Book Review: Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ

*This will be my last post of the year. Next week, December 26th, I am going to go ahead and post the index for my bible study on the book of Acts. This series will run Monday through Friday, from Monday, January 2nd to Friday, March 31st.The total running time for the series is about 12 hours. There are 65 posts, ranging in time from about 2 minutes to about 30 minutes, with most of them in the 10-15 minute range.*

I am going to do a quick review of the book: Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ written by Robert M. Bowman, Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski. This is a short book for a topic so big, but it is packed with information about the subject on which it speaks. The book has a popular level feel to it; in both its writing style and its presentation. It is very easy to read, except one chapter that goes into several arguments about the Greek language. Despite its easy to read style however, in terms of the amount and level of information, it is academic in its scope. I have been surprised, after looking at the chapter titles and overall length, how chock full of useful and insightful information this book contains.
While this book is only about part of the Trinity, 2/3rds of it really, God the Father and Jesus Christ, it presents a clear understanding of how the New Testament writers carefully wrote about Jesus Christ in light of their strong belief that God is one. They clearly represent Jesus as God, but not as the Father. When I converted, this was a topic I struggled with mightily. How can it be that God is both the Father and the Son? The second time I ever read the Bible all the way through, I highlighted every reference I could find, in both the Old and New Testaments, that seemed to represent the Trinity. There were a lot. Once you start looking for it, you see it everywhere. This book has surprised me in how deep and broad the evidence is for the deity of Christ. Needless to say, Jesus is God, and this book is a great resource for i) affirming your own belief in the Godhood of the Son and ii) for defending this doctrine from skeptics and other "Christian" relgions (i.e. LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.) who deny this fact.
The authors make it real easy to absorb the basic information as well by offering an acrostic to remember for why Jesus is God: HANDS. They then fill in the reasons in each chapter. Here is the acrostic

Jesus shares the...

Honors due to God: worship, prayer to, singing to, faith in, reverence
Attributes due to God: eternal, uncreated, immutable, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, incomprehensible
Names of God: YHWH, Lord, Shepherd, Rock, Bridegroom, Savior, first and last
Deeds that God does: creation and sustainment of the universe, saving people from sin, spiritual blessings, speaking with absolute truth and authority, raising the dead, judges all humanity
Seat of God's throne: Jesus shares God's very position of divine rule over all creation

In closing, I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to better understand the fact that Jesus is God or those of you who may encounter "Christians" who do not affirm the Trinity and need a resource to defend what really is, the doctrine of the Christian faith. Here is a link: Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ.