John 20:17 — “My God and your God”: The Risen Christ has a God

“I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

John 20:17

Context: Easter Morning at the Empty Tomb

John 20:1–18 narrates the Easter story from the perspective of Mary Magdalene. Early in the morning she comes to the tomb, finds the stone rolled away, runs to Peter and to the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” who confirm the empty tomb. As she remains alone weeping, two angels appear to her. Then she turns — and sees Jesus, but at first does not recognise him. Only when he calls her by name (“Mary!”) does she recognise him and cry out: “Rabboni!” (my teacher).

Striking: Mary does not call the risen Jesus “my God,” but “my teacher.” And Jesus does not correct her. What follows immediately is the message to the disciples — and it culminates in a theologically high-precision twin clause: “my Father and your Father — my God and your God.” Thus the Risen One himself supplies the hermeneutical instruction for how his new, glorified status is to be understood: not as a return to an ontological equality with God, but as entry into that relational frame in which the Father remains his God — just as he is also the God of the disciples.

The Greek precision of the verse is not accidental. John does not write “our Father” or “our God,” but deliberately distinguishes ton patera mou kai patera hymôn, theon mou kai theon hymôn. The sonship of Christ is unique (hence: mou) — but the having-of-God is the same referential frame in which the disciples also stand (hence: kai hymôn). Christ does not place himself on the side of God — he places himself on the side of creatures, who worship God, of course as their unique firstborn and envoy.

Equally noteworthy is what immediately precedes: “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father” (John 20:17a). The ascension still lies ahead. The Risen One is bodily torn from the grave, but not yet enthroned. The “ascending” (anabainô) to the Father is the language of motion: from below to above, from the created to the Creator, from the exalted to the Most High. Whoever ascends to God is not God himself.

In the wider context of the Gospel of John, v. 17 belongs to a series of consistent statements of distinction: 5:30 (“I can do nothing of my own accord”), 7:16 (“my teaching is not mine, but his who sent me”), 14:28 (“the Father is greater than I”), 17:3 (“you, the only true God”). Whoever reads John as a “high-Christology” gospel must read this line along with it. John 20:17 is its post-Easter confirmation.

Socinian Core Thesis

For the Socinian reading, John 20:17 is one of the clearest New Testament proofs against the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father. The argument is syllogistically simple and gets along without metaphysical constructions: Whoever is God in the absolute sense has no God above himself. Jesus has — even as the Risen One — a God above himself. Therefore Jesus is not the one, most high God. The logic is plain, the consequence radical — and the text yields it directly.

The point is precisely the post-Easter position of the verse. Anyone who would restrict the relational character between Father and Son to the time of humiliation (e.g. on the model of the Lutheran communicatio idiomatum: that Christ in the days of his flesh speaks “according to the human nature”) faces a massive textual problem here. It is not the suffering, weak Christ who speaks here — it is the Risen One from death, who will soon sit at the right hand of God. And it is precisely he who says: my God.

The Racovian Catechism (1605) develops this line as a compact scriptural proof: Christ “repeatedly calls the Father his God,” and the whole spectrum of apostolic statements (Paul, Peter, the seer of Revelation) confirms this linguistic order. There is in the entire NT no counter-voice that would relativise the Father’s status as “the God of Christ.” On the contrary: the Pauline standard formula reads ho theos kai patêr tou kyriou hêmôn Iêsou Christou — “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Understood in the Socinian sense, Christ is not thereby devalued, but defined more precisely in his unique role: he is the unique Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, sent by God, and exalted with glory after the completion of his work. But he is not the one true God. His “being-God,” where it occurs in Scripture (above all John 20:28; John 1:1c), is to be understood functionally — in the same semantic field in which Moses and the judges of Israel are also called “Elohim” (Ex 7:1; Ps 82:6).

