Anticipating Objections

Apologetic conversation rarely stays inside the chain of evidence one has prepared; it is worth briefly anticipating the texts most often raised in reply, since conversations with Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims, unitarians, and other non-trinitarian interlocutors will almost certainly bring them forward.

“The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28)#

This statement belongs to Christ's economic, incarnate condition — the voluntary self-humbling (κένωσις, Philippians 2:6–7) of the Son who took the form of a servant — not to a difference of nature or eternal rank. The Fathers distinguished consistently between statements made of Christ κατ᾽ οἰκονομίαν (according to the economy/incarnation) and κατ᾽ οὐσίαν (according to His eternal essence). A son sent on a mission by his father can rightly call the sender “greater” in respect of the mission's order, without thereby being of a lesser nature — the relation of “Father” and “Son” itself implies an order of origin (the Son is eternally begotten of the Father) without implying inequality of essence, just as a human son shares his father's full humanity despite originating from him.

“The firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15)#

πρωτότοκος (prototokos) in both biblical Greek and the wider Hellenistic world is a title of rank and inheritance, not necessarily of chronological birth order (David is called God's “firstborn” in Psalm 89:27 despite being neither God's first nor only son in any literal sense). Paul's own argument in the immediately following verse removes any ambiguity: “for by Him were all things created” (Colossians 1:16) — the One called “firstborn” is explicitly the Creator of “all things,” which would be incoherent if He were Himself a created being included within “all things.”

“The Word was a god” (a common mistranslation of John 1:1c)#

Anarthrous (article-less) predicate nouns that precede the verb in Greek, as θεός does in καὶ θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος, regularly function qualitatively in Koine Greek — describing the nature or quality of the subject — rather than indicating one member of a category of “gods.” Greek grammarians (E.C. Colwell's foundational study and subsequent refinements by scholars unconnected to any trinitarian commitment) have established this as ordinary usage, not a special pleading invented to rescue a doctrine; the same Gospel uses the identical anarthrous construction for purely qualitative statements elsewhere (e.g., John 4:24, “God is spirit,” πνεῦμα ὁ θεός).

“No one knows the day or hour, not even the Son” (Mark 13:32)#

This text belongs to the same incarnational pattern as John 14:28. The eternal Son truly assumed a human mind, human will, and human condition; He did not merely wear humanity as a costume. Orthodox Christology therefore confesses both the divine omniscience of the Word and the real human consciousness of Jesus. The verse is not an argument that Christ is a creature, but a witness that the incarnation was genuine.

“Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18)#

Jesus is not denying His goodness; He is pressing the rich young ruler to understand the meaning of his own words. If goodness belongs ultimately to God, then calling Jesus good should lead the questioner upward, not backward. The passage functions as a spiritual diagnosis: the man uses reverent language but has not yet perceived who stands before him.

“The only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3)#

In context, Jesus has just asked the Father to glorify Him with the glory He had with the Father before the world existed. John 17:3 distinguishes the Father and the Son personally; it does not exclude the Son from the divine identity. The same Gospel that records this prayer begins by saying that the Word was God and ends with Thomas confessing Jesus as “my Lord and my God.”

“My God and your God” (John 20:17)#

The risen Christ speaks as the incarnate Son and true man, leading His brethren to the Father. The phrase does not erase His divine sonship; it reveals the grace of adoption. The Father is Christ's Father by eternal generation, and our Father by union with Christ. Likewise, the Father is His God according to His assumed humanity, while Christ remains the eternal Word according to His divinity.

“The beginning of the creation of God” (Revelation 3:14)#

The Greek word arche can mean beginning, source, ruler, or originating principle. In Revelation 3:14, the title does not require that Christ is the first creature. Read with John 1 and Colossians 1, it means that Christ is the origin and ruler of creation: creation begins from Him because all things came to be through Him.

Proverbs 8 and Created Wisdom#

Arian and modern anti-trinitarian arguments often appeal to Proverbs 8, where Wisdom says she was “created” or “possessed” at the beginning, depending on translation. Orthodox interpretation must be careful here. Proverbs is poetic wisdom literature, not a simple metaphysical biography of the Son. The New Testament identifies Christ as God's Wisdom, but it also teaches that He is eternal, Creator, and before all things. A poetic personification cannot overturn the apostolic witness that the Word was already God in the beginning.

“Son of God” Means Lesser or Created#

Human sonship begins in time and depends on biological generation; divine sonship does not. When Christians confess the Son as “begotten, not made,” they are distinguishing eternal generation from creation. The Son is from the Father, but not after the Father; begotten of the Father's essence, not manufactured out of nothing. A human son shares human nature with his father; the eternal Son shares the divine nature with the Father.

“Worship” Can Mean Mere Respect#

It is true that some biblical gestures of bowing can express human respect. But the argument for Christ's deity does not rest on one ambiguous bow. It rests on the whole pattern: Jesus receives worship after divine acts, angels are commanded to worship Him, the Lamb receives heavenly doxology with the One on the throne, Christians pray to Him, and pagan observers notice hymns to Christ as divine. Taken together, the evidence exceeds ordinary honor.

None of this is offered as a substitute for patient, prayerful conversation — the goal of apologetics, as the Fathers practiced it, was never merely to win an argument but to remove obstacles standing between a soul and the God who desires its salvation.