John 17:25

What is the “Gospel”?

2011-08-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

Understanding the ‘good news’ in the 21st Century By Patrick Navas (2010) patrick_navas@yahoo.com

The term “gospel” literally means “good news.” In the Christian Scriptures, or New Testament, it is described more fully as “the good news of the kingdom of God” (Luke 4:43), “the good news about the Christ” (2 Cor. 2:12), “the good news of peace” (Acts 10:36), the “good news” of “salvation” (Eph. 1:13), and “the good news of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). The gospel, accepted as “the word of truth,” is a hopeful, joy-inspiring message for “every nation, tribe, tongue, and people”—revealed by the Creator through prophecy, recorded in sacred Scripture for all generations. It is the joyous news of the Creator’s purpose to “restore all things” through his coming kingdom, and his gracious gift of salvation through faith in Jesus, the long-awaited “Christ” or “Messiah.”—Eph.1:13; 2:8; Col. 1:5; Rev. 14:6; Acts 3:21

It is impossible, though, to truly appreciate the importance of the good news, and its life-giving significance to mankind, without first coming to direct terms with the underlying human and world condition.

The natural world around us, in all the richness of its diversity, is truly marvelous. Even in our modern age, many thoughtful persons agree that it all appears to have been purposefully designed by a supremely powerful and exceedingly wise Creator. Life itself, under the right conditions, can be so beautiful, so pleasurable, so meaningful—almost perfect. There is, in fact, so much beauty, goodness, and potential for goodness in the world—from the sweet harmonies of music, to the enjoyment of wholesome food, to the joyful satisfaction of family life, to the wonder and magnificence of nature (the entire scope of life’s inherent goodness)—it seems almost incredible to think that it all could have come about without purpose or apart from some kind of designing intelligence. It is true, of course, that mainstream science cannot conclusively “prove” or “disprove” the existence of God. But one thing science cannot legitimately claim is that faith in God’s existence is irrational or without logical basis. Although unable to be proven in a strict or traditional “scientific” sense, it is, nevertheless, entirely reasonable to believe in the existence of a Supreme Being who created the world with a purpose, even in the light of modern science. —Rom. 1:20; Psalm 19:1-6; 104:1-30; Prov. 3:19

But life in this world, as experience reveals, is marred so often by sickness, by poverty, by hatred, by injustice, and by senseless episodes of human cruelty. History itself is a testimony to countless wars, untold bloodshed, the violent rise and fall of civilizations, and disturbingly repetitive, terrifying measures of human suffering and adversity. In the midst of so much trouble we often find ourselves struggling to simply survive. Yet, if we can find moments of pleasure and meaning in this life, we still mourn for the evil and suffering in the world around us. And, when forced to reflect on it, we despair the inevitable prospect of sickness and death—the eventuality of the generations before us, a reality we all must eventually face.

In this light it is understandable that humans have often wondered: Is there a God—an invisible, caring, father-like-figure in heaven? Is there a meaning and purpose to our existence in this world? Is it possible that there is some kind of life beyond death? What is the true origin, and what is the ultimate destiny of, humankind? These are the questions only human beings—with our extraordinary intellectual capacities—can, and have, asked, setting us far apart from even the most sophisticated of animals. Yet in the end, as an ancient Scripture soberly reminds us, all—human and animal alike—“go to the same place; both were made from the dust, and to the dust they both return.” —Ecc. 3:20

Genesis, the first of the five books of Moses, is another ancient text yielding credible and unparalleled insights into the history and origin of the human race. It tells of the Creator’s wondrous works, and of his original, loving purpose for the human family—setting the stage for reliable comprehension of our universal human predicament; created, as we were, in “the image of God,” with the innate longing for immortality, yet tragically enslaved to the futility of decay and death. —Gen.1:27; Ecc. 3:11; Rom. 8:21

It was “in the beginning,” according to Scripture, when Jehovah, God, “created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). On the sixth day of the creation event God proceeded to create man “in his own image,” forming him out of the elements of the earth, as he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”—the day man became “a living soul” (Gen. 1:27; 2:7). The account goes on to describe how the first man, Adam, was created to live in an ideal environment—the Garden of Eden—where all his physical needs would be satisfied. After Jehovah created the first woman, Eve, from the man’s body, He commanded the couple to be fruitful, to multiply, and to fill the earth and subdue it (Gen. 1:28). In their garden home the first humans were permitted to enjoy every blessing created for their joy and benefit, as the Scripture states, God saw that every one of them was “good” (Gen. 1:21, 25). Yet, according to the scriptural record, “the tree of life was in the midst of the garden,” and also, “the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.” —Gen. 2:9

Consequently, the first humans were given one prohibition from Jehovah, their life-giver: “From every tree of the garden you may eat of freely. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it,” God warned, “for in the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” —Gen. 2:16

In spite of the Giver of life’s clearly-stated warning, however, the first humans, under satanic influence, partook of the forbidden fruit of the tree. The account explains that “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” —Gen. 3:1-13

They were once naked, without shame. After the trespass, their eyes were opened, becoming conscious of their nakedness and shame, induced by their disobedience, they became afraid. So God cursed the first human couple in their failure to obey His command: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Tragically, the man was expelled from the garden paradise, so that from that point onward he could not “reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and thus live for ever.” —Gen. 3:1-24

In the words “you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” God’s foretold sentence of death was formally pronounced upon humanity. Through the first human act of disobedience—a rejection of faith in their Creator’s wisdom, and a failed attempt at self-determination and independence from their life-giver—the ancestors of the human race forfeited their right to the life graciously given them by God. Hence, the introduction of sin and sin’s corresponding consequence, death, came to the first man, and, consequently, to the first man’s offspring—all future generations of the human family. As Scripture says: “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all had sinned.” It was, according to another biblical text, a case of “one trespass” leading “to condemnation for all men.”
—Rom. 5:12-19

Although the pronouncement in the garden was dismal, and the results disastrous, God did not leave his creation without a ray of hope, as he went on to foretell the coming of a “seed” that would come through the woman—one who would eventually “bruise” the head of the serpent that deceived her, leading to humanity’s ruin.
—Gen. 3:15

The rest of the books forming the modern “Bible” were written over the course of many centuries. Although diverse in scope, in authorship, and in literary form, they are remarkably unified in spirit and in the way they reveal the progressive fulfillment of God’s original pledge to the human race, inextricably linked to his associated promise to the man he called “Abraham,” and to the people of Israel, Abraham’s descendents.

Abraham, as Genesis tells us, was a man who proved faithful to God under test. Thus, as an extension of his original declaration in Genesis, God made the solemn promise to Abraham that “all nations of the earth” would “be blessed” by means of his seed, or offspring. The Hebrew Scriptures—often called the ‘Old Testament’—in fact, combine to form a record of God’s interactions with Abraham’s descendents, those who would eventually constitute the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel. —Gen. 22:1-17; Compare Hebrews 11:17-19

The Scriptures go on to trace the history of the Israelites, Abraham’s descendants, from their dramatic deliverance from slavery and following exodus out of Egypt, to Jehovah’s giving of the national law—along with its sacrificial system—through Moses, to Israel’s rise as a great kingdom centered in Jerusalem, to its unfaithfulness and eventual downfall and dispersion among the nations, all the while emphasizing God’s abiding promise to Israel’s King David (Abraham’s descendent); how he would ultimately, being true to His oath, “put one of [David’s] descendants on his throne” and “establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” —Acts 2:30; 2 Sam. 7:12-13; Compare Luke 1:32-33

After many centuries had passed, the foretold seed of Abraham and offspring of David—the true King and Savior of Israel—would arrive to fulfill the prophecy. As Scripture states, it was “in the fullness of time” that “God sent forth his Son, born of a woman.” —Gal. 4:4

From the Law of Moses to the coming of the Messiah

The Law of Moses—along with its ‘ten commandments’—was given by God 430 years after the time of Abraham. But the Mosaic Law, assigned exclusively to Israel as a nation, held only a temporary role in the outworking of God’s purposes (Gal. 3:17; Psalm 147:19-20; Deut. 4:8; Rom. 9:4). The daily animal sacrifices instituted by God, and the annual day of atonement (important features of the Mosaic Law), served as a constant reminder of Israel’s sinful condition, and as a means to impress upon their minds the absolute holiness of their God, Jehovah, and the need to be pure before him (Heb. 10:3; 1 Pet. 1:16; Lev. 10:3; 11:44-45; 19:2; 20:7). But rather than functioning as a permanent institution, or as a remedy for the peoples’ sins, in the end the Law served as a means to identify and expose the sin that existed, bringing about “wrath” against all violators of its standards. —Rom. 3:20; 4:15; 5:13, 20; 7:5-13; Compare Ex. 21:12-29
Since it was “but a shadow of the good things to come” and “not the substance,” the covenant of Law would exist only “until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made” (Heb. 10:1; Col. 2:16, 17; Gal. 3:19). According to the Christian records, the lineal descendant of Abraham and David through the tribe of Judah—Jesus of Nazareth—proved to be the “offspring” of promise through whom God would “bless all nations” of the earth (Matt. 1:1-17; Gal. 3:16). But, as Scripture says, “before this faith came, we were held captive under the Law, imprisoned until the coming faith [of the Messiah] would be revealed.” —Gal. 3:23
The Law of the old covenant functioned, then, as an agent of “condemnation,” exposing Israel’s unfaithfulness to God and to the conditions of their covenant, representing a “curse” from which the Messiah came to redeem God’s people (Gal. 3:13). Although it was “holy,” “righteous,” and “good,” fulfilling the role of a “school master” or “disciplinarian until Christ came,” the Law itself made “nothing perfect” (Rom. 7:12; 1 Tim. 1:8; Gal. 3:24; Heb. 7:18). It was, in the final analysis, a “ministry of death carved in letters on stone”—“the letter” that “kills” in contrast to the “new covenant of the spirit” that “gives life.” —Compare Ex. 21:12-29; 31:14, 15; 35:2; Lev. 20: 9-27; 24:16-21; 2 Cor. 3:6, 7

Because the Law represented a standard the Israelites could not live up to, a debt they were unable to pay, the apostle Peter, himself an Israelite, went so far as to describe it as a “burden” or “yoke which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear” (Acts 15:10; Col. 2:14). As critical as the Law had been to the religious life of Israel, it was, in fact, never the case that a man, apart from faith, would have been justified, or found righteous in God’s sight, by mere outward conformity to the deeds prescribed by it; for, as the apostle Paul stated elsewhere, the Law itself was “not of faith,” but it was “through the law” that came “the knowledge of sin” (Gal. 3:12; Rom. 3:20). That is, the purpose of the Law and its sacrificial system was not to save or liberate the people from their sins, but to make the people conscious of their sins in their transgression of it, preparing them for, and pointing them to, the coming deliverer.

Although he came “not to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them,” the sacrificial death of the Messiah resulted in the end of the “written code” as the means of governing God’s people (Matt. 5:17; Jer. 31:31-33; Heb. 8:10; 10:16). That is why Paul wrote to the early believers in the Messiah: “But now we are released [‘discharged,’ RSV] from the Law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (Rom. 7:6). This is, likewise, why the Messiah himself is referred to as “the end of the Law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” —Rom. 10:4

That is to say, rather than establishing righteousness through “works of Law,” God, in his undeserved kindness, declares righteous those who live by faith in God’s promise and in the Messiah who fulfills it. It is, as it was with Abraham, a case of “crediting” one with “righteousness” because of “listening to God’s voice” and “exercising faith” in God’s revealed word of truth (Rom. 4:1-22; Gal. 4:21-25). The righteous, according to Scripture, “will live by faith,” since, “without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” —Gal. 3:11; Heb. 11:6.

Although they “fall short of the glory of God” in Adam, those exercising faith are, like Abraham, justified before God the righteous judge (Rom 3:23-26). Whether born from Abraham’s bloodline or not, those having faith are the true children of Abraham, and of God, in Christ Jesus, through the good news (Gal. 3:7, 26). That is why, “Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the good news beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” —Gal. 3:8-9

Since all—both Jew and Gentile alike—were “under sin,” all stood equally condemned because of sin and under the sentence of death (Rom. 3:9; 9:32). At the right time, God would bring about his purpose to terminate the condemning effect of Law and to emancipate the human race from the bondage of sin through the one who would, by faith, fulfill all that was necessary and righteous in God’s sight—Jesus of Nazareth, his own Son (Matt. 3:17; Deut. 6:5; Mark 12:29-31; Matt. 22:40). As the Scripture says, “For God has done what the Law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit.” Indeed, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” —Rom. 8:1-4; John 3:16-17

According to the combined testimony of the New Testament writings, it is through his very own Son that God brings about his intention to bless all nations—blessings dependent not on Law but on God’s gracious promise, made effective by faith (Rom. 4:13-16). As the Gospel of John states, “the Law was given through Moses” while “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”—“grace,” in the form of God’s gift of his Son, “truth” in the fullness of the revelation of God’s purpose in his Son, “who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the good news.” —John 1:17; 2 Tim. 1:10

In the fullness of his faith, God’s Son was the only man to lead a perfectly sinless life, in unfailing obedience to the will of his Father. Although blameless before God and men, he was, nevertheless, treated as a sinner and, in the end, condemned to death as a blasphemer and criminal by his enemies. Yet the death of the Messiah was, as the apostle Peter put it, “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God”—since it constituted, in God’s eyes, a “propitiatory sacrifice” for “the sins of the whole world.” —Acts 2:23; 1 John 2:2
That the Messiah’s sacrificial death was according to God’s “definite plan” is verified in the writings of Isaiah, who wrote long before the event, that the Messiah would be “wounded for our transgressions” and “crushed for our iniquities”—how “he bore the sin of many,” and how “Jehovah has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” This harmonizes with the Messiah’s own revelation of himself; namely, that he came “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” —Mark 10:45; Matt. 20:28; Compare 2 Pet. 2:22-24

As prophesied, the Messiah “was manifested to take away sins.” He was “without sin.” Yet, out of his faithfulness to God and love for humankind, “he poured out his soul unto death.” He was “like a lamb led to a slaughter,” voluntarily laying down his perfect life as “the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.” —1 John 3:5; Heb. 4:15; John 1:29; 10:17-18; Isaiah 53:5-12

However, in fulfillment of the prophetic utterance, and in harmony with eyewitness testimony, three days later, God, as promised, raised Jesus to life and, a short time after, exalted him to his right hand in “the heavenly places,” powerfully marking him out as his Son and as the chosen object of our faith (1 Cor. 15:3-6; Rom. 1:4; Eph. 1:20; Luke 1:2; Acts 2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:39, 41). Ever since, “the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the Law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all [Jews and non-Jews] have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” —Rom. 3:21-26; 4:25

Though once condemned by Law and conscience as sinners, believers, of every nation, are “declared righteous” in the eyes of God through faith in God’s Messiah, Jesus. Those who were “once alienated,” “dead in trespasses and sins,” “without hope and without God in the world,” are now “brought near,” “reconciled to God by the death of his Son” with eternal life in view (Rom. 5:10; Eph. 2:1-13; 2 Cor. 5:18-21). By the grace of God, the sacrifice of the “spotless and unblemished lamb” effectively empties the Law and its corresponding fear of punishment of its condemning power. That is why Paul could write to believers in the first century:

“…when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with [Christ], when he forgave us all our offenses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the stake.” —1 Pet. 1:19; Col. 2:13, 14; Compare Eph. 2:11-22

Assured by God’s “blotting out” of the legal record that opposed them, believers are set free to exercise the kind of “faith that expresses itself through love,” as they stand not under the condemnation of Law but under the blessing of God’s grace and loving-kindness (Rom. 614; Gal. 5:6; Eph. 2:5). “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” wrote the apostle, “for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:1-4). Just as Jesus himself had promised: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” —John 5:4

The book of Acts records examples of the good news as it was first preached by the Messiah’s closest followers. In line with the prophecy, the apostles declared how it was from “[King David’s] posterity” that “God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised…Let it be known to you therefore, my brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.”

