Was Jesus Created According to Christian Theology?

According to mainstream Christian theology, Jesus was not created. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, the uncreated Creator, and the second person of the Trinity, eternally sharing the divine nature with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Christian theology distinguishes between Jesus’s eternal existence as the divine Son and his birth as a human being. The Son took on human flesh at a particular point in human history (John 1:14). Christians refer to this event as the Incarnation (“the act of being made flesh”). But there was never a time when the Son did not exist. He was never created.

The direct Christian answer

The Bible teaches that Jesus was not created but was rather the Creator. “In [Jesus Christ] all things were created: . all things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16).

Jesus, God the Son, was not created. He has always existed; He has no beginning or end. From the Incarnation onward, the eternal, uncreated Son is both truly God and truly man.

The early creeds of the church unequivocally teach that Jesus was not created but that He is an eternally divine Person, the Son of God. Many branches of Christianity consider Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son, the second of the three persons of the Trinity.

Why Christians say Jesus is eternal

When attempting to answer the question of “was Jesus created?” there is no better person to look to than Jesus Himself. During His public ministry, Jesus continually assumed for Himself divine prerogatives. He continually exercised rights that would never be appropriate for a created being.

He said that He was “Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28), and, since the Sabbath was instituted by God, Jesus’ claim to be “Lord” of the Sabbath was an assertion of deity. Jesus spoke of His unique, intimate knowledge of the Father (Matthew 11:27) and of the glory He shared with the Father “before the world began” (John 17:5).

Jesus accepted the worship of others (Matthew 14:32-33) and described a future time when He will sit in judgment over all nations (Matthew 25:31-44). Luke tells us that Jesus went so far as to personally forgive a woman’s sins-something only God can do-and attributed her forgiveness to her faith in Him (Luke 7:48-50)!

Jesus as the Word who existed in the beginning

The Gospel of John presents the strongest direct statement about Jesus’s eternal existence: “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word [Jesus] was God” (John 1:1).

The prologue to the Gospel of John identifies Jesus as an incarnation of the divine Word (Logos). As the Word, Jesus is described as eternally present with God, active in all creation, and the source of humanity’s moral and spiritual nature.

In this gospel, Jesus is portrayed as not only greater than any past human prophet but greater than any prophet could be: he not only speaks God’s Word; he is God’s Word.

John’s Gospel also connects the eternal Word with creation: “All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).

Think about that for a minute. John is not merely saying that Jesus made all things. He is saying much more than that. Without Jesus, nothing was made that was made.

So there are only two categories: things made and things not made. If it was made, then Jesus made it. Do you see what this means? Jesus cannot be one of the made things, because He made all of the made things.

This would mean that Jesus made Himself, which is logically impossible. John goes out of his way to communicate that Jesus is the uncreated Creator, who created all things that were created.

What does “firstborn of all creation” mean?

One of the most frequently discussed passages is Colossians 1:15, where Paul writes, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1:15).

Some groups understand the word firstborn to mean the “first created.” This fits their Arian presupposition that Jesus is a created being. However, firstborn does not have to be taken in a literal, physical sense. Firstborn can mean first in preeminence or rank.

Besides the immediate clue that the word is being used in connection with position (“firstborn over all creation”), there’s this statement found in the very next verse: “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16).

There’s not a lot of wiggle room there; if Jesus created “all things” that were created, then it stands to reason that He Himself was not created.

Firstborn as a title of preeminence

For instance, God calls David the firstborn even though he was the youngest son of Jesse. The psalmist writes, “And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth” (Psa. 89:27).

David was the last one born in his family, yet he is called the firstborn. The question remains, how should we interpret this text?

“Firstborn” here signifies David having a position of preeminence, not the first in some order-say, the order of kings, or the order of sons in a family (David was in fact the last son in his family-1 Sam. 16:10-11).

There are other examples of this use of “firstborn.” In Exodus 4:22 Israel is called God’s “firstborn.” Yet, we know that Israel was not chronologically the first nation. Ephraim is God’s “firstborn” in Jeremiah 31:9. Yet, Ephraim was not the first tribe chronologically speaking.

When believers are added to the church that belongs to Jesus, the Hebrews author says they have become a part of “the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven” (Hebrews 12:23). Firstborn there is a plural term in Greek referencing all members of the church; it therefore has nothing to do with birth order and everything to do with status.

I believe it’s used in a conceptually similar way when describing Jesus. Further, I believe that “firstborn” speaks to Jesus’ preeminence instead of His birth.

The context of Colossians 1

Verse 15 cannot be read in isolation. Right after Paul says that Jesus is preeminent over all creation, he says, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. ” (Col. 16-19).