Exegesis: Language and Substance

Four linguistic items decide the interpretation of John 20:17 philologically:

ton theon mou — “my God”

The Greek ton theon mou is a possessive construction: “the God of me,” “my God.” The possessive pronoun mou (“my”) in biblical usage expresses without exception a relation of belonging and subordination: the God to whom I belong. The God to whom I am subject. The God whom I worship. There is in OT and NT no instance in which God himself says “my God” to anyone else — for the simple reason that the one, most high God has no God above himself.

In the Septuagint the phrase ho theos mou is regularly used by a person at prayer — David in the Psalms (Ps 22:1 LXX; Ps 31:14 LXX; Ps 63:1 LXX), Jonah in the belly of the fish (Jonah 2:6), the prophets in the Lamentations. Whoever says “my God” is the one who calls, prays, worships. The one to whom “my God” is said is the most high, the one called upon, the one worshipped — God himself. The convention is unambiguous.

Striking: Christ takes up the Psalm-word on the cross precisely in this sense: Elôi, Elôi, lema sabachthani — “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34, citing Ps 22:1). Between the word from the cross and the word on Easter morning a strict linguistic continuum prevails: the same Christ who prays to God on the cross says the same after the resurrection.

anabainô — “I ascend”

The verb anabainô (“to go up,” “to ascend”) implies a movement from a lower to a higher place. In biblical usage one ascends to God: one goes up to the temple (Ps 122:1, 4), one goes up to the altar (Ex 20:26), one ascends the mountain with Moses (Ex 19:3). Ascending to God presupposes that one is not God; were one God, there would be nothing to ascend to.

Christ’s ascension, understood in the Socinian sense, is the return of the envoy to the sender — not a return to a position which he had previously occupied as a “second person of the Godhead.” It is entry into that exaltation which had been promised him by the Father (John 17:5: in God’s decree, cf. the entry on John 17:5), but which he now first, after the completion of the work, receives in history.

pater mou kai pater hymôn — “my Father and your Father”

The doubling is exegetically decisive. Christ does not say “our Father” (as he had taught the disciples to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, Matt 6:9), but distinguishes: my Father and your Father. The fatherhood of God over Christ is unique (only-begotten Son, monogenês); the fatherhood of God over the disciples is derivative (sonship received by faith, John 1:12; Gal 4:5). Both, however, mean the same type of relation: Christ and the disciples stand together under the Father — not: Christ is a co-participant in the fatherhood.

In the wider Johannine usage, Christ’s sonship is consistently described as a relation of sending and authorisation: he is the one sent (3:17), the one consecrated (10:36), the one who receives the inheritance from the Father (3:35; 13:3). Sons derive from their father, depend on him, are subordinate to him. The language of sonship confirms the distinction — it does not abolish it.

theon mou kai theon hymôn — “my God and your God”

The second member of the twin clause is linguistically even sharper: as regards the relation to theos, Christ explicitly places himself together with the disciples in the same position. Both have the same God. Both look to the Father as God. Both are creatures whose existence is owed to God. What distinguishes Christ from the disciples is the role of Son — not distance from God.

In this linguistic order there is no tertium quid: no third position between “God” and “a human being who has a God.” Christ belongs to the second side — in unique elevation, with unique authority, in unique closeness to the Father, but still on the side of those who ascend to God, address him as my God, serve him, worship him.

Reference to the Racovian Catechism and Fausto Sozzini

The Racovian Catechism (Catechesis Ecclesiarum Polonicarum, 1605) — the chief theological document of the Polish Brethren, which codifies Sozzini’s teaching — treats the phenomenon that Christ calls God his God in several mutually reinforcing sections. Three of them are central for John 20:17.

First, the Catechism draws the cardinal conclusion from the Johannine self-statements of Christ. The argument starts from John 14:28 (“the Father is greater than I”) and from the observation that Christ repeatedly designates the Father as his God:

“Finally, to pass over other matters, the same Christ openly assures us that the Father is greater than he, by which he indicates that he is not as great as the Father; and he repeatedly calls the Father his God. This is also confirmed by other sacred writers, and namely by Paul, who likewise testifies that God is the head of him, and that, as we are Christ’s, so Christ is God’s, and that the Son shall one day be subjected to him who has subjected all things to him.”

