Reflecting on the names and titles for Jesus, we have considered already the biblical teaching that Jesus, the Christ, the Anointed one, is confessed as the Lord. We reflected on the fact that the title the Lord was actually the divine name for Elohim, for the Most High God, in the Old Covenant. It was what was always said in synagogue and in prayer and in worship, when addressing God. We saw that God was called the Most High, until the Mosaic time, according to Scripture, and then in the encounter that Moses had with God in the burning bush, God gives Moses his name as ego eimi in Greek, Yahweh in [Hebrew]I AM or I AM Who I AM or I Will Be Who I Will Be or I Will Do What I Will Do or I Will Cause To Be What I Will Cause To Be.In a sense, even that name, Yahweh, which was pronounced only once a year, in the high place, by the high priestthat name is itself a kind of mysterious, we might say even mystical name. It is almost a non-name. There is the I AM, the Existing One, the Acting One, and that expression, I, ego in Greek, shows that God is a personal God, an acting God, a loving Goda God who speaks, a God who acts.In the Bible, this acting and speaking and doing, this was the great proof of the existence of God. The Hebrews did not have much of a metaphysical mentality. They didnt think in terms of being and nouns; they thought in terms of action and power, and then they came to the conclusion and they confessed that the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Most High God, the God of Moses, the God who reveals His name as I AMI AM who I AM, Yahwehthat this is the only one whos living. Hes the only one whos acting. Hes the one whos speaking. He is the one whos doing everything in a divine manner, and the confession is made that, in fact, he is God, and he is the only God; there is no other God beside him.Thisll be the first commandment of the Ten Commandments: I am the LordYahwehyour God. You will have no other God beside me, Yahweh, and all the other gods are not gods. The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and then ultimately, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, is the God of gods, and even the Lord of lords. Jesus, himself, will be called, in the Book of Revelation, the Lord of lords, and the King of kings, so God is also the only king. In the old covenant, any king who really rules with power and authority rules in the name of God. Hes an instrument of God. Hes a christ of God, an anointed of God.That God is always the Lord. We saw already that the term the LordAdonai in Hebrew, Kyrios in Greek, which means I AMis the divine name. And so we saw that, in applying that name to Jesus, its to apply to him divinity. It is to sayto use nounsthat he really is God. He is God. He is divine. He is Lord over all creation. He is the I AM, even.In St. Johns Gospel, that expression, ego eimi, I AM, which is the divine name, the name of God himself, Jesus applies to himself in that Gospel. He says, When you have lifted me upwhen I am lifted upyou will knowego eimithat I am. He said, Unless you believehoti ego eimithat I am, you will die in your sins. He says, Before Abraham was, before Abraham came to beego eimi, I am.We Christians believe that calling Jesus Adonai or Kyrios, calling him the I AM, is to say that he is God, that he is divine, that what he is is God. Of course, we shall see, and reflect, that what he is is also human. He is also a man. He is a man who says that he is divine, and acts in a divine manner.Here is another important point, that in the Bible, in Holy Scripture, and even we can say in the ancient philosophical world, a being was identified for what it was through its action. Even Aristotle taught that. He had a saying, agere sequitur esse or operare sequitur esse, which means, what a being is, so he acts, so it acts, or action follows being or operation proceeds from being.When you observe any realityand this would be very biblical and very Hellenistic, toowhen you observe the activity of any being, then you can name it for what it actually is. In the Bible, this is what you find in Genesis, when Adam is told to name the animals. He sees how they behave; he sees how they act. Then he says what they are, and he names them. There is a sense in which activity is disclosing being. You know what something is by seeing how it acts.The Christian Church and the holy Fathers would certainly come to their conclusion that Jesus Christ is divine, that he is God, because of the way he acts: he acts like God. He does stuff that only God can do. He says things that only God can say. He claims prerogatives that only belong to God. In other words, he goes around talking and acting like God, so much so that in the Scripture you have this question often asked, What manner of man is this? What kind of a man is this, who does these things?In the synoptic GospelsMatthew, Mark, Lukethe people will say, How can this man say your sins are forgiven? How does this man walk on the water? What manner of man is this that the winds are subject to him? Then you have this greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon, greater than the prophets. What is that greater one? The Christians would claim that it became clear to the people, it became clear to the believers, certainly [to] the apostles according to the New Testament, only after Jesus was crucified, raised, and glorified and was enthroned on the very same throne of God his Father himself, who was the Lord to whom God said, The Lord God said to my Lord, Sit on my right hand. Sit on this very throne with me, the Son of Manwell speak about that title laterwho comes riding on the clouds with judgment over the whole of creation, the Lord and the judge of the living and the dead. Who has power over living and dead except God? When Jesus raises the deadand he does it by his own name, by his own power, he just does it, I say to you, Arise, your sins are forgiventhen hes acting like God.Absolutely, certainly, it is the Christian convictionthe conviction of ancient, orthodox, classical