Thursday, December 30, 2021

"My Sabbath"

From Michael Bird, Jesus the Eternal Son.

Later, in one of the conflict stories concerning Jesus and the Sabbath, Jesus responds to his Pharisaic opponents that flouting their halakhah is justified because the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28). This logion could be saying no more than the Sabbath’s purpose in helping humanity (v. 27) implies humanity’s authority over the Sabbath (playing on the sense of “Son of Man” as a Semitic idiom for “human being”).

Alternatively, in light of the conflict described in Mark 2:23–28, it might imply that the Son of Man holds a special authority over the Sabbath and therefore can define its purpose and proper application. In favor of the latter view, we can say a few things:

(1) It would be exceedingly odd for Jesus or Mark to think that human beings in general, even if restricted to Israel, possesses authority to decide for themselves under what circumstances they may override the Sabbath command. Rights to abrogate the Sabbath are particularly affronting when one remembers that the Scriptures attribute such an authority to Yahweh as the one who instituted and consecrated the day of rest (see Exod 16:22–30; 20:10–11; 31:15–17; Lev 23:1–11; Deut 5:12–15), which is why Yahweh calls it “my Sabbath” (Exod 31:13; Lev 19:3, 30; Ezek 20:12–13).

(2) If we compare Mark 2:23–28 with 2:1–10, then we see an emerging pattern in these conflict stories where Jesus’s provocative action ends with an emphatic statement about Jesus’s own particular authority (2:10 and 2:28) that justifies his controversial behavior.

(3) The parallel texts in Matthew and Luke are even more unequivocal that Jesus’s authority over the Sabbath is not a general human authority. Rather, it is uniquely his authority as the Son of Man that is stressed (Matt 12:6; Luke 6:5).

We might paraphrase the Markan Jesus’s reasoning:

“You forget that the Sabbath was instituted to meet a human need so human needs may override sabbatarian restrictions. I declare this as no meagre opinion nor as a mere beneficiary of the Sabbath’s command to rest, but as one who is the Lord of the Sabbath, so I may legitimately pronounce when it is appropriate to suspend its requirements.”

If this is the case, as Gundry observes: “A Christological point has grown out of an anthropological one, and outgrown it.”

If Jesus carries authority over the most sacred and holy of divinely created institutions, then, as France puts it: “The christological stakes could hardly be pitched higher than this.” [France, Mark, 145, 148.]

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Moses, Jesus: god men

It must be borne in mind that if Jesus was made into a "God-man," whatever happened in the process of deification later on, at the time of the early church, when these notions were coming to the surface, there also existed similar ideas about Moses as "half-God, half-man" (Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:4). Philo (Moses 1: 6.27) already earlier informs us that people could not determine whether Moses was really human or divine or a mixture of both. It would only be gratuitous to attempt to explain away the midrash by delimiting it to metaphor or hyperbole while taking Christian expressions literally.

The reader would be rewarded, however, by a study of the Moses of Memra Marqah, a major Samaritan theological tract. Rabbinic literature preserved the tradition that Moses did not die but is present in heaven where he ministers before God (Babylonian Sotah 13b; Sifrei Deuteronomy 357; and as a heavenly Intercessor Paractete, in the older collection, Assumption of Mows, 12:6).

If we understand the rabbinic terms used of Moses' celestial activity, mesammes and mesaret 'to minister,' as priestly ministrations as intermediary we have a synonymous idea with the role of the Paraclete. All of these ideas were Jewish, known and legitimate in their day within Judaism, and were applied to Jesus. The agonizing problem of the first century was not whether these ideas were Jewish. but whether to apply them to Jesus.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.976.5851&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Friday, December 17, 2021

Angels of the LORD

Many teach "the angel of the LORD" refers to one specific angel only, namely the preexistent Son of God.

But the Hebrew phrase malak-YHWH can also be translated as "an angel of YHWH" or "a certain angel of YHWH" (depending on the context).

The NET Bible comment on Gen. 16:7 says the angel merely represents the Lord; he can speak for the Lord because he is sent with the Lord’s full authority. In some cases the angel is clearly distinct from the Lord (see Judg 6:11-23). It is not certain if the same angel is always in view. Though the proper name following the noun “angel” makes the construction definite, this may simply indicate that a definite angel sent from the Lord is referred to in any given context. It need not be the same angel on every occasion. Note the analogous expression “the servant of the Lord,” which refers to various individuals in the OT (see BDB 714 s.v. עֶבֶד).

Similarly in Deut. 15:17 God commands to take an awl and put it through the ear of a servant.

The Hebrew here literally says "the awl" but are we to suppose there was one specific awl that was kept since the time of Moses and used all the time?

Of course not.

Hence, the Bible can speak of "angels of God," (Gen 28:12; 32:1) i.e., angels of the LORD.

Adam, begotten son of God

 Luke and Scripture

The Function of Sacred Tradition in Luke-Acts

By Craig A. EvansJames A. Sanders · 2001


[According to Luke 3:38] just as God's breath/Spirit generated Adam, so it generated Jesus." If by virtue of this generation Jesus may be called "Son of God," then by the same token Adam may be called "son of God." 


