Is Jesus God?

Two Christians, one Bible, and a word nobody checks

Two Christians sit across a table with their Bibles open. The first one says Jesus is God – the very God, one being with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The second one says only the Father is God, and Jesus is His Son. The first reads John 1:1. The second reads John 17:3. The first reads John 20:28. The second reads John 14:28. An hour later, neither one has moved an inch.

You've probably sat at that table. Maybe you were told that if you can't say "Jesus is God," you're not a Christian. Maybe you were told the opposite – that if you do say it, you've broken the first commandment. Either way, somebody handed you a side before you'd read the verses for yourself.

I used to be the most hardcore trinitarian you'd ever meet. I was on the altar-call discipleship team, and when a new Christian needed the Trinity explained, I was the one they brought in. I even had my own demonstration. If there was an orange in the room, I'd grab it and cut it into thirds. I'd hold it up and ask, "How many oranges do I have?" One. Then I'd take one third in my other hand and ask again. Still one orange. "Is this third any less orange?" No. "Are the other two thirds any less orange than before?" No. "So am I holding two oranges now?" No. I'd put it back together and ask, "Did the nature of the orange change at all?" No. By then my job was mostly done. I convinced a lot of people the Trinity was true.

And in all those years, I never once asked what I meant by the word "God."

So go back to those two Christians at the table. Here's the question neither of them asks. What does "God" mean?

Both of them think they already know. When the first one, the trinitarian, says "Jesus is God," he means the one supreme being. When the second one says "Jesus is not God," he means the same thing – the one supreme being, and Jesus isn't him. They disagree about Jesus. They agree about the word. And that English word isn't the word the Bible uses.

Where the English word comes from

"God" is an old English word that came down from the Germanic languages. It doesn't come from the word "good." It isn't the same word as the Hebrew or the Greek in your Bible. Christians picked it up to stand in for those words. Christians in northern Europe were already doing that in the 300s, when they translated the Bible into their own language, Gothic. Today an English dictionary says that capital-G "God" means one being, perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness. That's the meaning you carry into every verse where you see the word.

The Bible wasn't written in English. The Old Testament word is elohim (eh-loh-HEEM). The New Testament word is theos (thee-OSS). Neither one is the name of a single being. Both can be plural. Both are used of more than one person. So from here on I'm going to use the words the Bible uses. Where the Bible says elohim or theos, so will I. And I'll call the Father what Jesus calls Him: the Father, or the Most High.

The Old Testament has to come first

Christians often say you can't understand the New Testament without the Old Testament. That's never more true than with this question. Jesus and the men who argued with Him grew up on two passages that tell you what elohim means. In Deuteronomy 32:7–9, the Most High divides up the nations, and Yhwh receives Jacob, the people of Israel, as his share. In Psalm 82, elohim stand in the assembly of El, the head of the council, and they are called children of the Most High. If you read the New Testament without those two passages, you'll read your English dictionary into it.

Before we start, think about these.

In Exodus 7:1, Yhwh tells Moses, "I have made you like God [elohim] to Pharaoh." The word "like" isn't in the Hebrew. Most English Bibles add "like" or "as" anyway. The King James doesn't: "I have made thee a god to Pharaoh." So was Moses God?

In John 17:3, Jesus prays to the Father and calls Him "the only true God [theos]." If the only true theos is the one Jesus is praying to, who is doing the praying?

And if your answer to that question cost you your church, would you still ask it?

That last one isn't a trick. In John 9:34, the man Jesus healed answered the leaders honestly, and they threw him out. In the next verse, Jesus went and found him. If you've been put out for asking what a word means, you're standing where that man stood.

Three questions to carry with you

Psalm 82:6 calls a whole group elohim and children of the Most High. What kind of word is elohim?
In John 20:17, Jesus says "my theos." If Jesus has a theos, can He be the only one?
Luke 1:32 calls Jesus the Son of the Most High. What does a son share with his father?

What if the word names a kind of being, and Jesus is that kind because He is the Son of the Most High? Hold that question. What follows is the case, first in plain terms, then with the evidence under it.