Christianity, following the Holy Scriptures, and following the way the New Testament writings interpret the Old Testament writingsit is certainly the teaching that Jesus is God. He is divine. He is theos.If you ask, What is he? the answer would be theos, and the answer would also be, as we shall see, anthropos. He is God, and he is man. Or to put it in adjectival form: he is divine, and he is human. He is what the one God is who is his Father, and he is what we all are, beginning with his mother, Mary. He is divine from his Father, human from his mother. He is really God, he is really man, and thats our confession of faith. That is Eastern Orthodox Christianity. That is classical Christianity. Thats the way catholic, orthodox, ancient Christians interpret the Bible, and that is what is said in the witness of the New Testament writingsthe writings of St. Paul, the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the New Testament writings, generally. This is the claim, which will then be explicated, explained, defended through Christian history, certainly, by the ecumenical councils, especially Nicaea, then the second Nicaeathen the first Constantinople, ratherthen Ephesus, and Chalcedon. The seven councils will insist that Jesus is divine, with the same divinity as God his Father, and human, with the same humanity that we all share.A defense of Jesus divinity is also madeand we saw this alreadyin the confession that he is the Son of God, not a son of God, not a metaphorical son of God, not a really great man that can be called, in some manner of speaking, a son of God, but literally, Gods Son. Thats a Christian confession, that Jesus of Nazareth is literally Gods Son. God is literally his Fathermetaphysically, ontologically, objectively. Not metaphorically, not symbolically, not in a manner of speaking, not in some type of poetic manner, but literally.Therefore, if, as the holy Fathers will argueAthanasius, Gregory, Basil, all of themthey will argue and say if Jesus is really Gods Son literally, if God is literally his Father when he is born of Mary, if hes begotten of God and hes monogenes, hes only begotten, then he must be what God is, [what] the Father is. He must be exactly what God the Father is. He cant be any different. He has to be divine with the very same divinity, otherwise hes not really Gods Son. Hes a creature or hes some other kind of a being.The Fathers would argue: when you have a being that gives birth, that generatesthat would be the noun in Greekthat generates from its own being, not creating out of nothing, but generating out of its own being, sort of reproducing its own self, according to its own being, then that being that is produced, that is generated, that comes forth fromand these are biblical termsmust be exactly what the generator is. In other words, a son has to be what a father is. What comes forth from anothers being has to be of the same beinghomoousios: thats the word from the Nicene Creed, Council of Nicaea: ousia, the same naturebeing, as the one who bears it, the one who produces it.The holy Fathers are going to argue this very same way about the Holy Spirit. Nowhere in the Bible is the Holy Spirit called God, theosnowhere. However, in the Book of Acts, when the Holy Spirit is blasphemed, when Ananias and Sapphira lie about their money, they lied to the Holy Spirit, then it says in Scripture, they lied to God. If you lie to the Spirit of God, you lie to God.The New Testament also says if you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, this can never be forgiven you. St. Basil the Great has a whole treatise on the Holy Spirit. Athanasius the Great does, too, Athanasius called Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit. I recommend that you read them, if youre interested in this. St. Basil the Great has a whole treatise: On the Holy Spirit. I believe its published in English by St. Vladimirs Seminary Press. Also, you have the theological orations of Gregory the Theologian, where he has one whole homily, of the five theological orations, on the Holy Spirit.The Holy Spirit is considered to be God, theosdivine, reallydivine with exactly the same divinity as the one God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, exactly the same divinity as the Son of God, who is the Lord Jesus Christ, because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. The Son is the Son of God, and the Spirit is the Spirit of God. So if the Spirit is the Spirit of God, the breath of God, the life of God, the one breathed forth from God, the one who proceeds from the Father, as it says in St. Johns Gospel, then the Holy Spirit must be God, too.Thats clear enough! It is absolutely clear enough that Jesus Christ is divine, and the Holy Spirit is divine, and they are divine with the same divinity as the one God and Father. But what we want to reflect on now is the use of the term theosGod; or ho theosdefinite articlethe God.In the Bible, the Godin Hebrew Elohim which [is] very interesting, by the way: its plural. The word that we translate into Greek and Latin and English and all other languages as God in the original Hebrew language is actually a plural word: Elohim. It means the Most High Ones.I wouldnt push this too much, but I think a case can be made that in the pedagogy of the Old Testament, you have a kind of unfolding of an understanding of God. I dont know if its true or notI wouldnt necessarily defend this, myself; I dont know enough about itbut there are some folks who say that the Old Testament writings in their earliest writings are not so much monotheistic as they are henotheistic. In other words, theres one God whos a real God, and he is the God over all the other gods, but theres a lot of other gods, too, who are really not gods. But then what develops is that the other gods are not gods at all, to such an extent that you cannot say that Yahweh is the top God, or the leading God, or the first among the gods, or the greatest of gods. Sometimes the Old Testament speaks that way. It says, Among the gods, there is no one