Christianity

Articles in the Christianity section.

• Does "I and the Father Are One" Mean Jesus Is God?
• "Before Abraham Was, I Am": Divine Name or Preexistence?
• The Son Addressed as God — Who Then Is "Your God"?
• "All Authority Has Been Given to Me"
• Thomas Says "My Lord and My God"
• John 1:1 and the Word That Was With God
• Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1: The Granville Sharp Construction
• The Philippians Hymn: Form of God, and the One Who Exalts
• Image of the Invisible God, Firstborn of All Creation
• All the Fullness of Deity Dwelling Bodily
• Romans 9:5: Where Does the Sentence End?
• 1 John 5:20: What Does "This" Refer To?
• The Only True God, and Jesus Christ Whom You Have Sent
• When the Son Himself Will Be Subjected
• The Risen and Exalted Jesus Says "My God"
• The Son Can Do Nothing of Himself
• "The beginning of the creation of God" (Revelation 3:14) means the source and originator of creation, not the first created thing
• The Bible is the inspired word of God, evidenced by its coherent, cross-referencing message across roughly 40 authors and 66 books written over many centuries
• 'God is not a man that he should lie' (Numbers 23:19) denies that God shares man's fickle, deceitful character—not that God could ever assume human nature
• The Incarnation is the highest expression of God's own perfect humility, not a degradation unworthy of him
• Jesus is the only-begotten Son by nature (eternal generation), categorically unlike believers who are sons by adoption
• Jesus raised himself from the dead by his own authority, which only God can do
• Jesus is Yahweh, because Scripture reserves Creator-identity to Yahweh alone yet attributes creation of all things to Jesus
• Melchizedek, "without beginning of days or end of life," resembles the Son of God, pointing to Christ's eternal divine priesthood
• The New Testament canon was recognized very early, not invented by fourth-century councils
• The New Testament writings were recognized as Scripture within the apostolic era itself, so the canon was discovered, not invented by a later council
• The unmatched sublimity of Jesus' ethical teaching, which demonstrably transformed civilization, points to its heavenly source
• Because God is omnipotent and supremely virtuous, his self-humbling in the incarnation is the highest display of divine goodness, not something beneath him
• The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are the best-attested claims of any world religion, and if they occurred they vindicate his divine authority
• Jesus demonstrated His deity by claiming and exercising the divine prerogative to forgive sins.
• Jesus is the eternal, uncreated Word through whom all things were made, and since only Yahweh creates, Jesus is Yahweh
• As one divine person subsisting in two natures, the Son can call the Father 'my God,' be subordinate, and truly die in his assumed flesh, while remaining the ever-living God
• If the Son is uncreated, eternal, and distinct from the Father, then monotheism requires one God existing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
• Thomas confessed the risen Jesus as 'my Lord and my God,' and Jesus commended rather than corrected him
• "The God of Jesus" is God with respect to the human nature the Son assumed, not evidence that the Son is a creature
• The immortal God can truly die in the flesh: how he died does not change who died
• The blood and water from Jesus' side prove real death, and his flesh-and-bones appearances prove a genuine bodily resurrection
• "The Father is greater than I" (John 14:28) expresses the Son's voluntary self-humbling in the incarnation, not an inequality of divine nature
• "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9) shows the Son shares the very nature and attributes of the Father
• Scripture is self-authenticating: the Holy Spirit indwelling the believer bears witness to which writings are God's word
• Scripture itself calls God "a man of war" (Exodus 15:3), so "God is not a man" cannot bar the incarnation
• Through Adam's fall all humanity inherits a corrupted, death-bound nature—not Adam's personal guilt, but a real bondage to corruption from which we must be saved
• Because God is perfectly just, sin cannot simply be overlooked; its penalty must be paid, and on the cross Christ bore that penalty in our place
• The Gospel of John is an early, stylistically unified eyewitness composition, not a late composite stitched together by multiple redactors
• The divine plural 'Let us make man in our image' reveals a plurality of persons within the one God
• Christ fulfilled rather than abolished the Law, so the Bible contains no abrogation (naskh) of God's word
• The Shroud of Turin is plausibly Jesus' authentic burial cloth and functions as a physical trace of the resurrection
• The Yahweh whom Isaiah saw enthroned and worshipped by the seraphim was the pre-incarnate Son