Philo apparently followed the same line of reasoning; Adam received "his soul not from any other thing created but through the breath of God [empneusantos theou] imparting of his own power [dynamis] such measure as mortal nature could receive" (On the Virtues 37 §203).[1]


Because of this unique creation Philo is able to assert that Adam's "Father was no mortal but the eternal God, whose image [eikon] he was" (On the Virtues 37 §204).[2]


In a highly allegorical discussion of the ideal man, in part based on Adam, and the real meaning of the garden of Eden (Gen 2:8) Philo says, "For that man is the eldest son, whom the Father of all raised up, and elsewhere calls him his first-born, and indeed the son thus begotten followed the ways of his Father" (On the Confusion of the Languages 14 §63).[3]


In another passage he says: "But if there be any as yet unfit to be called 'son of God,' let him press to take his place under God's First-born, the Word, who holds eldership among the angels, their ruler as it were. And many names are his, for he is called, 'the Beginning,' Name of God,' Word,' and the 'Man after His Image [kat' eikona]' [Gen 1:27] " (On the Confusion of the Languages 28 §146).[4]


In other words, Adam, the man created after God's image, is "son of God" and model for all others who aspire to qualify as "sons of God" (cf. On the Confusion of the Languages 28 § 147, "For if we have not yet become fit to be thought sons of God . . ."). 


[1] Translation based on F. H. Colson, Philo (LCL 7; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939) 289. 

[2] Colson, Philo (LCL 7) 289. Neyrey (The Passion according to Luke, 168) cites these texts to demonstrate that Adam was "son of God" because of his righteousness. True, but it is significant that Philo links Adam's creation by the breath of God to God as Adam's Father. 

[3] Translation based on F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, Philo (LCL 4; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935) 45. 

[4] Translation based on Colson and Whitaker, Philo (LCL 4) 89, 91. 

Sunday, December 5, 2021

Food Laws not for health reasons

Wenham, New International Commentary on the Old Testament, pp 167-68.

The hygienic interpretation holds that the unclean creatures are unfit to eat because they are carriers of disease. The clean animals are those that are relatively safe to eat. This explanation is adopted by many modern writers. Pork can be a source of trichinosis. The coney and hare are carriers of tularemia. Fish without fins and scales tend to burrow into the mud and become sources of dangerous bacteria, as do the birds of prey which feed on carrion. [1]

This interpretation is particularly attractive to twentieth century Western readers, obsessed as we are by health care and medical science. And it may well be that God in his providence did give rules that contributed to the health of the nation. But just because we can see hygienic considerations underlying some of the laws does not mean that the human authors of Scripture did too. There are good reasons for believing that they did not see these provisions as hygienic.

First, hygiene can only account for some of the prohibitions. Some of the clean animals are more questionable on hygienic grounds than some of the unclean animals.[2] If ancient Israel had discovered the dangers of eating pork, they might also have discovered that thorough cooking averts it. In any event, trichinosis is rare in free-range pigs. Among the Arabs camel flesh is regarded as a luxury, though Leviticus brands it as unclean.

Secondly, the OT gives no hint that it regarded these foods as a danger to health. Motive clauses justifying a particular rule are a very characteristic feature of OT law, yet there is never a hint that these animal foods must be avoided because they will damage health. Yet this would surely have constituted an excellent reason for avoiding unclean food.

Third, why, if hygiene is the motive, are not poisonous plants classed as unclean?

Finally, if health were the reason for declaring certain foods unclean in the first place, why did our Lord pronounce them clean in his day? Evidence is lacking that the Middle Eastern understanding of hygiene had advanced so far by the first century A.D. that the Levitical laws were unnecessary. Indeed, if the primary purpose of the food laws was hygienic, it is surprising that Jesus abolished them.


[1] See for example Clements, p. 34.

[2] J. Simoons, Eat Not This Flesh: Food Avoidances in the Old World (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1961), pp. 37ff.

Debate: Does the Bible Teach the Trinity?

YESDaley Reece daley1730@gmail.com

Bio: Teacher Daley Reece is an ordained minister with New Birth Apostolic Deliverance Ministries International, in 1st Avenue, Jackson, St. Michael, Barbados, serving under the Spirit-directed leadership of Apostle Shauntelle Best and Reverend Adrian Best. He is a former Jehovah's Witness who broke away from this religion after experiencing his own Damascus Road encounter with God. He is a father, mime dance choreographer, and functions in the office of Teacher in his ministry. He is the author of The Gospel Truth, Breaking The Curse of Eve: Women in Leadership, and other books available on amazon.com and CreateSpace Store.


NO: Carlos Xavier carlos@thehumanjesus.org

Bio: Carlos grew up agnostic before converting to the non-trinitarian view in 2006. He lives with his wife in Fayetteville, Georgia and currently works for Restoration Fellowship managing thehumanjesus.org christenemylove.com jesuskingdomgospel.com He also hosts a monthly Q&A with Sir Anthony Buzzard and has hosted noted Evangelical scholars like J.R. Daniel Kirk, Larry Hurtado and historian Richard E. Rubenstein. Carlos has also debated Apologists like Jonathan McLatchie, Michael Burgos and Matt Slick.


Day/Time: Thursday, Dec. 9 at 7pm EST.  

Format

  • 10 min open each; 
  • 10 min each rebuttal; 
  • 20 min each cross examination; 
  • 20 min audience Q&A.

Saturday, December 4, 2021

Why Preexistence Does Matter by Sir Anthony F. Buzzard

 Presented at the 2nd Human Jesus Conference

How do you know that a “pre-existing,” “pre-human” Jesus is not a different Jesus from the Jesus of Scripture? “Another Jesus” is to be avoided as highly dangerous and misleading, and exposed as false Christology. How do you know that a Jesus, who began in a “pre-life,” a preexisting life, as an angel or Son of God according to some, can also be the real Messiah, Son of God, coming into existence = beginning to exist, in Mary (Matt. 1:20)? This is one of the great, central, essential questions in the mind of Jesus, the best theologian of all. “Who do you say I am?” (Matt. 16:15). That is the question of all questions. It matters as a matter of life and death. We dare not guess at the question as to who Jesus is.