like you. In fact, that expression is even used in one of the vesper prayers in the Orthodox Church to this day: Among all the gods, thou art the greatest. Nevertheless, it came clearly to be the teaching already in the Old Testament Scriptures that these other gods are no gods at all. Theyre demons or theyre powers or theyre figments of peoples imagination or whatever, but theyre not God. Theyre not God at all, in any way whatsoever.Then, of course, you have the idols and the fertility gods, Ashtaroth, Baalim, and so on, who are no gods at all; theyre just natural powers of some sort of elemental powers in the universe that people thought were gods, but are not divine at all. By the time you get to the end of the Old Testament, and certainly by the time you get to the Gospels and the New Testament, there is only one God, and thats the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and thats clearly the God of Moses, because when you read Moses in the Bible, the whole point of Moses is that there is one God, and one God alone, and he is Yahweh. The Lord is God alone, the I AM, and there is no other God, and you only worship him, and all the rest are idols. You make no graven images, and you have no other gods before me. I AM the Lord, your God. You have the Shema Israel in Deuteronomy: Hear, O Israel, the Lord God; he is one: [...] Adonai Eloheinu, and then, The Lord God is echad: he is one. One God, and one only God, the only living God.So totally the Christians are using these terms. I dont like the term myself: monotheistic. I think it sometimes gives a very wrong impression of what that means. But in any case, the Most High Godthe Elohim of the Old Testament, the ho theos of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the ho theos of the New Testamentthat one God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose Son he is. That one God is the God who breathes forth his life-creating Spirit, whose Spirit the Holy Spirit is.Theres the one God, theres the Son of God, theres the Spirit of God. There is one divinity, or, in [the] Greek language, one theotis. You see in Latin one divinitas; there is one deus in Latin, one God, but the divinitas, the divinity, is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. In Greek, there is one theos, that is, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there are three who are divine, and that divinity would be called theotis.If youre interested, any hearers out there, about [the] Slavonic language, there would be one bog, one God, and then the bozhestvo, the divinity, or the Godhead, would be the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.In Eastern Orthodox Liturgy, by the way, it is very important to note we dont use the expression triune theos. We dont have the expression triune God. We have the expression triune or tri-hypostatic divinityGodhead. We have a triune theotis, or bozhestvo in Slavonic, divinity in English, Godhead in English. But there is this one God.What we want to think about now, though, and this is our specific topic for right now, we said already that ho theos or theos you cant find anywhere in the New Testament Scriptures where this would be applied to the Holy Spirit. St. Basil, St. AthanasiusI mentioned their writingsthey never called the Holy Spirit God. They just dont.Gregory the Theologian was the first one to say, The Holy Spirit is theos. There, Ive said it, he said. He even accused Basil the Great of being a little bit of a chicken or a coward for not coming right out and saying that the Holy Spirit is God, but Basil defended himself by saying, Were having enough trouble with the Son of God, to defend that he is theos, and that he is divine; well work on the Holy Spirit later. Im just kidding a little bit, but it seems that is what was going on there.But what about Jesus? Is he called theos? Is he called ho theos, ever, anywhere? Can you really say, Jesus is God, and have a scriptural reference to that particular sentence? This is our question for today. To repeat: certainly, without a doubt, the New Testamental Scriptures teach, proclaim, defend, herald the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is divine, and he is divine and he is Gods Son, and he is divine with the same divinity as God the Father. But is the word ho theos ever referred to him?Before we answer that, we should say one more thing, and that is: it seems pretty clearin fact, to me it seems absolutely clearthat in the New Testament writing, the Godho theos, the Elohim of the Old Testamentis God the Father, and that the one, true, and living God is the Father of Jesus Christ. That, I believe, is the biblical way, the way that the Bible speaks.I think theres no doubt, if you read the Bible the way its written, if you read the New Testament the way its written, 99.9% of the time, when the Bible is speaking about God, they mean the God who is the Father of Jesus Christ, the God whose Logos Jesus Christ is, the God whose Word is Jesus Christ, the God whose personal power is Jesus Christ, the God whose wisdom is Jesus Christ, the God who has generated his Son from all eternity, begot him from all eternity, who is born of the Theotokos Virgin Mary, without a human father, this Son of God is divine. He is divine. Thats very clear.But its the Father of this Jesus, who, in the New Testament writings, is almost always simply called God. He is the God. He is the one God. When you read the New Testament, theos and ho theos almost all the time means God the Father. Its very clear that that God, the Father of Jesus, is the one God.Here I will saywith the risk of being questioned, if not attacked, but I will say it anyway, as I have to try to speak the truth in love as I understand itI think that you could say, according to the Holy Scriptures, and according to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, that is the baptismal creed for Orthodox Christians until today (without the filioque, of course, in its Eastern Orthodox, pure form, not with the change made in the West) and in the Divine