@Wonderment
Your
objection, which seeks to deflate the Christological force of John 5:23 by
reducing it to a merely functional or representative “honor,” fundamentally
misconstrues both the semantic intent of the Johannine text and the context in
which it emerges. The claim that “honoring the Son” is not to be equated with
the same quality or substance of honor due to the Father, but is only the
reception of a delegated reverence on account of being God’s “venue of
salvation,” is demonstrably at odds with the testimony of the text, the witness
of early Christian exegesis, and the logic of Second Temple monotheism as
appropriated by the New Testament.
First, the
Greek text of John 5:23 (“ἵνα πάντες τιμῶσι τὸν υἱὸν καθὼς τιμῶσι τὸν πατέρα”) employs kathōs—“just as,” “in the same manner as,” or
“to the same extent as”—which is unambiguous in its meaning. The Son is to be
honored in the same way, with the same kind and degree of honor as the Father.
The suggestion that this is merely a qualitative or relative honor—akin to the
status of a royal ambassador—collapses in the face of the context, in which
Jesus claims prerogatives that, in the Second Temple Jewish framework, are
reserved exclusively to the God of Israel: the giving of life (vv. 21, 26), the
exercise of final judgment (v. 22), and the reception of universal homage. Such
a claim, in the strictest Jewish monotheistic setting, cannot be interpreted as
the bestowal of a subordinate or representational dignity, for the very charge
that triggers the ensuing discourse is that Jesus “made himself equal with
God” (John 5:18)—a charge the Johannine narrative neither mitigates nor
refutes but rather explicates and confirms.
The
invocation of texts such as John 3:16, 1 Timothy 2:5, and 1 John 5:13 as
evidence for Jesus’ mediatorial function does not, in any way, diminish the
necessity of equal honor. Indeed, the unique mediatorship of Christ is itself
predicated upon his ontological singularity as the incarnate Word. Only one who
truly shares in the divine identity can serve as the perfect mediator between
God and humanity, effecting reconciliation not as a mere intermediary creature
but as one who participates fully in the being of the one he reveals and
represents (see Heb 1:3; Col 1:19–20). The Son’s being “sent” by the Father
does not imply inferiority, but reflects the economic missions that manifest
the immanent relations of the Trinity in the history of salvation. The
processions within God—begetting and spiration—are the eternal basis for the
temporal missions; the Son is “sent” because he is eternally begotten, not
because he is a created deputy.
This
lexical maneuver, however, is unsustainable when scrutinized against the
broader Johannine context and New Testament theology. In John 5:23, the purpose
clause—“that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father”—is
explicitly tied to the Father’s entrustment of all judgment to the Son
(John 5:22). In Second Temple Judaism, judgment is a prerogative reserved
exclusively for God, as seen in texts like Deuteronomy 1:17 (“judgment
belongs to God”) and Psalm 50:6 (“God himself is judge”). By
assigning this role to Jesus without qualification, the text elevates him
beyond a mere representative. The Arian claim that Jesus executes the Father’s
judgment as a delegated agent (citing Romans 2:16 and Acts 17:31) overlooks the
implication: if judgment is inherently divine, the one who wields it
universally must share in that divine authority, not merely reflect it. The
honor demanded in John 5:23 is thus not derivative but commensurate with the
Father’s, a point reinforced by the warning that failing to honor the Son
equates to dishonoring the Father—a linkage implying unity of essence, not just
purpose.
The Arian
appeal to kathōs as denoting similarity rather than equality further
falters when compared to its usage elsewhere in John. In John 10:30, Jesus
declares, “I and the Father are one,” prompting accusations of blasphemy
(John 10:33) because it suggests equality with God. The Arian dismissal of this
unity as mere alignment of will, not essence, ignores the Jewish reaction and
the narrative arc of John, which consistently positions Jesus within the divine
identity (e.g., John 1:1, “the Word was God”). Similarly, in John 14:9,
"Whoever has seen me has seen the Father," and John 17:21, where
Jesus prays for disciples to be one "just as" he and the Father are
one, the kathōs construction points to a profound unity. While the Arian
notes that disciples are not divine, this misses the distinction: the unity of
believers mirrors the Father-Son relationship analogically, whereas the Son’s
unity with the Father is foundational, enabling that analogy. The Trinitarian
reading of kathōs in John 5:23 as indicating equal honor aligns with
this pattern, supported by standard commentaries like Barnes, who notes that
honoring the Son "even as" the Father denotes "religious
homage" due to God, implying equality.