(Acts 13:23; 38-39). The apostle Peter went further when he declared: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” —Acts 10:34-43

The gospel of peace

The Christian message is, therefore, the “good news” about “peace” and “reconciliation” with God. Though once estranged from the Creator by their sinful and unholy condition, believers are now, through faith in Christ and the cleansing power of his blood, at peace with God, brought near to Him as beloved children of a father (Rom 8:15; Gal. 4:6; 1 John 3:1-3). “Therefore,” wrote the apostle Paul, “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” —Rom. 5:1-2

Elsewhere, Paul wrote in the same spirit regarding his purpose as a minister of the good news:

“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” —2 Cor. 5:18-20

This was the call of the gospel in the first century; it remains unchanged in the twenty first. Because God is a being of utter holiness, purity and goodness—“in him there is no darkness at all”—humans defiled by sin must be purified before entering the necessary, life-giving union with him. This God has effected through the blood of his Son Jesus which “cleanses us from all sin.” —1 John 1:5, 7; Eph. 5:27; Col. 1:22; 1 Pet. 1:15, 16; Rev. 4:8

The Kingdom of God

The promise of God’s kingdom was spoken of by the prophets of Israel and confirmed in the teachings of Jesus and his apostles. The “good news of the kingdom,” in fact, lies at the very heart of the Messianic message. It is a message about a kingdom that “will crush and put an end” to all imperfect human kingdoms and governmental systems (Dan. 2:44). The message about the kingdom is “good news” since it heralds a coming age ruled by “the righteous one,” Jesus the Messiah (Compare 1 Cor. 15:25-28). He will rule, unfailingly, as the prophet foretold, in the “spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Jehovah. And his delight shall be in the fear of Jehovah. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.” —Isaiah 11:1-5

The kingdom of God under “the Prince of Peace” will be righteous. It will bring about the relief and lasting peace humankind has long struggled to establish through its own governing agencies. The prophet Isaiah described it vividly as an age when the “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox…They shall not hurt or destroy in all [God’s] holy mountain; for the earth”—under the kingdom of God and Christ—“shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea.” —Isaiah 9:6-7; 11:6-9

The current state of human affairs is marked by racial barriers, social fragmentation, tribal warfare, political division, international conflict (with the accompanying nuclear threat of ‘mutually assured destruction’), economic inequities, financial crises, false doctrine, religious strife, and ignorance of God. But the kingdom of God will peacefully and effectively unify every tribe, nation and tongue on earth in the spirit of brotherly love under the worship and true knowledge of Jah, the true God and Creator of all (Rev. 21:22-27; 22:1-3). Unlike the ruling institutions of a corrupted human race, the righteous rule of God is, and will be, “an everlasting dominion,” a kingdom “that will not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:14). That is why the disciples of God’s Son pray, “Our Father in heaven…let your kingdom come, let your will be done, in heaven and on earth…” —Matt. 6:9-13

Thus, as the true remedy to man’s disobedience and resulting alienation from his Creator, the kingdom of God becomes the means by which God’s will for humankind, indeed, for “heaven and earth,” is fully executed. It is the instrument through which God’s sovereignty is fully, lovingly, and wisely, expressed—the scheme whereby sinners are reconciled to God and paradise restored in a “new heavens and a new earth that we are awaiting according to [God’s] promise” (2 Pet. 3:13; Isaiah 66:22; Rev. 21:1). This is a description of “life in the age to come,” in the kingdom of God, which promises blessings that “no eye has seen nor ear heard,” “an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure”—an everlasting inheritance “prepared by God for those who love him.” —2 Cor. 4:17; 1 Cor. 2:9

In the promise of the gospel, believers look hopefully to this coming era when God will be “making all things new,” a time when it will be truly said…

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. The former things have passed away.” —Rev. 21:1-7

This is the Christian hope—the hope of eternal life in “the kingdom of God.”

Repentance and the Baptismal Command

The call to repentance is essential to the “good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Matt. 3:2, 11; Luke 13:5; Acts 8:12; 20:21; 25:20). It refers to a complete change in the heart of a believer. It is spoken of in Scripture as a “repentance that leads to life” and a “repentance that leads to salvation.” —Acts 11:18; 2 Cor. 7:10

Repentance has been expressed by God’s servants in the past by a “broken spirit” and a “humbled heart” which God will “not despise” (Ps. 51:17). To repent, then, is to change the inner life of the mind, resulting in a turning away from sin and a devotion to that which is righteous in the Creator’s sight (Compare 1 Pet. 2:24). The true spirit of repentance was expressed well in the writings of Isaiah, when God’s word was declared thus to the wayward people of Israel:

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before My eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause…” —Isaiah 1:16, 17; Compare Col. 3:5-11.

Centuries after the prophet Isaiah, following the ascension of the Messiah, Peter proclaimed first to the Jews how “God raised up his servant [Jesus] and sent him to bless you by turning each of you from your evil ways.”
—Acts 3:26

Eventually, Paul too would openly teach that God, through the proclamation of the gospel, “commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed; and of this He has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” —Acts 17:30-31

All the prophets and apostles agree that a time will come for the judgment of the world (Dan. 7:22; Matt. 12:36; 2 Pet. 2:9). That is why Peter also declared to his countrymen:

“Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets.” —Acts 3:19-21

Along with “repentance” the command to “be baptized,” or “immersed” in water, represents the believer’s acceptance of, and faith in, the good news (Acts 2:41). Because water is an agent of cleansing and purification, the repentant are commanded to be immersed in it as “an appeal to God for a good conscience” (Acts 10:48; 1 Pet. 3:21). Upon the symbolic “burial” of the “old man,” believers rise from the baptismal waters to a new life in union with Christ. This is why the apostle Paul wrote to a community of the faithful in the city of Rome: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in a newness of life.” —Rom. 6:3-4; Col. 3:9

True repentance, followed by, or symbolized in, immersion, represents an acknowledgement of sin and the need for God’s forgiveness. To those who were already believers, the apostle John wrote: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” But, wrote the apostle, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” —1 John 1:8, 9

We can rejoice therefore through the “grace in which we stand,” assured that the blood of God’s Son continually “cleanses us” from every trace of impurity—confident that the one “who confesses and forsakes [transgressions] will obtain mercy” (Rom. 5:2; 1 John 1:7; Prov. 28:13). Thus the call of the gospel is still:

“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit.” —Acts 2:38; Compare Matt. 28:19.

It is through the “hearing with faith” leading to heartfelt “repentance” that believers receive the empowering, life-giving spirit of God imparted through the gospel. And because the sins of the faithful are “forgiven on account of [Jesus’] name,” believers “perfected in love” have not fear but “confidence for the day of judgment,” knowing that the Son of God “died for all,” so that, in the true spirit of repentance, “those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” —Gal. 3:2; 1 John 2:12; 4:17; 2 Cor. 5:14-15

The Resurrection and the Promise of Eternal Life

The resurrection of God’s Son assures the future, universal defeat of death, the enemy of all men. It is essential to the good news, the foundation of the Christian hope. That is why Paul was compelled to write to the early believers of Corinth:

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the good news I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…”
—1 Cor. 15:1-5

According to the good news, Christ’s victory over death assures our own victory through a promised resurrection of life “at his coming” (1 Cor. 15:24). The resurrection was—and remains—the true hope for the faithful. As the apostle Paul reasoned: “If Christ has not been raised” then our “faith is futile and [we] are still in [our] sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). Since death makes each man but “a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes,” without the hope of life rooted in the resurrection, we might as well, as the apostle put it, “eat and drink for tomorrow we die” (James 4:14; 1 Cor. 15:32). This is the reality of our mortal condition—apart from “the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus.” —2 Tim. 1:1

“But the fact is,” wrote Paul, “Christ has been raised from the dead.” This means “he has become the first of a great harvest of those who will be raised to life again” (1 Cor. 15:20, NLT). That is, although the certainty of death awaits all, a “resurrection of life” awaits all those who have “done good” in harmony with God’s will on the “last day” (John 5:29; 6:40). Therefore, if “the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in [us],” we live in genuine hope before the shadow of death, since “the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to [our] mortal bodies also, through his spirit that dwells in [us].”
—Rom. 8:11

Jesus himself spoke with authority concerning the resurrection to his disciples when he said:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live…Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out…” —John 5:25-29

As God has purposed, the Lord Jesus will “reign as king until [God] has put all enemies underneath his feet. As the last enemy, death, is to be brought to nothing” (1 Cor. 15:26). As we live in expectation of his glorious second appearance, and the destruction of God’s enemies, we are instructed by our Lord to “strive to enter the narrow door” of life—knowing that “the world is passing away, along with its desire” but that “those who do the will of God live for ever” (Luke 13:24; 1 John 2:17; Compare Matt. 7:21-27; 24:13; Rom 2:6-11; Heb. 9:28). That is, if we continue “walking in the light, as [God] Himself is in the light” and if what we “have heard from the beginning abides” in us, then we will “abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is what He Himself has promised us, eternal life.” —1 John 2:24-25

In a world dominated by sin, death, and “the god of this age,” the light of the gospel dispels the darkness of deception, ignorance, and the hopelessness of death (2 Cor. 4:4; John 8:12). It is through our union with Christ that we are “delivered from the dominion of darkness” by the power of the truth, as the Son of God declared,

“If you remain in my word, you are really my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

And further…

“I have come as a light into this world, in order that everyone putting faith in me might not remain in the darkness.” —Col. 1:13; John 8:31, 32; 12:46

Effectively freed from “the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19) and from the crippling “fear of death” (Heb. 2:15), Christians rejoice in the Messiah’s light and in the life-giving power of the good news, since, as the apostle declared without shame, “it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” (Rom. 1:16; Heb. 2:5). And, in the full assurance of faith, we wait for “the redemption of our bodies” as we “set [our] hope fully on the grace that will be brought to [us] at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” —Rom. 8:23; 1 Pet. 1:13

God’s Will Expressed in the “Greatest Commandments”

According to Scripture, God, “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” is not only “light” but “love” (Rom. 15:6; Col. 1:3; 1 John 4:8). The apostle John bore witness to God’s love when he wrote: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” John concluded: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”
—1 John 4:9-12

This is the testimony of a chosen apostle, an authentic witness of “the word of life” that “became flesh” in the man Jesus Christ. —John 1:14; 1 John 1:1-3

The apostles’ instructions were in accord with the teachings of their Master. For instance, when a certain scribe asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord [Heb. Jehovah; Deut. 6:4] our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

According to Jesus—“the author and finisher of our faith”—“Everything in the Law and the prophets”, in fact, “hangs on these two commandments.” —Deut. 6:4; Heb. 12:2; Mark 12:29-31; Matt. 22:40

In addition to loving God whom we recognize as “one” (the only ‘numerical’ formula given for God in Scripture ), what matters most in his eyes is that we “love one another.” The apostle John even said, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and yet hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot be loving God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: that whoever loves God must love his brother also.” According to the apostle, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers.” Yet, the apostle wrote, in stark contrast, “Whoever does not love abides in death.” —1 John 4:19-21; Compare 1 John 3:13-18; James 1:27

If our love is genuine, consisting “not in word or in speech” but “in truth and in action,” then “we will know that we are of the truth and will reassure our hearts before him; whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts and knows all things.” And, as the apostle went on to say: “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and whatever we ask of Him we shall receive, because we keep His commandments and live the kind of life that He wants. His commandments are these: that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and that we love one another as He has told us to.” In fulfilling the all-important command to “love one another,” we always abide “in the light” and in the true knowledge of God, knowing that “whoever keeps His commandments lives in God and God lives in him” (1 John 3:18-24). That is why “faith, hope, and love abide,” wrote Paul, “these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
—1 Cor. 13:13

Jesus of Nazareth, the Promised Messiah

Although controversy still rages in religious circles regarding the true identity of Jesus, in the first century, the original, foundational truth of the gospel was that Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited “Christ” or “Messiah”—God’s “beloved” and “anointed” Son. The sense of the term Messiah (‘anointed one’) is brought out in Jesus’ own words regarding himself as “the one whom the Father consecrated and sent forth into the world,” and, perhaps, when God himself testified of Jesus during his baptism, “this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” He is, according to Scripture, the one whom God “sent” and the one on whom God, the Father, has “set his seal.” —Acts 4:27; John 10:36; Matt. 3:16; John 3:34; 5:30; 7:29; 6:27

Faith in, and confession of, Jesus as “the Christ” is essential, the true foundation of Christian faith; so much that the faith itself was, in the minds’ of the apostles, directly tied to one’s being “born of God”—a truth delivered by way of direct revelation from the Father. This is demonstrated in Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus pointedly asked his disciples, “who do you say that I am?”—to which the disciple Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In turn, Jesus responded, “Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” —Matt. 16:13-18

In perfect harmony, at the end of his Gospel account, the apostle John summarized the purpose of his own writings in this way:

“These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in his name.” —John 20:31

Unlike the doctrinal formulations of the historic “creeds,” the disclosure of Jesus’ identity as “the Christ” and “Son of God” is neither an interpretation nor a theological inference, but a divinely-revealed truth upon which the gospel stands. This is the true article of the Christian faith, resting not on the traditions of men but on the testimony of God himself. As the apostle John wrote in his first epistle:

“If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is surely greater; for this is the testimony of God, that He has borne witness to His Son. He who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. He who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne to His Son.” —1 John 5:9-10

The apostle likewise assured those whom he was writing to in the first century:

“…everyone believing that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.” —1 John 5:1-5

The children of God are not identified by conformity to a humanly-devised tradition, but, as the apostle wrote, by believing that Jesus is “the Christ” and because they “practice righteousness” (1 John 3:4-10). And because “the righteousness of God is revealed” in the gospel, those “who hunger and thirst after righteousness” find their fill in the words of “the righteous one,” God’s Son (Rom. 1:17; Matt. 5:6; Acts 3:14; 1 John 2:1), who imparts in believers confidence that his message was truly from God, as he made clear:

“My teaching is not mine, but His who sent me. If anyone's will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.” —John 7:16-17

That is to say, the words of the Messiah are trustworthy and righteous, for he has “not spoken on [his] own authority, but the Father who sent [him] has Himself given [him] a commandment—what to say and what to speak,” the commandment that leads to “eternal life.”
—John 12:49-50
The apostle John bore witness to the same hope, based on the same sure foundation:

“And we ourselves have seen and do testify that the Father has sent His Son as the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God” —1 John 4:14, 15

In spite of the theological formulations of early “church” councils and traditional creeds, the life that Jesus has in himself, as God’s Son, was “granted” to him by one who is “greater” than himself—his Father—and he himself lives “because of” him (John 5:36; 6:57; 14:28). He is, as Scripture says, “the image of the invisible God,” “the reflection of [God’s] glory” and “the exact representation of His very being” (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:2, 3). He is “the apostle and high priest of our confession”—the “one mediator between God and men.” —Heb. 3:1; 1 Tim. 2:5
These are descriptions that reflect the true, divinely-revealed role and identity of Jesus, the Messiah. Unfortunately, the so-called “orthodox” or “mainline” church institutions have, in a multitude of ways, defected from the original letter, and spirit, of Scripture—requiring the confession of doctrine and language that go beyond what is revealed there. As pervasive as they have proven to be historically, however, institution-based creedal formulas that go beyond the Scripture’s own language are unnecessary and often misleading. Because the Scriptures themselves are “able to make [one] wise unto salvation,” and because they spell the truth out with sufficient clarity on these matters, “the man of God” is under no obligation to recognize the authority of any other source (See for example: 1 Cor. 8:6; John 17:3; 1 Tim. 2:5; Deut. 6:4; 2 Tim. 3:14-18).