Liturgies, in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom that the Orthodox serve every Sunday, and in the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great that the Eastern Orthodox serve ten times a yearthat the one God is not the Holy Trinity.Okay, Ive got to now explain this. The one God is the Father of Jesus Christ. Hes the one God who begets the Son and from whom the Holy Spirit proceedsfrom the Fatherand rests in the Son. When we say the Creed, we say, I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. Then the Creed calls him Light from Light, true God from true GodSon from the Father, thats what it meansbegotten of the Father before all ages.Its clear that in the Creed, when we say, I believe in one God, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, and the one Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, are divine, with exactly the same divinity as the Father. But using the term ho theosthe GodI think that in the Scripture and in the Creed, when you use the term ho theosGod, as a kind of a name, as a kind of a proper name, when its not simply a word to designate what a being isbecause you can use the term god just to designate what a being isbut when its used as a name, when you pray, O God, in the Bible, and in the Creed, that means, virtually all the time, the Father of Jesus: God the Father.The same thing is true in the Divine Liturgies that I just mentioned. If you look at the Eucharistic prayer, it will say, It is meet and right to worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in essence, and undivided, meaning that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit constitute the Trinity, who is one in essencenamely, divinity, identical divinity, and has no division in it whatsoever. It is the one God. There are not three gods. There is one God: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.Then when you get to the Eucharistic prayer, it says, It is meet and right; it is fitting and proper. We say, Let us lift up our hearts, let us give thanks to the Lord; it is meet and right, and then the prayer of the priest continues, It is meet and right to bless thee, to worship thee, to praise thee, to give thanks to thee, for you alone are God, ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible.Then it says, ever-existing, always the same, and then it says, thou and thine only begotten Son and thy Holy Spirit, which means that the Anaphora, the Eucharistic prayer, is directed to God the Father. Thou art holy, and all-holy, itll say. Thou and thine only begotten Son and thy Holy Spirit. It is meet and right to give thee thanks, praise, honor, glory, and dominion: to thee, O God, and to thine only begotten Son and to thy Holy Spirit. The one God in that Eucharistic prayer is God the Father. He is the holy, holy, holy God. We sing, Holy, holy, holy, and then sing, Holy art thou and all-holy, thou and thine only begotten Son and thy Holy Spirit.I will give a meditation at some point in this series on the term holyhagios, which is one of the titles of Jesus: the Holy One. We will get to that in the future. But now what we want to see is that the term ho theos in the Bible, almost all the time, in the letters of Paul, in the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, [the] synoptic Gospels, [but] virtually almost always in St. Johns Gospel, thats where you are going to have the exception, in the theological Gospel; well get to that right nowbut in the Book of Acts, certainly in the Book of Acts and in the other epistles in the New Testament and in the Book of Revelation. For example, in the Book of Revelation, the one who sits upon the throne is the Father of the Lamb, and the Lamb is his Son, and Revelation calls Jesus the Lamb 28 times.It is interesting that the one God is called the Father of the Lamb, but Jesus, in the Book of Revelation, is also called the Son of God, but there is no direct vocative to Jesus, or direct calling of Jesus in the Apocalypse God. You dont find it. But all the stuff thats said about God is said about the Lamb who was dead and is alive again. For example, He will be called Lord of lords, he will be called King of kings. He will also be called the one who was, who is, and who is coming. He also will be called the Alpha and the Omega. Well think about all these things. And only God is these things; only the Father is all these things! Nevertheless, the term theos, ho theos is not applied to the Son of God in the Scripture, certainly not in the letters of St. Paul. Were going to see there are a couple places wheredepending on how the grammar works, it might be the case, we wont talk about that right nowbut generally speaking, weve got to say the truth; the truth is that ho theos in the Bible is the Father of Jesus.The one God is Christs Father. The one God is the one who begets the Son and breathes forth the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father. Thats the one God. Thats how the term ho theos, generally speaking, is used in the Bible generally, and in the New Testament in particular.Having said that, however, we now have to say that there are a few passages where the term theos is applied to Jesus, where the word God, the Hebrew Elohim, the Greek theos, is directly, specifically applied to Jesus. There are three times in St. Johns Gospel where we have this. Dont forget, in St. Johns Gospel you have the I AM. The I AM is there all the time in St. John, and it refers to Jesus. Thats the divine name; thats the Yahweh name. Thats God.But the term ho theos or theos, you find it three times. You find it twice in the prologue, once or twiceonce for sure, and a second time is debated. Where do you find it? You find it in the first and second verses of the Gospel according to St. John which begins like this: In the beginning. And dont forget, the Bible begins that way: In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. Well, the Gospel of St. John begins, In the beginningEn arche en ho logosIn the beginning was the Logosthe Word.In Hebrew that would