Trinity

=== Jesus in the New Testament ===
[[File:Meister Bertram von Minden 009.jpg|thumb|God in the person of the Son confronts [[Adam and Eve]], by [[Master Bertram]] (d. c. 1415)]] 
In the [[Pauline epistles]], the public, collective devotional patterns towards Jesus in the early Christian community are reflective of Paul's perspective on the divine status of Jesus in what scholars have termed a "binitarian" pattern or shape of devotional practice (worship) in the New Testament, in which "God" and Jesus are thematized and invoked.{{sfn|Hurtado|2010|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=0aCaqJGgJvAC&q=binitarian+pattern]}} Jesus receives prayer (1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 12:8–9), the presence of Jesus is confessionally invoked by believers (1 Corinthians 16:22; Romans 10:9–13; Philippians 2:10–11), people are baptized in Jesus' name (1 Corinthians 6:11; Romans 6:3), Jesus is the reference in Christian fellowship for a religious ritual meal (the [[Eucharist|Lord's Supper]]; 1 Corinthians 11:17–34).{{sfn|Hurtado|2005|pp=134–152}} Jesus is described as "existing in the very form of God" (Philippians 2:6), and having the "fullness of the Deity [living] in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). Jesus is also in some verses directly called God (Romans 9:5,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Is Jesus God? (Romans 9:5) |url=https://www.billmounce.com/monday-with-mounce/jesus-god-rom-9-5 |access-date=15 July 2022 |website=billmounce.com |language=en}}</ref> Titus 2:13, 2 Peter 1:1).

The Gospels depict Jesus as human through most of their narrative, but "[o]ne eventually discovers that he is a divine being manifest in flesh, and the point of the texts is in part to make his higher nature known in a kind of intellectual epiphany."{{sfn|Litwa|2019|p=53}} In the Gospels Jesus is described as forgiving sins, leading some theologians to believe Jesus is portrayed as God.<ref>{{Cite book |last=CS Lewis |title=Mere Christianity |publisher=HarperCollins |year=2001 |pages=51–52}}</ref> This is because Jesus forgives sins on the behalf of others, people normally only forgive transgressions against oneself. The teachers of the law next to Jesus recognizes this and said<blockquote>"Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Mark 2:7</blockquote>Jesus also receives {{lang|grc|προσκύνησις}} ({{lang|grc-Latn|[[proskynesis]]}}) in the aftermath of the resurrection, a Greek term that either expresses the contemporary social gesture of bowing to a superior, either on one's knees or in full prostration (in Matthew 18:26 a slave performs {{lang|grc|προσκύνησις}} to his master so that he would not be sold after being unable to pay his debts). The term can also refer to the religious act of devotion towards a deity. While Jesus receives {{lang|grc|προσκύνησις}} a number of times in the [[synoptic Gospels]], only a few can be said to refer to divine worship.{{sfn|Kupp|1996|p=226}}

This includes Matthew 28:16–20, an account of the resurrected Jesus receiving worship from his [[Disciple (Christianity)|disciples]] after proclaiming his authority over the cosmos and his ever-continuing presence with the disciples (forming an inclusion with the beginning of the Gospel, where Jesus is given the name Emmanuel, "God with us," a name that alludes to the God of Israel's ongoing presence with his followers throughout the Old Testament (Genesis 28:15; Deuteronomy 20:1).{{sfn|Hays|2014|pp=44–45}}{{sfn|Hurtado|2005|pp=337–338}} Whereas some have argued that [[Matthew 28:19]] was an interpolation on account of its absence from the first few centuries of early Christian quotations, scholars largely accept the passage as authentic due to its supporting manuscript evidence and that it does appear to be either quoted in the [[Didache]] (7:1–3){{sfn|Ferguson|2009|pp=134–135}} or at least reflected in the Didache as part of a common tradition from which both Matthew and the Didache emerged.{{sfn|Sim|Repschinski|2008|pp=124–125}} Jesus receiving divine worship in the post-resurrection accounts is further mirrored in Luke 24:52.{{sfn|Hurtado|2005|p=345}}{{sfn|Bauckham|2017|pp=516–519}}{{sfn|Hurtado|2005|p=345}} [[Acts of the Apostles|Acts]] depicts the early Christian movement as a public cult centered around Jesus in several passages. In Acts, it is common for individual Christians to "call" upon the name of Jesus (9:14, 21; 22:16), an idea precedented in the Old Testament descriptions of calling on the name of YHWH as a form of prayer. The story of Stephen depicts Stephen invoking and crying out to Jesus in the final moments of his life to receive his spirit (7:59–60). Acts further describes a common ritual practice inducting new members into the early Jesus sect by baptizing them in Jesus' name (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5).{{sfn|Hurtado|2005|pp=194–206}} According to [[Dale Allison]], Acts depicts the appearances of Jesus to Paul as a divine [[theophany]], styled on and identified with the God responsible for the theophany of [[Ezekiel]] in the Old Testament.{{sfn|Allison |2016|pp=807–826}}