 

CSB 2 Corinthians 11:4 “For if a person comes and preaches another Jesus, whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit, which you had not received, or a different gospel, which you had not accepted, you put up with it splendidly!”

Paul here shows his impatience!

 

Disagreement on this issue is not less than confusion over the identity of God and His Son. As Dan Gill told us at the recent Kingdom of God Missions Conference: “We must get God and Jesus right.” These are non-negotiable issues of truth and error. Hebrews 1:1 says that God did not speak in a Son in old times, i.e. in Old Testament times. That should settle the issue about the identity of the real and only Son of God, easily.

If there is a pre-existing, pre-human Jesus, then that would feature clearly in the NT Apostolic documents. Preexistence or not dramatically affects who Jesus is! The whole NT is profoundly interested in defining who Jesus is. But there is not a hint of any preexistence in the first three gospels or Acts! You mean that Dr. Luke did not bother to tell us about a so-called half-human, preexisting Jesus?

 

Raymond Brown: “There is no evidence that Luke had a theology of Incarnation or preexistence. Rather for Luke in 1:35 divine sonship was brought about through the virginal conception” (Birth of the Messiah, p. 432).

Can we not settle on that easy statement of fact?

Raymond Brown’s comments on Luke actually fully admit that the “orthodox” idea of preexistence is false to the Bible. On Luke 1:35 Brown makes a fascinating comment on the words “for that reason [the miracle in Mary] Jesus will be called the Son of God.” Brown observes that “orthodoxy” disagrees with Luke:

“This [Luke 1:35] has embarrassed many orthodox theologians, because in pre-existence Christology a conception by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb does not bring about the existence of God’s Son. Luke is unaware of such a Christology: Luke does not think of a preexistent Son of God….The child is totally God’s work, a new creation” (Birth of the Messiah, p. 314).

I am with Luke!

 

Come into Existence

The Greek word gennao means “to cause to come into existence; to begin to exist or be.” Note too how John in his epistle emphasizes this fact about the origin of the Son, Jesus. 1 John 5:18 tells us that “the one who was brought into existence [i.e. Jesus] preserves and protects the believers.” It is quite obviously destructive of Scripture and the identity of Jesus to contradict this easy idea, by holding that the Son was existing before he began to exist!

The truth of the identity of Jesus must be taught everywhere if it is taught at all — and it is not. If we have any regard for the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20), we must teach all the truth, not just one or two parts of it. In Hebrews 11:23 Moses was born, i.e. brought into existence (same word gennao). So also was the Son of God (1 John 5:18; Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:20). This is very easy truth about origins. Jesus, to qualify as the second Adam, cannot possibly start as non-human!

 

Gnosticism

It is well-known that the church quickly departed from truth, from the second century on, and Gnosticism was the evil, fatal influence! Our own Kegan Chandler, among many, has very powerfully documented this truth in his full account in The God of Jesus in the Light of Christian Dogma (see especially chapter 3 “Another Jesus.”)

“The direct Apostolic conflict with the Gnostic movement is easily detected in the late first-century writings of the Apostle John…The Christians we find utilizing the most peculiar metaphysical tenets of Trinitarians in the first two centuries of the Church were, in fact, the Gnostics” (p. 83). “It cannot now be denied that the Gnostic schools had a far-reaching effect on the subsequent formation of Christian doctrine…Many of mainstream Christianity’s most treasured Christological ideas may in fact be owed to the Gnostics early pressing of the historical Jesus through the preexisting Platonic framework” (p. 84).

Exactly so, but are we on guard against repeating the same mistake today? It was the Gnostics who used, or rather abused, the Gospel of John to twist the truth and to promote a non-fully human Jesus.

Let us not ever risk believing this pagan Gnosticism.

      In fact John’s Gospel was abused as it still is to this day, and Gnosticism introduced a second God Person by simply capitalizing the word as Word in John 1:1. If we say it does not matter whether a person believes in a pre-existing, pre-human Jesus — if we say that both preexistence and non-preexistence are equally good and valid — then we might as well say that truth and error please God and Jesus equally. How do we know that we are not falling for the very lie which John called the spirit of antichrist (1 John 4:2; 2 John 9)? These facts demand close attention in the interests of saving truth and fleeing from error.

Note too that “there is nothing in Matthew’s narrative either in 1:1 or the rest of the Gospel to suggest that he knew of or subscribed to the notion that Christ had existed before his birth” (Bart Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, p. 76). How very unreasonable then to force this view on John! A preexisting Son is a different Jesus, and this is not a matter of indifference. Do we really want to disagree with Luke and Matthew as to who the true Jesus is? Luke wrote more of the NT than even Paul.

It is an assault on Scripture to find a preexisting Son of God only in John! To do this is to follow the Gnostics and other Protestants and the Catholics, that John is to be taken as superior to the other Gospels (who said?!). To do this is to follow and repeat the same pattern of apostasy as occurred nearly 2000 years ago.

I maintain that the Abrahamic Faith people in the 1830’s recovered a colossal restoration of lost truth about who Jesus is, about his identity as fully human, and about the Gospel of the Kingdom. It will be to our shame to give this revelation away now! It would be a terrible slap in the face to our predecessors, as well as to the Bible.