• The Father Himself addresses the Son as 'God' (Hebrews 1:8), so the Son's deity is affirmed by the Father, not merely inferred
• The Son is to receive the identical worship and honour due the Father (John 5:23; Hebrews 1:6)
• 'I and the Father are one' (John 10:30) asserts one essence, since Jesus claims Yahweh's attributes and gives eternal life
• The 'name above every name' bestowed on the exalted Christ (Philippians 2:9-11) denotes supreme divine authority, and His essential name is Yahweh
• Hosea 11:9 ('I am God and not a man') affirms God's faithfulness, not the impossibility of the incarnation
• The Qur'an's own unique titles for Jesus—'Word of God' (Kalimatullah) and 'a Spirit from Him'—fit His deity better than a merely-human Christology
• The unique sinlessness of Jesus, attested even in Islamic sources, matches the Christian claim of a sinless Christ
• The burning bush shows God can localise His presence and speech without diminishment, so the incarnation is not philosophically impossible
• Biblical divine sonship is relational (ibn), not the carnal begetting (walad) the Qur'an rightly condemns, so the Qur'anic denial misfires
• Islamic theology's own 'complex unity'—transcendent Lord, active Spirit, and uncreated Word/Book—supplies a structural analogy for the Trinity
• The Qur'an's own language and the God-as-deceiver problem imply Jesus genuinely died on the cross
• Only the uniquely sinless Jesus can bear others' burdens, meeting the spotless-sacrifice requirement, so 'no bearer bears another's burden' does not defeat the atonement
• The promised Paraclete (Comforter, Spirit of Truth) is the Holy Spirit sent by the Father and the Son, not a future prophet such as Muhammad
• Scripture's own test (Deuteronomy 18:20-22 with Deuteronomy 13) shows a fulfilled prediction never authenticates a prophet who promotes other gods
• Jesus giving life to clay birds 'by God's permission' presupposes an intrinsic power to create, which belongs to God alone
• The Christian Trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the Qur'an condemns a triad of Allah, Jesus, and Mary that no Christian has ever believed
• The Incarnation is not a logical contradiction, because the one Person of the Son subsists in two complete natures with two intellects and two wills
• The deity of Christ and the Trinity predate the Council of Nicaea; the ante-Nicene fathers already confessed the Son as the eternal, consubstantial Word
• God's revelation reaches its climax and completion in the Son (Hebrews 1:1-2), leaving no room for a later prophet to supersede him
• Inspired Scripture can quote a non-canonical work without making that work Scripture
• The apostles' willingness to suffer and die for their eyewitness testimony shows they were not lying about the risen Christ
• All things are handed over to the Son, and only Father and Son know each other (Matthew 11:27)
• Jesus receives proskyneo, and worship belongs to God alone
• Only God can forgive sins, yet Jesus forgives them (Mark 2:7)
• Father and Son share one inseparable divine will (Luke 22:42; John 6:38)
• The Son does whatever the Father does (John 5:19-21)
• Giving life to whom he will is a uniquely divine function (John 5:21)
• Final judgment is God's prerogative, and Jesus judges humanity (John 5:22, 27-30)
• The Father is in Jesus and Jesus in the Father: mutual divine indwelling (John 10:38; 14:10-11)
• Jesus had glory with the Father before the world existed (John 17:5)
• Every creature gives the Lamb the same praise as God, then worships him (Revelation 5:14)
• Given his claims to deity, Jesus must be liar, lunatic, or Lord—not merely a good teacher
• Apparent discrepancies among the Gospels reflect accepted ancient biographical conventions, not error
• God answers the problem of evil not by aloof silence but by entering human suffering in the cross
• The promised 'seed of Abraham' is singular — Christ, not physical Israel
• The true Jew is inward and 'Jerusalem above' supersedes earthly Jerusalem
• Joshua is a divinely-arranged type of Jesus who brings God's people into rest
• Believers are 'children of God' by adoption, not literal offspring
• The Son is distinct from the Father, so the crucifixion is not 'God killing himself'
• The Psalm 22-23-24 sequence traces the crucifixion, death, and the King of glory's triumph
• Conditional immortality (annihilationism) as a Christian answer to the eternal-torment difficulty
• The Bread of Life discourse (John 6) teaches the real presence: one must eat Christ's true flesh and blood to have life
• Christ is one incarnate nature of the Word, united from full divinity and full humanity without mixture, confusion, or separation
• Because the Word truly became visible flesh, Christ can be depicted in an icon; to forbid it is implicitly to deny the Incarnation
• The Bible's own account of Ishmael cannot be reconciled with the Islamic story of Mecca, so it cannot be used to trace a lineage to Muhammad
• Is the Trinity Stated in the Bible or Inferred From It?