This is not the description of a finite, created being. In fact, in the very next chapter, Paul writes, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. ” (Col. 2:9).

Paul goes on to emphasize Jesus as the Creator by writing, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” With these contextual details, it becomes clear what Paul meant by “firstborn of creation”: Jesus is over creation insofar as he is the Creator, i.e., God.

A second clue for the “preeminence” interpretation is what Paul says in verse 16: “For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible.” This is an allusion to Isaiah 44:24, where God says, “ [W]ho formed you from the womb: “I am the LORD, who made all things, who stretched out the heavens alone, who spread out the earth-Who was with me?-

Paul is teaching us that Jesus is the Creator. And since God alone is the Creator, it follows that Paul believed Jesus was God.

Does “all things” mean “all other things”?

Some interpreters appeal to a translation that says, “For in him were created all other things in heaven and earth, the visible and the invisible,” the implication being that Jesus is still one among other created things.

But the word “other” is not in the Greek text. The Greek word for “all things” is panta, which just means “all” or “every.” Allos, which is the Greek word for “other,” is simply not there.

The issue is therefore not only the meaning of “firstborn,” but also the scope of Paul’s statement about creation. Paul presents all things as created through Christ and for Christ, while placing Christ before all things and describing the fullness of deity as dwelling in him.

Jesus and the Christian doctrine of creation

Scripture is clear that Jesus is the eternal, uncreated One. When Christians try to argue for the deity of Christ, Jehovah’s Witnesses are quick to bring up Colossians 1:15.

However, an honest evaluation of the text demonstrates that Jesus is the Creator God. Affirming the Deity of Jesus is the same as denying that Jesus was created.

Christian theology does not place Jesus among the beings made by God. It places him on the Creator side of the creator/creature divide. Is Jesus a creature, and thus part of the created order, or is He, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Creator of all created things?

Is Jesus heteroousios (“of a different substance”) than the Father, as the 4th-century heretic Arius held; or are Christ and the Father homoousios (“of the same substance”), as Athanasius maintained and the Council of Nicea decreed?

Orthodox Christianity answers that Christ and the Father are homoousios, “of the same substance.” Jesus is not a created intermediary between God and the world but the eternal Son through whom the created order exists.

The testimony of Jesus’s disciples

Jesus’ disciples were equally clear in their belief in Jesus’ deity and uncreated nature. John tells us that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word [Jesus] was God” (John 1:1).

After having encountered the risen Jesus, the apostle Thomas exclaimed to Him, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). The apostle Paul referred to Christ as “God over all” (Romans 9:5) and stated that “in [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9).

In the early days of the church, Jesus was both the object of prayer (Acts 7:59) and the One in whose name the forgiveness of sins was proclaimed (Acts 2:38; 10:43).

After having interrogated Christians under the threat of death, the Roman administrator Pliny the Younger wrote in his letter to the Emperor Trajan (c. AD 110) that “[the Christians] were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light when they sang in alternative verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god” (Letters 10.96).

The Incarnation: born as a human, not created as God

Jesus was Jewish, born to Mary, the wife of Joseph. Jesus (c. 6 to 4 BC - AD 30 or 33), also known as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and by various other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader in the Roman province of Judaea.

Most branches of Christianity consider Jesus the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah or Christ. According to Christian tradition, as represented in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus was circumcised at eight days old, presented at the Temple in Jerusalem at 40 days old, baptized by John the Baptist as a young adult, and, after 40 days and nights of fasting in the wilderness, began his public ministry.

Jesus often debated with other Jews, most commonly the Pharisees and Sadducees, about how best to follow God, engaged in healings, taught in parables, and gathered followers, 12 of whom he appointed as his apostles.

According to the New Testament accounts, he was arrested in Jerusalem and tried by the Sanhedrin, handed over to the Roman authorities, and crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judaea.

In Christian theology, the Resurrection is the event in which Jesus rose from the dead, on the third day after his death, and this belief became the foundation of the early Christian Church, which expanded into a worldwide movement.

Christian theology includes the beliefs that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin named Mary, performed miracles, founded the Christian Church, died by crucifixion as a sacrifice for atonement for sin, was resurrected by God the Father, and ascended into Heaven, from where he will return.

Christians commonly believe that Jesus enables people to be reconciled to God. The Nicene Creed asserts that Jesus will judge the living and the dead, either before or after their bodily resurrection, an event associated with the Second Coming of Jesus in Christian eschatology.

From the Incarnation onward, the eternal, uncreated Son is both truly God and truly man. The Son took on human flesh at a particular point in human history (John 1:14). This act was integral to our salvation (Galatians 4:4-5; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 9:22).

