God & Reason
The Divinity of Christ
Jesus of Nazareth is not merely a prophet or a good teacher but true God, the eternal Word made flesh, a claim rooted in Scripture and confessed unanimously by the earliest Christians.
Catholic teaching
The Church teaches that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, consubstantial with the Father, who took on a complete human nature without ceasing to be fully divine. He is one divine Person with two natures, human and divine, united without confusion or division. This is not a later invention but the apostolic faith itself, defined dogmatically at Nicaea (325) against Arius, who claimed the Son was a creature.
Biblical foundation
John opens his Gospel declaring that the Word was God and that the Word became flesh. Thomas, upon seeing the risen Christ, worships him saying 'My Lord and my God,' and Jesus accepts the worship without correction. Paul tells the Colossians that in Christ 'the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,' and Jesus himself claims 'Before Abraham was, I AM,' invoking the divine name of Exodus 3:14.
Scripture references
Historical evidence
Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor writing to Emperor Trajan around AD 112, reports that Christians met before dawn to 'sing a hymn to Christ as to a god,' confirming worship of Christ as God within decades of the apostolic age, from a hostile non-Christian source. Ignatius of Antioch, writing around AD 107 on his way to martyrdom, repeatedly calls Jesus 'our God' in letters to churches that knew him personally as a disciple of the apostles.
The Church Fathers
“Ignatius... to the Church... which is united and elected through the true passion by the will of the Father, and Jesus Christ, our God.”
“They were in the habit of meeting on a fixed day before dawn and singing responsively a hymn to Christ, as to a god.”
“He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God.”