The Lordship of Jesus Christ

In the Christian Scriptures Jesus is dignified with the status of “Lord” because of the all-encompassing authority given to him by God; as Jesus declared to his disciples after the resurrection: “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18; Compare Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22; Psalm 110:1; John 17:2; Rev. 2:27). Jesus was a faithful servant of God who lived a perfectly obedient life to the point of an agonizing death—“for this reason God has so highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name…” (Acts 3:26; Isaiah 52:13; Phil. 2:8-11). Because of his enduring faithfulness as “the only begotten of the Father,” God has not only “seated him at His right hand” but “has placed all things under his feet,” appointing him “to be head over everything for the congregation” of God’s people (John 1:14; Eph. 1:20-22); as Peter gave assurance to the house of Israel:

“God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ” —Acts 2:36

This is the testimony of the apostles, who, throughout their public ministry, continually drew attention to the Messiah’s resurrection and God-given Lordship as essential to the good news of salvation:

“…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” —Rom. 10:9

Scripturally, however, to honor Jesus as “Lord” is not to conflate him with the “one God, the Father,” who is “one,” but to recognize the authority that his Father, God, has vested in him. That is why our obedience to, and confession of, Jesus as the exalted, Messianic “Lord” always resounds “to the glory of God the Father.” —Phil. 2:11; 1 Cor. 8:4-6; Deut. 6:4; Compare John 5:22-23; 12:26

The dangers of “another gospel”

“…the good news that was proclaimed by me was not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”
—The apostle Paul, Galatians 1:11-12, NRSV

The good news preached by Jesus and his apostles is the same one Christians accept and live by today—requiring no additions, refinements, or alterations (Gal. 1:6-9). As it was in the first century, Christians today continue “devoting themselves to the apostles’ doctrine”—“sound doctrine” that is, thankfully, preserved for us in scriptural form to this day. —Tit. 1:9; 2:1; Acts 2:42; 2 Tim. 3:14-18

The apostles were well aware of the human tendency to corrupt and suppress the truth of the message they were entrusted with (Acts 20:29-32). They knew that, through various agencies, Satan falsely presented himself as “an angel of light,” and that his servants would “disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness.” They knew that the enemy deliberately worked to “blind the minds of unbelievers,” and of false teachers who would “secretly bring in destructive divisions” just as they would “distort the gospel of Christ.” That is why the apostles wrote much to address the threat of a “different gospel,” admonishing Christians to “examine everything carefully,” and to “not believe every spirit” but to “test the spirits to see whether they are of God,” since “many false prophets” and “deceivers have gone out into the world.” —2 Cor. 4:4; 11:14; 2 Pet. 2:1;1 John 4:1; 2 John 7; 1 Thess. 5:21; Gal. 1:7; 2 Cor. 11:4; Gal. 1:6

The spirit of this “different gospel”—“something beyond what [the apostles] declared to [the 1st century Christians] as good news”—has manifested itself in various ways throughout history (Gal. 1:8). In the first century some wanted to suppress the liberating power of the gospel through the re-imposition of Jewish laws (Acts 15:5; Gal. 3:10-29). Others became infected by, and tried to infect others with, the spirit that said Jesus “did not come in the flesh”—the “spirit of the antichrist.” —1 John 4:3; 2 John 1:7

Historically, the spirit of “another gospel” has appeared in the form of various ecclesiastical dogmas and unscriptural creeds—enforced often through the unwarranted and excessive elevation of human authority, at the expense of true knowledge of God and genuine Christian freedom. The original good news, however, did not and does not now require systematization into a certain number of theological “points” expressed in the complex and unscriptural language of “philosophy,” “theology,” or “metaphysics.” Nor is the prospect of human salvation, in any way, tied to the acceptance of post-biblical creeds, the determinations of “church councils,” or the self-assumed authority of various church “hierarchies.”

Contrary to what has at times been claimed, true Christian faith has never been contingent upon “organizational” membership, institutional approval, or the acceptance of certain “end-time” dates or chronological formulas based on human interpretations of prophecy and apocalyptic literature. The true Christian gospel, or “good news,” is the original one declared by Jesus and his apostles in Scripture—the “everlasting good news” (Rev. 14:6). The authentic Christian life is characterized by a living faith in Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of God,” who surrendered his life for sinners, and was raised to life by the power of God (Mark 8:29; John 11:27; James 2:14-18). It is accompanied by a lasting recognition of the Messiah’s God-given Lordship, and by a life-long devotion to “the only true God”—the Father of Jesus—who must be worshiped “in spirit and in truth” (John 17:3; 4:24). The identifying mark of true Christianity is neither organizational loyalty nor man-made creedal confession, but love of God and love of neighbor—a love that can be practiced in all contexts, in all places, at all times. It is a faith based not on superstition, blind credulity, or group conformity, but on “reason,” “knowledge,” “understanding,” “sober judgment,” and “soundness of mind”—made clear to the world by “the open statement of the truth.” —Acts 17:2; 18:4; 19:8; 26:25; Prov. 1:7; 10:14;13:16; Luke 1:77; Rom. 15:14; 2 Cor. 2:5; 4:6; 6:6; Col. 2:2; Psalm 119:104; Col. 1:9; James 3:13;1 John 5:20; Rom. 12:3; Gal.5:6; 2 Cor. 4:2

The Challenge of Christian Unity in the 21st Century

“There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” —Ephesians 4:4-6

On the last night of his earthly life, Jesus prayed fervently for the unity of his disciples—that they would all be “one,” or completely unified, just as he and his Father are (John 17:20-33; 10: 30). Yet, sadly, the destructive spirit of division quickly manifested itself in the very time in which the apostles of Jesus lived (Rom. 16:17; 1 Cor. 3:1-7; 11:18; Tit. 3:10; Jude 1:19). The apostles themselves labored intensely to combat the sectarian spirit and to preserve the undefiled doctrines of their Master. But discord, strife, false prophets, and false teachings, quietly, yet inevitably, spread like a cancer among the early congregations. Yet a moment’s consideration of the current religious landscape—2000 years after the fact—reveals that professing Christians are now irreconcilably divided into, literally, thousands of sects, denominations, and religious organizations. This can make for a bewildering situation for anyone trying to be faithful to Christ’s teaching yet desirous of the faith-building Christian fellowship spoken of in Scripture (Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-35). The scenario becomes even more difficult when religious leaders inspire guilt or fear among prospective disciples, insisting that loyalty to their self-assigned authority, adherence to a humanly-fabricated creed, or conformity to a contrived list of regulations and ecclesiastical policies, is—in addition to a living faith in Christ—the true way to salvation. Corruptions of these kinds can be subtle but they are rampant. They are often signaled by an unnecessary emphasis on unbiblical language, by an unwarranted dogmatism over unclear, interpretive, scriptural matters, by an unjustified insistence on a believer’s dependence on an “institution” or “organization” for salvation, and in an overall failure to build faith in “the word of truth” in the form of “the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ.”
These factors can make it difficult for Christians to give full support to many—if not most—of the modern religious establishments. But in spite of the challenges that exist, and the divisiveness that often prevails, believers can still—after the pattern of the apostles and first-century Christians—assemble together in private homes to experience the fullness of Christian fellowship (Rom. 16:3-5; 1 Cor. 16:19; Col. 4:15; Phm. 1:2). This can take place, of course, in a variety of places, like a park, a backyard, at the beach, or in a building—wherever at least “two or three are gathered in [Jesus’] name,” since he promises to be “in the midst of them” (Matt.18:20). The people of God do not meet, however, because of social or authoritarian pressures, to avoid punishment, or to fulfill a legalistic requirement, but to “stimulate one another to love and good deeds,” and to “encourage one another” in the “most holy faith” as we “see the day drawing near.” —Jude 1:20; Heb. 10:24-25

Together, believers partake of two common elements: bread—representing the Lord’s body, “which is given for you”—and “the cup of the Lord,” containing “the fruit of the vine,”—representing “the new covenant in [his] blood.” This serves as a fitting expression of faith in the life the Messiah gave as “a ransom for all,” and is practiced, as the Messiah instructed, “in remembrance” of him; for “as often as [believers] eat this bread and drink the cup” they “keep proclaiming the death of the Lord until he arrives.” —Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24-26
Although imperfections will inevitably arise in any gathering of Christians, a powerful force for unity can be found in a focus on “the more excellent way,” “the greatest commandment(s),” and in an unfailing recognition of Christ’s exclusive, God-given status as Lord and Master of the Christian community—strengthened by an enduring, conscious commitment not to go beyond the original Christian faith as expressed in Scripture. —Mark 12:28-31; 1 Cor. 12:31; 13:1-13

Now that the Scriptures have become so widely available (a relatively recent development), simply reading them with others (apart from ‘institutional’ or ‘denominational’ supervision), in private homes or the like, can make for a profound source of spiritual refreshment and faith-strengthening fellowship (1 Tim. 4:13; 2 Tim. 3:14-18). Through prayerful study and meditation, we can ensure that “the word of Christ dwell[s] in [us] richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in [our] hearts to God.” —Col. 3:16; Compare Eph. 5:19

Even in this divisive age, a genuine oneness of mind can be achieved when we remember that, as his disciples, we have “one teacher,” Christ himself, and that we “are all brothers”—using our gifts not to express superiority or dominance over others, but to “serve one another in love” (Matt. 23:8; John 13:13, 14; Gal. 5:13; 1 Pet. 4:10). With these principles in mind, both truth and freedom can prevail, in the understanding that all have access to the grace of God, as the Lord’s true people, not by conformity to a man-made creed or institution, but through faith in “the holy one of God,” Jesus, who alone has “the sayings of everlasting life”—for it is “through him” that we have “access in one spirit to the Father.” —John 6:68-69; Rom. 5:2; Eph. 2:18; 3:12; 1 Tim. 2:5

Echad (One)

2011-07-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

By Anthony F. Buzzard

It is customary for some Binitarians and most evangelical Trinitarians (especially Messianics) to propose that the Hebrew word for one, the numeral 1 (echad), is really “compound one.” This is a clever device which confuses logical thought.

Echad occurs some 960 times in the Hebrew Bible, and it is the numeral 1 [“one"]. It is a numeral adjective when it modifies a noun. “One day [noun],” “one person [noun],” etc. Echad is the ordinary cardinal number 1, “one.” Eleven [11] in Hebrew is ten [10] and one [1]. Abraham “was only one,” said Ezekiel 33:24 (NASU), “only one man” (NIV).

Just as the famous Armstrongian phrase “uniplural” does not appear in the Webster’s (thus it represents the DIY grammatical venture on which Worldwide theology was done in respect to defining God), “compound one” as a definition of echad is also not recognized in standard texts describing the grammar of the Hebrew language. It is an invented grammatical category which confuses and divides.

The Hebrew word for one operates as does the word “one” in English. You can have one thing, one person. And of course the noun modified by echad may be collective, one family, one people, one flesh, as a single unit composed of two — Adam and Eve, in that case. But to say that “one” carries the meaning of “compound one” is misleading in the extreme.

The basic meaning of echad given by the lexicons is “one single,” even the indefinite article “a.” Sometimes “the only one,” or even “unique” is the proper translation of echad.

Suppose now we say that “one” implies more than one. We could prove our point like this:

In the phrase “one tripod,” is it not obvious that one really implies three?
Does not one dozen mean that one is really 12? Or one million?
Is one equivalent to a million? Does this not suggest the plurality of “one”?
What about “one quartet” or “one duplex”?

To carry this madness to an extreme, we could argue that in the phrase “one zebra,” the word one really means “black and white.”

What is happening here?

We are being asked to believe that in the phrase “the LORD [YHWH/Adonai] our God is one LORD [YHWH/Adonai],” that “one” is “compound.” That “LORD” is more than one LORD, perhaps two or perhaps three. We are being lured into a complete falsehood that “one” implies plurality. We are asked to believe this on the basis of a tiny fraction of the appearances of echad when it modifies a compound noun (the vast majority of the occurrences of echad when it does not modify a compound noun are left unmentioned). Even when “one” modifies a compound noun — one family, one cluster — the word “one” retains its meaning as “one single…”

There is no such thing as “compound one” as a definition of echad.

This procedure is to confuse the numeral adjective “one” with the noun it modifies. It is to “bleed” the meaning of a compound noun back into the numeral. This will take the unwary by surprise. Thus “one flesh” is supposed to mean that one can mean more than one. The point, obviously, is that “flesh” as a combination of Adam and Eve does have a collective, family sense. But one is still one: “One flesh and not two fleshes.”

“One cluster (singular) of grapes” does not in any way illustrate a plural meaning for the word “one.” “Cluster” has indeed a collective, plural sense. But one is still one: “one cluster” and not “two clusters.”

Just imagine if at the check-out the clerk announces that your one dollar purchase is really “compound one.” You could become bankrupt.

So then, YHWH, the personal [Divine] name of the One God, occurs some 6,800 times. In no case does it have a plural verb, or adjective. And never is a plural pronoun put in its place. Pronouns are most useful grammatical markers, since they tell us about the nouns they stand for.

The very fact that the God Who is YHWH speaks of Himself as “I” and “Me” and is referred to as “You” (singular) and “He” and “Him” thousands upon thousands of times should convince all Bible readers of the singularity of God.

The fact that God further speaks of Himself in every exclusive fashion known to language —“by myself,” “all alone” etc., — only adds to this proof.

“There is none besides Me,”
“none before Me”
“none after Me.”
“I alone am Elohim, and Yahweh.”
“I created the heavens and the earth by Myself; none was with Me.”

A Sample of the Use of echad (one)

Genesis 42:13: “Joseph’s brothers said, ‘We are 12 brothers, sons of one (echad) man, in the land of Canaan. The youngest is this day with our father and one (echad) is not.’”

Verse 16: “Send one (echad) of you.”
Verse 19: “Let one (echad) of your brothers…”
Verse 27: “One (echad) of them opened his sack.”
Verse 32: “One (echad) is not.”
Verse 33: “One (echad) of your brothers.” There are well over 900 other examples in the OT.

The High Priest and the Worship of Jesus

2011-06-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

By Margaret Barker

[1]We are here to consider the problem of how Jesus came to be worshipped. Two assumptions have created this problem: first, that first century Judaism was monotheistic in the generally accepted sense of that word, and second, that a human being could not have been the object of worship.

The first evidence of belief in apotheosis is found in [1Chro 29]…The people worship the LORD [YHWH] and the king. Any possible ambiguity is removed a few lines later when we are told:

‘Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD as king” (1Chron 29:20, 23)

The king was the visible presence of the LORD in the temple ritual and Solomon’s enthronement was his apotheosis. Whatever they believed happened to the king at this time, anointing, enthronement, a mystical experience, this is what they meant by becoming divine, becoming the LORD, and it is a mistake to import into these ancient texts our ideas of what divinity should mean. They spoke of an adult being begotten as a son of God, but we prefer to use the term “adopted” thus importing alien ideas into the text, and with them, problems of our own making. The Chronicler, writing early in the second temple period and long after the events he was describing, knew that the king had been worshipped. This belief survived to the end of the second temple period as can be seen from Matthew’s account of the wise men who brought gifts to the infant Jesus. Matthew is said to be the most Jewish of the gospel writers and yet he could write:

“Where is he who is born King of the Jews for we have seen his star in the east and [have] come to worship him?” (Matt. 2.2)

The king was believed to be divine…he had a star…and the wise men brought offerings and worship…The King of the Jews was worshiped.