Racovian Catechism (Catechesis Ecclesiarum Polonicarum, 1605), section “On the Knowledge of Christ — Scriptural Proofs against the Two-Natures Doctrine” (cf. John 14:28; 1 Cor 11:3; 1 Cor 3:23; 1 Cor 15:28); doctrinal tradition of Fausto Sozzini

This is the precise argumentative arc within which John 20:17 stands: Christ calls the Father repeatedly his God — before the cross (John 17:3), on the cross (Mark 15:34), on Easter morning (John 20:17), in the consummation (Rev 3:12). This multiple attestation is no literary contingency but a theological constant. And it is, as the Racovian Catechism stresses, consistently confirmed by the Pauline and New Testament tradition: Paul calls the Father “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:17), the “head of Christ” (1 Cor 11:3), the one to whom even the Son will one day be subjected (1 Cor 15:28).

Second, the Catechism formulates elsewhere what this linguistic order positively signifies: that the Father alone, and no one else, is the God of Christ and of the believers. The polemical edge is directed against the transfer of this honour onto a supposedly second or third divine subsistent:

“It obscures the glory of the one God, who alone is the Father of Christ, by transferring it to another who is not the Father. Thirdly, it contains things unworthy of that one and most high God, namely that that one and most high God is someone’s Son or Spirit and thus has a Father and Author of himself, that that one and most high God became a human being and that a human being is that one and most high God.”

Racovian Catechism (Catechesis Ecclesiarum Polonicarum, 1605), section “Knowledge of the One God — Trinity and the Loss of Salvation”; on the basis of the Praelectiones Theologicae of Fausto Sozzini

For John 20:17 this passage is the hermeneutical key: if the Father alone is the God of Christ, then the word of the Risen One is no leftover of his humiliation, but the expression of the abiding, theologically constitutive linguistic order. Christ does not pass over into a second God-position; he goes to the one God who was his God from the beginning.

Third, the Catechism brings the question of resurrection and exaltation directly into relation with John 20:17. If the exaltation of Christ is the work of God — and not Christ’s own self-enthronement — then the very process presupposes the distinction which John 20:17 articulates linguistically:

“If Christ was the most high God, he could neither have been exalted, nor, even if he had been able to be, would he have ever attributed that exaltation entirely to anyone other than his own divine nature. And yet Paul says (Eph. 1:19–23) that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, displayed the working of the strength of his might in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.”

Racovian Catechism (Catechesis Ecclesiarum Polonicarum, 1605), section “The Shaking of the Hope of the Resurrection”; on the basis of the writings of Fausto Sozzini (cf. Eph 1:19–23; Phil 2:9–10)

This argument bears directly on the Easter-morning word. Christ “ascends to my God” — namely to the Father who has raised him from the dead. Whoever is raised by God is not himself the raiser; whoever is set into glory by God is not himself the one who sets in. John 20:17 names this God by name: my God.

Fourth, Sozzini himself, in On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore), set out the resurrection-logic which underlies John 20:17. For him the resurrection is the hermeneutical foundation of the whole of Christian soteriology — not a metaphysical self-actualisation of the incarnate Logos, but God’s deed performed on his servant:

“The head, then, and as it were the foundation of the whole faith and of our salvation in the person of Christ is the resurrection of Jesus Christ himself… Hence it is said that God exalted Christ in order to give Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins (Acts 5:31).”

Fausto Sozzini, De Iesu Christo Servatore (“On Jesus Christ the Saviour”), Book I, chapter on Resurrection and the Foundation of Faith

The theological gain of this view is enormous: the Easter-morning word of John 20:17 is not the embarrassing residue of an exaltation-process not yet completed, but the very content of the Easter message itself. Christ goes to his God — that is the conditio christiana as such. Whoever follows the risen Christ goes the same way: to that God who is also the God of Christ.