You can watch this study. The recording is 1 hour 21 minutes.

The case, in plain terms

How the Bible quotes read NET Bible unless marked, with the original word beside the English

Every Bible quotation is from the NET Bible unless it's marked NRSVue. The NRSVue is used where its wording is closer to the Hebrew or Greek. Where an English Bible prints "the LORD," the quote says Yhwh, because that's the name in the Hebrew. Where it prints "God," "god," or "gods," the English word stays, and the Hebrew or Greek word sits in brackets beside it: [elohim] or [theos]. That way you can see which word the writer actually used. Nothing else in the quote is changed.

1. The Most High sits over a council, and every member is elohim

Start with Psalm 82, because Jesus quotes it when He's answering this exact question.

"God [elohim] stands in the assembly of El; in the midst of the gods [elohim] he renders judgment." (Psalm 82:1, NET Bible)

Count the people in that verse. One elohim stands up to judge. He stands in the assembly of El. And he judges in the middle of a group that the same verse also calls elohim. So the word is used for the judge and for everyone he's judging. Then the psalm tells you who that group is.

"I say, 'You are gods [elohim], children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals and fall like any prince.'" (Psalm 82:6–7, NRSVue)

They're elohim. They're children of the Most High. And they can die. Deuteronomy tells you where this council came from.

"Remember the days of old; consider the years long past; ask your father, and he will inform you, your elders, and they will tell you. When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods [bene elohim, sons of elohim]; Yhwh's own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share." (Deuteronomy 32:7–9, NRSVue)

Verse 7 tells you this wasn't a new idea. Your father and your elders could tell you about it. Then verse 8 says the Most High divided the nations by the number of the gods. The oldest Hebrew copy of this verse, from the Dead Sea Scrolls, says "sons of God [elohim]" there. Then verse 9 says Yhwh got Jacob. So who hands out the nations? The Most High. Who receives one of them? Yhwh.

These elohim aren't ideas or forces. They're people with bodies. In Genesis 1:26–27, humans are made in their image. In Genesis 6:2, the sons of elohim take wives. In Genesis 18:1–8, Yhwh and two others stand at Abraham's tent, and they eat the meal he serves them. The Bible's council is a real family of real persons, with the Most High at the head of it.

2. Elohim and theos are words for a kind of being

Once you've seen the council, the word stops being a name and becomes what it is: a word for a kind of being. You can see the Bible use it that way over and over. In Exodus 7:1, Yhwh makes Moses elohim to Pharaoh. In 1 Samuel 28:13, the medium at Endor sees "a divine being [elohim] coming up from the ground." In the next verse, Saul figures out that it's the dead prophet Samuel.

Think of the word "king." Saul was a king. David was a king. Pharaoh was a king. Calling someone a king tells you what he is. It doesn't tell you which king he is. Elohim works the same way, and so does the Greek word theos.

Now go back to my orange. Did you catch what happened? I used one word two different ways, and I wasn't doing it on purpose. When I asked, "How many oranges do I have?" the word meant one piece of fruit. When I asked, "Is this third any less orange?" the word meant what the fruit is – its kind. The third is just as much orange as the rest, but it isn't an orange. That's why nobody said I was holding two. The demonstration only worked because the word kept switching back and forth, and nobody noticed. I didn't either, not for years.

"God" gets used the same way. "Jesus is God" can mean Jesus is the one supreme being. Or it can mean Jesus is the same kind of being as His Father. Those are two different sentences. The Trinity needs the word to mean both at once. Now watch how Jesus uses it.

The Jewish leaders replied, "We are not going to stone you for a good deed but for blasphemy because you, a man, are claiming to be God [theos]." Jesus answered, "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, you are gods [theoi]'? If those people to whom the word of God [theos] came were called 'gods' [theoi] (and the scripture cannot be broken), do you say about the one whom the Father set apart and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God [theos]'?" (John 10:33–36, NET Bible)

They want to stone Jesus because they say He's making Himself theos. What does Jesus do? He doesn't say, "I'm the Father." He quotes Psalm 82:6, where a whole group is called elohim, and He says, "I am the Son of theos." If Psalm 82 can call the council elohim, how can it be blasphemy for the Son to say what He is?