The image of the king going up into the holy of holies, that is into heaven, and then taking his place on the throne of the LORD, left an indelible impression in the memory of Israel. The ascending king became the “one like a son of man” who came with the clouds of heaven and was given “dominion and glory and kingdom” (Dan 7:13-14)…As long recognized, Daniel’s vision of the son of man was closely related to Psalm 2, or to the events that psalm describes. It was a memory of the enthronement of the David kings when they were declared to be the divine Son. Psalm 89 [19-27] also described the enthronement…The Chronicler reports this vision of ascent in David’s prayer after Nathan had said he would not build the temple [1Chron 17.17]. The text is obscure [the corresponding passage in 2Sam 7.19 is also obscure] and usually translated rather differently, but the Septuagint recognizes that there was a vision here and that it was David who had been taken up. These ascents were recorded in two ways: there were some who only observed the ascent, for example Daniel…but others actually experience the ascent, for example Enoch [1 Enoch 14:8]…The frequent reference to the clouds suggests that the experiences were induced by the incense of the sanctuary which had to be made according to a special formula and its use was forbidden anywhere but inside the temple (Exod 30.34-38).

A similar sequence to the account of Solomon’s coronation in 1Chron is found in [Rev 4.11; 5.12]…The words of the two doxologies are in a different order and the Lamb’s is the more elaborate but there can be no doubt that the Lamb is being worshipped as the LORD. There follows a joint doxology: “to him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb, be blessing and honour and glory and might” a double form similar to that used in the account of Solomon’s coronation; “obeisance to the LORD and to the King”, but here, “to the one on the throne and to the Lamb”.

There is no description in this chapter of the Lamb being seated on the throne, but the frequent repetition of a double phrase similar to “the LORD and the King”, shows that the Lamb was indeed enthroned. The LORD and the Lamb have become identical, giving rise to textual problems elsewhere in the book, e.g. “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their (or was it his?) wrath has come” (Rev 6:17). The multitude in white robes who stand before the throne cry out: “salvation belongs to our God on the throne and to the Lamb” (Rev 7:10). But the seer notes that they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, with no mention of the Lamb (Rev 7:11). What has happened to the Lamb here, if he is distinct from God? He is identical with God and enthroned, as can be seen from the hymn which follows:

“The Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd…and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev 7:17).

The enthronement of the Lamb is unambiguous in the final vision of the Book of Revelation, where the river flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev 22.1-3; [there is similar ambiguity at Rev 5.13; 11.15; 14.4; 20.6]).

The enthronement and apotheosis in Rev 5 inaugurates the great judgment…This is the scene depicted in Psalm 82.1…its significance for our enquiry is that this was a key verse in the Qumran Melchizedeck text (11Q Melch)…the ancient enthronement scene in Rev 5 was first and foremost a description of Melchizedeck but adopted by a Christian writer to depict the heavenly Jesus. This is the argument of [Hebrews].

According to Luke, Jesus in his synagogue address at Nazareth claimed to fulfill another key Melchizedeck text, Isa 61.1 [cp. Luke 4.18]. This is why Ps 110, the Melchizedek psalm, became the most frequently cited text in the NT.[2] Enthronement in heaven was the means whereby the king had been appointed to the eternal priesthood of Melchizedek, and the king was worshiped after his enthronement.

The main theme of [Hebrews] is that Jesus is the Melchizedek high priest and the catena texts which introduces the letter shows how the Melchizedek priesthood was described at the end of the second temple period. The entire epistle is set in the temple, which was believed to be a microcosm of the creation, its liturgy and rituals mirroring those of heaven. To say mirroring is a concession to our ways of thinking and the limitations of our language, because the temple was believed to be heaven itself and its priests the angels. This was the world view of the ancient priests of Israel and owes nothing to Platonism…Events on earth and in heaven coalesce, a sign that we are dealing with temple ritual…Philo had a similar understanding of [Lev 16.17], the prescription for the high priest entering the holy of holies. The verse is usually read today as “There shall be no man when he (the high priest) enters to make atonement in the holy place until he comes out”, but Philo understood it to mean: He shall not be a man when he enters the holy of holies…(On Dreams 2.189, 231). For Philo, the high priest was more than human, and the titles he uses show that he was still thinking in terms of the old royal cult. The Logos was the High Priest, the King, the Firstborn, the Beginning, the Name, and the Man after God’s Image and his archangel.[3]

The writer…goes on to say that this Son of God has “obtained a greater name than the name of any angel”, and there follow, by way of explanation, lines from Psalm 2…and from Ps 110.1…The reference here is to a remembered sequence of temple ritual: the royal high priest entered the holy of holies was given the Sacred Name and enthroned. He was “born” as a Son of God; that is, he became more than human and greater than any angel, he was enthroned and, by implication, since this is the climax of Psalm 110, he became the Melchizedek high priest.[4]

This is confirmed by what follows: “the first born is brought into the world”, i.e. in the ritual the high priest emerges from the holy of holies, and then “all the angels worship him”. In the temple, this would have been obeisance described by Hecataeus; “the Jews worshipped their high priest as an angel of the commandments of God”…The words quoted here in Heb 1.6, “Let all God’s angels worship him”, do not appear in the MT, which has only:

“Praise his people O you nations; for he avenges the blood of his servants, and takes vengeance on his adversaries and atones his land his people”.

The Qumran text, however, shows that a longer version was known and used in first century Palestine which included the line “Bow down to him, all you elohim”.[5]

It is important at this point to note two things; first, the Day of Judgment and the Day of Atonement were one and the same, the time when the LORD, that is the high priest, emerged from the holy of holies carrying the blood with which he sprinkled and smeared certain parts of the temple. Since the temple was a microcosm of the creation, the ritual was one to cleanse and heal the creation from the effects of human son. The Song of Moses tells of the LORD coming to atone the land of his people and take vengeance on their enemies, and as he emerges, the angels are commanded to worship him. It is also important to note that these two texts, which are crucial for reconstruction this aspect of the older temple cult, showing that the LORD was one of the sons of Elyon and that he received the homage of the elohim as he came to atone the land (literally soil) of his people (Deut 32:8, 43) have been taken from the Qumran text of Deuteronomy (4Q Deutq). The MT is significantly different and raises the question why? Justin, in his [Dial. 71[6], 72[7], 73[8]]…said that certain verses which were important for Christian claims about Jesus had recently been removed from the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Assumption of Moses 10 is thought to be an expanded version of this part of the Song of Moses.

And the his kingdom shall appear throughout all his creation,
And then Satan shall be no more
And sorrow shall depart with him.
Then the hands of the angel shall be filled
Who has been appointed chief
And he shall forthwith avenge them of their enemies.
For the Heavenly One will arise from his royal throne,
And he will go forth from his holy habitation
With indignation and wrath on account of his sons. (Assum. Mos. 10:1-3)

The one who emerges from the holy place to bring vengeance is described as the heavenly one leaving his royal throne, the chief angel whose hands have been filled. In other words, the figure who is the LORD in the Song of Moses is here described as the warrior priest, who has been enthroned in the holy of holies and appointed high priest. He then emerges to bring judgment on those who have shed the blood of his people. Note the similar sequence of events in Deut 32.43, the Assumption of Moses 10, and the first chapter of Hebrews.

These accounts for the description of Simon the high priest in Ben Sira 50:5-7.

How glorious was he when the people gathered round him
As he came out of the inner sanctuary!
Like the morning star among the clouds,
Like the moon when it is full;
Like the sun shining upon the temple of the Most High,
Like the rainbow gleaming in glorious clouds…

He emerges from the sanctuary, (literally the house of the veil), so this, too, is a description of the Day of Atonement. The imagery is theophanic; [he is] like the Morning Star among the clouds…a title used in the book of Job [38.7] to describe the sons of God who sang at the creation [and also of Jesus in Rev 22.16]. This must have been a title of some significance in the temple, even though this is now lost to us. Simon’s very presence, we are told, brought glory to the court of the sanctuary [Sir 50.11]…The curious observation recorded in Diodorus Siculus quoting Hecataeus of Abdera, adds weight to the possibility that the high priest who emerged from the holy of holies was worshiped. The authority of a king is vested by the Jews in their high priest, says Hecataeus, and “they believe that he acts as an angel to then of God’s commandments. It is he who, in their assemblies, announces what is ordained and the Jews…straightway fall to the ground and worship the high priest as he expounds the commandments” (Diodorus Siculus 40.3.5-6[; Cf. Mal. 3.1 where the angel of the covenant is to appear in the Temple]).

Elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures, the one who emerges from the holy place is unambiguously the LORD [Isa 26.21; Micah 1.3; Hab 2.20] and 1 Enoch begins in a similar way: the Great Holy One emerges from his dwelling to bring the judgment but also the renewal of the earth. The emerging warrior priest is seen most clearly in Rev 19.11-16…He wears the many diadems of the high priest, one of which bears the Sacred Name, and his robe is sprinkled with the atonement blood he has brought in to the holy of holies.[9] As in the ancient theophanies, he emerges, followed by the armies of heaven (e.g. Deut 33.2; Ps 68.17. Hab 3).

The importance of the heavenly priest can be seen also in Rev 8…Since the sequence of the seven seals corresponds to the sequence in the synoptic apocalypse, the seventh and final seal is the coming of the Man in clouds with great power and glory (Mark 13.26). In other words, it is the coming of the Man who is the LORD…the warrior high priest has emerged from his holy place. He is described as a mighty angel, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head and his face like the sun, which is exactly how Ben Sira had described Simon the high priest emerging from the house of the veil…then the seventh trumpet brings the seventh woe, which is the establishing of the kingdom, and the destruction of the destroyers of the earth (Rev 11.18, corresponding to Assum. Mos. 10.1).

The high priest wore on the front of his turban a golden plate inscribed with…what? The usual way to understand this prescription in Ex 28.36 is that the engraved words were Holy to the LORD, but at the end of the second temple period it was believed that there were simply four letters engraved, those of the Sacred Name. Philo wrote of the golden plate, showing a name “which only those whose ears and tongues are purified may hear or speak in the holy place and no other person nor in any other place at all. That Name has four letters” (Life of Moses 2.114; cf. Migration of Abraham 103). Aristeas wrote of a royal diadem full of glory with the Name of God, inscribed in letters on a plate of pure gold (Ep. Arist. 98) and the Book of Wisdom says that Aaron wore on his diadem the majesty of the LORD, with which he protected Israel against the plague (Wis 18.24). this suggest that the high priest wore the Name, hence the elaborate descriptions in 3 Enoch which tell how the exalted Enoch, himself a high priest figure, was transformed into the great angel Metraton, was enthroned, given a crown and the name The Little LORD. On his crown were inscribed the letters by which the world was created, that is, the Sacred Name, and once he had received the crown, all the angels worshipped him (3 Enoch 13-14)…the traditions preserved there must have been adopted by Jews from Christians. The sequence in 3 Enoch is exactly that presupposed by [Phil 2.9]…The Name Jesus received was the Sacred Name, the four letters that were placed on the forehead of the high priest. All in heaven and earth acknowledge that Jesus the Anointed One was the LORD and they worshipped him.

The high priest wore the Name for a reason. According to [Ex 28.38], it enabled him to be the sin bearer…The high priest, when he wore the Name of the LORD, carried the guilt of the people [same word used for both “to bear” and “to forgive”; cp. Num 17.6-12; Lev 16.15-19; Wis 18.21]. This was dangerous [thus Ex 20.7].

The greatest act of atonement was the self-offering of the royal high priest. How this was done in the first temple is still a mystery, but the two goats in the latter Day of Atonement ritual were clearly substitutes, the one for Azazel, who was banished bearing sin, and the other for the LORD, the high priest whose blood served to cleanse and hallow the holy place. In other words, they restored the eternal covenant and renewed the creation. Israel was brought back within the bond of the covenant as the LORD himself, the sin bearer, carried away the iniquity that would otherwise have cut them off.

With these aspects of the high priest’s role in mind let’s return to Phil 2…The problem with this story has always been: which prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures spoke of the suffering of an Anointed figure and his subsequent glory? There was, we have been told, no suffering Messiah. The Qumran Isaiah Scroll, however, has enabled us to see that some people in first century Palestine read the Fourth Servant Song as a messianic text and that the suffering Servant was a messianic figure.[10] [Note again that it is a Qumran reading not in the MT which enables us to understand this aspect of Christian origins.]

The Fourth Servant Song is frequently cited in the NT, identifying Jesus as the Servant…Isaiah’s original poem interpreted the suffering of a historical figure, almost certainly Hezekiah, in terms of the high priest on the Day of Atonement…The text of [Isa 52-53] is obscure in many place but certain allusions are unmistakable. The servant was raised up in heaven, as was the royal high priest, when he ascended into holy of holies. He became wise, an attribute of divine beings in the cult of the first temple. He sprinkled many nations, a difficult line, but the sprinkling was part of the atonement rite. He carried the transgressions and iniquities of his people, as did the high priest when he wore the Name, he made himself the sin offering, and he saw the light of God’s glory after his suffering. This is the explanation of the much debated passage in [Phil 2.6-11], where Jesus the Servant empties himself, that is, pours out his life as the high priestly atonement offering. He is then exalted and worshiped by the whole creation who acknowledge that he is the LORD [Adam, who is most frequently offered as the explanation of this passage, gives no ground for the central idea of self emptying].

The second question is: How did a human being become the LORD? Hints in the Psalms and elsewhere are all that we have. There are the royal psalms which describe the king raised up from the people and anointed [Ps 89.19-27; 2.7; 110.3 LXX]…he was Melchizedek [Ps 110.4]. There is David’s enigmatic prayer [at 1Chro 17.17]…presumably a reference to the vision of kingmaking described in Ps 89. There is the mysterious Qumran text 4Q 491.11, the words of someone who has a throne of strength in the congregation of the gods: “My glory is incomparable and apart from me none is exalted”, he says, “I am reckoned with the gods”…In 2 Enoch there is the extraordinary account of how the LORD commanded Michael to remove Enoch’s earthly clothing and then anoint hi8m and clothe him with garments of glory (2 Enoch 22). Irrespective of the date of this text, it bears a striking resemblance to the account of vesting Joshua, i.e. Jesus, the high priest. The LORD, also described as the angel of the LORD, commands his attendants to remove Joshua’s filthy clothes and dress him in the rich robes and turban of the high priest (Zech 3.1-5). Joshua then has the right to enter the holy of holies, “the right of access among those standing there”.

Something similar had been the experience of Jesus. All the gospels agree that Jesus’ ministry began with his baptism when he saw the heavens open and heard the voice saying: “You are my Son”. This was his experience of ascent and consecration as high priest, a merkavah experience. Only traces of this survive in the gospels, but other material associated with the baptism makes this the most likely explanation of what happened. There was the fire on the Jordan reported by Justin (Trypho 88 PG vi 686) and in two witnesses to the Old Latin of Matthew 3.15.[11] Origen compared Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot to what Jesus saw at his baptism.[12] Hyppolytus used day of Atonement imagery in his account of the baptism. When the heavens opened, “a reconciliation took place of the invisible and the visible…the diseases of the earth were healed”.[13]

Jesus knew well what the heavenly high priesthood entailed and there are echoes of this in all the gospels, a sign of dominical tradition…In the Fourth Gospel he claims to have been consecrated and sent into the world (John 10.36), consecrated being the word used in the Septuagint of [Lev 8.12] for the making of the high priest. Jesus speaks of what he has seen and learned in heaven [John 3.12, 32]. John knew that the true high priest had to sacrifice himself, hence the bitter irony of Caiaphas’s words [11.50]…John adds, by way of explanation, that this was to fulfill the Servant’s role of gathering in Israel [11.51-2; cf. Isa 49.6]…John’s account of Good Friday is steeped in allusions to the royal high priest. Jesus emerges dressed as a king and Pilate says: “Behold the Man” (John 19:5). The chief priests protest: “…he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God” (John 19.7); and then they declare “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).