• The Holy Spirit is a divine person identified as Yahweh himself, already in the Old Testament, not a created angel such as Gabriel
• The baptism of Jesus displays the three persons of the Trinity simultaneously and distinctly.
• Only a triune God can be eternally personal, relational, and knowable; strict unitarian monotheism collapses into an impersonal, unknowable absolute
• The Trinity is genuinely monotheistic and violates no law of logic, because 'being' and 'person' are distinct categories
• The Trinity's near-silence in the Old Testament is explained by progressive revelation
• Pre-Christian Judaism already held a plurality within the one God, so John 1:1 restates accepted Jewish theology rather than inventing it
• Which Titles of Jesus Are Actually Unique to Him?
• "The First and the Last": A Shared Title Examined
• Who Is Speaking in Revelation 1:8?
• Anointed: A Title Shared by Priests, Kings and a Persian Emperor
• The Shared Semitic Root Behind Shalom and Islam
• In the 'you are gods' passage (John 10:34-36) Jesus argues from the lesser to the greater for his own divinity, rather than denying it
• Calling Jesus 'firstborn of all creation' and 'the beginning of the creation of God' asserts his supremacy and source-hood, not that he was created
• Isaiah prophesied that the promised child would himself be 'Mighty God,' foretelling God's coming in human form
• Psalm 2:7—'You are my Son, today I have begotten you'—is fulfilled in Jesus and declares his unique divine sonship
• Numbers 23:19 ("God is not a man, that he should lie") concerns God's character, not the impossibility of the Incarnation
• At Christ's return the dead in Christ rise first and living believers are 'caught up' (raptured) with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air
• Jesus is the true temple who climaxes and fulfils the Bible's single unfolding promise-plan, rather than abrogating it
• The Bible nowhere prophesies Muhammad; every text Muslims cite is about Jesus, Israel, or a historical event
• The name Yeshua in the Old Testament points to Jesus of Nazareth
• Psalm 83:18 says YHWH alone is Most High, so a Jesus who bears YHWH-titles must be YHWH
• The title 'Son of God' means Jesus possesses God's nature and is therefore God the Son
• YHWH is Israel's husband, and Jesus calls himself the bridegroom (Mark 2:19-20)
• John himself says Jesus was 'making himself equal with God' (John 5:18)
• Jesus is the only way to the Father; salvation is found in no other name
• Archaeological discovery independently confirms the persons, places, and events recorded in the Bible
• The Messiah is David's own divine Lord, seated at Yahweh's right hand (Psalm 110:1)
• Being God's chosen people means greater accountability, not exemption from judgment
• Jesus 'became a curse for us' is redemptive substitution, not dishonour
• The Bible's fuller narratives are the coherent original the Qur'an's retellings presuppose
• Jesus married and fathered children, and the texts recording it were left out of the canon.
• The words of institution and Paul's warning about 'the body and blood of the Lord' establish a real, not merely symbolic, presence
• The Shema's 'the LORD is one' uses echad, a compound oneness, leaving room for plurality within the one God
• Immanuel in Isaiah 7: Sign to Ahaz or Prophecy of Jesus?
• Psalm 110:1 and the Two "Lords"
• A Name Containing YHWH Does Not Make the Bearer YHWH
• Isaiah 9:6 and the Throne-Name of a King
• A Prophet Like Moses From Among Their Brothers
• Who Is the Paraclete?