be the Devar Yahweh. In the Bible, the Devar Yahweh, the Word of the Lord, the Word of God, is divine. Theres no doubt about it. The Devar is divine. It is always with God, it is the way God acts, and Christians believe that it is that Word that has become flesh as Jesus of Nazareth.But lets stick now with the St. John Gospel written in Greek. En arche en ho logosIn the beginning is the Wordkai ho logos en pros ton theonand the Word wasand then pros ton theon means with God or toward God or about God. Its difficult to translate there; the King James says with God. Then it says, kai theos en ho logos. So its pros ton theon kai theos. It is with God, and Godjust God, but theres no definite articlekai theos en ho logosand God was the Word. It says God himself was the Word. You can twist that around and say, en ho logos en theosthe Word was God. The point here is, of course, that the word God is used. Theos is used.Then is says, This same onehoutoswas in the beginningen arche pros ton theon. So that this Logos who is theos, in the beginning was pros ton theon again, the same exact expression you have in the second verse as in the first verse. In the beginning, with God, or toward God, or around God.Then St. John continues: All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be that came to be. In him was life; the life was the light of men. The light was shining in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it.Then you finally get to kai ho logos sarx egenetoand the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Then it says, We beheld his glory, the glory as of, and then it calls him the only begotten of the Father. He is the monogenous para patros, the glory as of the only one born of the Father, the unique Son of the Father.Then this prologue of the Gospel [of] John continues, and it says that we beheld this Word made flesh. We saw him, it says. Then, you get to the 18th verse, where it says that this one was filled with grace and truth, and of his fullness we also have received grace upon grace, this Jesus Christ, this only begotten Son; you have this sentence [John 1:18]: No human being, no anthropos, no person, has ever seen God at any timeactually in Greek it simply says no onehoudeis eoraken popote theonno one has seen God at any time.Then it says, monogenes, and then, in the New Testament RSV and King James, you have a difference, because in the RSV and other versions it says, the only begotten Son, and then it says, ho onthe being, thats actually the divine name: monogenes theos ho on. Then it says, es ton kolpon tou patroswho is in the bosom, or the womb, or the interiors, of the Father. He has declared God; he has made God known; he has exegeted God. What is interesting here is that, in our Scriptures that we read, it says, the only begotten Sonthe ho on, the existing onein the bosom of the Father has made the Father known. Nobody saw God, but he has made him known. In St. Johns Gospel, Jesus will later say, He who sees me sees the Father. How can you say, Show me the Father? If youve seen me, youve seen the Father. If youve heard me, youve heard the Father. If youve touched me, youve touched the Father, because the Father is in me, and I am in the Father. I AM the I AM, in St. Johns Gospel. But whats interesting here is that in some ancient versions of the Scripture, and sometimes this is even translated this way in the original Greek text, it doesnt say monogenes huiosthe only begotten Son. Thats what the English translation says: the only begotten Son, but in Greek it says, monogenes theosthe only begotten God, the ho on. Thats the divine name given to Moses, the only begotten theos ho on is ton kolpon tu para patros: being in the bosom of the Father, he has made the Father known.Some of the Church Fathers probably had a version of the New Testament that did not say the only begotten Son, but said the only begotten God. Lets say that again, to try to be clear. One version says, only begotten Sonho on, the one who isin the bosom of the Father. The other text says, monogenes theosonly begotten God, ho on, the existing onewho is in the bosom of the Father.Some texts say, huios: son. Some texts say, theos: God. If we would say that this variant Which one is the variant? Which one is the original? Some can argue and say it seems more likely, if you do a literary criticism of the prologue, that theos should be the proper reading, because it begins with, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was theos. Then in the middle it says, the Word because flesh, and then in the end, if you read it in what is called chiastic structure, where you have the beginning, the high point is in the middlethe Word became fleshand then you have a recapitulation at the end, an inclusio poetica, they call it, you would then be catching back the line from the beginning of the prologue. So when you get to the 18th verse, it seems more likely that the proper reading is only begotten God, because the first verse says God: and the Word was God. Then, the Word became flesh, the only begotten Son, then this only begotten Son is the only begotten God, as Nicaea will say, God from God, who has made God the Father known.So what can we conclude here? We can conclude here a very simple thing. The one God is still the Father of the Logos, the one whose Logos he is. The one God is still the Father of the only begotten Son, the pater, because he is the only begotten of the Father, he is the monogenes of God the Father, the only begotten Son of the Father, para patros, the only begotten from a father, from the Father. So, the Father is the one God.Nevertheless, hes called theos here. Hes called theos in the first verse, and hes called theos in the variant reading in the 18th verse. Here you have two places where the word theos or God is clearly applied to the Son and not to the Father. Its applied to the Logos, to the Word who is the Son, the huios, because in the prologue, the Logos of the Father, of God, and the monogenes, the huios, the only begotten Son of God, is the same