The theme of high priesthood permeated the synoptic gospels too [Mat 8.17; 26.28; Mark 8.31; 9.31; 10.33-4]…The expected Parousia was the return of the high priest from the holy of holies, from heaven, and so the churches prayed “Come LORD” (1Cor 16.22; Rev 22.20) and the prophets received oracles: “I am coming soon” (Rev 22.12, 20).

[Revelation] is about the return of the high priest. It begins with a vision of the Great Hall of the temple, with the sevenfold lamp and the high priest. He is barefoot, as were the priests when they served in the temple, and “clothed in a long robe and with a golden girdle round his breast” (Rev 1.13). He is wearing the long robe and the curiously wrapped golden girdle which was the dress of the high priest. Josephus, who was of a high priestly family (Life 1) described these vestments as a linen tunic reaching to the ankles—and girded at the breast—a little above the armpits, with a long sash. For ordinary priests, this sash was multicolored, red, blue, purple and white, but only in the case of the high priest was the sash interwoven with gold (Ant. 3: 159)…[Revelation] opens with a vision of the high priest in the temple, newly emerged from the holy of holies. He speaks of himself as the LORD, “the First and the Last” (Isa 44.6; 48.12) and the seer falls at his feet. When the seer of the later visions falls at the feet of the angel, he is forbidden to worship him [Rev 19.10; 22.8-9]…In the first vision, however, the vision of the emerging high priest who speaks of himself as the LORD, the seer is not forbidden to worship.

I began this paper by asking some question: Who first made the claim that Jesus was the LORD? My answer is that Jesus made this claim for himself, since he believed himself to be the Melchizedek high priest. I also asked: dies this hypothesis account for the other titles given to Jesus—Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, and Servant? The answer is “Yes”. The high priest was anointed and the curious (but undateable) evidence of 2 Enoch suggest that anointing was the rite of apotheosis when the man, originally the Davidic king, became son of God, Melchizedek and the Man who emerged from heaven…The high priest had to offer himself as the atonement sacrifice, hence the logic of Heb 9.12…

In short, the origin of Christianity is to be sought within the temple traditions, not those of the second temple, but those of the first, when the king became divine and was worshipped by his people as the LORD in their midst.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus, ed., C.C. Newman, J.R. Davila, G.S. Lewis, 1999.

[2] There are 20 quotations from, or allusions to, Ps 110.1; Matt. 22.44; 26.64; Mark 12.36; 14.62; (16.19); Luke 20.42f.; 22.69; Acts 2.33f.;5.31; 7.55f.; Rom 8.34; 1Cor 15.25; Eph 1.20; Col 3.1; Heb 1.3, 13; 8.1; 10.12f.; 12.2; 1Pe 3.22.

[3] On the Migration of Abraham 102; On Dreams 1:215; On Flight 118: On the Confusion of Tongues 41, 146.

[4] The assertion that the high priest has obtained a higher dignity than any angel appears in 3 Enoch as the initial hostility of Uzzah Azzah and Azael to the exaltation of Enoch/Metraton. The Holy One replies “I have chosen this one…to be prince and ruler over you in the heaven” (3 Enoch 5.8). Enoch/Metraton then explains that he is called Naar, originally meaning Servant, the old royal title, but here in 3 Enoch 4.10 reinterpreted to mean “youth”. Any idea of chronological sequence is out of the question in 3 Enoch, but chapters 13-14 describe how Enoch/Metraton is given the Name and then worshiped by the host of heaven.

[5] 4Q Deutq was first published by P.S. Skehan, “A Fragment of the Song of Moses (Deut 32) from Qumran”, BAZOR 136 (1954) 12-15.

[6] “…I wish you to observe, that they have altogether taken away many Scriptures from the translations effected by those seventy elders who were with Ptolemy, and by which this very man who was crucified is proved to have been set forth expressly as God, and man, and as being crucified, and as dying; but since I am aware that this is denied by all of your nation, I do not address myself to these points…”

[7] “…From the statements, then, which Esdras made in reference to the law of the passover, they have taken away the following: 'And Esdras said to the people, This passover is our Saviour and our refuge. And if you have understood, and your heart has taken it in, that we shall humble Him on a standard, and thereafter hope in Him, then this place shall not be forsaken forever, says the God of hosts. But if you will not believe Him, and will not listen to His declaration, you shall be a laughing-stock to the nations.' And from the sayings of Jeremiah they have cut out the following: 'I[was] like a lamb that is brought to the slaughter: they devised a device against me, saying, Come, let us lay on wood on His bread, and let us blot Him out from the land of the living; and His name shall no more be remembered.' And since this passage from the sayings of Jeremiah is still written in some copies [of the Scriptures] in the synagogues of the Jews(for it is only a short time since they were cut out), and since from these words it is demonstrated that the Jews deliberated about the Christ Himself, to crucify and put Him to death, He Himself is both declared to be led as a sheep to the slaughter, as was predicted by Isaiah, and is here represented as a harmless lamb; but being in a difficulty about them, they give themselves over to blasphemy. And again, from the sayings of the same Jeremiah these have been cut out: 'The Lord God remembered His dead people of Israel who lay in the graves; and He descended to preach to them His own salvation.'”

[8] "And from the ninety-fifth(ninety-sixth) Psalm they have taken away this short saying of the words of David: 'From the wood.' For when the passage said, 'Tell ye among the nations, the Lord hath reigned from the wood,' they have left, 'Tell ye among the nations, the Lord hath reigned.' Now no one of your people has ever been said to have reigned as God and Lord among the nations, with the exception of Him only who was crucified, of whom also the Holy Spirit affirms in the same Psalm that He was raised again, and freed from[the grave], declaring that there is none like Him among the gods of the nations: for they are idols of demons…Here Trypho remarked, ‘Whether[or not] the rulers of the people have erased any portion of the Scriptures, as you affirm, God knows; but it seems incredible.’ ‘Assuredly,’ said I, ‘it does seem incredible…you appear to me not to have heard the Scriptures which I said they had stolen away. For such as have been quoted are more than enough to prove the points in dispute, besides those which are retained by us, and shall yet be brought forward.’"

[9]11Q18 fr 14 The New Jerusalem Text, seems to be describing the fifth, sixth and seventh crowns of the high priest, an explanation of the “many diadems” in Rev 19.12.

[10]1Q Isaa 52:14 has mshty for MT msht.

[11] Codex Vercellensis, 4th or 5th century, has “et cum baptizaretur, lumen ingens circumfulsit de aqua ita ut timerent omnes qui advenerant” and Codex Sangermanensis 7th century “cum baptizaretur Jesus, lumen magnum fulgebat de aqua ita ut timerent omnes qui congregate sunf”.

[12] Origen Homily 1 on Ezekiel: 4-7, PG xiii 672-4. D.J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot (Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck 1988) suggested that Origen had recently taken these ideas from Jewish sources. I argued against this in my The Risen Lord, 45-47.

[13] Hyppolitus On the Holy Theophany 6, PG x 857.

Did the First Christians pray to Jesus?

2011-06-16T10:06:00.001-07:00

Sections from the book, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? by J.D.G. Dunn

In the synoptic Gospels Jesus speaks on several occasions about praying (proseuchesthai), with the assumption that prayer is made to God [i.e., Mat 6.5-13/Luke 11.1-4]...

The less prominent term deesthai, ‘ask, request’, can be used both of requests to other individuals and of requests to God. In the narratives of Matthew, Mark and Luke we find both usages, with requests made to Jesus[1] and Jesus talking of making requests to God.[2]

Another word with a similar range of usage is aitein, ‘to ask for’ [Mar 6.22-25; Matt. 27.20; Mar 15.43 pars.]...Presumably the request of James and John for the top seats in his glory falls into the same category (Mark 10.35-38). But Jesus also uses it of requests in prayer to God.[3]

John’s Gospel uses none of the common words for prayer (proseuchesthai, proseuche, deesthai, deesis)…[Yet, Jesus] repeatedly promises that whatever his disciples ask (aitein) in his name the Father will give them (15.16; 16.23-24), even promising that he (himself) will do whatever his disciples ask (aitein) in his name, ‘so that the Father may be glorified’ (14.13) and he adds, ‘if you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it’ (14.14). Requests to the Father in Jesus’ name are of a piece with requests to Jesus himself; the common factor is ‘in his name’. ‘In that day you will ask (erotan) the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you’ (16.26-27). If the disciples abide in him and his words abide in them they may ask (aitein) whatever they want and it will be done for them (15.7).

Elsewhere in the NT writings, ‘prayer’ as such (proseuchesthai, proseuche), explicitly or implicitly, is always made to God…in Acts 8.22, 24, where Simon is urged to ‘pray (deesthai) to the Lord’ that he might be forgiven, the reference to ‘the Lord’ is ambiguous.[4] But deesis is used in the Epistles always for prayer; that is, prayer to God.

...in the Epistles aitein is used almost exclusively in prayer contexts. For example, ‘I pray (aitoumai) that you may not lose heart over my sufferings’ (Eph, 3.13); God ‘is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask (aitoumetha) or imagine’ (3.20); ‘we have not ceased praying (proseuchomenoi) for you and asking (aitoumenoi) that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will’ (Col 1.9[Jam 1.5-6; similarly 4.2-3; 1 John 5.14-16])...

In Acts and the Epistles [parakalein] regularly appears in the everyday sense of ‘urge, exhort [2Cor 1.3-7; 7.4-7, 13]…The only obvious case [of it] being used in a prayer context is 2Cor 12…parakalein here is used in the sense of an appeal in prayer…to the Lord Jesus Christ. This can safely be concluded not only because ‘the Lord’ in Paul is almost always the Lord Jesus (apart from its occurrence in scriptural quotations[5]) but also because the grace and power that the one appealed to promises Paul in answer to his appeal is specifically identified as ‘the power of Christ’…Paul understood the exalted Christ as one who could be appealed to for help, a request or petition that can readily be understood as prayer.[6]

Another passage that calls for attention is [1Cor 16.22; cf. Rev. 22.20]. The fact that it appears in Aramaic strongly suggests that it had become a regular feature in early liturgies—rather like the continued use of the Aramaic ‘Abba, Father’ in the prayers of the Greek-speaking churches (Rom 8.15; Gal 4.6)...Yet perhaps we should recall that according to the Gospels, when Jesus cried out on the cross, some of the bystanders thought he was calling on (phonei) Elijah; that is calling for him to come and help him (Mark 15.35-36). Elijah, it should be remembered, had been taken to heaven…and there was a widespread expectation that he would return from heaven before the day of the Lord [Mal. 4.5; cf. Mark 6.15; 8.28; John 1.217]. However, we have no examples of appeals to Elijah being made in Second Temple Judaism for him to return or to help someone[8], though we should also recall Alan Segal’s observation that in Jewish mystical texts all kinds of angelic beings are invoked.[9]...[Yet, Jesus’ crucifixion] may provide evidence that the contemporaries of Jesus could well conceive of an appeal being made to one who had been transferred to heaven that he come (again) to earth.

To call upon Jesus (in prayer[10]) was evidently a defining and distinguishing feature of earliest Christian worship.

The most explicit prayer language is used exclusively of prayer to God. Jesus himself is remembered as regularly praying to God and giving instruction on prayer to God. With the less explicitly prayer language of ‘asking, requesting and appealing to’ the picture is somewhat different. Again, where it appears in prayer, the request is normally addressed to God. But in John’s Gospel repeated emphasis is placed by Jesus on his disciples’ future praying to God ‘in his [Jesus’] name’. Paul both appeals directly to Jesus for help from heaven and reflects a commonly used appeal for the Lord Christ to come (again) from heaven. And the earliest Christians are known as ‘those who call upon or invoke the name of Jesus’. If, speaking with tightly focused precision, ‘prayer’ as such was not usually made to Jesus in the worship of the first Christian congregations, at least he was regarded as one, sitting at God’s right hand, who could be and was called upon, and to whom appeal could be made.

Looking back over the first centuries of the Christian era, we may come to this conclusion: to judge from all that survives in documents and accounts of the Church’s life in this period, liturgical prayer, in regard to its form of address, keeps with considerable unanimity to the rule of turning to God (repeatedly described as the Father of Jesus Christ) through Christ the High Priest...It was not until the end of the fourth century that we meet by way of exception prayers to Christ the Lord, and these are not within the Eucharistic celebration proper, but in the pre-Mass and in Baptism. On the other hand we know that in private prayers, both in apostolic times and later, the prayer to Christ was well known and customary. J.S. Jungmann, The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer (London: Chapman, 1965, pgs. 164-6).

This [quote] also reminds us that a more prominent theme in the NT is Jesus as the one who prays for his followers rather than the one prayed to…Hurtado notes that in the NT ‘any direct prayer or appeal to Christ is always to be framed by the sovereignty of the one God, and is in fact very limited in scope and frequency’ (Origins 104)...

[Another] important side to the question of whether Jesus was prayed to [is] the thought of Jesus as the heavenly intercessor [and his functioning as High Priest, Heb 7.24-25]…intermediary between God and humans [1Tim 2.5]…Christ can emphasize with and help those who come to God through him…Equally, indeed more, important for many of these Christians was the assurance that Jesus was praying for them. Here again we find ourselves with the two-sidedness of the first Christians’ esteem for Christ, both as the mediator between God and man, the one through whom they would come confidently to God, and as the one who was also conjoint with God in the worship [and prayers] they brought to God.

FOOTNOTES:
[1]Luke 5.12; 8.28, 38; 9.38 (the same request made to the disciples—9.40).

[2]Matt. 9.38/Luke 10.2; 21.36; 22.32 (Jesus makes a request on behalf of Simon Peter). The noun deesis is used exclusively of requests made to God (Luke 1.13; 2.37; 5.33).

[3]Mark 11.24; Matt. 7.7-11/Luke 11.9-13; Matt. 6.8; 18.19.

[4]...as in the other ‘Lord’ = God references in Acts, the influence of the OT usage suggests that Luke was thinking of worship [and prayer] to God.

[5]19 times in the Pauline corpus…However…the OT eschatological expectations of ‘the day of the Lord’ seems to have become the Christian hope for ‘the day of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1Cor 1.8; 2Cor 1.14)…in several instances Paul quotes an OT reference to the Lord (Yahweh) and refers it to the Lord Jesus Christ [Rom 10.9-13]…[this means] for Paul either that Jesus is Yahweh, or, more likely, that Ywahweh has bestowed His own unique saving power on the Lord [Jesus] who sits on His right side, or that the exalted Jesus is himself the embodiment as well as the executive of that saving power...

