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STATING THE PROBLEM

COEXISTENT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE CATEGORIES

 

Almost all the logical problems that we have with "one God yet 3 persons" and a "dual nature" in one person, problems that we cannot explain without resorting to "we can't explain it because it's outside of our human experience" occur because we say that Jesus was God. The main reason that we say that Jesus was God is simply because of the many scriptures that seem to say that Jesus was God. This involves having to resolve the tension between the scriptures that support the Creed of the Jews that God is One, affirmed over and over, affirmed by Jesus himself, yet at the same time we have scriptures that seem to speak of Jesus as God and yet differentiate Jesus from God the Father. We have scriptures that speak of Jesus as if he is a man, and others that speak as if he is God. The "two natures" concept is nowhere explicitly stated, it must be inferred as a solution to these seemingly coexistent mutually exclusive categories. That's the logical problem - coexistent mutually exclusive categories.
 

If we can legitimately, realistically, and honestly (I repeat: legitimately, realistically, and honestly) determine that we have misunderstood the "Jesus was God" scriptures - if in actual fact the historical Jesus was not God, ALL THESE PROBLEMS GO AWAY.
 

Below I have used my Greek friend's list of scriptures that seem to say that Jesus was God. Following that is a list that seem to indicate that Jesus was NOT God. There are many more in both categories but this is enough to illustrate the problem.
 

VERSES THAT SEEM TO SAY THAT JESUS WAS GOD
 

  • [Jesus]... existing in the form of God, did not consider being equal with God a grab, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of men...(Php 2:7).

  • God was manifested in [the] flesh, justified in [the] spirit, seen by heavenly angels, proclaimed among nations, believed in the world, taken up in glory. (1Ti 3:16)

  • The first man was from the earth, earthly, the second the Lord from heaven (1Co 15:47).

  • ...of whom is the Christ (in terms of the flesh), who is God over all, blessed in the ages-- Amen. (Ro 9:5).

  • Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. (John 8:58).

  • And now glorify me, You, Father, by Yourself, with the glory I had PRIOR to the world, with You. (John 17:5).

  • And Thomas replied and said to Him, My Lord and my God. (John 20:28)

  • We declare to you the Eternal Life, which was before the Father and was revealed to us (1Jo 1:2).

  • Behold, the virgin will have in her womb, and will bring forth a son. And they will call his name Immanuel, which is, being interpreted, God with us. (Mt 1:23).

  • And his name shall be called... Mighty God Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace. (Isa 9:6)

 

VERSES THAT SEEM TO SAY THAT JESUS WAS NOT GOD
 

  • For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5).

  • To us [Christians] there is one God, the Father, and one Lord Messiah (1 Cor. 8:4-6)

  • Genesis of Jesus (Matt. 1:18)

  • Begetting as Son (Matt. 1:20) in Mary's womb

  • According to Isaiah 44:24 God was unaccompanied at the original creation. Jesus in the Gospels attributes the creation to the Father (Mark 10:6; Matt. 6:30; Luke 12:28) and has no claim of being the agent in the Genesis creation.

  • Jesus was tempted. God cannot be tempted (James 1:13)

  • Son of God "came into existence" from a woman and from the seed of David (Rom. 1:4; Gal. 4:4).

  • The One God of Israel and of Jesus was and is the Father (John 17:3; John 5:44; 1 Tim. 2:5; 1 Cor. 8:4-6)

  • Jesus called God, "the ONLY God" (Jn 5:44)

  • Jesus called God, "the ONLY true God" (Jn 17:3)

  • Jesus said, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord" (Mark 12:28)

  • Psalm 110:1, "The LORD said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand 'till I make your enemies your footstool" - the very text which Jesus himself had produced when describing the relationship of himself to the one God (Mark 12:35-37).

  • Jesus said, "the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28)

  • The Messiah would expressly not be God, but a unique, final "prophet like Moses," coming into being from a family in Israel (Deut. 18:15-19; Acts 3:22; 7:37)

  • If Father and Son are co-equal persons, why did Jesus pray to the Father? (Matthew 11:25).

  • Similarly, how can the Son not know as much as the Father? (Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32).

  • Similarly, how can the Son not have any power except what the Father gives Him? (John 5:19, 30; 6:38).

  • Similarly, what about other verses of Scripture indicating the inequality of the Son and the Father? (John 8:42; 14:28; I Corinthians 11:3).

  • Jesus described himself as, "a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God." (Jn 8:40)

  • How can there be an eternal Son when the Bible speaks of the begotten Son, clearly indicating that the Son had a beginning? (John 3:16; Hebrews 1:5-6).

  • If the Son is eternal and existed at creation, who was His mother at that time? We know the Son was made of a woman (Galatians 4:4).

  • God was in Christ (2 Cor. 5:19)

  • Jesus was adamant in his rejection of any notion of coequal Deity - "Why do you call me good? There is none good but the One God." (Matt. 19:17).

  • We might add that Paul speaks of the Son of God who "came into existence from a woman" (Gal. 4:4; Rom. 1:3). Paul uses the word ginomai = to come into being, rather than the ordinary word "was born" (gennao). In Galatians 4:23, 29 he speaks of the birth of Esau using the normal word for birth (gennao). Paul appears to be stressing that the birth of Jesus, the Son of God was not only his birth but also his entrance upon existence.
     

As a point of argument, if we could determine that we have misunderstood the scriptures that seem to say that Jesus was a man, that is, he only appeared to be human, but really wasn't, we could also resolve the logical conflict. This position does have historical precedent (Docetism) but it lost out to the Trinitarians. It's not relevant to the discussion at hand because Trinitarians acknowledge that Jesus was human. The problems arise when they say he was also God - human and God at the same time - and thus the confusion begins. See: God" and "Man" are Mutually Exclusive Categories.
 

My experience has been that when we have seemingly opposing scriptures, what has happened is that we don't understand at least one set of those scriptures. Our misunderstanding is what creates the conflict. The proper solution to this is not to speculatively infer some kind of extra-Biblical scheme (as in the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ), all that does is REINFORCE THE MISUNDERSTANDING, but to endeavor to come to another hopefully more accurate understanding of one or the other, or both, sets of seemingly conflicted scriptures. Ideally, the improved understanding can be justified from the immediate context, has no logical problems, and has some kind of historical referent. That's the goal. It seems to me that questioning the understanding of the set of scriptures that seem to speak of Jesus' deity is the most logical place to begin in light of the preceding centuries of Jewish monotheistic history  - a history and a paradigm that ALL - ALL! - the New Testament writers were steeped in. Not only did Jesus explicitly affirm Israel's monotheistic creed but the Apostle Paul did as well, no one disputes this. Jesus was a Jew, all the NT writers were Jews (except Luke?), coming from and writing in the context of Jewish theology, history, and categories of thought. That is why I'm starting from the theory that we don't understand the "Jesus was God" set of scriptures and trying to verify that theory. It's the simplest, most obvious solution.
 

So, before I give a non-Trinitarian exposition of the above scriptures, and a few others, I would like to establish the Jewish paradigm, the matrix that both Jesus and the apostles were coming from, and therefore the world-view context, the categories of thought, from which these supposed Trinitarian proof-texts should be understood. While it may be that some of those scriptures seem pretty solid now - I understand how that can be - it has been my experience that what seems solid today might look distinctly like quicksand tomorrow.

 

Next: Jewish Categories of Thought

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