporting witness

...h doctrines would be put in danger in one way and the other, because when one is shown to have lost belief, the other is lost also. Let those, therefore, who read that Jesus Christ the Son of man is man, also read that this same Jesus is also called God and the Son of God. For in the same way as man He is of Abraham, so also as God He is before Abraham himself. And in the same way as He is as man the Son of David, so as God He is proclaimed to be David's Lord. And in the same way as He was made as man under the law, Galatians 4:4, so as God He is declared to be Lord of the Sabbath. And in the same way as He suffers, as man, the condemnation, so as God He is found to have all judgment of the living and the dead. And in the same way as He is born as man after the world, so as God He is shown to have been before the world. And in the same way as He was begotten as man from the seed of David, so also as God the world is said to have been ordained by Him. And in the same way as He was as man after many, so as God He was before all. And in the same way as He was as man less than others, so as God He was greater than all. And in the same way as He ascended as man into heaven, so as God

Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ Supporting witness

...soul might become visible. Well then, did the flesh likewise become soul so that the flesh might be manifested? If the soul is flesh, it is no longer soul, but flesh. If the flesh is soul, it is no longer flesh, but soul. Therefore, where there is flesh, and where there is soul, it has become both the one and the other. Now if they are neither one in particular, although they become both the one and the other, it is, to say the least, very absurd for us to understand the soul when we name the flesh, and, when we point out the soul, to explain that we mean the flesh. All things will be in danger of being taken in a sense different from their own proper sense. And while they are taken in that different sense, they will lose their proper one, if they are called by a name different from their natural designation. Faithfulness in names secures a safe understanding of properties. When these properties undergo a change, things are considered to have the qualities their names indicate. For example, baked clay receives the name "brick." It does not keep the name that marked its former state, because it no longer shares in that state. Therefore, the soul of Christ, having become flesh, ca

Origen, De Principiis (On First Principles) Supporting witness

1. In the first place, we must note that the nature of that deity which is in Christ in respect of His being the only-begotten Son of God is one thing, and that human nature which He assumed in these last times for the purposes of the dispensation (of grace) is another.

Novatian, Treatise Concerning the Trinity Supporting witness

As reasonably in the way in which He is not of this world according to the divinity of the Word, so He is of this world according to the frailty of the body that He has taken upon Him.

Gregory Thaumaturgus, A Sectional Confession of Faith Supporting witness

for his object is to show that He became incarnate without change, and that He retains the divinity without duplication.

Cyprian, Treatises Supporting witness

God is mingled with man. This is our God, this is Christ, who, as the mediator of the two, puts on man that He may lead them to the Father.

Alexander of Alexandria, Connection to Hebrews 13:8 Supporting witness

because when He became man, He changed not; but, as says the apostle, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for ever."

Tertullian, Against Praxeas Supporting witness

... He must be understood to have become flesh in this sense: that He came to be in the flesh, and was manifested, and was seen, and was handled by means of the flesh, since all the other points also must be understood in this way. For if the Word became flesh by a change and transformation of substance, then it follows at once that Jesus must be a substance made up of two substances, flesh and spirit, a kind of mixture, like electrum, made of gold and silver. Then it begins to be neither gold, that is, spirit, nor silver, that is, flesh. One is changed by the other, and a third substance is produced. Therefore, on this view, Jesus cannot be God, for He has stopped being the Word, which was made flesh. Nor can He be Man incarnate, for He is not truly flesh, and it was flesh that the Word became. Being made up of both, then, He is actually neither one. He is rather some third substance, very different from either. But the truth is that we find Him clearly presented as both God and Man. The very psalm we quoted indicates, concerning the flesh, that God became man in the midst of it. “He therefore established it by the will of the Father.” Certainly, then, He is in every respect both

Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh Background

...hat resembles that one. For when he actually declares that those who are in the flesh cannot please God, he immediately calls the statement back from a heretical sense to a sound one by adding, "But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit," in Romans 8:8-9. Now, by denying that they were in the flesh, though they obviously were in the flesh, he showed that they were not living among the works of the flesh. Therefore, those who could not please God were not those who were in the flesh, but only those who were living after the flesh. But those pleased God who, although they existed in the flesh, were still walking after the Spirit. And again, he says that the body is dead. But it is dead because of sin, just as the Spirit is life because of righteousness. When, however, he thus sets life over against the death that is established in the flesh, he unquestionably promises the life of righteousness to the same condition for which he assigned the death of sin. But this contrast that he makes between life and death is meaningless if the life is not there where the very thing is to which he opposes it, namely, the death that is, of course, to be rooted out from the body. Now, if lif