For more on the word itself, the Elohim Is Not a Name study walks through it verse by verse. For this question, here's the short form.

Jesus is theos. The question was never whether He is God. It was what the word means.

3. The one theos is the Father, the Most High

So if there are many elohim, what does the Bible mean when it says there is one? Paul answers that in one sentence.

"If after all there are so-called gods [theoi], whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods [theoi] and many lords), yet for us there is one God [theos], the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we live, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we live." (1 Corinthians 8:5–6, NET Bible)

Verse 6 usually gets quoted on its own. But in verse 5, Paul says there really are many gods and many lords. Then he says that for us, there's one theos, and he tells you who: the Father. And there's one Lord: Jesus. All things come from the Father, and they come through Jesus. Paul doesn't put Jesus inside "one theos." He puts Jesus right beside Him.

Jesus says the same thing when He prays.

"Now this is eternal life – that they know you, the only true God [theos], and Jesus Christ, whom you sent." (John 17:3, NET Bible)

Who is "you" in that sentence? The Father. Who is praying? Jesus. The only true theos is the one who sent Him. So "one" isn't a head count of everyone in Heaven. It's the One at the top, the Most High, the One every other elohim answers to.

4. Jesus is theos because He is the Son of the Most High

Now go back to the third question. What does a son share with his father?

"He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High." (Luke 1:32, NET Bible)

A son shares his father's kind. The son of a man is a man. The son of a king is royal. So the Son of the Most High is the same kind of being as His Father. That's theos. But a son isn't his father. Jesus is not the Most High. He's the Most High's Son.

John opens his Gospel with the same two facts.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God [the theos], and the Word was God [theos]. He was in the beginning with God [the theos]. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being." (John 1:1–3, NRSVue)

In the Greek, the first and third "God" have "the" in front of them. The middle one doesn't. Here "the theos" is one person, the one John calls the Father in John 1:18. "Theos" with no "the" says what kind of being the Word is. The Word was with the theos, so the Word is not the one He was with. And the Word was theos, so He's the same kind. Two persons, one kind. Then verse 3 says everything came into being through Him, and that's the same thing Paul said: from the Father, through Jesus.

So when did the Son begin? Jesus tells you He was with the Father before the world.

"And now, Father, glorify me at your side with the glory I had with you before the world was created." (John 17:5, NET Bible)

Paul says the same thing.

"who, though he existed in the form of God [theos], did not regard equality with God [theos] as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness." (Philippians 2:6–7, NRSVue)

He existed before He became human. So Jesus was a real person before Mary, and like every member of the council, He had a body. He has a beginning and a Father. That beginning was before the world.

Jesus is the same kind as His Father, the Most High. He is not the Father, and He is not one third of anything.

What about "John 1:1 says the Word was God – full stop"

It does say the Word was theos. It also says the Word was with theos, in the same sentence. You can't read "was God" as "was the Father" without erasing "with God." The NET Bible prints "fully God," but the word "fully" isn't in the Greek. The full answer is in the objections.

What about "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58)

Jesus says He existed before Abraham. That's the same claim as John 17:5. "I am" isn't a name in the Greek, and the Hebrew of Exodus 3:14 is "I will be." The whole conversation in John 8 has been separating Jesus' Father from the god His hearers worshiped. The full answer is in the objections.

5. Jesus has a theos

If Jesus were the only theos, He couldn't have one. But He does, and He says so after He has risen from the dead.

"I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God [theos] and your God [theos]." (John 20:17, NET Bible)

Hebrews calls the Son theos and says He has a theos, in back-to-back lines.

"But of the Son he says, 'Your throne, O God [theos], is forever and ever, and the scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God [theos], your God [theos], has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.'" (Hebrews 1:8–9, NRSVue)

Who is called theos in verse 8? The Son. The Greek can also be read "God is your throne," but verse 9 makes the point either way. Who anoints Him in verse 9? His theos. And notice "your companions." The Son has companions, and He is anointed above them. In Revelation 3:12, the risen Jesus says "my God [theos]" four times in one verse. In 1 Corinthians 15:28, at the very end, "the Son himself will be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him." So does the Son ever stop having a theos? Not in any verse.