• God's covenant promise to David of an everlasting throne is fulfilled in Jesus, the Savior raised up from David's offspring
• Isaiah 7:14 (with the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15) prophesied a virgin-born son called 'God with us,' fulfilled in Jesus
• The resurrection of Jesus fulfils Psalm 16:10, since—unlike David, who decayed—the Messiah's body did not see corruption
• In Zechariah, Yahweh himself declares his people will look on 'me whom they have pierced,' foretelling that God would take flesh and be wounded
• The Servant of Isaiah 42 is Jesus, whom Matthew explicitly names as its fulfilment
• David foretold the crucifixion a thousand years in advance—'they have pierced my hands and my feet' and 'they divide my garments and cast lots'—fulfilled precisely at Jesus' cross
• Isaiah 21 prophesies Babylon's fall to Medo-Persia and its rider is the Messiah on a donkey, leaving no room for a camel-riding Arabian prophet
• The biblical text exhibits deliberate, intricate literary and numerical design, evidencing an authorial hand beyond the human writers
• Isaiah 42:8 says God gives His glory to no other, yet Jesus has that glory
• Isaiah 53 predicts the resurrection: the servant dies and then lives again
• In Zechariah 2:10-11 YHWH says 'the LORD of hosts hath sent me', revealing persons within YHWH
• Jesus foretold that the Jerusalem temple would be so utterly destroyed that not one stone would be left on another, and it was fulfilled to the letter in AD 70
• The prophecy that Judas would betray Christ does not destroy Judas's free will, because God foretold the betrayal on the basis of his foreknowledge of Judas's free choice, not by decreeing it
• Jesus is the true Israel who recapitulates and succeeds where the nation failed
• The prophetic 'second fall' of Babylon is Revelation's symbolic Babylon, not any Islamic conquest
• Prophetic pattern: God raises pagan nations to punish, then judges those nations in turn
• Prophetic 'idols shattered' language means the gods were defeated, not that idolatry was physically eradicated
• Doubled words in Hebrew signal emphasis and certainty, not two separate events
• The Eucharist is prefigured across the Old Testament in the Passover lamb, the manna, and the bread of the Presence
• Isaiah 61's Spirit-anointed herald of good news is fulfilled in Jesus, who claimed it of himself
• Jesus' cry 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' invokes the whole of Psalm 22, which ends in vindication, not a confession of defeat
• The Comma Johanneum: A Verse That Left the Bible
• What the Oldest Complete Bible Does Not Contain
• The Longer Ending of Mark and the Woman Caught in Adultery
• No Autographs: What the Manuscript Record Actually Contains
• The Books the Bible Cites That No Longer Exist
• Only Son or Only God? The Variant at John 1:18
• The Bible's textual integrity is confirmed by the Qur'an itself, which affirms the Scriptures the Jews and Christians possessed in Muhammad's day and denies that God's words can be altered
• The canonical Gospels are not anonymous but are securely attributed to their traditional authors
• The Gospels are not truly anonymous: universal, early attribution and internal evidence establish their authorship, with Luke–Acts a model case
• The New Testament canon can be established on ordinary historical evidence without appeal to an infallible church, and the Roman appeal to such a church is self-defeatingly circular
• Because God's final revelation is a person, not a book, the Bible's documented textual variants do not threaten the faith
• The biblical text is demonstrably preserved and reliable on manuscript and historical grounds predating Islam, so the tahrif (corruption) charge fails
• Only God ascends to and descends from heaven, and Jesus did both (John 3:13)
• 'From among your brethren' in Deuteronomy means fellow Israelites, not Ishmaelites
• The earliest Fathers — Ignatius and Justin Martyr — attest the real presence from the apostolic era, so the realist reading is the original one
• The Conquest Texts and How Christian Scholars Read Them
• Deuteronomy 22:28-29 and the Question of Translation
• "Let the Women Keep Silent": Text, Context and Interpretation
• Can the Infancy Gospel of Thomas Be Used Against Christian Claims?
• Substitution Accounts of the Crucifixion: What the Sources Actually Show
• Paul and Jesus: One Message or Two?
• The God of the Bible ultimately condemns and dissolves slavery: in Christ there is neither slave nor free, and in the coming Kingdom none are held in bondage
• The seemingly misogynistic verses of Sirach express a father's protective love and a warning against seduction, not contempt for women
• Jesus decisively ends holy war for his followers, delegating vengeance to God
• God may justly command the taking of life, yet it is impossible for him to lie
• The resurrection is supported by 'minimal facts' that no one would have invented — an honorable burial by a member of the condemning Sanhedrin and an empty tomb first discovered by women — which the criterion of embarrassment shows to be historical