Why Do You Call Me Good? Matthew 19:17 and Christ's Denial of Divine Goodness
In Matthew 19:17, Christ responds to a young man who addressed him with the title “good teacher” by asking: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except one, that is, God.” A Coptic Orthodox priest on the Anba Takla website interprets this verse as a veiled invitation for the young man to recognize Christ’s divinity. A close reading of the verse across multiple Arabic Bible translations, supported by two Western Christian commentaries, demonstrates that this interpretation is an imposition on the text rather than an exegesis of it.
The Priest’s Interpretation
The priest presents a two-part reading of the verse:
The priest then adds a second argument: Christ is good — even by divine standards — because he is sinless, as testified by Peter, Paul, and the Father himself.
The Priest’s Interpretation Has No Basis in the Text
[!objection]
Christ’s question “Why do you call me good?” was an invitation to the young man to reflect on the divine standard of goodness — implying that if the young man recognized Christ’s miracles, he should recognize his divinity.
Furthermore, the priest’s chain of reasoning — that miracles prove divinity, therefore Christ asking about the standard of goodness is a prompt to recognize him as God — proves too much. The prophets of the Old Testament performed miracles: Moses split the sea, Elijah called down fire, Elisha raised the dead. By the priest’s logic, the performance of miracles that humans cannot do would make every miracle-working prophet a god.
Matters of foundational belief require clarity and explicitness. If Christ intended to declare his divinity through an ambiguous rhetorical question to a young man about goodness standards, this is a strange and ineffective method of revelation. The priest himself acknowledges that Christ “did not say anything” to the young man that would suggest he was God — and then proceeds to construct an elaborate inference from what he imagines Christ might have meant.
The Critical Problem: Most Arabic Translations Do Not Contain This Phrase
The priest builds his entire theological argument on the specific phrasing “Why do you call me good?” — but this phrasing appears in only one of the five major Arabic Bible translations. The remaining four render the verse differently, referring not to Christ’s goodness but to the young man’s question about what is good:
The phrase “Why do you call me good?” appears exclusively in the Van Dyck translation. The Common, Catholic, Pauline, and Book of Life translations all render it as “Why do you ask me what is good?” — a question about the concept of goodness, not about Christ’s personal title. In these four translations, Christ makes no comment on being called good at all, and the entire framework of the priest’s argument — the human standard versus divine standard of goodness, the invitation to recognize Christ’s divinity — has no textual basis whatsoever.
The priest constructed a theological argument about Christology from a translation variant that does not appear in the majority of Arabic Bible versions. Had the priest acknowledged this textual situation, the elaborate interpretive scaffolding he built would have been unnecessary.
Western Christian Commentaries Do Not Support the Priest’s Reading
Even commentators who relied on the Van Dyck-style text did not interpret the verse the way the priest does. Two significant Western commentaries are instructive:
Matthew Henry’s commentary focuses entirely on the young man’s attachment to wealth and his failure to surrender to God’s will. It contains no claim that Christ was using the question about goodness to reveal his divinity or prompt the young man to recognize him as God.
This commentary reads the young man’s use of “good” as an unusual expression of respect for a teacher — not as a theological category that Christ then exploited to reveal his divinity. The focus is on discipleship, surrender of wealth, and obedience to God’s commands.
Neither commentary supports the priest’s claim that Christ was inviting the young man to recognize him as God through this question. The priest’s interpretation is his own imposition, not the reading of the Western Christian scholarly tradition he is presumably drawing upon.
What the Verse Actually Affirms
Taking the verse at face value across all translations — and particularly in the four that focus on the concept of goodness rather than Christ’s title — the consistent message is:
- Goodness in its ultimate sense belongs to God alone
- Christ redirects the conversation from himself to God
- The path to eternal life lies in keeping the commandments
This is entirely consistent with the Islamic understanding of Christ as a prophet who affirmed the absolute oneness and unique goodness of God, and who directed his followers toward obedience to divine commandments rather than toward worship of his own person.
“And dutiful to my mother, and He has not made me a wretched tyrant.”
On the Priest’s Secondary Argument: Christ’s Sinlessness
The priest argues that Christ’s sinlessness — testified by Peter, Paul, and the Father — affirms his divine goodness. This argument is separate from the exegesis of Matthew 19:17 and introduces its own difficulties.
[!objection]
Christ is absolutely good by divine standards because he is sinless, as confirmed by Peter (1 Peter 2:22), Paul (Hebrews 7:26), and the Father (Matthew 3:17).
In John 2:4, when Christ’s mother informs him that the wedding guests have run out of wine, the Gospel records him responding: “Woman, what do you and I have to do with each other? My hour has not yet come.” The Quran presents Christ honoring his mother; the Gospels here present him addressing her with a dismissive rhetorical question.
In Matthew 12:46–50, when told that his mother and brothers are waiting outside to speak with him, Christ responds: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” and redirects to his disciples as his family. The commandments of the Old Testament explicitly require honoring one’s mother and father. If Christ’s goodness and sinlessness are the basis for his divinity, the Gospel text itself raises questions the priest does not address.
Moreover, if the argument is that the one who does the will of the Father constitutes Christ’s true family — as Christ states in Matthew 12:50 — the obvious question is whether his mother was not doing the will of the Father. No answer is given.
Conclusion
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The priest’s interpretation of Matthew 19:17 — that Christ was inviting the young man to recognize his divinity through a question about goodness standards — has no basis in the text. Christ says nothing about divine versus human standards of goodness.
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The phrase “Why do you call me good?” appears in only one of five major Arabic Bible translations (Van Dyck). The remaining four read: “Why do you ask me what is good?” — making the priest’s entire argument inapplicable to the majority of Arabic-language Bibles.
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Western Christian commentators who engaged the same text — Matthew Henry and the IVP New Testament Commentary series — made no claim that Christ was using this verse to reveal his divinity. The priest’s reading is not supported by the mainstream Christian exegetical tradition.
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The plain meaning of the verse, consistent across all translations, is that absolute goodness belongs to God alone — a statement that separates Christ from God rather than identifying him with God.
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The priest’s secondary argument for Christ’s sinlessness is undermined by conduct attributed to Christ in the Gospels themselves, including his manner of addressing his mother at the wedding in Cana and his apparent disavowal of his mother and brothers in Matthew 12.