6. Each answer is half right

Now look back at the two people at the table. The one who says "Jesus is the very God" is right that Jesus is theos. John 1:1 and John 20:28 say so. He's wrong that Jesus is the Father, or one third of one being. The one who says "only the Father is God" is right that the one theos is the Father. John 17:3 and 1 Corinthians 8:6 say so. He's wrong that Jesus isn't theos. Both of them are wrong about the word, and that's why both of them have verses they can't use.

Verses that each of the two usual answers to "Is Jesus God?" has trouble with
Trouble for "Jesus is the very God"	Trouble for "Only the Father is God"
John 17:3 The Father is "the only true theos"	John 1:1 The Word was theos
John 20:17 "My theos and your theos"	John 20:28 "My Lord and my theos"
1 Cor 15:28 "The Son himself will be subjected"	John 10:34–36 "You are gods" … "I am the Son of theos"

7. Yhwh, one of the council, is not that Father

There's one more piece, and you've already seen it. In Deuteronomy 32:8–9, the Most High hands out the nations and Yhwh receives Jacob. The one who receives a share is not the one who gives it. Yhwh is one of the elohim. He is not the Most High.

Jesus says the same thing to the men in the Temple who worshiped Yhwh.

"The one who glorifies me is my Father, about whom you people say, 'He is our God [theos].' Yet you do not know him, but I know him." (John 8:54–55, NET Bible)

They knew their god very well. They'd served him their whole lives. So who is the Father they don't know? Not Yhwh. The John 8 study and the Elyon gave Jacob to Yhwh study make that case in full.

The three questions, answered

What kind of word is elohim? A word for a kind of being. Psalm 82 puts a whole council under it.
If Jesus has a theos, can He be the only one? No. Jesus is theos, and His theos is the Father.
What does a son share with his father? His kind. The Son of the Most High is theos, and He is not the Most High.

The case in one line

Jesus is theos because He is the Son of the Most High. He is not the Most High.

That's the case. What follows is the same argument with the evidence underneath.

The full evidence

This part is the same case with the proof under it: what the English word carries, what the Hebrew and Greek say, where the translations add words, and what Christians wrote about the Son before the creeds. Then the pushbacks you'll actually hear.

What the English word carries

English "god" is a native Germanic word. German Gott is the same word, and so are the old Gothic and Norse words for a god. Nobody knows for sure where it came from before that. Guus Kroonen, who wrote the standard dictionary of the oldest Germanic words (Brill, 2013), opens his entry with "No accepted etymology." Any page that tells you what the word "originally meant" is repeating a guess.

What is settled is that it doesn't come from "good." Anatoly Liberman, who writes on English word origins for Oxford University Press, notes that English speakers believed that "for centuries," and then shows why it can't be true: the vowels don't match. His verdict: "god is not allied to good."

It also isn't the same word as elohim or theos. Wulfila, who translated the Bible into Gothic in the 300s, needed a word for theos and used the one his people already had. In John 10:34 his Gothic says "I said, you are gods," and the word for "gods" is guda, the plural. So the plural was there from the start.

Today's English dictionary is a different story. Merriam-Webster defines capital-G God as "the being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped … as creator and ruler of the universe." That's one being, already defined, before you've read a verse. When a translator prints "God" with a capital letter, that definition comes with it.

Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32:7–9

Psalm 82:1 in the NET Bible reads "the assembly of El." The Hebrew is adat el. El is the head of the council, and the one judging stands in his assembly. The NRSVue prints "the divine council." Both put a group in the room.

Psalm 82:6 is "I said" in the Hebrew (amarti), and Jesus quotes it that way in John 10:34. A few English Bibles soften it. The NET Bible prints "I thought," and the Jewish Publication Society's 1985 translation prints "I had taken you for divine beings." Most English Bibles keep "I said," the way Jesus quoted it.

