I think 100 BCE is too early for Rabbinical-Merkabah politics also. I assume your source is the Talmud and anything written at the time is collected from ancient notes of the same time.Mistaken? Perhaps. However, my point was that the two-powers debate originated between the "rabbinical group and the adheres of the Merkabah group, which arose about 100 BCE", and Christianity was included in the debate in the first century. I'm not sure what the "... Talmud nor Ester is among the Dead Sea Scrolls, but some letters to Bar Kochba have been found in the same area" comment adds to the conversation. Even so, my brain is not quite as nimble as it was three or four decades ago.
Even, so, it would appear from the posts, so far, there is not much information in advancing an understanding of the Godhead.
Understanding the GodHead.
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Bob Estey
Well-Known Member
I believe God is our Father in heaven. I believe he came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. I believe that when we are communicating with him, he might be called the Holy Spirit.
There are those who believe Jesus was a person who God raised to be our Savior. I respect those people.
Lambano
Well-Known Member
"False" is false.
Just talking about English grammar and the use of the word "by" for instrumentality here...
A mob boss orders a hit on a rival. The hitman is instrumental in carrying out the boss's will. Is it correct to say the victim was killed BY the hit man? Is it also correct to say that the victim was killed BY the mob boss?
The hitman was arrested, tried for first-degree murder, and convicted. The mob boss was arrested, tried for conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree, and convicted. After a ridiculous number of appeals and lengthy delays, both were executed for their moral responsibility for the crime of murder. (That's the Florida version. The California version turned out different.) Was justice done?
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Wrangler
Well-Known Member
Yea, sure you are! You aren’t propping up a false God using semantics to contradict Scripture. Jesus is NOT God. He is not the Creator but created by God.
This is the foundation. Of the unitarian text.
Lambano
Well-Known Member
Okay; so we are agreed that the world was created BY the Logos as a third-party means to implement the will of God. We are agreed that the Logos was everything God is. And we are agreed that the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.
Hey, I can't help it if Scripture contradicts Scripture. That is precisely why Nicaea and Chalcedon had to happen.
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
Nope. An attribute of a person is not a 3rd party from that person. You got nothing to say about Jesus being a created, begotten person who said another person was the only true God! Nice.
Hey, cousin…
Yes, that would agree with the Scriptures, both the Hebrew & Greek.
I have some questions:
- How could this be?
- To whom was Jesus praying all those many times?
- When Jesus came up from the waters, after he was baptized, who was speaking that said, “This is my son the beloved, whom I have approved”?
- When Jesus was dying, to whom was he speaking when he said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”?
- After his resurrection, he said to Mary, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father and to my God and your God.” How could he ‘ascend’ to Him, if Jesus was Him?
- Who was Mary’s God?
It doesn’t.
Only by misunderstanding it.
That’s how errant teachings arise: through misunderstanding it.
Lambano
Well-Known Member
Nobody sees what's right in front of their faces. Why is that? Why are we so emotionally invested in the concept of scriptural inerrancy? Is it because it gives us a sense of control, a sense that we can know the truth with full certainty if we only just make certain assumptions and read the sacred texts the "right" way?
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Lambano
Well-Known Member
That same person also is said to have said this:
Jesus remembers being with the Father before the world began. Liar, lunatic, or Lord?
Lambano
Well-Known Member
He's talking to a different PERSON. The Trinitarian solution to the problem of Jesus's divine nature versus traditional Jewish monotheism requires that we have to change our understanding of what the concept of "God" IS. We have to break the one-to-one correspondence of "God" with Personhood.
The concept of "Godhead" is a single "state of being" that is shared across multiple persons. In the terms the Nicaean fathers phrased it, three hypostases, one ousia., "God" is like a (and I said "like a") substance of which Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are composed. (And I have problems with THAT, which I'll defer to later.) But that's one of the key concepts about "Godhead" that most lay persons don't understand, and they end up concluding that both the Father and Son are the same Person.
Personhood is relational. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to each other as different Persons in unique ways (as the quoted text points out), and we also should relate to them individually in unique ways.
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Lambano
Well-Known Member
John's claim is that the entity that became Jesus was there at Creation and was instrumental in Creation.
All right, now I'm going to take Dr. Dow's advice and switch sides in the argument, at least in respect to the Johannine Prologue.
I would argue that the rhythm of John 1:1-5 clearly indicate that these verses belong to the genre of Poetry. The Logos is a poetic device like the Chochmah of Proverbs 8:22-31. Solomon did not intend that the personified "Wisdom of God" to be taken as a literal person, and nor did John intend that the personified Logos of God be taken as a literal person.
This may be correct, but John 17:5 above clearly has Jesus Himself claiming to remember being with the Father before Creation, and John 8:58 ("Truly, truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.") also has Jesus claiming to have existed before His current mode of existence. The choice of this material clearly indicates that John believes Jesus did in some way exist before.
We also still have to deal with Paul's Colossians 1:16 quote, directly attributing instrumentality in Creation to Jesus Christ. What was His nature when He did that?
