Public Revelation
Public Revelation is the definitive self-communication of God to humanity, completed with the death of the last Apostle. It is contained in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and is authoritatively interpreted by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. At its centre stands the person of Jesus Christ — true God and true man — the fullness of God’s revelation.
Jesus Is God
The central claim of Christianity is not merely that Jesus was a great teacher, a wise prophet, or an extraordinary man. It is that Jesus of Nazareth is God — the second Person of the Holy Trinity, the eternal Word made flesh. This claim was not a later invention; it was present from the earliest strata of the New Testament and was the driving force behind the explosive growth of the early Church.
St. Paul’s First Sermon: “Jesus Is the Son of God”
“At once he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’”
— Acts 9:20
This single verse is one of the most important pieces of historical evidence for early Christology. Saul of Tarsus — a strict Pharisee, trained under Gamaliel, zealous for the Law — had been violently persecuting the Church precisely because he saw the claim that a crucified man was divine as blasphemy. After his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus (c. AD 33–36), the very first thing he preached, immediately, in the synagogues of Damascus, was that Jesus is the Son of God.(a)
This matters because it shows the divinity of Christ was not a late legendary development. Within a few years of the crucifixion — before any Gospel was written, before any of Paul’s letters — the core Christian proclamation was already that this Jesus is God’s own Son. A man who had every reason to deny that claim staked his life on it from his very first sermon.
Notes
(a) Acts 9:20. The Greek phrase is ho huios tou theou (“the Son of God”) — the same divine sonship language used in the Synoptic Gospels and confessed at Caesarea Philippi (Matt 16:16). Paul’s pre-conversion letters of authorization from the high priest (Acts 9:1–2) date this preaching to within roughly three years of the Resurrection.
Scriptural Evidence for the Divinity of Christ
The New Testament contains multiple, independent witnesses to the divinity of Jesus. These range from explicit declarations to implicit claims embedded in his actions and self-understanding.
The Prologue of John (John 1:1–14)
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
— John 1:1–3, 14
The “I AM” Statements
In the Gospel of John, Jesus makes seven solemn “I AM” (ego eimi) declarations that echo God’s self-revelation to Moses at the burning bush: “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). The most explicit is:
“Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am!”
— John 8:58
The audience understood precisely what he was claiming — they picked up stones to execute him for blasphemy (John 8:59). Jesus was not merely claiming to have existed before Abraham; he was claiming the divine Name for himself.(a)
The Philippians Hymn (Philippians 2:5–11)
“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
— Philippians 2:6–11
Most scholars regard this as a pre-Pauline hymn — already in liturgical use before Paul incorporated it into his letter (c. AD 62). It affirms that Christ existed “in very nature God” (en morphê theou) before the incarnation.(b)
Further Key Texts
- •John 10:30 — “I and the Father are one.”
- •John 14:9 — “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
- •John 20:28 — Thomas’s confession: “My Lord and my God!”
- •Colossians 1:15–20 — “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created.”
- •Hebrews 1:1–3 — “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”
- •Titus 2:13 — “Our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”
Notes
(a) Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to New Testament Christology (Paulist Press, 1994), pp. 137–144, demonstrates that the ego eimi statements in John reflect the absolute use of the divine Name from Exodus 3:14 and Isaiah 43:10.
(b) Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 83–107: “The devotional pattern reflected in this passage indicates a remarkably high christology that was already characteristic of Christian worship within the first couple of decades.”
The Great Councils
The early Church was forced to articulate precisely what it believed about the divinity and humanity of Christ in response to various heresies. Through the first seven Ecumenical Councils, the Church defined the doctrine of the Trinity and the person of Christ with increasing precision — not inventing new doctrine, but clarifying what was always believed.
Council of Nicaea (AD 325)
Against Arius, who taught that the Son was a created being (“there was a time when he was not”), the Council declared that the Son is homoousios(“one in being” or “consubstantial”) with the Father — “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made.”
The Nicene Creed, professed at every Sunday Mass, is the lasting fruit of this Council.(a)
Council of Constantinople (AD 381)
Expanded the Nicene Creed to affirm the full divinity of the Holy Spirit (“the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father”) and the completeness of Christ’s humanity against the Apollinarian heresy, which denied that Christ had a human rational soul.
Council of Ephesus (AD 431)
Against Nestorius, who seemed to divide Christ into two separate persons (one divine, one human), the Council affirmed that Mary is Theotokos (“God-bearer” or “Mother of God”) — not because Mary is the source of the divine nature, but because the child she bore is one divine Person with two natures.
Council of Chalcedon (AD 451)
Produced the definitive statement on the person of Christ: he is one Person (divine) in two natures (divine and human), “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”(b) The two natures are united in the one divine Person of the Word (the “hypostatic union”). This formula remains the standard of orthodox Christology to this day.
Notes
(a) The creed as prayed at Mass today is technically the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, incorporating the work of both the 325 and 381 councils. See J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3rd edition (Continuum, 1972).
(b) The Chalcedonian Definition guards against four errors: confusing the natures (Eutyches), changing one into the other, dividing the Person (Nestorius), or separating the natures as if they merely co-existed. See CCC 464–469.
Related Sections
The divinity of Christ is grounded in the historical evidence for his life and vindicated by his bodily resurrection from the dead.
Sources & Further Reading
- Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to New Testament Christology (Paulist Press, 1994)
- Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Eerdmans, 2003)
- J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 5th revised edition (Continuum, 1977)
- Martin Hengel, The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion (Fortress, 1976)
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 422–478 (“I Believe in Jesus Christ”)