“Begotten” and the eternal Son

Some try to explain Jesus’ status as firstborn through the concept of eternal begetting, i.e., that Jesus somehow is eternally God’s Son. I personally believe that Jesus was not begotten at all until He was “born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4), existing from eternity instead as the Word of God (John 1:1-5).

Different Christian traditions explain the relationship between the Father and the Son using the language of eternal generation or eternal begetting. These expressions do not mean that Jesus was created in time. They are intended to describe the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son while affirming that the Son has no beginning.

But there was never a time when the Son did not exist. He was never created. Jesus always was and will forever remain “our great God and Savior” (Titus 2:13).

Alternative views about Jesus’s origin

Orthodox Christianity’s affirmation of the full deity of Christ and His uncreated nature makes Christianity unique from all other religions and philosophies.

Various world religions may agree on some important issues such as the existence of a transcendent, objective morality and the value of a strong family life, but the answer to the question “who is Jesus Christ?” quickly separates those who adhere to biblical Christianity from those who do not.

Muslims teach that Jesus was a virgin-born human prophet, but came into existence just like everyone else. Mormons, who adhere to a modern-day form of Arianism, believe that Jesus had a beginning, just as God the Father had a beginning. Jehovah’s Witnesses say that Jesus was the first creation of Jehovah and was originally called Michael the archangel.

Mainstream Judaism rejects the belief that Jesus was the awaited messiah, holding that he did not fulfil messianic prophecies, was not lawfully anointed, and was neither divine nor resurrected.

In contrast, Jesus in Islam is considered the messiah and a prophet of God, who was sent to the Israelites and will return to Earth before the Day of Judgement. Muslims believe that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary but was neither God nor the son of God. Most Muslims do not believe that he was killed or crucified, but that God raised him into Heaven while he was still alive.

Why Proverbs 8 is not treated as proof that Jesus was created

People have been applying that passage from Proverbs to Jesus at least since the time of Arius (256-336 AD). However, it’s worth noting that Arius was a man marked by most professing Christians of the time as being a heretic.

Bible verses do not exist in contextual vacuums. Before taking a passage in the Old Testament and applying it to Jesus, it would be good to see if textual clues even allow for such a possibility.

In the case of Proverbs 8:22-31, there’s sort of a contextual sandwich that should prevent such an application from even being considered. If you’ll notice, the speaker of the text is identified using the pronoun, “me.”

If you’ll follow the personal pronouns back, you’ll find the speaker is identified as, “I, wisdom” (Proverbs 8:12). Keep moving back in the context and you’ll see that wisdom is introduced before its speech with 3rd person pronouns.

Note the gender of these pronouns: “…her voice… she takes her stand… she cries out” (Proverbs 8:1-3). The last statement is the one that introduces wisdom’s monolog.

It should be noted that neither Jesus, the Father, nor the Holy Spirit are ever referenced using feminine pronouns in either the Old or New Testaments. They are always referenced using masculine pronouns.

The other side of the passage in consideration is much the same. If you keep reading after Proverbs 8:31 as people would have done before there were chapter divisions, you’ll find the monolog ends with this statement: “Wisdom has built her house…” followed by a number of 3rd person feminine pronouns (Proverbs 9:1ff).

The conclusion is inescapable: no Person of the Godhood could be referenced by Proverbs 8:22-31. Instead, the passage is about wisdom which is frequently personified as a woman throughout Proverbs 1-9.

Jesus in the New Testament sources

The four canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are the foremost sources for the life and message of Jesus. Other parts of the New Testament also include references to key episodes in his life, such as the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.

Acts of the Apostles refers to Jesus’s early ministry and its anticipation by John the Baptist. Acts 1:1-11 provides more detail about the Ascension of Jesus than the canonical gospels do.

In the undisputed Pauline letters, which were written earlier than the gospels, Jesus’s words or instructions are cited several times.

Some early Christian groups had separate descriptions of Jesus’s life and teachings that are not included in the New Testament. These include the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Judas, the Apocryphon of James, and many other apocryphal writings.

Most scholars conclude that these texts were written later and are less historically reliable than the canonical gospels.

The four canonical Gospels

The canonical gospels are four accounts, each attributed to a different author. The authors of the gospels are generally regarded as pseudonymous and are attributed by tradition to the four evangelists, each associated with Jesus or his close followers.

According to Marcan priority, the first to be written was the Gospel of Mark (AD 60-75), followed by the Gospel of Matthew (AD 65-85), the Gospel of Luke (AD 65-95), and the Gospel of John (AD 75-100).

