Few questions carry more spiritual and theological weight than whether Jesus, peace be upon him, ever claimed to be God — or whether that belief was attributed to him long after his departure. In this second part of his powerful conversation on The Deen Show, Dr. Jerald Dirks — Harvard-trained theologian, former ordained Methodist minister, and a scholar who embraced Islam in 1993 after decades in Christian ministry — lays out a compelling, evidence-based case drawn directly from the Gospel texts. With a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and deep grounding in Islamic studies, Dr. Dirks demonstrates that the case for Jesus’s divinity rests not on what he said, but on how his words were catastrophically misread when carried far beyond the cultural and linguistic world in which they were spoken.
How a Semitic Idiom Became a Theological Doctrine
In first-century Palestine, calling someone the “son of God” was a familiar Hebraic expression — a way of honouring a man as righteous, pious, and God-fearing, nothing more. Every Jew in that context understood this. Jesus himself declared in Matthew 15 that he was sent only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” meaning his immediate audience shared this cultural and linguistic framework entirely. The theological rupture occurred when the Apostle Paul began spreading the message beyond that audience, carrying it into Asia Minor and Europe, where Greeks and Romans heard “son of God” through a radically different lens — one shaped by myths of Zeus, Jupiter, and demigods like Hercules, born when divine beings descended from Mount Olympus to father children with mortal women. The original Semitic idiom was abandoned; in its place, an imported theology of divine sonship took root. Dr. Dirks draws a sharp analogy to modern slang — “he’s bad” meaning someone is extraordinary, or “I need a lift” meaning a ride rather than an elevator — to show how language divorced from its living context becomes dangerously open to misreading. The same phenomenon, scaled to global religion, is how a title meaning “righteous servant of God” became the cornerstone of the doctrine of the Trinity.
“In first century Palestine, if you said so-and-so was the son of God, everyone knew that what you meant was: this is a very righteous and pious and God-fearing individual — and that’s all you were saying. The problem arose when Paul took his particular brand of Christianity and began to teach it to the Gentiles in Asia Minor and Europe.” — Dr. Jerald Dirks
What Jesus Said About Himself: Evidence That Requires No Theology Degree
Dr. Dirks applies what he calls the “Rorschach test” to the proof-texts most commonly cited for Jesus’s divinity. Verses like “I and the Father are one” or “Before Abraham was, I AM” are genuinely ambiguous — open to multiple readings, including unity of purpose, or the spiritual pre-existence that, in Islamic understanding, belongs to every soul descended from Adam. What is not ambiguous is the body of Gospel evidence in which Jesus speaks with unmistakable clarity about his own subordination to God. People raised attending Sunday school, Dr. Dirks notes with compassion rather than accusation, have been conditioned since childhood to read ambiguous verses through one specific theological lens — not out of deliberate deception, but because they were never prompted to pause and ask what other interpretations are possible. The following unequivocal verses, rarely given equal weight, speak plainly:
- Mark 10:18 — Jesus answered: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” A direct, categorical distinction between himself and the divine.
- John 5:19 — “The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing.” Omnipotence — a core attribute of God — is explicitly denied.
- John 5:30 — “I can do nothing on my own… I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” He was sent by one greater than himself.
- John 14:28 — “The Father is greater than I.” Subordination in Jesus’s own words, stated without ambiguity.
- John 20:17 — “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” If God is Jesus’s God, Jesus cannot simultaneously be God.
- Matthew 14:23 — Jesus withdrew alone to pray. Prayer is an act of submission; one who prays to God acknowledges a higher authority and cannot be that authority himself.
The Islamic Vision of God — and the True and Noble Status of Jesus
“God is one — and that is a very emphatic one. He is incomparable. Nothing can compare with Him. He is greater than anything you can name. We humans, our minds are too finite; we can never get a totally comprehensive mental understanding of God. He is beyond our human intellect — that is the greatness and the majesty and the awesomeness of God.” — Dr. Jerald Dirks
Islam does not diminish Jesus, peace be upon him — it restores him to his true and honoured rank as one of the greatest prophets and messengers of God, a man of miraculous birth who carried direct revelation from the Creator and stood in a uniquely close relationship with Him. In Islam, God — Allah — is One without equal or partner: Al-Wadud, the Loving; Ar-Rahman, the Compassionate; Ar-Rahim, the Merciful; and eternally beyond any human or created thing. The declaration Allahu Akbar — “God is Greater” — is not merely a phrase but a profound theological statement: God is greater than any concept, image, or being the human mind could project onto Him. For sincere seekers coming from a Christian background, Dr. Dirks offers liberating reassurance: embracing Islam requires no change of name, no adoption of foreign dress, no surrender of cultural identity. Muslims have contributed to the fabric of nations for centuries. What Islam invites is something far simpler and far more profound — the honest use of the tools God already embedded in every human being: reason, reflection, and the innate recognition of His oneness that the Qur’an calls the fitrah. No master’s degree, no theological training is required. You need only look at the evidence with open eyes — in the scriptures, in the signs surrounding us, and in the voice already placed within you — and ask whether what you find there matches what your heart has always known. That is the invitation of Islam: the same conscious surrender to the One God that Jesus practised, that Abraham practised, and that every soul, in its truest nature, already recognises.
