Putting Jesus In His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ by Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski is a book about the greatest human who has ever lived: Jesus, God in the flesh. The world’s religions have no problem embracing and affirming his human nature; it is the doctrine of his divine nature that offends and confronts the heart of all that is implied with the uniqueness of Jesus (hence, the reason why many post-evangelical Christians sadly today will focus on his “humanness” as to not offend postmoderns.)
This book is anything but a dry systematic treatment of the deity of Christ; and it is crafted and organized in such a way as to mnemonically teach our Lord’s identity in a church setting or apologetically argue for his deity with nonbelievers. Devotionally, this book will dispel any notion that Jesus is our “big brother”–it will bring us back to a reverence for his Lordship that was practiced in the apostolic age. In other words, we pray and worship to the Creator of the universe and not a mere first-century demigod. The book is not monochromatic in its approach, the authors write,
Our aim is to provide a comprehensive case from the New Testament for the deity of Jesus Christ. Many of us were taught that the deity of Jesus can be proved using one or two verses—say, John 1:1 (“and the Word was God”) or John 20:28 (where Thomas calls Jesus, “My Lord and my God”). To be sure, we will say something about these important texts. But there is much more biblical evidence for Jesus’ deity.
The authors are pedagogically and apologetically minded for they have structured the content in five categories of evidence for the deity of Christ with the acronym HANDS:
Honors: Jesus shares the honors due to God.
Attributes: Jesus shares the attributes of God.
Names: Jesus shares the names of God.
Deeds: Jesus shares in the deeds that God does.
Seat: Jesus shares the seat of God’s throne.
The book contains an appendix, “HANDS Review Tables” that summarize the evidence in the book. So once you read the book these “review tables’ in the appendix would be an excellent way to review these different categories of evidence for the Deity of Christ without having to go back and re-reading the entire book.
Lastly, since I am a footnote junkie I have to say the endnotes at the back of the book are worth the cost of the book. Though the book itself covers what is essential for the Deity of Christ, the footnotes immerse you deeper into current scholarly discussion, grammatical and textual insights, and further suggested readings for the ambitious.
God in human flesh is a mystery and miracle—this we cannot fully fathom. God’s revelation to us that this has indeed happened is demonstrated comprehensively in Putting Jesus in His Place from the Primary Source: God-breathed Scripture.