The
patristic and medieval commentators are virtually unanimous in reading John
5:23 as an explicit assertion of the Son’s consubstantiality and co-equality
with the Father. As Barnes rightly notes, the honor to be rendered is not
merely civil, nor is it limited to the acknowledgment of messianic function.
Rather, it is the same “religious homage” due to God; to withhold it from the
Son is to withhold it from the Father, for the Father has willed that his Son
should be honored “even as” he himself is. Matthew Henry, Poole, Gill, and the
rest—Protestant and Catholic alike—see in this verse not the accommodation of a
subordinate “venue of salvation,” but the crystallization of the early
Christian conviction that Jesus is worthy of worship as God.
The very
structure of John’s Gospel refutes the notion that Jesus’ honor is merely
functional or representative. Thomas’s confession (“My Lord and my God!”—John
20:28), the worship of the risen Christ (e.g., Matt 28:9, 17; John 9:38), and
the coordination of the Son with the Father and the Spirit in the baptismal
formula (Matt 28:19) are intelligible only if the Son is recipient of the same
cultic devotion as the Father. The charge that “Trinitarians fail to honor the
Father as they honor the Son” is an unsubstantiated assertion rooted in a
misunderstanding of orthodox Trinitarian doctrine. In classical Christian
theology, the worship of the Son is not a zero-sum affair that detracts from
the Father; rather, as Jesus himself insists, “whoever does not honor the Son
does not honor the Father who sent him.” The veneration of Christ is not a
detour around the Father, but the divinely willed and instituted mode by which
the Father is known and glorified (see John 14:6–9).
The logic
of the Gospel is not that Jesus is to be “welcomed as if he were God” while in
reality remaining external to the divine identity, but that in welcoming and
honoring Jesus, the believer is, in fact, encountering the one true God
manifest in the flesh. John 1:1, 18; 8:58; 10:30–33; 14:9–11; and the entire
corpus of high Christology in the New Testament make this point explicit: Jesus
is not a merely functional “venue of salvation,” but the definitive
self-revelation of the God of Israel.
The
persistent attempt to relativize the honor due to the Son not only fails
exegetically and theologically but stands in open contradiction to the
narrative arc of John and the unanimous liturgical and doctrinal tradition of
the apostolic and patristic church. To refuse the Son the same honor as
the Father is, according to the Johannine witness, to refuse the Father
himself. The only conclusion compatible with the text, its historical context,
and the church’s rule of faith is that Christ is to be accorded the same
undivided adoration, worship, and honor as the Father—not in a mitigated, “as
if” sense, but in the full reality of his divine personhood.
The Arian
critique also invokes Old Testament precedent, arguing that figures like David
were “worshiped” alongside Yahweh (1 Chronicles 29:20) without being divine,
suggesting a parallel with Jesus. Yet this misreads the text. In 1 Chronicles
29:20, the Hebrew wayyištḥawû ("they bowed down") applies to both
Yahweh and the king, but the context—a public assembly blessing God and
acknowledging David’s reign—distinguishes cultic worship of Yahweh from civil
homage to David. The Septuagint renders this with proskuneō for both,
but its semantic range, as noted in BDAG and LSJ, spans from reverence to
divine worship, determined by context. Here, David receives no sacrificial
rites or doxology, and his mortality is soon emphasized (1 Chronicles 29:28).
Contrast this with Revelation 5:13-14, where the Lamb (Jesus) shares the throne
and receives identical praise—“blessing, honor, glory, and power”—with
the Father, a scene echoing Isaiah 45:23’s divine prerogative. The Arian
assertion that this is “relative honor” collapses under the unified grammar and
cosmic scope, which no Old Testament figure, even David, approaches.
