by mavie 41 Replies latest watchtower bible
I know Jehovah is one God. I am not saying that Jesus is God, Jehovah
I know what you are saying. I am saying you are wrong - Jesus is God (yhwh).
of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen. ~Rom 9:5
And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” ~Jn 20:28,29
Hey Mavie:
The claim that Jesus is 'divine in nature' can have many different meanings. Is he (a) God? John 1:1 seems to point the reader in that direction. However, Satan is also called a God in the Bible. What does this mean? Could it be that both have the same nature as God? Could they both be spirits?
That is what I think too. The bible calls the angel's 'flames of fire'. Also Jeh is a consuming fire. I believe they are of the same nature or substance....spirit being (whatever that really is)
In Psalm 52:1 NIV God preside in the great assembly, he gives judgement among the 'gods'. vs. 5 "I said, 'You are "gods", you are all sons of the Most High, But you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other ruler."
The angels are gods, therefore Satan and Jesus are gods.. god = divine, heavenly one.
But I do think, just because they are the same nature does not make them the same being!
Mavie if you reread Leolaia's posts you'll see she is not suggesting that the writer/s involved with G.John were teaching the Trinity. That would be an anachronism. However the point being made was that Jesus was being indentified with God as equal and coexistant.
17 Jesus said to them, "My Father is always doing his work. He is working right up to this very day. I am working too."
18 For this reason the Jews tried even harder to kill him. Jesus was not only breaking the Sabbath. He was even calling God his own Father. He was making himself equal with God.
19 Jesus answered, "What I'm about to tell you is true. The Son can do nothing by himself. He can do only what he sees his Father doing. What the Father does, the Son also does.
Verse 19 in directly connected with the statement in 17 that assserted that what the Son was doing was exactly what the Father was doing. They do not contradict each other as if they were separate competing gods. What the father does the Son does, therefore to find fault with the Son is to find fault with the Father. The writer then has Jesus assert that he does everything that the Father does including giving life and judging as well as working of the Sabaath. The author has no formal Trinity in his mind but he does intend to identify Jesus with God in action and authority. This is neither the WT strict hierchal separation nor the later Triune ellaboration. The problem with simplistic theological interpretations is that theology is never simplistic, its supposed to be counterintuitive and incomprehesible.
Star More, first Psalm 82 is a classic example of the Canaanite Divine Council. El sits in judgement of the gods (sons) and punishes them with death like a mere mortal. This polytheistic excerpt in the Psalm is clearly very old and was apparently accomodated by later editors through the reinterpreation of the gods as being angels, fallen angels or even evil human judges. The writer of John, understanding the Psalm some such way, is having Jesus argue that the charge of blasphemy cannot technically be made simply because he claims to be God because Psalm 82 calls angels (or human judges if you prefer) 'gods'. The author is having Jesus outwit them through his familiarity with the OT.
Thank you everyone for the replies and keeping it civil. I don't have the time to do this topic justice right now. Maybe I just need to take a break.
Thanks, PP for explaining my point in perhaps better language. I would suggest mavie to review my answer to this question, for I already explained that instead of "correcting" the idea that Jesus was "making himself equal to God," the author is actually affirming this claim. Don't get hung up on the statement about the Son being unable to do anything of his own accord. The purpose of this statement is not to emphasize Jesus' inferiority but to highlight his authority as God's appointed agent. He goes on to explain that God has authorized him to do everything he himself can do. This emphasizes parity with God, not the opposite. Read again the statements I cited: "Whatever the Father does the Son does too" (v. 19), "As the Father gives life to anyone he chooses, so the Son gives life to anyone he chooses" (v. 20-21), "All may honor the Son as they honor the Father" (v. 22-23), "the Father who is the source of life has made the Son the source of life" (v. 25-26), etc. All these statements emphasize the equality of the Son with the Father as it pertains to "doing whatever the Father does", in "giving life to anyone he chooses," which is exactly what Jesus was doing on the Sabbath. So, indeed, by doing these things "he was making himself God's equal"; nothing less than God's equal has the power and ability to do whatever the Father does. It's a status given to the Son by the Father, true, but the mere fact that it is a conferred status does not negate the status itself.
The claim that Jesus is 'divine in nature' can have many different meanings. Is he (a) God? John 1:1 seems to point the reader in that direction. However, Satan is also called a God in the Bible. What does this mean? Could it be that both have the same nature as God? Could they both be spirits?
