When we consider Jesus' claim to be the Son of God, it’s not only natural for us to wonder if what He said about Himself was true—but also whether He was sane. In part one of this series, we began our examination of Jesus by briefly looking into the historical evidence for the Resurrection and the credibility of the eyewitness accounts from those who claimed to have seen Jesus alive again after His crucifixion. In part two, we examined the character of Jesus along with His claim to divine revelation under the scrutiny of our modern definition of cult leadership. We also surveyed how He substantiated His claims, not just in His resurrection, but also from His workings of miracles and fulfillment of prophecy.

In part three, let's explore how we can determine an authentic belief structure from one that might be based on a forgery of the Christian faith. Since cults are a phenomenon which can happen within any belief structure, it’s important that we know first and foremost that what we believe about the identity of Jesus is true. It's important to prove that belief in Jesus is not a cultish forgery, but also to ensure that we don't define correct beliefs about the nature of the Godhead as evidence of a cult. We'll dive deeper into this topic by answering questions on a common belief on the definition of a cult—and how that belief has misled many.

Defining a Christian cult

In 1965, Christian scholar Walter Martin published the book, The Kingdom of the Cults, in which he defined authentic Christianity as belief in the teachings of Scripture, and the Constantinople Nicene creed of 381 C.E. This creed included a trinitarian philosophical teaching alongside Scripture—the result of centuries of theological exploration—which declared God to be a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The way Martin defined orthodox Christianity wasn’t something new. Not long after the universal Church, known then as the Catholic Church, united itself with the Roman Empire under Constantine, Emperor Theodosius made an edict which stated that anyone who didn’t accept this trinitarian interpretation of scripture should “be branded . . . heretics, and shall not presume to give their [assemblies] the name of Churches'' (as quoted in Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, 1967, p. 22).

In our current times, this is the standard by which most Christian denominations determine orthodox Christian teaching. But how did a statement of belief in a triune God, decreed over 280 years after the death of the last living apostle, become the ultimate test of authenticity? Should this define genuine Christianity?

Surveying competing worldviews

As the apostles' message reached the world outside of Palestine, there were individuals who began preaching “another gospel” and “another Jesus'' to the body of believers (2 Corinthians 11:4). Believers “were meeting cultures very different from that of Judaism, especially within the Graeco-Roman world,” and their philosophical movements had a significant influence on their teachings (MacCulloh, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, pg 121).

Chief among these different religious philosophies is what we now know as “Gnosticism.” Broadly speaking, this view believed that Jesus could not have been divine based on the presupposition that flesh is evil and only spirit is good; that God would have never coexisted in the flesh as the man Jesus. This view was so prevalent that we even see letters from the apostles Paul, John, Peter and Jude throughout the New Testament combating its influences on the Church. Yet despite their best efforts, Gnosticism and the flood of gnostic writings in the centuries that followed continued to permeate teachings in the early Church.

This philosophy led to various misunderstandings about Jesus. Some of these included that His physical life and resurrection were just a divine illusion (not reality), that He was adopted by God (didn't preexist eternally) and that His physical mind was simply replaced by God. Most controversial were the teachings of Arius of Alexandria, who taught that God the Father couldn’t come to earth so He created His Son by adopting Jesus, and He only became equated with the divine “because of His preeminence as the first creation” (J. Warner Wallace, “Historical Heresies Related to the Nature of Jesus,” 2019).

Competing with Gnosticism, the influence of what became known as Neoplatonism blended Platonic, Aristotelian, Gnostic and Stoic philosophy. Neoplatonism taught that the essence of God could be explained as a triad of the One, the Intellect and the Soul. Basically, the One was the Father, who was “self-caused,” and also the cause of everything (Gerson, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018, “Plotinus”). The Intellect was the “cognitive identity,” which was derived from the One and connected to Jesus, as the Word of God (Gerson). Finally, the Soul, which expressed itself as the actualization of the Intellect, was equated to the Holy Spirit—as the “effluence of God [like] a ray of the sun” (Athenagoras, "The Apology," 176-177 C.E., as reproduced by MacMullen, Paganism and Christianity: 100-425 C.E A Sourcebook, p. 179).

Well-trained and educated Christian philosophers and apologists—such as Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clement, Origen and Tertullian—likened God to this Greek concept of the One by varying degrees. Seeking to combat ideas that Jesus couldn’t have been the God in the flesh, they explained God in terms that the great Greek poets and philosophers did: that God is three in one (Athenagoras).

However, these competing views were wreaking havoc on the unity of the Catholic Church and posed a significant threat to the power of the Roman Empire. Formally presided over by Emperor Constantine himself, the first council of Nicea in 325 C.E. decreed that Jesus was in fact an eternal being, equal to the Father, and that there is a Holy Spirit. Yet they did not quantify the Spirit in the godhead, and the issue of the identity of God remained unresolved. Then, sparked by the controversy of Arius’ views, Emperor Theodosius called another council in Nicea where the Trinity was adopted as the official teaching of the universal Catholic Church. The conclusion was that, “the Holy Spirit . . . with the Father and the Son is [to be] worshiped and glorified” (Constantinople Nicene Creed, 381 C.E.).

The Father and our Lord Jesus

Taking into account the background and framework of the Trinity, let’s strip away Greek philosophy and ancient politics for a moment and consider our primary sources, the Old and New Testaments. As with any examination of a previous historical event or person, we need to hold primary sources containing the eyewitness accounts and testimonies of Jesus above any secondary or tertiary sources, such as the gnostic or ante-Nicene church fathers’ writings and interpretations of the scriptures.

First and foremost, Jesus taught that He was the I AM of the Old Testament who existed from the beginning with God, and that He came to earth to reveal the Father to humanity (Genesis 1:26; John 1:1; John 8:58; John 14:6). The Father, Jesus explained, was greater because He made the universe through His Son, and that He was the One whom no one had ever seen or heard before (John 14:28, 5:37). Jesus, then, was glorified by the Father after His sacrifice for humanity, ascended into heaven, and took His place at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19-20; Acts 7:55-56). These two beings are the only beings described on the throne of God.

The Holy Spirit is said by Jesus to be the power of God and the essence which unified Him with His Father (Acts 1:8; John 17:20-26). It is the medium of God the Father and His Son, which manifests itself in prophetic visions, as divine gifts and abilities, fruition of godly character and ultimately the gift of eternal life. Though the Spirit is referred to as "He," "Him," and "Whom," the Greek word is a neuter word, and due to a predisposition of belief in the Trinity it is mistranslated as a masculine being instead of "it" or "which," as it means literally. So this spiritual and holy composition of God, known as the Holy Spirit, is not a third part of a triune being, but rather Their spiritual essence which makes us one with the Father, His Son and one another as believers (1 Corinthians 12:12-14).

Finally, Jesus said that knowing God in a literal and personal sense—“the only true God, and Jesus Christ [whom He] sent” is the only path to “eternal life” (John 17:3; 1 Corinthians 8:6; 17:3). The works of Jesus in His resurrection, miracles and fulfillment of prophecy bear witness to His identity as the Son of God. His divine revelations were spoken by the divine spirit of God, and faithfully recorded in testimonies of His apostles. Therefore, teachings apart from the primary sources of Jesus and His apostles—namely a Hellenized triune version of God—are indicators of a misguided faith. With this understanding, "may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (2 Peter 1:2, 16).