...if Ps 110.1 allows the concept of two Lords, the second given his plenipotentiary status by the first, then there is presumably no reason (why such passages) should not be referred to the second Lord…That God was understood to pass divine authority to others is indicated by the various individuals who were thought to play the role of heavenly judges—Adam & Abel(T. Abr. 11,13), Melchizedech (11QMelch 13-14), Enoch and Elijah (1 Enoch 90.31; Apoc. Elij. 24.11-15)—including the saints themselves (Matt. 19.28/Luke 22.30; 1Cor 6.2-3). Cf. Hurtado’s careful formulation: ‘Early Christians saw Jesus as the uniquely significant agent of the one God, and in their piety they extended the exclusivity of the one God to take in God’s uniquely important representative, while stoutly refusing to extend this exclusivity to any other figure’ (Lord Jesus Christ 204.)].

[6]‘Paul’s easy recounting of his actions suggests that he expects his readers to be familiar with prayer-appeals to Jesus as a communally accepted feature of Christian devotional practice [1Cor 1.2] (Hurtado, Origins 75).

[7]…we should stress that there is no thought of Elijah being worshiped [or prayed to] in any of these accounts. But again the precedence for the belief that Jesus had been exalted to share in heavenly glory should not be ignored.

[8]Hurtado, Origins 77.

[9]In common Greek epikaleisthai is regularly used of calling upon a deity [BDAG, 373. Alan Segal, ‘Paul’s “SOMA PNEUMATIKON” and the Worship of Jesus’, in Newman, et al.(eds.), Jewish Roots 258-76, notes that the terminology is characteristic both of pagan magic and of Jewish mystical texts: ‘In the Hekhaloth texts, all kinds of angelic beings are invoked with the terminology’ (274)…the motif of angelic intercessors was already familiar within Second Temple Judaism [e.g., Job 33.23-26; Tobit 12.15; 1 Enoch 9.3; 15.2; 99.3; 104.1; T. Levi 3.5; 5.6-7; T. Dan 6.2].

[10]Cf. “call upon”, Acts 7.59; 9.14,21; 22.16; Rom 10.12,14; 1Cor 1.2; 2Tim 2.22. This defining feature of these early Christians…marked them out from others who ‘called upon (the name of)’ some other deity or heavenly being...’Jesus’ cultic presence and power clearly operate here in the manner we otherwise associate with a god’ (Hurtado, Origins 80).

The Personhood that is "the word of God"

2011-06-14T07:04:00.000-07:00

By Dustin Smith.

Having spent some time recently reading Aramaic Targums, I have found what seems to be a breakthrough in ways which we can effectively teach others about what John 1 means in regards to the Word (logos).

A targum is an Aramaic translation of a particular passage or book of the Hebrew Bible. Yet these translations served as ketib (oral) commentaries as early as the first century BCE (such as those found in the Dead Sea Scrolls). Therefore, I suggest that the evidence below is necessary background and context which served as the matrix of thought out of which the author of the fourth Gospel produced his prologue.

I’ll post the translation from the NASB as well as the Aramaic Targum below it. The Aramaic memra and dibbera are the original phrases translated as “word” (cf. the Greek logos).

• Gen. 1:3 – “Let there be light, and there was light”
“...there was light according to the decree of the Word” Targum Neofiti

• Gen. 1:7, 9, 11, 15, 24, 30 – “...and it was so.”
“...and it was so according to his Word.” Targum Neofiti

• Gen 3:1 – “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.”
“....which the Word of the LORD had made.” Targum Neofiti margin

• Gen. 3:8 – “They heard the sound of the LORD God...”
“....sound of the Word of the LORD” Palestinian Targum

• Gen. 3:10 – “He said, I heard the sound of You....”
“...the sound of the Word” Targum Neofiti

• Gen. 14:19 – “...Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.”
“...who by his Word created the heaven and earth.” Targum Neofiti

• Gen 15:6 – “Then he believed in the LORD and it was reckoned...”
“He believed in the Word of the LORD” Targum Onqelos

“He had faith in the Word of the LORD” Tagrum Pseudo Jonathan
“Abram believed in the name of the Word of the LORD” Targum Neofiti

• Exo. 6:7 – “Then I will take you for My people and I will be your God...”
“...I will be to them my Word, a redeemer God...” Targum Neofiti

• Exo. 19:17 – “And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God...”
“...to meet the Word of God.” Targum Onqelos

• Exo. 20:11 – “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth...”
“the Word of the LORD perfected” Targum Neofiti marginal gloss, similar comment found in Exo. 31:17

• Exo. 25:22 – “There I will meet with you...”
“There I will appoint my Word...” Targum Neofiti, Pseudo Jonathan, and Onqelos

• Exo. 29:45 – “I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God.”
“...and I will be to them, in my Word, a redeemer God.” Targum Neofiti

• Exo. 33:22 – “...and cover you with My hand until I have passed by.”
“...I will shield you with my Word...” Targum Onqelos

• Lev. 1:1 – “Then the LORD called to Moses and spoke to him...”
“The Word of the LORD called to Moses and the Word of the LORD spoke to him...” Targum Pseudo Jonathan

• Lev. 11:45 – “...from the land of Egypt to be your God...”
“to be, in my Word, your redeemer God.” Targum Neofiti margin

• Lev. 22:33 – “...from the land of Egypt to be your God...”
“to be, in my Word, your redeemer God.” Targum Neofiti

• Lev. 25:38 – “I am the LORD your God...”
“I am, in my Word, the LORD your God” Targum Neofiti

• Lev. 26:12 - “I will also walk among you and be your God...”
“...and be, in my Word, your God.” Targum Neofiti

• Lev. 26:45 – “...in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God.”
“I might be, in my Word, their God.” Targum Neofiti

• Num. 6:27 – “So they shall invoke My name on the sons of Israel...”
“So they shall put my name, my Word, upon the sons of Israel.” Targum Neofiti

• Num. 7:89 – “...between the two cherubim, so He spoke to him.”
“...the Word spoke to him.” Targum Neofiti and Pseudo Jonathan

• Num. 14:22 – “...and have not listened to My voice,”
“and have not received my Word.” Targum Onqelos and Pseudo Jonathan

• Num. 15:41 – “I am the LORD your God...”
“I am, in my Word, the LORD your God.” Targum Neofiti margin

• Num. 17:4 – “...in front of the testimony, where I meet with you.”
“The Word meets you.” Targum Neofiti, Pseudo Jonathan, and Onqelos

• Deut. 4:24 – “the LORD your God is a consuming fire...”
“the LORD your God, his Word, is a consuming fire.” Targum Onqelos

• Deut. 26:17 – “You have today declared the LORD to be your God...”
“...declared the LORD to be, in my Word, your God.” Targum Neofiti

• Deut. 32:15 – “But Jeshrun grew fat and kicked, You are grown fat, thick and sleek, Then he forsook God who made him...”
“...forsook the Word of God who/which made him” Targum Neofiti

• Deut. 32:18 – “...and forgot the God who gave you birth.”
“and forgot the Word of God who/which made them.” Targum Neofiti

• Psalm 106:25 – “...they did not listen to the voice of the LORD.”
“they did not receive the Word of the LORD.” Targum on the Psalms

• Isa. 44:24 – “...I, the LORD, am maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself...”
“I stretched out the heavens through my Word” Targum on Isaiah

• Isa. 45:12 – “It is I who made the earth...”
“I, by my Word, made the earth” Targum on Isaiah

• Isa. 48:13 – “Surely My hand founded the earth...”
“By my Word I founded the earth.” Targum on Isaiah

• Isa. 63:5 – “...So My own arm brought salvation to Me, and My wrath upheld Me.”
“...by the Word of my pleasure I helped them.” Targum on Isaiah

• Jer. 27:5 – “I have made the earth...”
“I, by my Word, made the earth” Targum on Jeremiah

Hopefully this helps explain how John 1:1 can say, “...and the Word was God.” It seems rather apparent that Jews freely spoke of God and his Word in interchangeable ways.

“Palabra” or “Verbo”: Truth or Tradition?

2011-06-02T03:42:00.000-07:00

The True Story Behind the Spanish Translation

Most new Christians are told to read the Gospel of John as a sort of initiation rite. I personally was told to read John when I asked the universal question, “Where do I start?” It was only much later, after further study and research on my part, that I realized why this is common among all Christian denominations. The Gospel of John has been popularly coined “the spiritual Gospel,” as any encyclopedia or dictionary will tell you:

Because of its special theological character the Gospel According to John was considered in ancient times to be the ‘spiritual Gospel’ [wielding] a profound and lasting influence on the development of early Christian doctrine.[1]

This “special theological character” has led some to identify John’s Christological teaching as “higher” than that of the other Gospels. However, all the Gospel accounts relate the same story of Jesus of Nazareth and proclaim him as the prophesied Jewish Messiah, “the Son of the Living God.”[2]

As a result of this “profound and lasting influence” from ancient times, the novice believer is immediately confronted by “a kind of mystic symbolism and repeated emphasis on the incarnation.”[3] In other words, most Christians come away with an erroneous picture of how the one eternal, invisible God somehow literally became a human being. This often-used word “Incarnation” needs further explanation, since it has in many ways been obscured due to the way the early Church Fathers of the nascent Catholic Church reinterpreted it from its original Hebraic meaning.

The noted scholar Raymond E. Brown best defines the term under the heading “Precreational Preexistence” in his An Introduction to New Testament Christology [p 34-35]:

Incarnation means that at his human conception the Son of God did not come into existence;[4] rather he was a previously existing agent in the divine sphere who took on flesh in the womb of Mary. Technically incarnation does not tell us whether this agent was created (as were the angels who exist in the divine sphere) or existed with God before any creation. A fortiori, it does not tell us whether the agent was God or equal to God…Many scholars, influenced by the Prologue to John’s Gospel where the Word who becomes flesh does exist before creation, join the two ideas.

This modern Christological consensus goes back to the early church fathers who, while not Trinitarian in the later sense of the word, nevertheless identified the human Jesus as the preexistent Person of “the Word who [became] flesh.”

There is one God, who has manifested Himself by Jesus Christ His Son, who is His eternal Word, not proceeding forth from silence, and who in all things pleased Him that sent Him.[5]

The Sad History Behind the First Spanish Bible Translations

[It is illegal for anyone to translate the] Bible in Castilian romance [Spanish] or in any other vulgar tongue, the Spanish New Testament of Francisco de Enzinas…and any other books of Holy Scripture in Castilian romance, French or Flemish or any other tongue which have prefaces, notes or glosses that reveal erroneous doctrines repugnant or contrary to our holy Catholic faith or to the sacraments of Holy Mother Church” (Index of the Spanish Inquisition, 1551).

It was in this environment of intimidation and persecution that the Spanish reformer Francisco de Enzinas published the first known translation of the New Testament from the original Greek into Castilian in 1543. He was also one of the first to convert to the cause of the Spanish Protestant Reformation. The translation was done directly from the Greek, using as basis the Greek text of Erasmus of Rotterdam (for which he himself was arrested in Brussels, leading to his work being prohibited by the Inquisition). Enzinas dedicated his edition to Emperor Charles V, mentioning the three reasons that led to his work: the assurance that such a translation would serve both God and the Christian world, the honor this would bring to the Spanish nation, and the fact that the author considered the work as not violating any law.[6]

From 1556 to 1560, Dr. Juan Perez de Pineda published a number of works in Geneva designed to introduce these ideas throughout the rest of Spain. Among these was his translation of the New Testament, only the second complete translation into Castilian. Perez was helped by Enzinas’ translation. However, quick opposition in their native country led both of them into exile. But thanks primarily to the efforts of one Julian Hernandez, copies were spread by smuggling them into Catholic churches and monasteries. Like Enzinas and Perez, Julian was persecuted by the Catholics but, unlike them, he did not escape the hands of the Spanish Inquisitors.

Unfortunately, Julian was betrayed by a supposed friend and imprisoned for his ‘crime’ of Bible smuggling. He was brutally tortured by the Catholic Inquisitors. After three years of remaining firm in the faith despite the persecution, refusing to denounce his convictions, Julian was burned alive at the stake.[7]

Casiodoro de Reina was a Catholic monk in the monastery of San Isidoro del Campo in the city of Sevilla where he obtained one of Julian’s contraband New Testaments by Enzinas-Pineda. He immediately set to work on what would become the most famous of the early Spanish Bible translations, La Biblia del Oso, published in 1569.

Like Enzinas and Pineda before him, Reina made extensive use of various sources for his translation, some of which are mentioned in his introduction. The work also shows other sources used, which were not mentioned for fear of the Inquisition. The basic texts used were the Hebrew and Greek texts available at the time: the Masoretic Hebrew text and the Greek texts compiled and used by Erasmus. In addition Reina also used the Latin version made in Lyon in 1528 by Sancte Pagnini, the Bible of Ferrara, the Latin Bible of Zurich and the Latin Bible of Sebastian Castellón. But most of all, Reina extensively used the Spanish translations of Francisco de Enzinas, Juan Perez and Juan de Valdés. All of these books were banned by the Catholic compendium known as the Index of Forbidden Books.

Like Enzinas before him, Reina sought the acceptance of the Catholic Church and the Spanish government. Unfortunately, these not only rejected his translation but made it illegal, persecuting anyone involved in its distribution.

He was constantly pursued by the Catholic Inquisitors and a price was placed on his head. He was labeled a heretic, a criminal, and was even accused of being a Sodomite by the Catholic Church. [His translation] was labeled [as] "a most dangerous edition of the Bible."[8]

In his dedication to his 1543 edition, Enzinas “fiercely postulated the convenience and necessity to translate biblical texts in their native language and in particular to Spanish.” Years before he died of a plague that was raging in Europe, Enzinas wrote to a friend saying:

I'm working with good conscience, God is my witness. If the people of this time do not thank me, I hope others in the future come with a better judgment, who will be better served by our studies.[9]

More prophetic words could not have been written but, unfortunately, the effort and hard work of these first Spanish Reformers are yet to be fully appreciated by modern biblical translators. They until this day continue to ignore the simplicity and truth brought by these scholars, attained through their rigorous study and knowledge of the original biblical text. The best example of this is the way they translated John’s prologue.

Logos: Word or Verb?

In the beginning was the word [la palabra] and the word was with God and God was the word…All things were created by her and without her nothing that that is made was made. In her was life…She was the true light that illuminates all men who come into the world.[10]

The fidelity of the first Spanish Reformers in translating logos as “palabra” (“word”) instead of “verbo” (verb), followed by feminine pronouns (“she, her”) instead of masculine (“he”), has survived in a few modern translations. But unfortunately they have been overshadowed by the overwhelmingly popular Spanish version known as the Reina-Valera, itself influenced by the (in)famous King James Bible of 1611. This version has been proven time and time again, by Catholic and Protestant scholars alike, to be one of the worst — not only for its antiquated style but, more importantly, because of its many errors.[11] An example of this is the persistent addition since the 1500s of the only verse which explicitly teaches a Trinitarian doctrine, 1 John 5.7-8, also known as the Johannine Comma.[12]

The first Reina-Valera edition of 1569 was subsequently revised by a number of editors and biblical groups through the centuries. Indeed, they changed the all-important meaning that was first faithfully translated from the original languages by the first Catholic converts to Protestantism: Enzinas (1543), Pineda (1556), Reina (1569) and Valera (1602).

The first to introduce this fatal interpretation into the text of John’s prologue, changing the feminine noun “palabra” to the masculine “verbo,” was the Spanish scholar Pedrosa Lorenzo Lucena in 1862. Lucena was a Catholic bishop who later joined the Protestant Episcopal flock. His task was not only to change the antiquated spelling, but also to revise forms and meaningless expressions into the modern Castilian. In the process, he changed the significance of logos.