Overview of the writings of Sozzini

Logical Arguments

From John 20:17 the following linguistic-philological and logical arguments against the ontological consubstantiality of Christ with the Father follow:

1. Argument from the post-Easter position. The verse stands after the resurrection, in the mouth of the glorified Christ. Any interpretation which would restrict the “my God” to the time of humiliation (e.g. in the sense of the Reformation two-natures doctrine) is refuted by the temporal placement of the verse: Christ here speaks not as the crucified, but as the One Risen from the dead.
2. Argument from the direction of motion. Anabainô (“I ascend”) implies a movement from below to above, from a lower to a higher place. Whoever ascends to God is not himself the place to which he ascends. A statement like “God ascends to God” would be unthinkable in biblical usage; it occurs nowhere.
3. Argument from possessive logic. “My God” (theos mou) is in the entire biblical-Greek usage an asymmetrical relation: the speaker is the worshipper, the addressee the one worshipped. God himself never says “my God” to another person, because he has no God above himself. Christ, however, says it four times — even after Easter.
4. Argument from the Johannine linguistic order. In the Gospel of John, Christ’s position relative to the Father is consistently described as a relation of sending and reception: he is the one sent (3:17), the one authorised (3:35), the one who learns from the Father (5:19; 8:28), the one subordinate to the Father (14:28). John 20:17 is the post-Easter apex of this line, not a break with it.
5. Argument from the double parallel “mine and yours.” Christ does not put “ours,” but distinguishes. This distinction supports the uniqueness of the sonship — but does not transfer Christ into the sphere of the Father. On the contrary: the fact that “my God” and “your God” are the same God places Christ and the disciples in the same theological class: that of the creatures who worship God.
6. Argument from the resurrection as the work of God. The Father has raised the Son (Acts 2:24; Rom 4:24; 1 Pet 1:21). The Raised is not the Raiser. When Christ ascends to his God, then to the very one who has called him from the dead. An ontological equality of the two would dissolve this asymmetry — and thereby devalue the Christian message of the resurrection itself.
7. Argument from apostolic consistency. Paul calls the Father eight times “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:17; 1 Cor 11:3; 2 Cor 1:3; 11:31; cf. Rom 15:6; Eph 1:3; Col 1:3; 1 Pet 1:3). Peter and the seer of Revelation do the same. John 20:17 stands within this thoroughgoing apostolic linguistic order — and nowhere is there an apostolic counter-voice.
8. Argument from Revelation 3:12. In the letter to Philadelphia the exalted, heavenly Christ speaks four times of “my God”: the temple of my God… the name of my God… the city of my God… from my God. The linguistic order of John 20:17 thus persists in the heavenly consummation. There is no point in the drama of salvation at which Christ ceased to call the Father “my God.”
9. Argument from 1 Cor 15:28. Paul expects that “the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.” The relation “Son having God above himself” thus reaches into the eschatological end. John 20:17 is the Easter-morning, 1 Cor 15:28 the eschatological statement of the same linguistic order.
10. Argument from the Shema. Christ himself in Mark 12:29 quotes the Shema Israel as “the highest commandment”: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut 6:4). Whoever places this confession at the apex of his own teaching cannot in the same breath mean a second or third subsistent of the same God. John 20:17 is the post-Easter confirmation of the Shema in the mouth of Christ (cf. the entry on Mark 12:29).

Biblical Cross-references

The following passages are essential for the correct understanding of John 20:17:

Mark 15:34 / Matthew 27:46 — “My God, my God”

On the cross Jesus cries from Ps 22:1: Elôi, Elôi, lema sabachthani — “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The phrase “my God” is therefore already firmly coined before Easter. John 20:17 is not its first attestation, but its post-Easter confirmation.

John 17:3 — “The only true God”

In the High Priestly Prayer Jesus himself says: “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God (ton monon alêthinon theon), and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” The Father is alone the true God; Christ is the one sent by him. This hermeneutical bracket already fixes the relation of the Father to the Son before Easter — John 20:17 takes it up.