Most scholars agree that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source for their gospels. Since Matthew and Luke also share some content not found in Mark, many scholars infer that they used a hypothetical Q source in addition to Mark, while a growing number support the Farrer hypothesis or Matthean Posteriority, in which Matthew and Luke used each other directly.

Although not without critics, the view that the gospels are a type of ancient biography represents the consensus among scholars today.

Concerning the accuracy of the accounts, viewpoints range from considering them inerrant descriptions of Jesus’s life, to doubting their historical reliability on various points, to regarding them as providing very little historical information about his life beyond the basics.

How the Gospels portray Jesus

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels, from the Greek σύν (syn, 'together') and ὄψις (opsis, 'view'), because they are similar in content, narrative arrangement, language, and paragraph structure, and can readily be set side by side for synoptic comparison.

The Synoptics emphasize different aspects of Jesus. In Mark, Jesus is the Son of God whose mighty works demonstrate the presence of God’s Kingdom. He is portrayed as a tireless wonder worker and the servant of both God and humanity.

The Gospel of Matthew emphasizes that Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s will as revealed in the Old Testament and the Lord of the Church. He is presented as the “Son of David”, a “king”, and the Messiah.

Luke presents Jesus as the divine-human saviour who shows compassion to the needy. He is depicted as the friend of sinners and outcasts, who came to seek and save the lost.

This gospel includes well-known parables, such as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus reveals his divine role publicly and is depicted as the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the True Vine, and more.

The authors of the New Testament generally showed little interest in establishing an absolute chronology of Jesus’s life or in synchronizing the episodes of his life with the secular history of the age.

The accounts were primarily written as theological documents in the context of early Christianity, with timelines as a secondary consideration. The gospels devote about one third of their text to the last week of Jesus’s life in Jerusalem, referred to as the Passion.

They do not provide enough detail to satisfy the demands of modern historians regarding exact dates, but it is possible to draw from them a general picture of Jesus’s life story.

The meaning of the name “Jesus Christ”

A Jewish person in Jesus’s time usually had only one name, sometimes followed by a patronymic phrase of the form “son of [father’s name]”, or by the person’s home town. Thus, in the New Testament, Jesus is commonly referred to as “Jesus of Nazareth”.

The name Jesus is the English transliteration, through Latin Iesus, of Ancient Greek: Ἰησοῦς, which is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Joshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‎ Yehoshua).

The Hebrew/Aramaic name was common among Judean Jews at the time of Jesus’s birth, although by that period it had been shortened to יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshua) from יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‎ (Yehoshua).

The name means “God saves” in Hebrew, literally “Yahweh saves”, from the root ישׁע (y-š-ʿ, 'to save') and the noun יְשׁוּעָה (yeshuah, 'salvation').

The Gospel of Matthew asserts the etymological significance of Jesus’s name explicitly in the prophecy of the angel to Joseph about his birth: “you will call his name Jesus (Ἰησοῦς), for he will save (σώσει) his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).

Since the 1st century, Christians have commonly referred to Jesus as “Jesus Christ”. The word Christ is not a given name but was originally a title or office (“the Christ”), meaning “The Messiah”.

The term derives from the Greek Χριστός (Christos), a calque of the Hebrew word משיח (mashiakh), transliterated into English as messiah.

The Hebrew term means “anointed”, from the verb מָשַׁח (mashaḥ), “to rub with oil, to anoint”. Early Christians designated Jesus as “the Christ” because they believed him to be the Messiah whose arrival is prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).

In post-biblical usage, Christ came to be viewed as a name-one part of “Jesus Christ”. The term Christian, meaning a follower of Christ, has been in use since the 1st century.

How the Christian claim differs from other views

Various religious traditions may honor Jesus as a prophet, teacher, messiah, or exalted being, but orthodox Christian theology makes a specific claim: Jesus is not part of the created order. He is the eternal Son through whom all things were created.

Why the doctrine matters in Christianity

It is orthodox Christianity’s affirmation of the full deity of Christ and His uncreated nature that makes Christianity unique from all other religions and philosophies.

The doctrine of the eternality of Christ is one of the distinguishing marks of biblical Christianity. While Jesus is held in high esteem by Muslims, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others of various theological beliefs, those groups teach that Jesus was a created being.

The early creeds of the church unequivocally teach that Jesus was not created but that He is an eternally divine Person, the Son of God.

Christians refer to the Incarnation as the event in which the eternal Son became human without ceasing to be divine. Jesus was born in human history, lived as a Jewish preacher and religious leader, died by crucifixion, and, according to Christian belief, was resurrected and exalted.

The Christian answer therefore separates two questions that can otherwise be confused: Was Jesus born as a human being? Yes. Was the eternal Son created? No.

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