Deuteronomy 32:8 is where the copies split, and the split matters:

Copy or translation	What it says the nations were divided by
Dead Sea Scroll 4QDeut^j (the oldest Hebrew copy)	"the number of the sons of God [bene elohim]"
Most Septuagint copies (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible)	"the number of the angels of God"
A few early Septuagint copies	"the number of the sons of God"
The Masoretic Text (the later standard Hebrew)	"the number of the sons of Israel"
NRSVue	"the number of the gods," with a footnote naming the scroll
NET Bible	"the number of the heavenly assembly"

The NRSVue footnote is in short form: "Q ms Compare Gk Tg: MT the Israelites." In plain words, their reading comes from a Dead Sea Scroll copy, the Greek and Aramaic translations are there to compare, and the Masoretic Text says "the Israelites." The Masoretic reading doesn't fit the sentence. Israel didn't exist yet when the nations were divided. The Elyon gave Jacob to Yhwh study walks through every copy and shows how "sons of God" became "sons of Israel."

Read Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32 together and you get the council: the Most High at the head, many elohim under Him, the nations handed out among them, and Yhwh given Jacob.

What John 1:1–3 does and doesn't say

John 1:1 has three clauses. In the second, the Word is "with the theos" – the Greek has the word "the." In the third, "the Word was theos" – no "the," and theos comes first in the Greek order. So John says the Word was with the theos, and the Word was theos.

Philip Harner wrote a well-known article on this kind of Greek sentence (Journal of Biblical Literature, 1973). He says the third clause can't mean "the Word was the theos," because then "with the theos" would make no sense. He also says "a god" is too small for what John wrote. Harner's own reading is that the Word had the same nature as the one He was with. That's the grammar. The step this study takes, that theos is a kind with a Father at the head and a Son who is that kind, is not Harner's. It's what Psalm 82 and Luke 1:32 add.

Don't let anyone build the whole case on the word "the." In 2 Cor 4:4, Paul puts "the" on both theos words, and they're two different gods. The little word helps. It doesn't decide.

Two NET Bible choices to watch. In 1:1 the NET Bible prints "the Word was fully God." The word "fully" isn't in the Greek. In 1:3 the NET Bible prints "All things were created by him." The Greek says all things "came into being through him," and that's what the NRSVue prints. "Through" keeps the Father as the source, the way Paul does in 1 Corinthians 8:6.

John 1:18 has two readings in the Greek copies. Many early copies say "the only one, theos." The NET Bible prints that reading as "The only one, himself God," but "himself" is the NET Bible's word, not the Greek. Many others say "the only Son." Either way, He is "in closest fellowship with the Father," so He is beside the Father, not the Father.

The Son is called theos and has a theos

Hebrews 1:8–9 quotes Psalm 45:6–7, a song for a king. The NRSVue footnote on 1:8 gives "God is your throne" as another way to read the Greek. Either way, verse 9 still says "God, your God, has anointed you." Dan McClellan, a Bible scholar who explains the Bible's history on video, pointed out on 19 October 2026 that Psalm 45 calls the king elohim, the same way Exodus 7:1 makes Moses elohim. Hebrews takes that line and gives it to the Son.

Philippians 2:6–7 in the NRSVue says Jesus "existed in the form of God" and then took "the form of a slave, assuming human likeness." He was already somebody before He took human likeness. Some English Bibles bring in the word "nature" here. The NIV says "being in very nature God" and "the very nature of a servant," and the NET Bible says "sharing in human nature." The word "nature" isn't in the Greek. Paul's words are "form," "likeness," and "appearance."

Colossians 1:16 in the NRSVue says "in him all things in heaven and on earth were created … all things have been created through him and for him." The footnote says "in" can also be "by." The verse puts creation in Him and through Him. It doesn't put Him at the source. That's the Father's place, "from whom are all things" (1 Corinthians 8:6).