The [[Gospel of John]] has been seen as especially aimed at emphasizing Jesus' divinity, presenting Jesus as the ''[[Logos (Christianity)|Logos]]'', pre-existent and divine, from its first words: "[[John 1:1|In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God]]" (John 1:1).<ref name="bbc-john"/> The Gospel of John ends with Thomas's declaration that he believed Jesus was God, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28).{{sfn|Metzger|Coogan|1993|pp=782–783}} There is no significant tendency among modern scholars to deny that John 1:1 and John 20:28 identify Jesus with God.{{sfn|Brown|1970|pp=1026, 1032}}  However, in a 1973 [[Journal of Biblical Literature]] article, Philip B. Harner, [[Professor Emeritus]] of Religion at [[Heidelberg College]], claimed that the traditional translation of John 1:1c ("and the Word was God") is incorrect. He endorses the [[New English Bible]] translation of John 1:1c, "and what God was, the Word was."<ref>Philip B. Harner, "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1", ''[[Journal of Biblical Literature]]'' 92, 1 (March 1973),</ref> It should be noted however that Harner claim has been criticized by other scholars.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://bible.org/article/revisiting-colwell-construction-light-masscount-nouns |title=Revisiting the Colwell Construction in Light of Mass/Count Nouns|last=Hartley |first=Donald|website=bible.org |access-date= 1 November 2022}}</ref> In the same article, Harner also noted that; "Perhaps the clause could be translated, 'the Word had the same nature as God". This would be one way of representing John's thought, which is, as I understand it, that the logos, no less than the theos, had the nature of theos," which in his case means the Word is as fully God as the person called "God".<ref>{{cite journal|author=Philip B. Harner|date=March 1973|title=Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1|journal=Journal of Biblical Literature|publisher=The Society of Biblical Literature|volume=92|issue=1|pages=75–87|doi=10.2307/3262756|jstor=3262756}}</ref><ref name="Rhodes">Rhodes, Ron. "Reasoning from the Scriptures with the Jehovah's Witnesses" Harvest House Publishers, 2009, p. 104-105.</ref> John also portrays Jesus as the agent of creation of the universe.{{sfn|Hoskyns|1967|p=142}}

====Jesus in later Christian theology====
Some have suggested that John presents a hierarchy{{sfn|Clarke|1900|pp=161ff.}}{{sfn|Polkinghorne|2008|pp=395–396}} when he quotes Jesus as saying, "The Father is greater than I", a statement which was appealed to by [[Nontrinitarianism|nontrinitarian]] groups such as [[Arianism]].{{sfn|Simonetti|Oden|2002|p=}} However, Church Fathers such as [[Augustine of Hippo]] and [[Thomas Aquinas]] argued this statement was to be understood as Jesus speaking about his human nature.<ref name="de-trinitate1"/><ref name="dhspriory.org">{{cite book |last1=Aquinas |first1=Thomas |title=Summa Contra Gentiles Book Four Chapter 8 |url=https://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles4.htm#8 |access-date=11 January 2019 |archive-date=28 July 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180728185342/http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles4.htm#8 |url-status=dead}}</ref>