Few questions in the history of religion have generated more sincere confusion — and more consequential debate — than whether Jesus (peace be upon him) was God, the Son of God, or a prophet of God. For millions of people raised in the Christian tradition, these distinctions can feel impossible to untangle, especially when different denominations teach conflicting answers. In this revealing episode of The Deen Show, Dr. Jerald Dirks brings both personal experience and rare scholarly authority to the discussion: a Harvard Divinity School graduate with a Master of Divinity, a former ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church, and a man who later found clarity, purpose, and spiritual peace in Islam. As Muslims, our love for Jesus (peace be upon him) is non-negotiable — denying his prophethood puts one outside the fold of Islam entirely — but the evidence from scripture, early Christian history, and textual scholarship paints a strikingly different picture from the Trinitarian doctrine that millions are taught today.
Three Views from Early Christianity — and Why Calling Jesus “God Alone” Was Considered Heresy
“To be called the son of God simply meant you were a righteous and pious man. That’s it. That’s all it meant.” — Dr. Jerald Dirks, Harvard Divinity School
- Three distinct early Christian positions existed on the nature of Jesus: (1) Jesus is purely God — a view held by some early groups like the Dosatists but condemned as heresy even by traditional Christianity itself; (2) Jesus was simultaneously God and man, with two natures neither mixed nor separated — the later Chalcedonian “orthodox” position; and (3) Jesus was fully human, a righteous man in a uniquely close relationship with God — the adoptionist and subordinationist view held by many of the earliest Christians.
- The title “son of God” in first-century Palestinian context was never an exclusive title for Jesus. The Bible applies it to the entire nation of Israel (Exodus 4:22; Hosea 11:1–3), King David (Psalm 2:7), King Solomon (2 Samuel 7:13–14), angels (Job 1:6), faithful Israelites in general (Deuteronomy 14:1), and any righteous man (Ecclesiasticus 4:10). In that cultural and linguistic context, it was a term of piety — nothing more.
- English Bible translators capitalise “Son” when the term is applied to Jesus but use a lowercase “s” for everyone else — yet the original Greek text makes no such distinction whatsoever. There is no uppercase or lowercase in ancient Greek. This capitalisation is an arbitrary editorial decision by translators, not a feature of the ancient scriptures themselves.
- The Ebionites — a large Christian community in Palestine who existed during the lifetime of the Twelve Disciples — firmly maintained that Jesus was not divine. Crucially, Rabbi Gamliel, president of the Jewish Sanhedrin, officially ruled that the early Jerusalem church led by James and the disciples was authentically Jewish, a ruling that would have been categorically impossible had they been claiming Jesus to be God.
The question of divine begetting — the idea that Jesus’s miraculous birth proves his divinity — is also examined with precision. Christians point to Matthew and Luke, yet even within these accounts there is a significant internal tension: if Jesus is “God the Son,” his father should logically be “God the Father,” but it is the Holy Spirit — not God the Father — who is described as coming upon Mary. Islam affirms the virgin birth without hesitation, but the Quran frames it as a miraculous creation rather than a divine begetting, precisely as God created Adam from dust by His word “Be.” The prologue of John (1:1), often cited as the strongest proof of Jesus’s divinity, is acknowledged by biblical scholars to be a later addition to the Gospel of John, heavily influenced by Greek philosophical concepts of the logos. Furthermore, pre-existence in Islamic theology does not imply divinity — all souls were gathered before God in a spiritual sense prior to their earthly creation, including the soul of every prophet. And the word “trinity” itself? It does not appear anywhere in the Bible, nor did Jesus (peace be upon him) ever teach it.
From the Council of Nicaea to the Dawn of Islam — How Adoptionist Christianity Became Muslim
- The adoptionist tradition — affirming God’s absolute oneness and Jesus’s status as a prophet in a special relationship with God — was widespread and dominant across North Africa and the Middle East for centuries, upheld by major historical figures: Arius of Alexandria (founder of Arianism, 4th century), Eusebius of Nicomedia (4th century bishop), Macedonius (Patriarch of Constantinople), Nestorius (5th century Patriarch and founder of Nestorianism), and numerous other bishops and theologians from the 2nd through 6th centuries.
- Arius taught that God is absolutely unique, incomparable, self-existent, unchangeable, and infinite, to be understood in His absolute oneness — and that Jesus, who was born, grew through childhood and adulthood, and was finite in time, could not share in God’s infinite and unchangeable nature without compromising it. As Dr. Dirks notes plainly: as Muslims, we can fully affirm everything Arius was teaching.
- Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE primarily for political reasons — to stabilise his empire by unifying his fractured Christian coalition. Many bishops refused to attend. Those who went and supported the adoptionist position were under enormous military and political pressure; many who voted for the Nicene formulation later recanted once they returned home. Constantine himself was an adoptionist, later baptised by an Aryan bishop.
- The Council of Sirmium in 357 CE officially declared that Jesus is not of the same substance as God — directly overturning the Nicene position. The Nicene Creed as practised today was not actually finalised until the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE, more than half a century after the Council of Nicaea — evidence of just how hotly contested this question remained.
- The adoptionist communities of North Africa and the Middle East did not simply disappear in the 7th century — Dr. Dirks submits that when the message of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) arrived, those already affirming God’s oneness and Jesus’s prophethood embraced Islam in vast numbers, recognising in its message the same truth all the prophets had always carried.
“The example of Jesus in the sight of God is like that of Adam. He created him from dust, saying ‘Be,’ and he was.” — The Quran, Surah Al-Imran (3:59)
What this episode makes unmistakably clear — through the testimony of a man who once stood at the pulpit of a Christian church and later found his faith, purpose, and spiritual home in Islam — is that the message of Jesus (peace be upon him) was always the message of every prophet before and after him: worship God alone, without partners, without equals, without intermediaries. The earliest followers of Jesus understood this. Large and significant portions of the early Christian world affirmed it for centuries. And the Quran — preserved verbatim, memorised by millions across fourteen centuries, unchanged and uncorrupted — confirms it with perfect clarity. For anyone sincerely seeking guidance, truth, and a direct relationship with the Creator of the heavens and earth, this conversation is not an invitation to reject Jesus, but to truly understand him: as one of the mightiest messengers God ever sent, a prophet who called humanity not to worship himself, but to worship God alone.
