One of the most potent accusations you can make against Christians is that they deny the divinity of Christ. This accusation was made, far too hastily, against Fr Peter Kennedy on the basis of a television interview (pictured). It may be helpful to ask in what terms the question of Christ's divinity came first to be raised and why it is has been seen as so important.
The early Christians knew that Jesus addressed God as Father. After the resurrection, they had to ask how Jesus was related to God. Although, as Fr Kennedy said rightly, Jesus could not have referred to himself as God, that did not settle how he was related to the God whom he knew as Father.
The question was pressed in the Fourth Century by the Alexandrian priest, Arius. In order to protect the unity and otherness of God, he said that the Father was alone and uniquely God. Christ was also a unique, but a lesser being. Later Arians would say that the Father was alone uncreated. As Son of God, Christ was created.
The debate about this question was tumultuous and often confused. Both those who followed Arius and those who claimed that the relationship between Christ and the Father was one of equality found Scriptural texts to support their positions.
But they also found that their opponents could also interpret these texts coherently within their own framework. One side argued for Jesus' equality with the Father, for example, on the basis that Jesus was described as the Son of God. Their opponents then cited texts in which angels or human beings were described as sons of God.
It slowly became clear that the issue was not about particular texts but about what the whole Gospel demanded. Did the story of what God had done in Jesus Christ demand seeing Jesus Christ as equal to the one he called Father? Or was it compatible with seeing Jesus as a lesser being, even as no more than a human being?
The conclusion was that the Christian faith represented in the New Testament demanded that Christ be seen as the Son of God who was equal in all respects to the Father.
This was not the easier position to hold. Its opponents immediately asked how it could be compatible with the central belief that God is one, and how a divine Christ could share fully