Kegan’s good historical analysis of how pagan Gnosticism twisted the Bible is to be studied carefully. The danger to which Kegan and I are pointing involves “a subtle embrace of the docetic Jesus” (p. 90), that is a Jesus who only seems to be, but really is not a fully human person. Kegan quotes Barnes: “John says that we must accept only what John provides, that is only an acknowledgement of the Christ as a real human being. That the Son of God was really a man(p. 91). Kegan italicizes this for emphasis!

“Orthodoxy” says thatFirst in Chalcedon Jesus is called ‘man’ in the generic sense (human) but not ‘a man.’ He has a human nature but does not have a human personal center.” The author of that remark, a Roman Catholic critical of the “orthodoxy” of Chalcedon, says that Chalcedon “makes a genuine humanity impossible” (Hart, To Know and Follow Jesus, pp. 44, 46).

 

Lampe: Wise Words from Cambridge

The late Regius Professor of Theology at Cambridge, Geoffrey Lampe, was one of many who are critical of the Chalcedonian, Trinitarian definition of Jesus. He argued that if Jesus preexisted his human life as God, and was therefore fully God, then he could not also be fully human. This, as we have seen, is admitted by the writers quoted above. They confirm that a person who is not a human person cannot be fully man! Lampe describes the unfortunate and confusing implications of the traditional dogma that Jesus is God possessing “impersonal human nature.” What Lampe says applies equally to any form of preexistence, Trinitarian or JW Arian:

“The [Trinitarian] concept of the preexistent Son reduces the real, socially and culturally conditioned personality of Jesus to the metaphysical abstraction ‘human nature’...According to this Christology, the ‘eternal Son’ assumes a timeless human nature...which owes nothing essential to geographical circumstances; it corresponds to nothing in the actual concrete world; Jesus Christ has not, after all, come in the flesh” (God as Spirit, p. 144, emphasis added, quoted with strong approval by Kegan on p. 90-91).

 

John gave us a deliberate and clear test for recognizing the difference between truth and error, and John warned us to shun the error and embrace the true and only Jesus, the one who is fully human (who came “in the flesh,” 1 John 4:2; 2 John 9, emphatically not “into the flesh”). No one can be genuinely human if he is “pre-human”! So let us be warned.

 

John 1:1 and 1 John 1

      “The word” (not Word), John 1:1c said, “was God.” But note that it is illegitimate to start with a huge preconception that word is really Word (capital W)! John was well aware of how his Gospel could be confused and abused. In his first epistle, John countered the errors already being made out of his own gospel of John! John said six times that he had not said that the Son of God had pre-existed, but that “eternal life” had preexisted with the Father. It was “eternal life which was with God” (1 John 1:2). He called this a “that which,” a “what” six times! It was “eternal life,” not the Messiah pre-existing with the father. This is John’s own inspired and clarifying and corrective comment on his earlier words in the Gospel of John. What preexisted was the word (not Word) which, not who, was God in John 1:1c. Jesus is what the word became in John 1:14.

In John 1:1c “God” is in emphatic position. The word, not Word (capital W) was God Himself and not someone else. 1 John tells us that by “God” in the Gospel, John means the Father. It is dangerous to propose a non-human, pre-human Son of God based on John, twisting him and contradicting the rest of the NT.

So John 1:1c tells us that the word in John 1:1 was the Father and no one else.

 

The word was God

The predicate noun “God” as found in John 1:1c is never to be translated as “a god.” Look at John 1:18 in the same context. Here too the sentence begins with theon, God: “God, no one has ever seen at any time” or “No one has ever seen God,” definitely not “a god.” This would be impossible as equally in 2 John 9: “Whoever in the name of progress does not remain in the teaching of Christ does not have God (theon),” not “a god.” This cannot possibly mean “does not have a god.”

An exact parallel to “the word was God” is the statement that “God is spirit” which was wrongly rendered as “God is a spirit” in the KJV (John 4:24). This again shows that “the word was God” cannot be rendered as the word was “a god.”

We have also “God is love” and “God is light.” These are not “God is a love” or “God is a light.” No standard modern translation has in John 1:1c, “The Word was a god.”

There are only 2 NT examples of theos as “a god” — where Herod thought of himself as “a god,” and where Paul was thought to be “a god,” when he was unharmed by a snake (Acts 12:22; 28:6).

If there was “a god” Jesus, preexisting as Son, where is he mentioned in the Hebrew Bible? What did he say? What did he do? When was he begotten as Son? He is just not there!

 

The word “word”

In the OT “word” is found 727 times and never once does it mean a person, Word (capital W). So a supposed preexisting Son disappears! Does not exist! The whole idea should be firmly rejected.

In John’s Gospel “word” (no capital) is “God thinking and planning.” That is the meaning of “word” throughout the OT. The capitalizing of “word” in John 1 simply facilitated the appearance of a second “God” or “god.” The truth is that “Jesus is what the word became, not one to one equal with preexisting Word,” as Goppelt says in his Theology of the NT, Vol. II, p. 297.

In John 1 “word” is a personification like “wisdom,” and not a person. That is, not a person before Jesus “came,” i.e. was born. The capital on Word in John 1:1 is not warranted by the Greek text.

It is essential to point out that many scholars recognize that the Bible does not teach the “eternal generation” of the Son. Many also recognize that John “is as undeviating a witness as any NT writer to unitary monotheism (Rom. 3:30; James 2:19; Jn. 5:44; 17:3)” (Dr. J.A.T. Robinson, Twelve More New Testament Studies, p. 175).