being; its the same person, its the same one. Thats exactly what this prologue is saying, and twice it calls him theos.Some scholars will say, Well, you know, both in the first verse and in the 18th verse, theres no definite article. It says that the ho logos is theos; it doesnt say ho theos, which led some scholars to think you can call the Logos, the Word, who is the huios, the Son, theos, which is God, but you really cant call him the God, ho theos, because in both cases here in the prologue, there is no definite article.So the claim would be, Yes, hes God, but he is not the God, because the God is his Father, and he is God because he is Gods Son. And that would be a very classical way of patristic theology to explain things. Thats how we would understand it.However, we have one more text that is critical. Thats the text in the 20th chapter of St. John, the 20th chapter, which if you consider the 21st chapter as being a later addition, in order to have the re-acceptance of the apostle Peter among the apostles, some folks think that, actually, the original St. Johns Gospel ended at the end of the 20th chapter, with the words, And these things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of Godboth with articlesand that believing, you may have life in his namein the name of the only begotten Son of God, who is the Christ. It seems like it ends. Whether it does or whether it doesnt, whether the other chapter is a little later addition, or something that needed to be put there, its certainly extremely early, and its always printed with the text from very early, but you can say it looks like an addition there, and it probably is.But if you read the whole Gospel of St. John, chiasticallywhich means that the beginning of the Gospel has to be recapitulated at the end of the Gospeland then you have to determine what is the center of the Gospel and if you try to read it that way, in determining the center, the climactic centerwhich in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, would be the confession of Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and then he transfigures on the mountain and God the Father says, This is my SonI would say, personally, and theres no dogma here, just my opinion, that the center of St. Johns Gospel, read chiastically, would be the confession that before Abraham was I AM, the clear divinity of Jesus.And then it would be Jesus, two chapters laterthat would be the central chapters 8-11where he goes and raises Lazarus from the dead. He says, I am the resurrection and the life; [he] shows that he has the full power of God by raising Lazarus in his own name, and thereby getting himself crucified, because they put him to death because he raised up Lazarus.But you also have in that 11th chapter of St. Johns Gospel, the parallel to the confession of Peter in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, its Peter who says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Mark and Luke say, You are the Christ. Matthew says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.In the 11th chapter of St. Johns Gospel, at the narrative of the raising of Lazarus, where you have Jesus saying, in [the] eighth chapter, Before Abraham was I AM, in the 13th chapter, All these things are happening, so when they happen you may believe that I AMego eimi. But in the 11th chapter, it is Martha who confesses virtually the same thing that Peter confesses in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, when theyre standing at the tomb of Lazarus, and theyre saying to Jesus, If you had been here, our brother would not have died, and Jesus says, Ego eimiI AMhe anastasis kai he zoethe resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will never die. If you believe in me you live forever.Then he says to Martha, Do you believe this? She says to him, Yes, Lordshe calls him Kyrie: Yes, Lord. Thats the divine nameI have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of the God, the one who is coming into the world. Thats about the highest confession you can have of Jesus: You are the Christ, the Son of God, who should come into the world. She says in Greek, I believehoti si ei ho christosthat you are the Christho huios tou theouthe Son of the Godho eis ton kosmon erchomenosthe one who is coming into the world.In St. Johns Gospel, if you read it this way, you have this central point: the Jesus, the I AM, confessed as the I AM, confessed as the Christ, confessed as Son of God, and showing his divinity by raising up a stinking four-day-dead corpse.When you get to the end of the Gospel, Jesus appears, risen from the dead. He shows himself to the apostles. Thomas is not there. Thomas says unless he sees him, he will never believe. Then you have what I believe is the poetic inclusion of the entire Gospel that recapitulates the prologue, which means, the prologue says, In the beginning was the Logos, the Logos was pros ton theonwas with Godand the Logos was theosthe Logos was God.Then it says also in the prologue, in the 18th verse, that no one has seen God at any time, but the only begotten theos, the only begotten Godin the other variant reading, the only begotten Son of Godhas made him known. So you have theos-theos twice in the prologue.Now here you are at the very end of the 20th chapter of St. Johns Gospel and you have Thomas seeing the risen Christ. He enters the room; the doors being shut. He tells Thomas, Reach here your finger, and behold my hands, reach here your hand, thrust it in my side. Dont be faithless, be faithful. Dont be unbelieving, be believing.Then you have this sentence, which is incredibly important for our topic today. You have the only place in the entire New Testament when someone addresses Jesus as God, with a definite article, and calls him Lord God, Adonai Eloheinu, which is the the name for God in the Old Testamentthe Lord God, Yahweh God. When Jesus tells Thomas to do this, the 28th verse of the 20th chapter [John 20:28] says, And Thomas answered and said to him, My Lord and my God. Thats how he addresses