Jesus is God and We Must Worship Him: Apostolic Confession, Patristic Witness, and Interfaith Theological Discourse

By Dr. Maxwell Shimba, Shimba Theological Institute

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Abstract

The confession of Jesus Christ as God remains the central tenet of Christian faith and the cornerstone of Christian worship. This article re-examines the apostolic testimonies of Christ’s divinity, situates them within early patristic theology, and engages with both interfaith critique—especially Islamic tafsīr traditions denying Christ’s divinity—and contemporary theological debates. By analyzing texts such as John 20:28 and Titus 2:13, alongside patristic witnesses like Athanasius, Augustine, and Chrysostom, this paper asserts that the worship of Jesus as God is not merely a later theological construction, but rather the original faith of the apostles.

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1. Apostolic Confession of Christ’s Divinity

The apostle Thomas’s declaration to the risen Christ, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28, NIV), remains one of the clearest and most profound affirmations of the deity of Jesus in the New Testament. Unlike earlier christological titles such as Messiah or Son of Man, Thomas’s confession explicitly identifies Jesus with theos, thereby collapsing the distinction between the worship due to Yahweh and the reverence given to Christ.

Jesus’ response to Thomas—“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29)—universalizes this confession, extending it beyond the apostolic circle to all subsequent Christians. This provides not only a hermeneutical foundation for faith in unseen realities (cf. Heb. 11:1) but also establishes an ecclesiological standard: the Christian community exists precisely as those who confess Jesus as both Lord and God.

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2. Pauline Witness and Eschatological Expectation

Pauline theology confirms this confession. Titus 2:13 describes the believer’s eschatological hope as “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” Here, the Greek grammar (τοῦ μεγάλου θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ) conforms to the Granville Sharp rule, identifying one referent: Jesus Christ as both theos and sōtēr. Patristic exegesis—most notably by Chrysostom—recognized the unity of divine and salvific identity in this passage, countering later Arian claims that attempted to divide Christ’s status from God’s essence.

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3. Patristic Continuity: From Apostles to Nicene Orthodoxy

The patristic era consistently interpreted John 20:28 and Titus 2:13 as affirmations of Christ’s deity. Athanasius of Alexandria, in his Orations Against the Arians (Orat. II.22), argued that Thomas’s confession was not hyperbolic reverence but literal acknowledgment of Christ’s consubstantiality with the Father. Augustine, in De Trinitate (Book I), used Thomas’s confession to demonstrate that the church’s worship of Christ was already present in the apostolic witness, not a later development.

Furthermore, the Nicene Creed (325 CE), which declared Christ as “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,” formalized this apostolic and patristic consensus against Arian denials.

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4. Interfaith Engagement: The Qur’anic Rejection of Christ’s Divinity

Islamic theology explicitly rejects the worship of Jesus as God. The Qur’an asserts: “They have certainly disbelieved who say, ‘Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary’” (Qur’an 5:72). Classical tafsīr sources such as al-Tabari (Jāmi‘ al-bayān on 5:72) and Ibn Kathīr (Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-‘Aẓīm) interpret this as a repudiation of Christian confession, reducing it to shirk (associationism).

However, such Islamic critiques fail to account for the textual and historical rootedness of Christ’s worship within the apostolic era itself. The Christian response is not innovation, but continuity: from Thomas’s confession, through Paul’s letters, to Nicene orthodoxy. Whereas Islamic theology frames the divinity of Christ as a corruption of prophetic monotheism, Christian theology insists it is the fullest revelation of God’s self-disclosure.

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5. Conclusion: The Necessity of Worshiping Jesus as God

To deny Jesus’ divinity is to deny the very core of the apostolic kerygma. The earliest Christian witnesses worshiped Him, the fathers of the church defended His divinity, and the ecumenical councils formalized it as dogma. Interfaith discourse must therefore grapple not with a later theological accretion, but with the earliest Christian experience of Christ as God incarnate. The question is not whether Christians may worship Jesus, but whether they can be Christians at all without doing so.

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References

• Primary Sources

  • Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV).

  • Athanasius of Alexandria, Orations Against the Arians.

  • Augustine, De Trinitate.

  • John Chrysostom, Homilies on Titus.

  • The Nicene Creed (325 CE).

• Islamic Sources

  • Al-Tabari, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān.

  • Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-‘Aẓīm.

• Secondary Sources

  • Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.

  • Hurtado, Larry W. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.

  • Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978.