 

In the flesh

The spirit of antichrist is to be recognized by this test: Every teacher who does not confess Jesus as having come “in the flesh” (en sarki), notinto the flesh.” Jesus, the Son of God, came from the womb of his mother, as all humans do (except Adam!)

Luther could not deal with this “in flesh” in the Johannine test for recognizing the only genuine human Jesus. And so Luther forged the Greek of 1 John 4:2 and 2 John 9 to read “come into the flesh.” So desperate was he to make his traditional theology of Jesus fit the Bible!

Raymond Brown observes that “come into the flesh” would be an attempt to force preexistence and thus Incarnation into the text. Brown thus fully endorses my point that “come in the flesh” cannot support Incarnation and thus does not support a literal preexistence! Brown rightly points out that if Scripture supported a preexisting Son, such a Son would indeed have come “into the flesh.” Luther was willing to alter Scripture to make it fit with his traditional Incarnation of a preexisting Jesus. On no account should we do this! This would be tampering with the Bible.

 

Not going back

There is a perfectly good Greek word for “preexist” in the NT (prouparchein). It is never, ever used of Jesus. There is a perfectly good word for “transform,” but no text ever says that Jesus was transformed from pre-human to human.

There is a perfectly good word for “return, go back” but Jesus is nowhere said to “return” or “go back” to the Father. See John 13:1, 3; 16:28; 20:17. That is simply because Jesus had not been there before! But there is a “crime scene” in some modern versions (including NIV), which do say that Jesus “went back” to the Father. This should alert us to the tendency to want to make Jesus fit with the later error of preexistence, which was the first step towards the Trinity!

How do you know that a preexisting, pre-human Jesus is not a different and false Jesus, to be exposed as antichristian and to be avoided as such?

All the Bible writers were obviously Socinian, i.e., non-literal preexistence unitarians. The later move away from Jesus to an alien definition of God as triune is one of the most remarkable shifts away from and loss of essential information, in the history of (mis)communication. Jesus expressed his unitarian confession of faith as we know by asserting that the “Father is the only one who is true God” (John 17:3; 5:44). He told the Jews that his God was the same one Person whom the Jews claimed as their God.

These unitarian texts merely repeat the 1300 NT references to GOD as the equivalent of the Father. Jesus declares himself to be not GOD, which would make two Gods, but God’s unique human agent.

 

John 17:3

The simplicity of the confession in John 17:3 may be illustrated like this: “You [singular], Father [singular], are [singular] the [singular] only [singular and exclusive] true [singular] God [singular].” [1]

Standard commentary finds itself obliged to write:

“How often may these last solemn words of Jesus have stirred the soul of John. To this corresponds the self-consciousness, as childlike as it is simple and clear in its elevation, the victorious rest and peace of this prayer, which is the noblest and purest pearl of devotion in the whole New Testament. For plain and simple as it sounds, so deep rich and wide it is that none can fathom it” (Luther).

“Spener never ventured to preach on it because he felt that its true understanding exceeded the ordinary measure of faith; but he caused it to be read to him three times on the evening before his death” (Meyer, 1884, p. 475).

Meyer comments, “Only one, the Father, can be termed absolutely ‘the only true God,’ ‘the one who is above and over all” (Rom. 9:5), not at the same time Christ (who is not even in 1 John 5:20 the true God).” Meyer correctly says that the Son is in unity with the Father, works as His commissioner (10:30) and is His representative (14:9, 10) and unique agent or shaliach. Meyer later loses himself in a befuddling confusion over the “genetic subsistence” of the Son, but he has already admitted to the unitarian statement of Jesus.

The famous commentary by Barrett notes that in Wisdom literature (Prov. 11:9) “through knowledge the righteous will be saved,” and that the world will eventually be “filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord” (Hab. 2:14), and that “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6; Isa. 5:13).

“Clearly then the notion of knowledge as the ground of salvation is very widespread…knowledge and believing are not set over against each other but are correlated. The God whom to know is to have eternal life is the only being who may properly be so described; He, and it must follow, He alone is truly God” (Commentary on John, pp. 419-20).

This is straightforward unitary, non-Trinitarian monotheism.

 

Professor Loofs described the process of the early corruption of biblical Christianity:

“The Apologists [‘church fathers’ like Justin Martyr, mid-2nd century] laid the foundation for the perversion/corruption (Verkehrung) of Christianity into a revealed [philosophical] teaching. Specifically, their Christology affected the later development disastrously. By taking for granted the transfer of the concept of Son of God onto the preexisting Christ, they were the cause of the Christological problem of the fourth century. They caused a shift in the point of departure of Christological thinking — away from the historical Christ and onto the issue of preexistence. They thus shifted attention away from the historical life of Jesus, putting it into the shadow and promoting instead the Incarnation [i.e., of a preexistent Son]. They tied Christology to cosmology and could not tie it to soteriology.

      “The Logos [i.e. preexisting Jesus] teaching is not a ‘higher’ Christology than the customary one. It lags in fact far behind the genuine appreciation of Christ. According to their teaching, it is no longer God who reveals Himself in Christ, but the Logos, the inferior God, a God who as God is subordinated to the Highest God (inferiorism or subordinationism). In addition, the suppression of economic-trinitarian ideas by metaphysical-pluralistic concepts of the divine triad (trias) can be traced to the Apologists” (Friedrich Loofs, Leitfaden zum Studium des Dogmengeschichte [Manual for the Study of the History of Dogma], 1890, part 1 ch. 2, section 18: “Christianity as a Revealed Philosophy. The Greek Apologists,” Niemeyer Verlag, 1951, p. 97, translation mine).

