Today, at the beginning of class we learned a little bit about St. Thomas the Apostle. His statement in John's Gospel, "My Lord and My God" is the most explicit statement of Jesus' divinity in any of the four Canonical Gospels.
After that, we learned about the divinity of Jesus and how it was discussed at the Council of Nicea. The first thing that I learned was that Dan Brown stated that Jesus' followers did not see him as divine until the Council of Nicea. Rather, they saw him as a great and powerful mortal prophet. However, this is false, as we have St. Paul's writings that claim him to be divine well before the council. St. Paul referred to Jesus as the "Son of God", proving the idea of Jesus being the Son of God was not first introduced at the council. Rather, the council discussed how Jesus was divine. The Council had a vote whether Athanasius or Arius was right. Athanasius represented orthodox Christian views and Arius saw Jesus as purple (inside joke with Mr. Leeman's 8th perion Religion I class). The vote came out 250 - 2 in favor of Athanasius, the Orthodox Christian. Yet Dan Brown still argues that this idea was first proposed at the Council of Nicea. He believes the Council made up Jesus' divinity in order to gain prestige and power. For instance, no one would belong to a religion where their "god" is just a regular mortal human. There are multiple titles associated with Jesus, further solidifying my case. For example, Jesus is referred to as Lord, Savior of humanity, and in John 14:9, he acknowledges he is divine, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father". Almost all Christian writers agree that Jesus was divine.
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