Paul splits the Shema in two

The Shema is the most famous line in the Hebrew Bible:

"Hear, O Israel: Yhwh is our God [elohim], Yhwh is one!" (Deuteronomy 6:4, NET Bible)

Jesus quotes it in Mark 12:29, when an expert in the Law asks Him which command is the most important. Paul writes a sentence with the same shape and pulls it apart. "One theos" becomes the Father. "One Lord" becomes Jesus (1 Corinthians 8:6). The Shema has Yhwh in both places. Paul puts two persons there. Whatever else you say about that sentence, it doesn't make Jesus the Father.

"Begotten" is another assumption

The creeds say the Son is "eternally begotten." That phrase isn't in the Bible. "Beget" is an old word for becoming a father. When the New Testament uses that verb (gennao) of Jesus, it always puts a time on it:

Matthew 1:20 – "the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit." That's conception.
Luke 1:35 – "the child to be born will be holy; he will be called the Son of God [theos]." That's birth.
Acts 13:33 – Paul quotes Psalm 2:7, "This very day I have become your father," and says that day came "by raising Jesus." That's the resurrection. In the psalm itself, it was the king's coronation day.

The same verb is used of believers. In John 1:13, they're children born "by God [theos]." So the verb doesn't set Jesus apart. What makes Him the Most High's kind is that He's the Son of the Most High (Luke 1:32) and that He was theos with the theos in the beginning (John 1:1). He has a beginning and a Father, before the world. The verses with "beget" in them aren't where the text tells you that.

"Only begotten" is a different problem. The Greek word is monogenes, and it means one of a kind. Hebrews 11:17 calls Isaac Abraham's monogenes – most English Bibles print "his only son" – while Abraham had other sons (Genesis 25:1–2). Newer Bibles such as the NIV print "one and only" in John 1:14. The old Latin and English "only begotten" put the idea of begetting into a word that doesn't have it.

So where did "eternally begotten" come from? From the church councils. The council at Nicaea in 325 wrote "begotten, not made." The second council, at Constantinople in 381, wrote "begotten of his Father before all worlds." Even William Lane Craig, a Christian philosopher who defends the Trinity in debates, said on 9 September 2026 that "this doctrine that the Son is begotten in his divine nature is not taught in the New Testament." Craig still says Jesus is fully God. He drops only the eternal begetting.

Early Christians called the Son a second god

In Jesus' own lifetime, Philo, a Judean writer in Alexandria, was already calling the Word a "second God" under the Most High. He wasn't talking about Jesus. But before the councils ruled it out, Christian writers said the same thing about the Son, in their own words. None of them would agree with everything here. Several of them said "second god" and then tried to take part of it back. But all the Christian writers below treat the Father as the Most High and the Son as theos beside Him.

Who	When	What they said
Philo, a Judean writer in Alexandria, quoted by Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 7.13)	c. AD 40	"the second God, who is the Word of the former"
Justin, a teacher in Rome (Dialogue with Trypho 56)	c. 155	"another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things"
Tertullian, a Latin writer in Carthage (Against Praxeas 9, 13)	c. 213	The Son is "a derivation and portion of the whole." "Two Beings are God" – but he refuses to say "two Gods"
Origen, a teacher in Alexandria (Commentary on John 2, Heine's translation)	c. 230	The Word should "not be said to be 'the God,' but 'God'"
Origen (Against Celsus 5.39)	c. 248	calls the Son a "second God," then says he means a virtue that includes all other virtues and a reason that contains all reason, which dwelt in the soul of Jesus
Lactantius, tutor to Constantine's son (Epitome 42)	c. 317	The Father "created a second God." Chapter 49 then denies there are "two Gods"
Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea (Proof of the Gospel 5, Ferrar's translation)	c. 315	"a Second God after the Most High and Supreme"
Basil of Ancyra, a bishop at the councils after Nicaea (in Epiphanius, Panarion 73)	358	The Son "is not the same thing as the God and Father who begot him," but like Him
John Milton, the poet (Christian Doctrine, Sumner's translation, p. 92)	c. 1660	"Though the Son be another God, yet in this passage he is called merely Lord"

Two limits. First, these writers still assumed the Most High was Yhwh. None of them says Yhwh isn't the Father. Second, the "second god" line didn't survive. Nicaea condemned anyone who said "there was a time when the Son of God was not," and Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria who fought for Nicaea's creed, wrote that "neither is the Son another God." After that, a Christian who said what Justin said would have been condemned.