 

Those who are dedicated to restoring the identity of the biblical Jesus, Son of God, may take heart from the incisive words of a leading systematic theologian of our times. He restores the biblical meaning of the crucial title “Son of God,” rescuing it from the millennia-long obscurity it has suffered from Platonically-minded church fathers and theologians. Professor Colin Brown, who spoke at one of our “theological conferences,” general editor of the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, writes:

“The crux of the matter lies in how we understand the term Son of God…The title Son of God is not in itself an expression of personal Deity or the expression of metaphysical distinctions within the Godhead. Indeed, to be a ‘Son of God’ one has to be a being who is not God! It is a designation for a creature indicating a special relationship with God. In particular, it denotes God’s representative, God’s vice-regent. It is a designation of kingship, identifying the king as God’s Son…

      “In my view the term ‘Son of God’ ultimately converges on the term ‘image of God’ which is to be understood as God’s representative, the one in whom God’s spirit dwells, and who is given stewardship and authority to act on God’s behalf…

      “It seems to me to be a fundamental mistake to treat statements in the Fourth Gospel about the Son and his relationship with the Father as expressions of inner-Trinitarian relationships. But this kind of systematic misreading of the Fourth Gospel seems to underlie much of social Trinitarian thinking…

      “It is a common but patent misreading of the opening of John’s Gospel to read it as if it said, ‘In the beginning was the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was God.’ What has happened here is the substitution of Son for Word (Gk. logos) and thereby the Son is made a member of the Godhead which existed from the beginning” (“Trinity and Incarnation: Towards a Contemporary Orthodoxy,” Ex Auditu, 7, 1991, pp. 87-89).



[1] Augustine, finding this creedal statement incompatible with the Trinitarian creed of the post-biblical Church, actually dared to alter the order of the sentence and fraudulently twist the words of Jesus. In his Homilies on John he said that John 17:3 ought to read: “This is eternal life, that they know you [Father] and Jesus Christ whom you sent as the only true God.” Reader, take careful note. The “church father” Gregory of Nyssa (335-394) conceded that the Trinity, of which he was an architect, “does not harmonize with the Jewish dogma” (he was referring to the strict monotheistic creed of Jesus and Israel in Deut. 6:4; Mark 12:29). He thought that the Trinity destroyed “each heresy,” i.e. the unitary monotheism of Jesus and Israel and the pagan polytheism of the non-Jewish world, “and yet accepting what is useful from both” [the Shema and paganism]. He argued that the Trinity was a truth which passes in the mean between the two positions [Jewish and pagan].” Gregory unashamedly condemned Jesus’ unitarian view of God as a “Jewish dogma” needing to be replaced.


Agency: Shaliach

 

G. Jackman, The WordBecame Flesh, 2016, pp 179-85.

The notion of agency has played a significant part in Hebrew/Jewish thought and practice since earliest times until today. Peder Borgen provides a succinct article that has exerted a considerable influence on the study of John's Gospel since it was first published in 1968.[1]

·       An agent is like the one who sent him, or even ‘the agent ranks as his master’s own person,’ so that there is a unity between sender and sent.

·       The agent carries out his mission obediently.

·       The sender transfers his/her rights and property to the agent. But the age is still agent, thus the sender takes possession when the agent does.

·       The agent reports back to the sender.

·       An agent can appoint an agent.

In contemporary Jewish legal thinking, the term used for this kind of empowered emissary is shaliach, which has been defined as follows:

·       A person's shaliach is as he himself.

·       … The shaliach does not abnegate his intellect, will, desires, feelings, talents and personal ‘style' to that of the one whom he represents; rather he enlists them in the fulfilment of his mission. The result of this is not a lesser bond between the two, but the contrary: the meshaleiach [i.e. the one who 'sends' the agent) is acting through the whole of the shaliach - not only through the shaliach's physical actions, but also through the shaliach's personality, which has become an extension of the meshaleiach's personality.

·       The emissary's final achievement is attributed to the principal.

·       The emissary's every action is attributed to the principal.

·       The emissary completely embodies the principal.

·       ... while the goal is for the principal to be represented - in order to this, the emissary must bring his own entire being into the mission.

So a shaliach enjoys all the authority of the principal, the one whom he represents, indeed for practical purposes he is the principal. He acts on his own, responsible initiative, yet remains totally subordinate, dependent on his principal. In the contemporary Western world, its closest parallel is probably the increasingly familiar notion of ‘power of attorney.’

The account of Abraham sending his servant to find a wife for Isaac in Genesis 24 demonstrates how ancient this notion is. The sender Abraham determines the goal to be achieved and, in outline, how it is to be accomplished (v. 3-8), but the agent employs his own personality, abilities and judgment deciding how, in detail, the goal is to be achieved (vv. 11-14) - he is very far from being merely a tool of his master. The servant, as agent, acts with a full authority of his master, so that his actions are effectively the actions of his master - he is a 'plenipotentiary'. In consequence, he enjoys the status of his master and is treated as the latter would be (v. 31-32). Nevertheless, the agent is, ultimately, not his master.

At least since the appearance of Borgen's article, it has been increasingly recognized that this concept provides a satisfying way of approaching John’s presentation of Jesus and especially of the apparently contradictory things that Jesus says about himself, that mix of absolute authority and self-effacement…a way that is far more convincing than the creeds' notions of 'two natures' and ‘two wills.’