Unfortunately, Lucena’s translation was adopted not only by the Catholic Church but by all the Protestant Bible societies. Therefore, from 1869, Lucena’s text appears in Bibles published in London, Madrid and Barcelona. Nowadays the Reina-Valera Bible, thanks in large part to Lucena’s revision, remains the most popular version in Spanish, reaching an annual distribution of some two million copies.

So why the change of the word “palabra” to “verbo”? The answer should be self-evident.

Christological Prejudice

As a matter of solid fact…such a rendering is a frightful mistranslation. It overlooks entirely an established rule of Greek grammar. Bruce Metzger on John 1.1.[13]

The reader of John 1 can come to a Trinitarian interpretation only with an already developed Christology. That is why many Spanish readers find it hard to read logos in John 1.1 as “palabra,” since the translation of logos into a feminine noun necessitates the use of feminine pronouns in the rest of the prologue. That is why translators chose the masculine noun "verbo" which in turn was probably taken from the “verbum” of the Latin Vulgate by Jerome, a version made famous since the 19th century.

Furthermore, any Greek lexicon confirms that logos means "word" and never "verb." Logos can also mean: story, cause, communication, doctrine, purpose, preaching, thought, mind, plan, activity, statement, expression. As we can see, logos can never be translated as “verb”! However many Spanish dictionaries today have added a new meaning to “verbo”: "The Second Person of the Holy Trinity."

In personal correspondence Professor Lynette Dyer Vuong, Instructor of Latin at the University of Houston, wrote:

If the translator who used 'verbo' instead of 'palabra' did so on the basis of gender and rejected 'palabra' because it's feminine, he was wrong...I would side with the majority and vote for ‘palabra’, which obviously means ‘word’, while ‘verbo’ generally means ‘verb’…It looks to me as if the Reina-Valera translator may have had some bias against females that made him unwilling to translate a word used to refer to the deity, who was 'with God' and 'was God,' with a word of the feminine gender.

[Apparently, he either didn't know or chose to ignore the fact that the word for 'spirit' as in Holy Spirit is feminine in Hebrew. (It's neuter in Greek and masculine in Latin.)]

Translators should give as nearly as possible the meaning of the words and keep their own biases and agenda out of it.

I think you are right on in your assessment. I agree with you.”

FOOTNOTES:
[1] John, Gospel According to, The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 6, 15th ed., p 587-588.

[2] Mar 8.26-29; Lu 9.17-20; Mat 16.12-16; John 20.31.

[3] Ibid.

[4] We do not know how Matthew and Luke understood the conception of Jesus through the Holy Spirit without a human father. For them was that the becoming of God’s Son? The “therefore” in Luke 1:35 (“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the one to be born will be called holy, Son of God”) could be interpreted to point in that direction. One may not simply assume that Matthew or Luke thought in a Johannine incarnation pattern. Although some scholars think Luke knew John’s Gospel that is far from certain; and John never mentions the conception of Jesus. Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 110) is the first one known to have put together conception and incarnation Christology, for he refers to both Jesus as God’s Word and the birth from a virgin (Magnesians 8:2; Smyrnaeans 1:1).

[5] Ignatius, Ep.to Mag. 8, c. 110 AD.

[6] P.W. Comfort, R.A. Serrano, The Origin of the Bible, p. 347, 2008.

[7] Rodriguez, God’s Bible, p. 39.

[8] Ibid., p. 40.

[9] Boehmer, Eduard, Bibliotheca Wiffeniana: Spanish Reformers of Two Centuries, (Strasbourg 1874), vol. 1, p 155.

[10] El Testamento Nuevo de Nuestro Senor y Salvador Jesu Christo. Nueva y fielmente traducido del original Griego (por J. Pérez) en romance Castellano. Venecia, 1556.

[11] “So superstitious has been the reverence accorded the Textus Receptus that in some cases attempts to criticize or emend it have been regarded as akin to sacrilege. Yet its textual basis is essentially a handful of late and haphazardly collected minuscule manuscripts, and in a dozen passages its reading is supported by no known Greek witness” (The Text of the New Testament, p. 106). “The King James Version has serious defects…These defects were so many as to call for revision” (NRSV to the Reader, Metzger).

[12] “The Roman Catholic Church was slower to reject the comma…On 13 January 1897…the Holy Office decreed that Catholic theologians could not ‘with safety’ deny or call into doubt the Comma's authenticity. Pope Leo XIII approved this decision two days later, though his approval was not in forma specifica [full papal authority]…On 2 June 1927, the more liberal Pope Pius XI decreed that the Comma Johanneum was open to dispute” (Comma Johanneum, Wikipedia).

[13]Bruce M. Metzger, Theology Today, 10.1 (April 1953), p.75.

Jesus Christ, the “Creator” of the Church.

2011-05-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

From One God & One Lord, Graeser, Lynn, Schoenheit, pp. 267-274.

In this section, we want to take another look at Colossians 1: 15-18, in light of what we have seen in previous chapters about Christ's post-resurrection supremacy over the angels. Understanding the broader context of his post-resurrection glory helps us to interpret these verses accurately, and in accordance with other verses on the same subject, that is, Christ's present supremacy in heaven. These Colossian verses are frequently quoted to support the intrinsic deity of Christ as God and his supposed creation of the heavens and earth in Genesis 1. A closer look at this passage argues powerfully for interpreting them as descriptive of Christ's post-resurrection supremacy in heaven. This supremacy was the result of restructured authority between Christ and the angels after his ascension. It also shows that the domain of Christ's reign at present is both in heaven and over the Church, and that with respect to the Christian Church, he is even called its "creator.”

Before we consider this very important section of Scripture regarding the relationship between God and Jesus Christ, it is necessary to briefly discuss the relationship among the epistles of Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians, which parallels that of Romans, Corinthians and Galatians. Ephesians sets forth doctrine, Philippians corrects the practical failure of people to adhere to that doctrine and Colossians addresses the doctrinal deviations away from the revelation of Ephesians that led to the practical errors. Just as in Galatians you can read many of the same truths stated in Romans, so in Colossians can you read many of the truths recorded in Ephesians. In fact, many of the Greek constructions are exactly the same. Colossians reiterates the basic truth of Ephesians about the Headship of Jesus Christ in his relation to his Body. If one keeps these truths in mind, especially recalling what he read in Ephesians 2: 15, he will be able to “correctly handle” (2 Tim. 2: 15) the following section of Scripture, one that has been for many Christians most difficult.

Colossians 1: 15-18 (NASB)
(15) And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation [via his
resurrection].
(16) For by [en, "in"] Him all things [in context, primarily a new order or hierarchy in
heaven] were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether [angelic] thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all [these new] things have been created by [dia] Him and for Him [he is the ranking functional authority in heaven—God having delegated it to him],
(17) He is before all things [in priority], and in Him all things hold together,
(18) He is also the head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything.

The language in this passage of Colossians must be carefully compared to the similar language in Ephesians 1, which sets the doctrinal stage for the Colossian correction of their wrong teaching and thinking regarding Christ. Both passages describe his post-resurrection glorification and empowerment, and contain similar language with respect to his supremacy of his authority over "rulers”, "authorities, “etc.

Ephesians l: 19b-23 (NASB)
(19) These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might
(20) which he brought about in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated
Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,
(21) far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is
named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.
(22) And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
(23) which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

When such a precise doctrinal correlation exists, we do not need to stretch the Colossians passage beyond its intention, particularly in regard to verse 16, which is often cited as proof that Jesus Christ created the heavens and the earth. Clearly the context of these verses is his post-resurrection glorification and not an eternal state as a pre-existent Son, part of a Triune "godhead.” Some special note should be given to verse 16, though, because it amplifies the truth of 1 Corinthians 8: 6, which we already looked at in depth in Chapter 3. The reader may recall that the Greek preposition dia occurs in that verse twice with a similar meaning. Let us look at it again:

1 Corinthians 8: 6 (NRSV)
Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through [dia] whom are all things and through [dia] whom we exist.

The Church Epistles show Christ's relation to the Church, his Body, of which he is the Head. As the Church Epistles are the apex of revelation from God to mankind, the Book of Ephesians is the apex of the revelation of the Church Epistles. In the last half of Ephesians 2, God sets forth how, through Christ, both Jews and Gentiles have entree into the Body of Christ, and how, in Christ, they have been made “one new man.”

Ephesians 2: 10-15
(10) For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
(11) Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called
"uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the
body by the hands of men)—
(12) remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and
without God in the world.
(13) But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near
through the blood of Christ.
(14) For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the
barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,
(15) by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His
purpose was to create [ktizo] in himself one new man out of the two, thus making
peace.

The way Christ is “creating” one new man is by filling each member of his Body with all that God has given him. This “creation” is twofold. First, the Lord Jesus “creates” the gift of Holy Spirit in a person at the moment of his new birth. Second, as the believer obeys God's Word, he becomes a “new creation”, being transformed from the inside out by the inherent power of this divine nature within him. Several passages in the Church Epistles speak of this new creation:

2 Corinthians 5: 17, 18a
(17) Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
(18a) all this is from God...

Ephesians 4: 23, 24 (NRSV)
(23) To be renewed in the spirit of your minds;
(24) and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness God in true righteousness and holiness.

Colossians 3: 10, 11 (NRSV)
(10) And have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator [Christ]
(11) In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all, and is in all!

At the very least, we can conclude from these verses that Christ is “co-creator” with God of this new creation, which is manifest within each believer and in the collective Body of Christ.

We know that Col 1.15-16 cannot be saying that Christ is the creator of the original heavens and earth because verse 15 says he is "the firstborn of every creature [or “all creation”]. If he is “the firstborn of all creation”, then he is a created being.[1] The things that are spoken of in the above passage as being “created” are not rocks, trees, birds, animals, etc., because those things were created by God. These things—“thrones, powers, rulers and authorities”—are the powers and positions that were needed by Christ to reign over heaven and his Church, and were created by him for that purpose.

In Ephesians 2: 15, the NIV uses the word “create”, and accurately so, according to the Greek word from which it comes (ktizo). What we see in this verse is that Jesus Christ has created something and, in fact, is still in the process of creating it.[2] What is this “creation” of Jesus Christ? Certainly, in context, it is not the “creation” of Genesis 1: 1. The Bible says that what Jesus did was to “create in himself one new man.” That "new man" is the Church, the Body of Christ (Eph. 1: 22, 23) that was figuratively “born” on Pentecost, the called out of both Jew and Gentile (Eph. 2: 15), “God's household” (Eph. 2: 19), the “holy temple” (Eph. 2: 21), the “dwelling place of God” (Eph. 2: 22). This is the “Secret” upon which Paul elaborates in Ephesians 3.

Colossians 1: 13, 14 (NASB)
(13) For He [God] delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,
(14) in whom [or "by" or "through" whom] we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

In the above verses, we see once again that it is through Christ that God has made
redemption available to us.

Colossians 1: 15 (NASB)
And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation.

If God is invisible, and if Jesus is the image of God, then obviously Jesus is not God Himself.

That Jesus is the" image of the invisible God" is the same truth communicated in Philippians 2: 6, when it says that he was “in the form of God.” This is not difficult to understand, but many people have been confused by the last half of verse 15: "the firstborn of all creation.” Most Christians have been taught that this refers to the "creation" of Genesis 1: 1, but verse 16 specifically defines what sphere of creation it is talking about: "thrones or powers or rulers or authorities.” This fits with the context of Colossians, as it relates to Ephesians.

The "creation" of Colossians 1: 15 is the same "creation" of Ephesians 2: 15—the Church! As we continue reading Colossians 1, we will see more about this creation.

Colossians 1: 16, 17 (NASB)
(16) For by [the text reads "in"] Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created by Him and for Him.
(17) And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

The figure of speech, epanadiplosis ["encircling"] helps us to identify the proper context of "all things”, that it refers to the "things" needed to administer in heaven and the Church. Note in the above verse that the phrase "all things" occurs before and after the things that were "created, " and thus defines them. The "all things" here are the "things" for the Church, not the "things" of the original creation. The word "all" is used in its limited sense, not in a universal sense. The phrase appears a number of other places in the Church Epistles. Let us consider this phrase as it is used three times in the following verses:

Ephesians 1: 22, 23 (NASB)
(22) And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all
things for the church,
(23) which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all [things] in all [things].

The "all things" of Colossians 1: 16 and 17 are the same "all things" of Ephesians 1: 22 and 23.[3] As the exalted Lord and Head of the Church, Jesus Christ has now been given all authority over all spiritual powers. The "all things" of Colossians 1: 16 refers to "thrones, dominions, rulers or authorities" in the spiritual, or angelic realm as well as in the physical, namely the Church. The latter is corroborated in Ephesians 1: 22 where it says that Jesus is Head over everything for the Church.

In verse 17, we see that Jesus Christ is "before" all things. This word "before" (pro), can be used in regard to place, time or superiority. Here in this context, it is clearly referring to his superior rank and position. Jesus Christ is now the pre-eminent one. It is he who is the one in whom God's ultimate purposes for mankind are held together. This leads us to conclude that the whole point of the section is to show that Christ is "before, " i. e., "superior to" all things, just as the verse says. If someone were to insist that time is involved, we would point out that in the very next verse Christ is the "firstborn" from the dead, and thus "before" his Church, in time as well as in position.

Colossians 1: 18 (NASB)
He is also head of the body, the church; and he is the beginning [arche], the first-born from the dead; so that he himself might come to have first place in everything.

Here the NASB well translates the Greek word arche as "the beginning. " Jesus Christ is the beginning of the Church, over which he has supremacy. He has the prototypical body that all members of his spiritual Body will be given one day, and he was the first "member" of the church to be established—that is, the Head).

Let us now consider the word "firstborn”, which we saw in verse 15 also. So far we have seen that Jesus is the "firstborn" of all creation and the "firstborn" from among the dead. Let us look at another verse containing this word.

Romans 8: 29 (NASB)
For whom He foreknew He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren.

Here we see that Jesus Christ is the "first born among many brethren”. Since the other uses of "firstborn" refer to Christ's resurrection, do you think there is any possibility that part of the "all creation" of Colossians 1: 15 is those "many brothers" who will be raised "from among the dead?" Bingo! Remember John 5: 26, where we read that God gave Jesus life in himself? Jesus Christ is the Promised Seed, and as the resurrected Lord at the right hand of God, he gives life to whomever believes in him as Lord. On the Day of Pentecost, he first poured out that life and began the Church of his Body. On that day, he first poured out holy spirit, which is the "deposit guaranteeing" the everlasting life he will one day give to all who believe on him. It was on Pentecost that Jesus Christ began the Church (Acts 2: lff.).

The phrases, "the firstborn of all creation" and "the firstborn from the dead", encircle the domain of Christ's resurrection authority and dominion. The "creation" being referred to here is the new creation of which Jesus Christ is the prototype. He is not only the first person to have been raised from the dead, he is the first one to have been born from death into everlasting life with a body perfectly suited to live eternally in heaven or on earth. This places Jesus Christ in a unique and advanced position, supreme above all of God's creations. Indeed, in his resurrected body he has been given the privilege of sharing in all that God is, including his creativity.

Colossians 1: 19, 20 (NASB)
(19) For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness [of God) to dwell in Him,
(20) and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through theblood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.

FOOTNOTES.

[1] Some mistranslate this phrase "firstborn over all creation", because this supports their presupposition that Christ is the creator of the heavens and earth. Were they to admit the standard use of the genitive here, they would be forced to conclude that the verse is saying that Christ is the firstborn of a different creation, and not the creator himself. They also translate en as "by" in verse 16, with the intention of attributing creation to Jesus Christ beyond what is warranted textually. Consider the translation of this verse in the Amplified Version:

For it was in Him that all things were created, in heaven and on earth, things seen and things unseen, whether thrones, dominions, rulers or authorities; all things were created and exist through Him (by His service, intervention) and in and for Him.