No, Satan is not referred to as theos in the same way Jesus is in John 1:1. Satan is referred to as the "god of this world" for unbelievers (apistón) in 2 Corinthians 4:4; he is their "god" because he has "blinded their mental powers". Clearly, his status as theos is a fictive one, through deception, and not comparable in any way to God himself. Thus Paul states elsewhere: "For even if there are so-called gods (legomenoi theoi), whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords", yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live" (1 Corinthians 8:5-6). The situation in John 1:1 is altogether different. As I noted in my first post to this thread, the Logos is not characterized as an inferior theos or even a pseudo-theos as Satan is in 2 Corinthians, i.e. "divine" but less divine than God. The qualitative construction is the same one used in 1 John 4:8 that states that "God is love". God is love in a similar way that the Logos is God. The idea is that everything love is, God is. The idea is not that God represents a lesser kind of love. Similarly, in John 1:1 the Logos is whatever God is. He is not being identified as the God he was "with"; rather, his nature is defined as corresponding to that of God. Everything God is, the Logos is. So you can capture the sense by saying "The Logos was divine" or "the Logos was divine in nature," as long as you understand that this nature is not less divine than God himself. This accords very well with the sense in ch. 5, "Whatever the Father does, the Son does as well", "The Father gives life as the Son gives life," "the Son is honored as the Father is honored", etc. The Logos can reveal the Father precisely because he has all the power, divinity, and authority that the Father has. That is why Jesus could say "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9).
BTW, the qualitative of essence that occurs in John 1:1 and 1 John 4:8 (which states that "God is love") is found elsewhere in John and 1 John and in fact is a distinctive feature of the Johannine style. Thus John 17:17 says "your word is truth" (ho logos ho sos alétheia estin) which has an anarthrous noun that is nominative and in a copular predicate (just as in John 1:1 and 1 John 4:18), where the emphasis is on the truthful nature of God's word; God's word is true in the fullest sense. Similarly, 1 John 1:5 states that "God is light (ho theos phós estin), in him there is no darkness at all", where again the idea is that God has all the qualities and nature of light. The expression even occurs in John 2:9 to describe the nature of the transformed water, "the water having become wine (to hudór oinon gegenémenon)", i.e. that the nature of the water has assumed the quality of wine, and not inferior wine but wine in the purest or best sense (cf. 2:10). Other Johannine examples can be found in John 1:14, 3:6, 6:63, 12:50. John 1:1 follows the same pattern...."the Logos was God", i.e. "God" is what defines the nature of the Logos, just as "love" and "light" define the nature of God, or "truth" defines the nature of God's word, or "wine" defines the nature of the water that was served in the wedding party.
The major difference imo between Johannine and later Trinitarian theology is that, in GJohn, the oneness of (1) the Father and (2) Son is ultimately shared by (3) all believers. Whatever (1) the Father is (2) the Son is and (3) those who are in the Son are too. 1 = 2 = 3.
This was proto-Gnostic thinking. The 2nd-century Great Church rejected Gnosticism but wrought the Gospel from the Gnostics (through a complex process of edition and reinterpretation), playing down the third term of the equation -- although the introduction of the Holy Spirit (which dwells in believers) as the third "person" of the Trinity filled the gap to an extent. So, in "orthodox" interpretation, the equality between (1) Father and (2) Son was (correctly) given full force but severed from (3) the (now inferior) status of the believers -- to the anti-Gnostic orthodoxy, it was essential that the latter were and remained creatures, hence not divine in nature, hence "children of God" only in a derived, acquired, secondary sense. Hence 1 = 2 > 3.
The Arians in the 4th century (as JWs now) used the "orthodox" difference of treatment between the "high" interpretation of the Johannine oneness (1 = 2) and the "low" one (1 and 2 > 3) to question the former. If the "oneness" of the disciples (3) was to be interpreted in a weak sense (as "unity of purpose" etc.) the same weak sense could be read into the relationship between the Father (1) and Son (2): "that they may be one as we are one". So the Arians found a new exegetical consistency for GJohn: 1 > 2 > 3. But that was not the original one (1 = 2 = 3).
At every Trinitarian debate I can hear Gnostic souls laughing.
Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation by James D. G. Dunn
On page 241, Dunn in explaining John 1:1, quotes Philo, who applied "theos" without the article to the Logos. Philo called the Logos "the second God", and yet was monotheistic. Dunn considered that the contrast in John 1:1 between "theos" with the article and "theos" without the article was deliberate on the part of the author and would be significant to the Greek reader.
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Jesus did not call himself equal to God here, the Jews did
This seems to me to be the case with a lot of scriptures. Who was actually doing the talking, or (I always hated this saying) In other words, why the term “accurate knowledge” is so important. Just because we read the verses does not mean we are really reading them, accurately. I think this is the biggest problem the senate/ Borg has when interpreting scriptures and then hypocritically telling everyone else to listen to them and the way they read. Each and every one of us are designed to do this for ourselves. They will not allow it even though the Bible puts it right smack in their faces that it is wrong to prevent us from digging for the truth.
Picking out the scriptures that are actually "inspired" is what I would like to accomplish. I doubt the Bible would be a very big book if we could just weed out the crap.