Revelation 3:12 — The Exalted Christ and “My God” (four times)

In the letter to Philadelphia the heavenly, exalted Christ speaks: “I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, and my own new name.” Four times “my God” in the mouth of the glorified Christ. The linguistic order of John 20:17 remains in force in the heavenly consummation.

Ephesians 1:17 — “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ”

Paul prays to “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.” The formula ho theos tou kyriou hêmôn Iêsou Christou is a fixed phrase in the Pauline corpus (cf. 2 Cor 1:3; 11:31; Rom 15:6; Eph 1:3; Col 1:3). Even after the resurrection and exaltation Christ has a God, and Paul prays to this very God.

1 Corinthians 11:3 — “The head of Christ is God”

“But I want you to understand: the head of every man is Christ; the head of a wife is her husband; and the head of Christ is God.” Christ has a head above himself — God. The statement cannot be defused trinitarianly: it concerns a relation of authority and reference, and that is asymmetrical (cf. the entry on 1 Cor 11:3).

1 Corinthians 15:24–28 — The Son subjects himself to the Father

At the end of salvation history the Son hands over the kingdom to the Father and subjects himself to the one who has subjected all things to him. The Easter-morning statement of John 20:17 is thus eschatologically confirmed: the relation “Christ has a God” reaches into the consummation.

1 Peter 1:3 — “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”

Peter formulates the same doubling as John 20:17: God is both the Father of Christ and the God of Christ. Both aspects hold together and they exclude an identity of essence.

Acts 2:32–36 — God has made Christ Lord and Messiah

Peter’s Pentecost sermon sums up the exaltation-logic in a precise statement: “This Jesus God raised up… Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God… Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” The Raiser and Enthroner is God; the Raised and Enthroned is Christ. That is precisely the linguistic order in which John 20:17 stands (cf. the entry on Acts 2:36).

Objections and Socinian Answers

Objection 1: “Christ here speaks according to the human nature, not the divine.”

The objection is a theological auxiliary construction which the text itself does not yield. Christ does not say: “Insofar as I am human, I ascend to my God.” He simply says: “I ascend to my God.” The “I” is the subject-I of Christ’s self-statement — and this I has a God.

In addition, the two-natures mode of speech cannot be sustained intratextually. Christ would then have had at the same time, “according to the divine nature,” to say: “I am myself God and for you the same as the Father” — and that is precisely what he does not do. On the contrary: he places himself beside the disciples (“mine and yours”) and over against the Father (“to my God”). A second, “divine” self-statement alongside the human is nowhere present in the text.

The Racovian Catechism rejects the same auxiliary construction with a fundamental objection: if the whole person of Christ bears the statement, then it bears it as the whole person. A doctrine which splits the subject-I of Christ into two speaking instances does not solve the difficulty but doubles it: now Christ would have two I’s, and neither of them is biblically attested. Methodologically the two-natures reading is no exegetical finding but a secondary harmonising assumption.

Finally: the two-natures interpretation falls in the face of Rev 3:12. There it is not the earthly, not the crucified, but the heavenly exalted Christ who speaks — four times “my God.” If according to traditional doctrine the human nature is taken up into the divine in glorification, then for the “my God” in the mouth of the Glorified no subject remains — except Christ himself, unitary, who speaks to his God.

Objection 2: “In John 20:28 Thomas calls Jesus ‘my Lord and my God’ — that overrides v. 17.”

The two statements do not contradict each other but complement each other. In v. 17 Jesus himself speaks about his own relation to the Father. In v. 28 Thomas speaks about his recognition of Jesus. Jesus’ own self-statement carries hermeneutically greater weight than the address of a disciple.

Furthermore, theos in OT and NT is used functionally. God himself calls Moses “Elohim” over against Aaron and Pharaoh (Ex 4:16; 7:1); the judges of Israel are called “Elohim” (Ps 82:6); and Jesus himself appeals to this functional usage in John 10:34–36: “If he called those gods, to whom the word of God came…” Thomas recognises in Jesus the Lord (kyrios) instituted by God, the authorised one, who bears divine authority — that does not make Jesus the one God of the Shema.