Modern scholars who defend the creeds refuse the phrase. James Dunn, Larry Hurtado, and Richard Bauckham, three of the best-known New Testament scholars of the last fifty years, all decline to call Jesus a "second god." That's their reading. The early writers' words are still on the page.

How the Trinity replaced the council

Dan McClellan makes the same point about the Trinity in his 19 October 2026 video: the idea of several persons in one God belongs to the 2nd through 5th centuries, not to the Bible. He also sets Philo's "second God" beside John 1:1. McClellan doesn't say Yhwh isn't the Father. On the Trinity's dates, though, he and this study agree.

Where the Trinity came from

The Trinity replaces the divine-council hierarchy with "one God in three persons." It merges the Most High, Yhwh, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit into one being. The remaining council members are then reduced to angels, human judges, or figures of speech. Once that framework is in place, every distinction between Jesus' Father and Yhwh has to be moved back inside one being.

The finished formula does not appear in the Bible. Its development can be dated:

Around 200 AD – Tertullian, a Christian writer from Carthage, is the first surviving author to use the Latin word trinitas, "Trinity." Every New Testament book had already been written.
325 AD – the Council of Nicaea, called by the Roman emperor Constantine. Arius, a priest in Alexandria who taught that the Son had a beginning and was subordinate to the Father, was condemned. The bishops declared the Son "of the same essence" (homoousios, hoh-moh-OO-see-oss) as the Father. Constantine enforced the decision by exiling Arius and bishops who refused to accept it.
381 AD – the Council of Constantinople, where the creed called the Holy Spirit "the Lord and giver of life," worshiped and glorified with the Father and the Son. Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa – three fourth-century theologians from Cappadocia – helped develop the language used for that formula.

The councils used technical Greek categories such as "essence" and "substance" to explain how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit could be one being. Jesus does not describe His Father that way. Jesus says who sent Him, whose commands He obeys, whose work He completes, and whose character He shows.

The doctrine of three co-equal persons in one essence took roughly 350 years after Jesus to reach its finished form. Every biblical author wrote before that formula existed. Deuteronomy 32:7–9 and John 20:17 should be read on their own terms before a later creed decides how many beings those passages are allowed to name.

The pushbacks, answered

What about "John 1:1 says the Word was God. That settles it."

Read the whole verse. "The Word was with God [theos], and the Word was God [theos]." If "God" in the third clause meant the Father, the second clause would say the Father was with the Father. So "the Word was theos" has to mean something other than "the Word was the one He was with." That's how a word for a kind works. Peter is with a man, and Peter is a man. Nobody thinks that makes them the same man.

Some translations print "a god" there. Harner says that's too small, and the case here doesn't need it. Jesus isn't one god among millions. He's the Son of the Most High, anointed above His companions (Hebrews 1:9).

What about "Thomas said 'My Lord and my God!'" (John 20:28)

He did, and Jesus didn't correct him. Thomas calls Jesus theos, and Jesus is theos. But read what Jesus said earlier in the same chapter. In John 20:17, Jesus says "my Father and your Father, my God [theos] and your God [theos]." Thomas's line doesn't cancel that. And three verses later, John tells you why he wrote the book: "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God [theos]" (John 20:31). He doesn't say "that Jesus is the Father."

What about "Before Abraham came into existence, I am" (John 8:58)

The claim is that Jesus existed before Abraham. That's what made them pick up stones. He'd just said Abraham saw His day (John 8:56), and they answered that He wasn't even fifty years old. The Greek "I am" (ego eimi) is an ordinary verb. The blind man uses the same words in John 9:9. The link people make to Exodus 3:14 rests on an English translation. The Hebrew there is ehyeh asher ehyeh, "I will be who I will be."

And look at where the verse sits. From John 8:19 on, Jesus has been telling these men they don't know His Father, and in John 8:55 He says it flat out: "you do not know him." Reading John 8:58 as "I am your god" would make His last line contradict everything He'd just said.