The Hebrew shachah
and the Greek proskuneō indeed have a semantic range that includes both
veneration and cultic worship. However, in Israel’s strict monotheistic
context, only YHWH was the fitting recipient of cultic, liturgical worship, and
the canonical record is unambiguous in its condemnation of offering this kind
of honor to anyone but God (e.g., Exod 20:3-5; Deut 6:13-15). Instances of
courtly prostration before kings (e.g., 1 Chr 29:20) do not abrogate this
fundamental norm, as the narrative, liturgical, and theological contexts always
sharply delimit the honor given to human rulers from the exclusive worship
given to God. The king, even David or Solomon, is always subordinate, mortal,
and strictly never receives prayer, sacrifice, or doxology in the manner YHWH
does. By contrast, in the New Testament, the worship of Jesus ascribes to him
all the attributes and honors of YHWH, including creation, judgment, the power
to forgive sins, and the reception of prayer and liturgical acclamation (see
Rev 5:13-14, where “every creature” worships both “him who sits upon the
throne and the Lamb,” with no hint of distinction).
The Old
Testament “prophetology” argument, that prophets and kings are “worshipped” and
called “lord,” must also be rejected on canonical and theological grounds.
Nowhere is cultic, divine worship (i.e., the offering of prayer, hymns, or
doxological acclamation) directed to prophets or kings; at most, they receive
homage or obedience in their office, never the religious veneration reserved
for God alone. The Psalms and prophetic texts cited by the objector are often
messianic in their trajectory (e.g., Psalm 2, Psalm 45, Psalm 110), and their
highest language is ultimately fulfilled in the divine Messiah, Jesus Christ,
as the unanimous patristic and liturgical tradition attests.
The Arian
claim that Jesus’ role as one “sent” (apostellō) negates divinity is a
non-sequitur. In John, the sending motif (e.g., John 5:30, 7:16) underscores
Jesus’ obedience to the Father’s will, not subordination in essence.
Trinitarian theology distinguishes the economic Trinity (roles in salvation)
from the immanent Trinity (eternal being), a nuance the Arian flattens. Jesus’
statement, “I can do nothing on my own” (John 5:30), reflects his
incarnational dependence, not ontological inferiority, as evidenced by John 1:1
and Philippians 2:6-7, where his preexistent equality with God precedes his
self-emptying. The Arian analogy to ambassadors receiving honor “as”
their sender fails, for no human envoy claims divine titles (e.g., “Lord,” John
20:28) or receives universal worship without rebuke (cf. Acts 10:26, Revelation
19:10).
The core
claim of the Arian objector is that John 5:23 simply means the Son is to be
“honored as a representative,” in the same way that an ambassador is honored as
one honors the king, and that the Greek kathōs does not require
equality, but only similarity or adequacy of honor. This, we are told, is
bolstered by Old Testament passages where human kings receive proskynesis
or are “worshipped” alongside God, by New Testament statements about Christ
being sent, and by early church practices of honoring bishops.
The text
and context of John 5:23 do not support this reductionist reading. John’s
Gospel is consistently high in its Christology, from the prologue (“the Word
was God”) through its culminating confessions (e.g., “My Lord and my
God!” John 20:28), and nowhere is this clearer than in the very passage
under dispute. The setting is a controversy over Jesus’ claim to prerogatives
that are, for any Second Temple Jew, uniquely divine: the authority to give
life, to execute final judgment, and to receive the very honor owed to the
Father. The logic of John’s argument is that the Father “has given all
judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as (kathōs) they
honor the Father.” This is not mere functional representation, but a
deliberate theological identification: the Son is included in the singular,
undivided divine honor that, in the Old Testament, is strictly reserved for
YHWH (see Isa 42:8: “My glory I give to no other”). The structure is not
distributive (“honor the Father, and also honor His agent”), but
participatory and coextensive: the honor due to the Son is to match, in kind
and degree, the honor due to the Father. This is underscored by the subsequent
warning: “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent
Him.” In Johannine theology, to withhold worship from the Son is not mere
discourtesy to the king’s ambassador; it is outright refusal to honor the King
Himself, because the Son is one with the Father (John 10:30).