Furthermore: the Racovian Catechism explicitly recalls that the Greek theos is used in a double sense: once of the most high, one God (with article: ho theos), and once of those authorised by God (without article, or with the article in a transferred sense). Thomas’s exclamation “my God” (ho theos mou) is to be read in the second sense — analogous to David’s address to Saul, who is repeatedly addressed as “my lord, my anointed.” Christ is Lord and God of his church, because all authority in heaven and on earth has been handed over to him by the Father (Matt 28:18). But he himself stands under the one God whom he in v. 17 calls “my God.”

Decisive is finally the direct intratextual comparison: if Jesus in v. 17 unmistakably says that the Father is his God, and eleven verses later Thomas addresses him with “my God,” then theos here must have two different referents — otherwise within eleven verses Christ would have marked his own Father and himself as the same “God.” That is not possible. Therefore: the Father is ho theos in the strict sense; Christ is Lord and God in the derivative, functional sense.

Objection 3: “Christ goes to ‘my Father’ — that includes the intratrinitarian relation between Father and Son.”

The objection presupposes what would have to be proved: that the Father-Son relation is intratrinitarian. But that is precisely the disputed question. The biblical evidence is the opposite: “Son of God” in OT and NT designates persons who stand in a relation of sending, authorisation or covenant to God — Israel (Ex 4:22), the Davidic king (Ps 2:7), the angels (Ps 89:6), the believers (John 1:12; Rom 8:14). In all these cases the sonship-relation is a creature-to-God-relation.

Christ’s sonship is unique — he is the monogenês, the only one conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35), the one consecrated by the Father (John 10:36), the only one to whom the whole fullness of the Father is handed over (John 3:35; Matt 28:18). But it is not ontologically unique in the sense of consubstantiality; it is relationally unique in the sense of sending. Even a unique son remains a son — dependent on the Father, receiving from the Father, subordinate to the Father.

The twin clause “my Father and your Father — my God and your God” makes this clear with unique sharpness: precisely the fatherhood which distinguishes Christ from the disciples (his mou is unique) is at the same time the same fatherhood which connects him with the disciples (it is also their Father). Christ does not belong to a third class between God and creatures; he is the firstborn Son among many brothers (Rom 8:29).

Finally: the Racovian Catechism formulates the consequence unmistakably. If the one, most high God were at the same time “someone’s Son” — that is, would have a Father and Author of himself — that would be a notion unworthy of the Most High. The language of sonship confirms the subordination; it does not dissolve it into intratrinitarian equality. John 20:17 forces the strict reading: Father and God of the Son is one point of reference; the Son is distinguished from him.

Theological Consequences

Summary

John 20:17 is, linguistically, theologically and in salvation-historical terms, a verse of unusual sharpness. The risen Christ calls the Father “my God” — and indeed in parallel to “your God”: the one, most high God is the same for Christ and for the disciples. The statement cannot be reduced to a “human nature”; it cannot be defused by Thomas’s address in v. 28; it cannot be reinterpreted intratrinitarianly. It is the post-Easter confirmation of the entire New Testament linguistic order.

Understood in the Socinian sense — and precisely formulated in the Racovian Catechism on the foundation of Fausto Sozzini — this means: Christ is not the one, most high God. He is his unique Son, his envoy, the one conceived by the Holy Spirit, the one exalted by the Father after the completion of his work. But between him and the one God the categorical distinction remains: the Father is his God, on the cross, on Easter morning, in the heavenly consummation — always.

With this the Christian faith gains a twofold seriousness. The monotheism of the Shema remains undiminished: the one God, the Father. And the unique position of Christ remains undiminished: he is the firstborn, sent by the Father and exalted, to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been handed over. Both go together — not by metaphysical construction, but by the simple word given by Christ himself: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”