"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.]

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

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. Evans, James 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. 

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?

YES: Daley 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.

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 that “First 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), not “into 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-2^nd 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.