The attempt
to dilute kathōs (“just as”) into a vague indicator of similarity rather
than equality is linguistically and contextually flawed. While kathōs
can, in some constructions, denote resemblance or analogy, in John 5:23 it
marks the explicit criterion and measure of the honor due: not “honor the Son
in some comparable way,” but “honor the Son in the same way.” This is
reinforced by parallel uses elsewhere in John where the language, though
capable of analogical extension, is inextricably tied to ontological or
qualitative identity (e.g., “just as the Father has loved me, so I have
loved you” [John 15:9]; “that they may be one just as we are one”
[John 17:22]). Moreover, as the best patristic and Reformation commentators
recognize, it is precisely the radical nature of this claim that caused Jesus’
Jewish opponents to charge him with blasphemy and making himself “equal with
God” (John 5:18).
The invocation
of “agency” or “representation” as the exhaustive category for Christ’s role
fails to account for the full witness of John and the New Testament as a whole.
Jesus is not merely a sent emissary acting on delegated authority, as the text
makes clear in John 5:26: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has
granted the Son also to have life in himself.” The Son possesses “life
in himself”—an exclusively divine prerogative—by virtue of his relationship
with the Father, not by mere commission. Similarly, in John 1:1-3, the Son is
identified as the eternal Word who is both with God and is God, the one through
whom all things were made. The giving of judgment to the Son (John 5:22) is not
simply functional delegation but the manifestation in history of the Son’s
eternal relation to the Father.
The claim
that Jesus “gives away” his glory to his disciples in John 17:22 is a
fundamental misunderstanding of the Johannine idiom of “glory.” The glory that
Christ bestows upon his followers is not identity with his divine nature, but
participation by grace in the filial communion he enjoys with the Father. The
entire context of John 17 is the Son’s unique relationship to the Father, and
the “glory” given to the disciples is their adoption into this communion
through union with Christ. The distinction between “created participation” and
“uncreated essence” is a staple of Christian theology and precludes any
flattening of categories. The glory of the Son is eternal, the glory given to
believers is derivative and participatory (see 2 Peter 1:4: “partakers of the
divine nature”—not partakers of the divine identity).
Regarding
the application of titles such as “Lord” (kurios, adonai) to both
God and human figures, it must be noted that in the Old Testament, “Lord” as a
title is sometimes used for human masters or rulers, but the New Testament’s
consistent ascription of kurios to Jesus, especially in doxological and
soteriological contexts, draws on the Septuagintal practice of using kurios
to translate the Tetragrammaton (YHWH). When the New Testament authors acclaim
“Jesus is Lord,” this is not merely bestowing honorifics, but identifying him
with the God of Israel.
The
argument that delegated authority nullifies ontological identity is also
misplaced. In the economy of salvation, the Son is “sent” by the Father, but
this sending presupposes his preexistence, divinity, and participation in the
Father’s being (“the Word was with God, and the Word was God”). The biblical
motif of “sending” does not reduce the sent one to a mere creature, but in the
case of the Son, manifests the eternal Trinitarian life into which believers
are incorporated.
In
conclusion, the context, language, and theological trajectory of John 5:23,
together with the wider canonical pattern, exclude the possibility that Jesus
is to be honored merely as a representative or a prophet. The honor and worship
owed to the Son are the honor and worship owed to the one God of Israel,
revealed in the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To honor the Son is
to honor the Father; to withhold worship from the Son is to repudiate the
Father. Any attempt to deny the Son his divine honor
is not fidelity to monotheism, but a refusal of the fullness of the biblical
revelation. As John 5:23 and its authoritative commentators declare, “He who
does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” This is not an
innovation, but the very heart of Christian faith and worship.
The Arian
reinterpretation of John 5:23 as mere representational honor collapses under
the weight of its immediate context, the Johannine portrayal of Jesus’ divine
identity, and the New Testament’s cultic devotion to him. The Trinitarian
affirmation that Jesus is to be worshiped as God coheres with the biblical data
and early Christian practice, rendering the Arian objection a selective
misreading that cannot sustain its denial of Christ’s divinity.
John 5:23,
properly read, does not provide cover for Arian subordinationism or a
diminished Christology. It is a cornerstone of Trinitarian dogma, a
proclamation that the one God of Israel is now to be worshipped in the face of
Jesus Christ, to the glory of the Father, in the Holy Spirit. Any attempt to
dilute or evade this truth stands not only against the witness of Scripture but
also against the very logic of Christian faith, worship, and salvation.