him.This is really important in Greek, because it says this: Thomas answered and said to himeipen aftosaid to himho kyrios mou kai ho theos mou. If you translate this literally, it says, Thomas says to him, The Lord of me, and the God of me. Definite articles in both instances: Ho kyrios mou kai ho theos mou. The Lord, the God; the Lord God, of me. There you have that address to Jesus as God.If we just had this sentence, and it was canonized by the Church from the beginning, you can say that certainly Eastern Orthodox Christiansclassical, catholic, believing Christians through the agesconfess Jesus as God: the God, the God with the God who is his Father. So he is called theos. He is called God. Thats a title for Jesus in the New Testament, certainly in the writing of St. John.Lets just think for a couple more seconds here about Paul. St. Paul generally speaks about the God being the Father of Jesus, and Jesus being the Lord, and Jesus being the savior. The Lord and the savior.You find the same kind of expression in the second letter attributed to the Apostle Peter. You have: The God of us and the savior of us, our Lord Jesus Christ. In Titus, the second chapter, you have: The great God and our savior, Jesus Christ. In Timothy, you have a command of: God, our saviorthe savior of usand Christ Jesus, the hope of us.Sometimes these texts are translated, and theyre even used liturgically as, Our great God and savior, Jesus Christ. Or, Our great God and our savior, Jesus Christ, our hope. Like, at the end of vespers and matins we say, Glory to thee, O Christ, our God and our hope. Some people might think that is simply a quotation of I Timothy 1: Our God, our savior and our hope. Our great God, even. Glory to thee, O Christ, our God. We already mentioned how at the dismissal we use the divine participle when we say, Christ, our God, the existing. But again, we say, Christ, our God.The expression, Christ, our God, or, Christ, the God of us, is used in Christian Liturgy, certainly Eastern Orthodox Christian Liturgy, very often. For example, in the Great Litany, we say, Let us commend ourselves and each other and all our life to Christ, our God. At the end of the service we say, Glory to thee, O Christ, our God and our hope. So we do use that expression of Thomas; we pray it: O, you are our Lord, and you are our God. You are certainly the Lord.But even when we call Jesus the Lord, we remember that we also call God the Lord, and we also remember that the name for the Most High God, who is the Father of Jesus, in the Bible, is the Lord. So the [terms] the Lord and God are applied in Scripture both to God the Father and to the Son. So the Father is Lord; the Father is God. The Son is Lord; the Son is God. The Father is I AM; the Son is also: Before Abraham was, I AM. So all these names are applied to Jesus the Son in exactly the same way they are applied to God.If you want to be a little more technical, though, we can say that in Titus, and in II Peter, and in Timothy, that you have a grammatical issue, because it could as easily be translated, To our great Godcommaand our savior Jesus Christ. Or, To the God of uscommaand to the savior of us, our Lord Jesus Christ. Or, a command of God, the savior of us, and of Jesus Christ, our hope. So it doesnt necessarily mean that the great God and savior, and our great God and savior, Jesus Christ, means one and the same person, namely Jesus. It could be our great God, meaning God the Father, and our savior, Jesus Christ.Perhaps we can simply say that it can be translated either way, and it doesnt really matter that much, because it is a very clear teaching of the New Testamentby what Jesus says, and what Jesus does, and how he calls himself, and what he speaks about himself, and how the people called him, and how he related to God the Father, in what is written about him by the evangelists and the apostlesthat he is really divine. So theres absolutely nothing wrong with saying that Jesus is God.Here we want to be careful, though, because Jesus is not God the Father. Weve got to always make that distinction, and we have to also make the point strongly that the one God is not the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all together somehow. Theres not one God who is the Father, who is the Son, and who is the Holy Spirit, so that there would be a uni-personal God, so God would be only one hypostasis and not three. Theres one divine nature, but there are three hypostases, that is the technical theology. Namely, theres one divinity, but there are three who are divine: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And they are prayed to in the Divine Liturgy of Chrysostom and Basil, as three thous: thou and thine only begotten Son and thy Holy Spirit.Weve got to be really careful with the language. Basically, the doctrine is important; what the language signifies is important. There is the one God and Father, there is the Lord Jesus Christ, there is the Holy Spirit. The Son and the Spirit are divine with the same divinity as the Father. The Godhead is a Trinity of three divine persons. The Son and the Spirit are divine with exactly the divinity of the one God and Father. But the expression, the one God, which is often connected with the Fatherthe one God and Father, or God the Fatherthat is probably as a name, as a proper name, fitting only for the Father.And you have to be real careful, if people say, Do you believe Jesus is God? We have to say, Yes, we do, but hes not God the Father. There is the God the Father, and the Son of God is divine also. Therefore, he may be called theos, and he is called theos in the Holy Scripture.There are two other places where we could mention this, and we should before we conclude today. One of them is in the letter to the Hebrews where theres a quotation of the Old Testament that is referred by the author of the letter to the Hebrewsattributed to St. Paul, of course, by Traditionwhere, speaking about the Son, it calls him God. It calls him God. Its, again, a translation issue, but it seems pretty clear