Importance of the Deity of Christ: A Response to Grudem

Wayne Grudem, on p. 247 of Systematic Theology, gives a number of reasons why the doctrine of the deity of Christ is essential to Christianity. (The section title is "The Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity," but the first four reasons he gives actually deal with the deity of Christ, presumably as a related doctrine. See my article "Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity: A Further Response To Grudem" for my response to his later arguments.) I deeply appreciate Grudem's work and respect him highly, but on this issue I find his overall reasoning less convincing than I'd like. (To be fair, this section is a side-argument, not the main core of Grudem's treatment of this doctrine.)

I have at times struggled to believe in the deity of Christ. The clear distinctions in the Bible between the persons of the Trinity are ever before me. Even more, Jesus makes frequent statements that seem quite clearly to put him separate from and subordinate to the Father, and these statements are both more numerous and less obscure than his claims to deity. I am now settled as to the deity of Christ in light of a number of different passages, such as Is. 9:6, which in predicting Christ gives him four titles which encapsulate the unitarian and trinitarian aspects of God.

However, the Arian view of the Son as the first, best, and only direct creation of the Father (as currently taught by e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses) was quite compelling to me, and I would like to encounter some strong defenses of the deity of Christ both for my own benefit and establishment in truth, and for the good of others who, like me, have struggled with this question. It is for this reason that I deeply hoped Grudem's arguments would be compelling and, having pushed hard enough to test them, frankly find them somewhat lacking. (My counterarguments, as appropriate, come from the Arian perspective as I understand it.) Grudem gives four arguments for the importance of the deity of Christ.