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Bob Estey
Well-Known Member
I believe Jesus was setting an example for us. Therefore, when he prayed, his words were for meant for our ears, not for God's. With that in mind, let me attempt to answer your questions:
1. God can do anything.
2. Jesus's prayers were meant for our ears, not God's.
3. It was God.
4. To God. Once again, Jesus's words were meant for our ears, not God's.
5. God had taken human form. Perhaps this was meant to explain to us what would happen when we died.
6. The same God as our God.
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
Saying something does not make one the Creator. Your question is a False Alternative. Can you even admit there are many lords in Scripture?
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
There is no reason we have to do this break the one-to-one correspondence of "God" with Personhood. Breaking the one-to-one correspondence of "God" with Personhood violates the 1st Commandment. It's so important that God put it first. 7,000 times singular pronouns are used to refer to the one God of the Bible. You could not have missed it.
Scripture explicitly and repeatedly states there is one God, whose name is YHWH, who we relate to as Father. And it explicitly and repeatedly states Jesus is NOT God but anointed by God, the son of YHWH, the long awaited prophet Moses told the people of Israel about. We know Jesus is not God because Jesus died and is the first fruit of the resurrection.
AW Bowman
Active Member
What a ridiculous statement! Do you want me to tell you why this is so absurd?That same person also is said to have said this:
Jesus remembers being with the Father before the world began. Liar, lunatic, or Lord?
I wonder, have you considered that this verse 17:5 is not the only verse spoken by Jesus as he prayed to his Father before he literally moved across from the Kidron Valley, one physical boundary of King David's city to the Mt of Olives to the Garden (John 18:1).
Jesus prayed to his Father, who is God, as a human being, not as a deity or a pre-existent deity - verse 1. Jesus said the time had come to glorify him, as a human being so he could then glorify his Father as a result of his God giving him this immortality, for the first time.
So Jesus is saying that this glorification shall then give glorification or everlasting life to others, as he was already given authority to give this immortality to other human beings, those that even do/did not exit yet. - verse 2 He just need to be given his own eternal life first.
Verse 3 sets the foundation or identifies who is Jesus and his Father, and others who shall also be glorified with eternal life, in the future.
Verse 4 - Jesus reminds his Father that all the work of all kinds, words, gestures, the many miracles, etc., he did as commanded, and he gave his Father all the glory or credit that made it all possible. As a human being, Jesus could do none of this work.
Verse 5 - Now Jesus, the human being, because of his work and the time of his death approaching, and for sake of other human beings, he needed/ wanted to be glorified along with his Father, as his Father spoke of him doing, or gaining eternal life as prophecy in the OT. Jesus knew the OT very well to know this glorification with immortal life was part of his Father's plan for the salvation of mankind, since the world was created.
If Jesus was speaking of the exact same glorification, as when he somehow pre-existed as a deity, and possessed it previously, and now waits to re-acquire these superpowers once again, then what is the point of this entire prayer to his Father, and for us human beings as he spoke of for their glorification later in the Chapter that I have not even focused on yet?!
If you, without qualification make this incredible remark inferring that Jesus the human being was once a deity or still one incognito, then you deny Jesus ever being human, since his feet walked this earth, and truthfully you are also saying the human Jesus did nothing at all in his role and agent of his Father, who is God, to become our savour and lord.
You have denied that the Son of God is human and was born a human being. You have made him into a deity as if your so-called god-head had a super-deity prayer session between god the son and god the Father, and who knows where the god the holy spirit is located all this time. And then for who's benefit or edification; for the sake of the word of God, for the one true God and his Son....this type of statement you have made is at least intellectually irresponsible and really stupid!
So which are you, Liar, lunatic, or Lord? Or more that one or 'other'?
But Jesus didn’t say “Father”. He said “God”. (The other two persons, then?)
It’s like at 2 Corinthians 13:14, ASV (which trinitarians seem to think supports their view, but it’s just the opposite)….
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”
There are three entities mentioned here, yes. But If the Trinity was a valid teaching, something that Paul supported, he would have by necessity, worded it, “…the Lord Jesus Christ, … the Father, and … the Holy Spirit.” Then trinitarians might have an argument.
But by Paul’s own semantics, writing “God” separately, and not saying “Father”, he excluded Jesus Christ & the Holy Spirit from being God. In this same way, Jesus is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not Jesus….and Jesus and God are not the Holy Spirit….
Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not God!!
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Because the author is God, and He is inerrant. As Jesus said in prayer to his Father at John 17:17…”Your word is truth.”
Well, based on the facts I mentioned above, there would be a “right”, ie., accurate, way to understand it.
But it requires His help, as Jesus clarified at Luke 10:21…”In that very hour he became overjoyed in the holy spirit and said: ‘I publicly praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have carefully hidden these things from wise and intellectual ones, and have revealed them to babes. Yes, O Father, because to do thus came to be the way approved by you.’”
It’s Jesus’ Father, his God, who reveals understanding of His Word.
Or, hides it.
What do you think that would depend on, for a person to accurately understand it or not?
Would worshipping Him the right way be important? (See John 4:23,24 & Matthew 7:21). What about being sexually immoral? If a person “sleeps around”, should they expect to receive “accurate understanding”?
Obedience is prime.
Wrangler
Well-Known Member
Trinitarians want to pretend "the Father" is not synonymous with God - in his unitarian nature - then deny all the verses that juxtapose God - in his unitarian nature - with Jesus.
Who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son? Not, "the Father." But a stubborn trinitarian made the substitution in answering the question. It's like they are schizophrenic on the question.
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