The shaliach is, after all, one 'sent,’ that is what the term actually means - and in repeatedly describing the Father as ‘He that sent me’, using the two verbs apostello and pempo…Jesus is referring quite specifically to the concept of agency, specifically as known and practices among Jews. This is not to say that the Jewish law of agency explains the relationship between Jesus and God: rather, it provided for Jesus an analogy or parable with which to illuminate the nature of that relationship for hearers familiar with this institution. The principle is clear enough in the Synoptic Gospels: whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me, says Jesus in Mark 9:37, while a parallel account in Matthew illustrates also one agent (Jesus) appointing another (the disciples): Whoever welcomes you welcome me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me (Matt. 10:40).

In John too we find Jesus speaking of just such a relationship: servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them (13:16). The fit with John’s Gospel is clear: in sayings such as the following we hear the shaliach’s sense of duty and obedience to the ‘sender’: John 5:30; 8.28; 12:50.

When, on the other hand, he says The Father and I are one. (10:30) or Whoever has seen me has seen the Father (14:9) we see realized the principle that ‘A person’s shaliach is as he himself’. The recurrent ‘He that sent me’ similarly reflects the notion of an empowered emissary, while the prayer of chapter 17 illustrates Borgen’s comment that ‘the agent reports back to the sender’ [17:4].

Ashton points out that this fundamental conception was already at work in OT prophecy and adds that ‘the convention according to which the agent was fully representative of his master was more than a legal fiction: it illustrated and exemplified a way of thinking’.[2] However, the analogy with OT prophecy that Ashton introduces is nor entirely helpful. The prophets’ recurrent phrase: ‘The word of the Lord came to me, saying…’ or similar indicates precisely a limited empowerment—they could not go beyond the word received. But the word did not ‘come’ to Jesus—he was the word and so represented his ‘sender’ in everything that he said and did. It is he who fully realizes the shaliach principle that ‘the emissary must being his own entire being into the mission’. This accords with our earlier comment that Jesus is far from being an ‘empty vessel’ or externally directed automaton.

Perhaps the best illustration of the idea at work in John is the beginning of the conversation in John 5:17-23. On the one hand, Jesus enunciates in v.17 the principle that the service of the agent is determined by the ‘sender’ and in v.19-20 emphasizes his dependence. On the other hand, he also stresses his empowerment (v.21-22) and the honour that accrues to him as the agent of his ‘sender’ (v.23). His adversaries, by contrast, see in his claim to represent and to act for the Father as a claim to equality-the same fundamental error that soon began to be made, and is still being made, by John’s expositors.

In this passage we in fact see a further parallel with Genesis. In chapter 1, God’s declared intention is that man should be in his image, after [his] likeness—in other words, ‘as God’, not in status but in practice, as the agent should be. In chapter 3, however, the serpents’ suggestion to Eve is that by eating the forbidden fruit she and Adam will be ‘like God’—no longer in the practical, functional sense but in status. it is interesting to observe the actual formulation of the serpent’s’ suggestion: You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:4-5). The subtlety lies not so much in the ‘you will not die’ as in the ‘God knows that’: the serpent suggests to Eve that the reason for the prohibition is that God wishes to keep them in subjection—he introduces the notion of competition, changing the ‘as God’ in the sense of chapter 1 into ‘like God’ in the sense of equality of status. The serpents’ way of thinking excluded the idea of agency and the honour to both parties that accrues from it—it can think only of individualistic rivalry. That is how Jesus’ critics respond to his words in John 5, and something like it is also at work in Trinitarian thinking: if Jesus acts and speaks like God, then he must be God—and equal to him.

What, then, was the commission that was entrusted by God to his agent? What ‘authority’ did He give him? There are at least three answers to this question: first, when the shaliach reports back in chapter 17 to the One who sent him, he enumerates all that he has done—and the key word is ‘give’. Just as the Father has entrusted His word, the revelation of His nature and the completion of His saving work to the Son, so Jesus has ‘given’ (didomi—this verb occurs no less than 17 times in John 17) to those who have believed first God’s words (v.8,14), but also even the glory of being his agents (v.22). His first commission, then, is essentially revelatory: to communicate to those who believe all that he has received. This illustrates again the divine sharing which contrasts so markedly with the competitive spirit of the world.

That giving is in turn the means through which a further charged laid upon the Son is being fulfilled: you have given him authority (exousia) over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him (17:2). We recognize in these words an echo not only of the beginning of the Prologue (in [the world] was life…--v.4) but also, much more importantly, of chapter 5: just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes (5:21). The phrase ‘to whomever he wishes’ is perhaps indicative of the shaliach’s freedom of action in pursuit of his principal’s’ objective.

There is, however, a third ‘authority’ that has been entrusted to him [John 10:17-28—‘power’ translates exousia = ‘authority’ in both cases].

The key to the accomplishment of the Father’s purpose is the giving of his own life, followed by his resurrection, and Jesus strongly emphasizes that he fulfills this commission freely, voluntarily: ‘no one takes it from me‘. He is neither a slave, nor an externally directed automaton, nor yet ‘God’ divesting Himself for a brief moment of a life that stretches back to eternity and which is therefore never seriously at stake—though how a ‘God’, for whom unending life is perhaps the most essential quality that he possesses, could ever ‘lay it down’ remains quite without explanation! However much, therefore, Jesus’ life may appear to run ‘on tramlines’ towards the cross—the word ‘fulfilled’ (pleroo) appears 7 times between chapter 12 and chapter 19, as we saw in chapter 2—we have all the time to see Jesus as one voluntarily choosing to follow the path that the disputes marked out for him. Indeed, whether we see the raising Lazarus, as in John, or the cleansing of the temple, as in the Synoptics, as the event which finally triggers his death, it seems that Jesus, the freely action shaliach, himself brings about the final climax.

