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Book Review: Who Do You Say That I Am?

October 15th, 2007 at 06:55pm Albert McIlhenny

Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ – Robert M. Bowman & J. Ed Komoszewski Kregel Publications (August 2007) Topic: Christology Summary: Presentation of the New Testament evidence for the deity of Christ Rating:

The unprecedented media attention given to Dan Brown’s polemical novel The Da Vinci Code raised the question of what the early Church believed about Jesus Christ. There have been numerous books dedicated to rebutting the spurious historical claims Brown inserted into his whodunit (and claimed to be factual) but even with that nonsense off the table it still does not give us a satisfactory answer to the claims for Christ.

Robert M. Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski supply much of the needed answers in Putting Jesus in His Place. In a thoroughly readable analysis of the New Testament writings, the authors give a wealth of evidence that Jesus was recognized as divine from the earliest days of the Church. They divide their work into five sections with each focusing on a certain theme that is asserted about Jesus but would be recognized by Jews as belonging to God alone. Such assertions give a powerful witness to the early Christians ascribing divinity to Christ.

Beginning with how the early Christians gave honors to Christ that would be given to God alone, the authors demonstrate that the New Testament writings make sense only within the context of the early Church seeing Christ as a deity. Continuing in sections where it is shown that Jesus shares the attributes of God, shares the names of God, shares in the deeds of God, and shares the seat of God’s throne, a persausive case for the deity of the New Testament Christ is fleshed out and a reminder given to the reader in the acronym HANDS (Honors-Attributes-Names-Deeds-Seat).

While the case for the deity of Christ might not be accepted for those who reject the inspiration of the New Testament, there is little doubt left that for the New Testament Church, Jesus was seen as God. Furthermore, given the ample evidence available that the so-called “other Gospels” were later documents that postdated the New Testament Chruch by one or more centuries, there can be little argument that Christ was seen as divine from the earliest period of the Church. As a exposition for Christians who have never had the evidence of Christ’s deity given in detail, Putting Jesus In His Place is an indispensible resource.

Entry Filed under: Bowman, Robert M., Christology, Essential Books, Komoszewski, J. Ed