What about "The Father and I are one" (John 10:30)

"One" in that verse is the Greek word for one thing, not one person. Jesus has just said nobody can snatch His sheep from His hand, and nobody can snatch them from His Father's hand (John 10:28–29). They hold the same sheep. In John 17:22, Jesus prays for His followers "that they may be one just as we are one." If "one" means one being, the disciples become one being too. And when they picked up stones over 10:30, Jesus answered with Psalm 82:6 and "I am the Son of God [theos]" (John 10:34–36), not "I am the Father."

What about "Mighty God, Everlasting Father" (Isaiah 9:6)

"Mighty God" is el gibbor in Hebrew, and el is the shorter word for the same kind of being. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, has "angel of great counsel" in that place. These are the throne names of a child who is born. If "Everlasting Father" made Jesus the Father, it would break every verse where Jesus talks to the Father. Nobody at the table on either side reads it that way.

What about "Jesus was created – Proverbs 8:22, Colossians 1:15, Revelation 3:14"

The people who say this are right about one thing: Jesus has a beginning and a Father. But none of these three verses names Jesus and says He was created. Proverbs 8:22 reads "Yhwh created me" in the NET Bible and the Septuagint (the King James has "possessed me"), and the speaker is wisdom; the text doesn't say wisdom is Jesus. Colossians 1:15 calls Him "the firstborn of all creation" (NRSVue), and the next verse says all things were created in Him and through Him. "Firstborn" is the heir's title. Revelation 3:14 calls Him the arche of creation. BDAG, the standard dictionary of New Testament Greek, gives "first cause" for that verse and also says "beginning," meaning the first thing created, is a likely reading. The same dictionary gives both, so the verse can't settle anything on its own.

What the text does say is "Son" and "Father." That's the language the Bible uses for where He came from, and it's the language this study keeps.

What about "He's only under the Father as a man"

That's an explanation people add. No verse says it. 1 Corinthians 15:28 is about the end of everything, after the resurrection: "the Son himself will be subjected." It says the Son. It doesn't say "the Son's human nature." In John 20:17 He has a theos after He has risen. In Revelation 3:12 He has one in Heaven. None of those verses mention a human nature.

What about "Jesus never claimed to be God"

He never claimed to be the Father. He did claim to be the Son of theos, and He said it in answer to the charge that He was making Himself theos (John 10:33–36). He claimed to have shared the Father's glory before the world (John 17:5). That's a claim about what He is.

Every assumption has to be checked

The fight at that table runs on three assumptions. The first is that "God" means one supreme being. The second is that "begotten" tells you how the Son began. The third is that the NET Bible's "fully God" is what John wrote. None of them is in the text. Take them out, and both people at the table can keep every verse they were quoting.

You don't have to take my word for any of this. Check it yourself:

Read Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34–36 side by side. Ask what Jesus was answering.
Read John 20:17 before you read John 20:28.
Count how many times the risen Jesus says "my God" in Revelation 3:12.
Look up John 1:1 in the NET Bible and read its own note on the word "fully."
Read Deuteronomy 32:7–9 in the NRSVue and read the footnote on verse 8.

If you've been told that asking what the word means is the same as denying Jesus, notice who actually answered that question. It was Jesus. In the Temple, the men around Him had picked up stones to kill Him. He didn't say "I am the Father." He said, "I am the Son of God [theos]."

Back to the table

So go back one last time to those two Christians at the table. Neither of them has to give up a verse. Read the word the way Jesus read it, and the first one keeps John 1:1 and John 20:28. The second one keeps John 17:3 and John 20:17. They were both holding real verses. They were both holding the wrong definition.

When I was cutting oranges for new Christians, I thought I was defending Jesus. I was defending a definition, one I'd never checked. The question was never whether Jesus is God. It was whether I'd let Him tell me what the word means.

He already did. He's the Son of the Most High. He was with His Father before the world. And on the morning He rose, He told Mary where He was going: "to my Father and your Father, to my God [theos] and your God [theos]" (John 20:17). Jesus didn't come to make you pick a side at that table. He came to bring you to His Father.