In fact, to think of Jesus as God’s ‘agent’ takes us back to the question of what is revealed that we discussed in the previous section. The concept of shaliach implies that the one sent is, to all intents and purposes, the one who sent him. This means that in the closeness of His relation to the Son, the Father is Himself bearing what the Son bears. We are at a loss to understand how there can be an analogy between a human father suffering the loss of a son and the eternal God who ‘sends’ His Son into the world to face the cruelty of men, yet that is exactly what John 3:16 implies, as does the more explicit parallel with Abraham’s experience that we find in Romans 8:32: He did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us.



[1] P. Borgen, ‘God’s Agent in the Fourth Gospel’. This essay originally appeared in J. Neuner (ed.) Religions in Antiquity, Leiden, 1968. It has since been reprinted in J. Ashton (ed.), The Interpretation of John, p 67-68.

[2] Ashton, Understanding The Fourth Gospel, p. 315 – his italics.

Friday, November 19, 2021

Christians and Food Laws discussion notes

 For video click here:

Why did God classify some foods as “unclean”?

  • The simple answer, because God said so!
  • The Bible focuses on the purpose which explains the rationale;
  • Primarily for religious reasons, to distinguish one nation from the others: 

Lev 11.8 "they are unclean to you."

Lev. 11.28 "they are unclean to you."

Meier, A Marginal Jew Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume 5, 1991:

"The most frequent use of “clean” and “unclean” in the Jewish Scriptures is in the context of cult." 

  • As a sign to the nations:

Leviticus 20:24b I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart from the peoples.

25 You are therefore to distinguish between clean and unclean animals and birds. 

26 You are to be holy to Me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be My own.


Are food laws for health issues?

  • It was not always so; In the beginning, all foods are clean; God’s Covenant with Noah declared all foods cleanGenesis 9

2 "Every bird of the air, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are delivered into your hand. 

Everything that lives and moves will be food for you."

  • NOTE: “unclean” does not equal bad, cp. Gen 1.25

God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.

Jer. 27.5

With my great strength and powerful arm I made the earth and all its people and every animal. I can give these things of mine to anyone I choose.

  • Unclean does not equal unhealthy: ESV Study BibleLev. 11.1-8

The diet of these animals is apparently not the basis of their cleanness or uncleanness. The passage itself says nothing about what the animals eat, and the camel, rock badger (hyrax), and hare are exclusively vegetarian but unclean. 

  • Improper cooking/serving of any meat can be unhealthy!
  • For Christians, the NT removes all distinctions: Jesus, Mar 7:14-20; God, Acts 10-11; Jerusalem church, Acts 14; James, 21; Paul, Rom 14.14, 20, etc.

Tyndale, Acts by I.H. Marshall.

Christians realized that the cancellation of this law was part of the new order brought by Jesus, and that some of the things said by Jesus implied the abolition of the Jewish distinction between things clean and unclean (Mk. 7:19). 

Similarly, Paul ((Rom. 14:14).... 


For the NT the words common = unclean are synonymous!

  • Unclean animals came to be called "common" during the Maccabean period, BC times.
  • Hence, in the NT Greek koinos common is synonymous with akarthatos unclean used in LXX of Leviticus:

Mark 7.2, 5 "common hands";

Mark 7:15 "Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile make them unclean, koinos."

Mark 7:19b, most translations.

“In saying this Jesus declared all foods clean [katharizon].”

Cp. parallel account in Luke 11.41 GNT

“But give what is in your cups and plates to the poor, and everything will be ritually clean [kathara] for you.”

  • The Dr. Historian Luke:

Acts 10.14b NASB 1995

But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy [koinos] and unclean[akathartos].”

Acts 11.8b NIV

“Nothing impure [koinos] or unclean [akathartos] has ever entered my mouth.”

  • The Apostle Paul

Romans 14.14 

“I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean [koinos] in itself.”

Romans 14.20b

“All food is clean [katharos]."



NOTE: Jew-Gentile Table-fellowship established by Jesus.

  • Jesus ate with “sinners," i.e., Jews or Gentiles who did not meet the demands of the purityregulations of the Torah.  

Matt 9:10-17; Mark 2:15-22; Luke 5:29-39.

  • Jewish ID markers removed by Jesus meaning non-Torah keeper and Gentile inclusion in the Messianic banquet: Luke 13:

28“There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. 

29 People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. 


BOTTOM LINE: Apostolic council verdict

  • Gentiles should not be circumcicsed, i.e., not keep the Law of Moses!

Acts 15.19

“And so my judgment is that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.”


Acts 21:25a, almost 10 years later!

“With regard to the Gentiles who have believed, we have written a letter containing our decision and concluded that they observe no such thing.”


Summary:

  • In Rom 14.14, 20 Paul was convinced, by the teaching of the lord Jesus himself back in Mar 7, that everything is clean!
  • As a result, the HS directs the Jewish Jerusalem Council "concluded that they observe no such thing.”
  • NT warnings! Col 2.16a

"So don’t let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink" 


Heb 13.9, etc. 

“Don’t be swept off your course by all sorts of outlandish teachings. 

It is good that we should gain inner strength from the grace of God and not from rules about food, which have never benefited those who observed them.”