thats what it is.When the letter to the Hebrews, in the first chapter, is insisting that the Son of God is not an angel, that the Son of God is not a creature, that the son of God is ever-existing with God the Father, that the Son is the one by whom all things came to be and were created, you have a reference there, by the author, to prove it, in the eighth verse of the first chapter [Hebrews 1:8]. Its a quotation of the psalm where it says, But unto the Son, heGod the Fathersayeth, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thy throne, O Godit says of the Sonis forever.Some texts would translate that not as, Thy throne, O God, but Thy divine throne is a throne forever, calling the throne divine in an adjectival way. You have, in the RSV, the Revised Standard Version, But of the Son, he says, it is written in the Scripture, God says, Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee. I will be to him a Father, he shall be to me a Son, and it says, To what angel has he ever said, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever?So God calls him God here. But then the text continues: Therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee. It says, Thy throne, O God, is forever, and God, thy Godmeaning God the Fatherhas anointed thee. But still, he calls the Son God. Here, the RSV has a note, and it says that it might be translated: God is thy throne forever and ever. Therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee. Or, thy divine throne. But here the first translation is, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the psalm that is quoted, that is what is being said there: Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.So here you have a text in the New Testament, clearly referring to the Son of God, to Jesus, and its saying that his throne is forever. However anybody wants to interpret this text, one thing is very, very clear. The entire New Testament says that Jesus sits on the very same throne as God the Father, and that throne is eternal, and it is divine, and it is Gods throne, and Jesus doesnt sit on another throne, he sits on the same throne. He is co-enthroned. He sits at the Fathers right hand, which means he has the same glory, dominion, honor, and majesty that God has forever. That really shows that he is truly divine. But it would be very interesting if, indeed, the proper reading is, He says to his Son, Your throne, O God, is forever, meaning that Jesus has an eternal, divine throne because he is God.One more text, just to mention quickly, is used very often on this issue, and that is the famous hymn in the letter to the Philippians by the Apostle Paul. It begins in the fifth-sixth verse of the second chapter of St. Pauls letter to the Philippians, where it says [Philippians 2:5], Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, or, literally, Think this way among yourselves, as you think in Christ Jesus. Then it says, hos en morphe theou iparchon, and literally translated that is, who in form of God subsistsis subsisting, is existing: who is existing in the form of God. In the King James translation it says, who, being in the form of God. So it says, being in the form of God, and it says, theos en morphe theou: in Gods form. So people say, Well, thats very clear: hes divine. Hes divine. Some other, more liberal-type people will say, No, it just means hes in the image of God, like Adam was, or being in the form of God. But that doesnt seem likely at all, because the hymn, the song, recorded here in Philippiansand most people think it is a liturgical hymncontinues, where it says: He thought it not robbery to be equal to God. He thought it [not robbery] to be isa theoequal to God. Now, no Adam or creature can be called isa theo, equal to God.Then it says that he took upon himself the form of a slave; he was found in the likeness of man. He took on the form of a slave, he emptied himself, and he took onlavon: takingmorphen doulou. So hes en morphe theou, and hes now taking morphe doulou. So hes taking on a form that he didnt have before. He had a divine form, he was in the form of God; now he has on the form of slave, a bonded slave. Then it says, en homoiomati anthropon genomenos: becoming in likeness of man.Of Adam it would say he was in the likeness of God. Now, here it says that this one, who was in the form of God, is now taking the likeness of man. Just the opposite is happening, so to speak. Adam is found in the likeness of God, but this one, who is in the form of God and is isa theo, equal to God, God the Father, he is now found in the likeness of man. He becomes like man. Then it says, And being found in schemati hos anthroposas a manhe humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, death on a cross.This has been classically interpreted that Jesus is divine; he is isa theo, equal to the Father. He is theos; hes en morphe theou, before he is found in the likeness of man, taking on the form of a slave, being obedient unto death, and dying on the Cross. We could say that this text also, this earliest hymn found in [the] Philippian letter, affirms that Jesus is theos. He is theos, just as God the Father is theos. But the Father is ho theos. Jesus is theos, but he can also be addressed like Thomas did, as ho theos: my God, the God of me. My God, the one that I worship. Another time, we will reflect on: how did the Fathers even understand that term: God? What did they think that they were saying when they used that term Godtheos? What did it mean? What was it trying to say? But well leave that for another time. What we want to say today, for sure, is that the title theosGod, even ho theos, in some sense, the God, is perfectly applicable to Jesus Christ. The one God is his Father, but as the divine Son, he is God, and even can be prayed to as the God of me, our God, my God, in an absolutely acceptable, legitimate, biblical, true way. Jesus is theos; he is God. And that is a proper title for him, together with his Father and the Holy Spirit.

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