[2] Whether Christ is creating something in this verse or not depends upon how the Greek word en is translated. When it occurs with the dative case, it can carry the meaning of "by, " as in active causation (as in the NIV). But otherwise it would be translated "in", which changes the meaning of the verse considerably. In that case, Jesus is not creating anything, but is the domain in which the creation occurs. In other words, he is the one through (dia) whom and in (en) whom God laid out His plans and purposes for the Church Age. In our exegesis of this verse, we are granting the translation of en as indicating active agency in light of the parallel Ephesian usage of "create" in the context of the Church (2: 14). We disagree, however, that the passage can be handled accurately and honestly by attributing the creation of the heavens and earth to Jesus Christ, in part because to do so completely obliterates the intended parallelism with Ephesians.

[3] "All things" appears also in 1 Corinthians 8: 6, another key verse that establishes Christ's identity as God's agent:

Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

Reina & Servetus: the Hidden Connection.

2011-05-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

Casiodoro de Reina was one of the first Spanish Reformers to translate the Bible from the original Hebrew & Koine Greek manuscripts available to him at the time. A Catholic monk, Reina came under the influence of other Spanish Reformers who had published their own translations of the Bible thus, breaking with Catholic laws of the time:

"[it is illegal for anyone to translate the] Bible in Castilian romance [Spanish] or in any other vulgar tongue…and any other books of Holy Scripture in Castilian romance, French or Flemish or any other tongue which have prefaces, notes or glosses that reveal erroneous doctrines repugnant or contrary to our holy Catholic faith or to the sacraments of Holy Mother Church.” Index of the Spanish Inquisition, 1551.

As per previous and contemporary Reformers, de Reina had to flee his home of Spain, seeking refuge in such places as England, Germany and eventually Geneva. It is here that until recently some scholars have written regarding his connection with free-thinkers such as Sebastian Castellion and his fellow Spaniard the anti-trinitarian Michael Servetus.

"Much of the opposition to Casiodoro came from the fact that he was friendly with people who were not acceptable to the champions of orthodoxy, particularly those of the Calvinist persuasion. It was also taken amiss that he had expressed disagreement with the execution of Servetus; whereas the successors of Calvin and his companions have since erected on the site of Servetus’ martyrdom an expiatory monument.

Detached from the strife of the period, we can readily understand that someone, who has escaped the risk of a like fate for similar reasons, would be horrified to find that what he thought to be a haven of gospel religion was capable of the same savagery as his native Spain.

During his stay in Geneva…there is evidence that he made an approach to Sebastian Castellion…it is possible for a man’s beliefs to undergo considerable modification during his lifetime…Hence, it is not inconceivable that in his early days in Geneva and London Reina had had leanings towards the doctrines of Servetus and others who questioned the traditional view of the Trinity. Corro’s letters indicate that Reina had at least considered them, and we know that he did not feel that such views should result in their holders being excluded from the fellowship of the church, but the Confession of Faith that he drew up for the Spanish Church of London gives no indication that he wished to question seriously the doctrine of the Trinity, even though the French Consistory wished Reina to amplify the statements on that doctrine.

Nevertheless, in admitting the need for the words ‘Trinity’ and ‘Person’, the Confession points out that the words are not taken from Scripture…

'...we confess the names of the Trinity and of Persons, of which the ancient Church Fathers did not see a great need to use in declaring what they felt against the errors and heresies of their time'…

Reina’s honesty in stating that neither the Trinity nor infant baptism is mentioned explicitly in Scripture seems to be a treacherous admission, which would have been better left unstated. It is indeed probably his honesty in speaking his mind, rather than any real deficiency in his beliefs, that brought disaster in the end. To admit that it was the writings of a condemned heretic that had been responsible for enlightening his mind about God, to state that since the Apostles nobody had spoken better than that same heretic, and to assert that it was a lack of Christian charity that had been responsible for his death at the state in Geneva, was merely to add fuel to the flames of suspicion that had already been kindled." Arthur Gordon Kinder, Casiodoro de Reina: Spanish reformer of the sixteenth century, 1975, pp. 82-84.

¿Feliz navidad?

2010-12-02T14:05:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas?

2010-11-30T14:51:00.000-08:00

CSI “Begetting”

2010-11-28T05:04:00.000-08:00

Ep. 1: Mistranslations, corruptions and bias on the origin of the Son

As the saying goes, ‘for those who came in late’, the title of this study takes after those popular crime shows on television which are involved in Crime Scene Investigations of all kinds. The Bible is riddled with crime scenes. As we will see, these are ‘crimes’ committed by people not only in the past but also in the present. This article will take on the style of those shows, in an effort not only to uncover the biblical crime scenes, but to try and bring clarity to the issues at hand.

The Evidence
Our first case deals with those texts associated with the “begetting” of the Son of God, “the man Messiah Jesus” [1Tim 2.5]. As the evidence will show, there is a strong case to be made that very early in the transmission of the NT letters, people at times sought to obscure and, in some extreme cases, totally remove evidence relating the unique creation by God of His Son. This event took place not in some “time before time” [as per the Creeds], but in a small Jewish village near Jerusalem some 2 000 years ago.

Exhibit A: Ps 2.7
While our first exhibit does not necessarily show any signs of tampering or indeed corruption, it is those verses associated with it that will lead us to the ‘crime scene’.

As it stands, the text of Ps 2.7 says:

“You are my son. Today I have begotten you.” [cp. 2Sam 7.14]

The verse as it appears in the Greek translation of the Bible [the LXX, some 300 years before Christ] translates the Hebrew for “begotten” [yalad] as gennao. Scholars are adamant that, in its OT usage/background, “the few passages[1]…in which God appears as subject of [yalad] must be interpreted figuratively”. They insist that in each case these verses allude to the “enthronement of the [Davidic] king”[2], as opposed to his physical/literal “begetting” by YHWH. Yet, the verse as used by the NT writers[3] gives it an altogether literal, as opposed to figurative, meaning. It is here where we discover signs of ‘violence’ based on Christological bias.

The verse is first cited by the writer of Acts [13.33] in a sermon the Apostle Paul gave to a synagogue in Pisidia, Antioch. Paul explains how some of the Jews did not recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah because they could “not understand the words of the prophets” [v. 27]. Though he was unjustly killed as a criminal, God raised him from the dead, thus proving to everyone that he was the Messiah. These events were prophesied about when God “raised up Jesus” to be His son as per Ps 2.7.

Crime scene 1: Acts 13.33
Many have argued [incredibly enough] over the centuries that Ps 2.7 should be understood in reference to Jesus’ resurrection and not his birth! This is because early on in the translation of v. 33, it was taken as a second reference [the first being at v. 30] to Jesus having been ‘raised up from the dead’.

For example the KJV [1611] added the word “again”, whereas some modern translators added the even more explicit “from the dead”[4]. This has led to its wide acceptance amongst many noted scholars. Dunn suggests that “there is a wide measure of agreement that the earliest (traceable) Christian use of Ps. 2.7 was probably in reference to Jesus’ resurrection along the lines of Acts 13.33…spoken of as a fulfillment of the divine promise to Israel, a promise expressed in Ps 2.7…as the day of his appointment to divine sonship, as the event by which he became God’s son.”[5]

In another example, the popular Vine’s Expository Dictionary of the NT, under their definition of gennao in Mat 1.20 makes the claim that “it is used of the act of God in the birth of Christ, Acts 13:33; Heb. 1:5; 5:5, quoted from Psalm 2:7, none of which indicate that Christ became the Son of God at His birth.” Yet, when giving us the definition of the Greek word translated “raise (up)” [anistemi] they note:

“[It is] said of Christ, Acts 3:26; 7:37; 13:33, RV, ‘raised up Jesus,’ not here by resurrection from the dead, as the superfluous ‘again’ of the AV [KJV] would suggest; this is confirmed by the latter part of the verse, which explains the ‘raising’ up as being by way of His incarnation [that is in the miracle of the virgin birth], and by the contrast in ver. 34, where stress is laid upon His being ‘raised’ from the dead, the same verb being used.”

We should note that the same word can be used in reference to resurrection but only when it is used in this context[6] . Thus, in Acts 13.33, God is said to have “raised up” His Son onto the scene and not from the dead. We know this fact from the use by the writer of Ps 2.7, which is in reference to a “begetting” always associated with birth and not death![7]

Perhaps one of the reasons why noted scholars like Dunn and commentaries like Vine's err is based on a presupposed, Orthodox Christological understanding based on the Catholic/Protestant creedal statements regarding Jesus' sonship. i.e., when did Jesus become the Son of God. According to the creeds and their supporters, like the "Church Father" Origen, "there was never a time when the Son was not the Son".

...we must of necessity hold that there is something exceptional and worthy of God which does not admit of any comparison at all, not merely in things, but which cannot even be conceived by thought or discovered by perception, so that a human mind should be able to apprehend how the unbegotten God is made the Father of the only-begotten Son. Because His [the Son's] generation is as eternal and everlasting as the brilliancy which is produced from the sun. For it is not by receiving the s breath of life that He is made a Son, by any outward act, but by His own nature. [De Principiis, 1.2.4]

This type of interpretation fails to take into account, as we have seen, the Biblical testimony in relation to the "begetting [yalad]...bringing into existence [gennao]" of the Son in both Matthew and Luke. Regardless, the so-called "eternal generation" doctrine has always posed a problem even amongst those within the Trinitarian camp.

[Origen] did not arrive at the Nicene confession of co-equality. First of all, he regarded the Son only as a secondary species of divinity, which he sometimes even spoke of as Theos Deuteros. As Louis Berkhof rightly pointed out, "This was the most radical defect in Origen's doctrine of the Trinity and afforded a stepping-stone for Arius."...Another fatal defect is found in his contention that the generation of the Son is not a necessary act of the Father, but proceeds from His sovereign will.¹³ This necessarily implies that the Son is not God in the genuine sense but a "creature", even though he is the first, and high enough to mediate between God and world. http://www.jsrhee.com/QA/thesis1.htm

Another problem has to do with the variant reading found in some ancient manuscripts of Luke 3.22, as well as patristic writings, which quote Ps 2.7 in connection with Jesus’ baptism. (Even though the weight of the manuscript testimony is against this reading, some still argue for its inclusion.) Most of these obviously agree with the assumption, as stated above, that Jesus only became Son of God at his resurrection or his baptism and not at his birth[8].

The “western reading” of the Lukan account of the baptism seems to have affected the way the parallel accounts of Jesus’ baptism have been transmitted in Mat 3.17; 17.5; Mar 1.11; Luke 3.22; 9.35[9]. This is the reason why most scholars wrongly connect Ps 2.7[10] to Jesus’ baptism and/or his resurrection.

“Ps 2.7 is much used in the NT. At Acts 13.33 the ‘to-day’ of the generation of the Son of God is the resurrection. At Lk. 3.22 (western reading) it is the baptism…At Hb. 1.5; 5.5…it is again doubtful whether the reference is to his birth or his baptism…”[11]

Crime scene 3: Heb 1.5-6
The context of Heb 1 “is that Jesus is the Melchizedek high priest and the catena [chain] of texts which introduces the letter” points to the uniqueness of his sonship in contrast to God’s holy angels. The writer does this by citing two specific OT texts which show YHWH “begetting” a son, the Messianic king.

“This was the world view of the ancient priests of Israel and owes nothing to Platonism [where Philo had a similar view, interpreting such priesthood passages like Lev 16.17 as] He shall not be a man when he enters the holy of holies…(On Dreams 2.189, 231) For Philo, the high priest was more than human…The Logos was the High Priest, the King, the Firstborn, the Beginning, the Name, and the Man after God’s Image and his archangel.”[12]

But, as the comment from the ESV Study Bible shows, “Platonism” did take over the biblical meaning of these passages. The ESV says that it describes how God entered “into a new phase of that Father-Son relationship [so that the text] should not be pressed to suggest that the Son once did not exist [since God has] begotten the already living Son ‘today’”. At Heb 1.6 they note that “since only God is worthy of worship (Ex. 20:3–5; Isa. 42:8; Matt. 4:10; Rev. 19:10; 22:9), this is further evidence [where’s the rest?] of the Son's full deity.”

Such interpretations of the text go against the language used in the virgin birth accounts. For example, notice the words in the phrase “the holy child to be born”. The first is the word tikto, variously translated “to bring forth, give birth”. This word is related to another that is often used in reference to the Son, prototokos [“firstborn”] related to gennao [“cause to exist”] and ginomai [“come into existence”]. This explains why throughout the rest of the NT Jesus is identified by both spiritual beings [the Devil, Mat 4.3] and humans [the Baptist; Nathaniel, John 1.34; 49] as “Son of God” and not God, the Son.

The same sentiment is reflected under the definition in The Complete WordStudy Dictionary given to the word gennao in Mat 1.20. But in this case the commentators find themselves with no choice but ‘to come clean’. Thus, they give the game away:

“The designation of this relationship by words with a temporal notion [“this day have I begotten you”, Ps 2.7] has troubled theologians, who have proffered various explanations. Origen understood this as referring to the Son's relationship within the Trinity and was the first to propose the concept of eternal generation. The Son is said to be eternally begotten by the Father. Others have viewed the language more figuratively and connected it with Christ's role as Messiah. Upon Christ's exaltation to the Father's right hand, God is said to have appointed, declared or officially installed Christ as a king (Act 13:33; Rom 1:4; Heb 1:5; 5:5).”

The verdict
What many fail to see with these interpretations are the clear Gnostic-pagan overtones that they introduce to the biblical text. As some scholars note, “what we find in Matthew and Luke is not the story of some sort of sacred marriage (hieros gamos) or a divine being [“the Son”] descending to earth…in the guise of a man…but rather the story of a miraculous conception without aid of any man, divine or otherwise.”[13]

FOOTNOTES

[1] “Dt. 32:[15], 18; Ps. 2.7; LXX 110.3[LXX 109.3”; TDOT, yalad.

[2] Ibid. Emphasis mine.

[3] Acts 13.33; Heb 1.5; 5.5.

[4] New Century Version; Wycliffe NT; Authorized Version; also reflected in all major Spanish translations, RV1960, 1995; NVI; LBLA; the English GOD’S WORD Translation reads, “by bringing Jesus back to life”.

[5] Dunn, Christology in the Making, pp 35-36. Dunn cites prominent scholars including: Brown, Birth, pp. 29f., 136; J.H. Hayes, ‘The Resurrection as Enthronement and the Earliest Church Christology’, Interpretation 22, 1968, pp. 333-45; Kummel, Theology, pp. 110f.,; Hengel, Son, pp. 61-6. See his “notes to pages 32-35, 35-39”; fn. 138, 142.

[6] “(a) of the resurrection of Christ, Matt. 16:21; 17:23; 20:19, RV; 26:32, RV, "(after) I am raised up" (AV, "... risen again"); Luke 9:22; 20:37; John 2:19; Acts 3:15; 4:10; 10:40; 13:30,37; Rom. 4:24,25; 6:4,9; 7:4; 8:11 (twice); 8:34, RV; 10:9; 1 Cor. 6:14 (1st part); 15:13,14, RV; 15:15 (twice),16-17; 15:20, RV; 2 Cor. 4:14; Gal. 1:1; Eph. 1:20; Col. 2:12; 1 Thess. 1:10; 1 Pet. 1:21; in 2 Tim. 2:8, RV, "risen;" (b) of the resurrection of human beings, Matt. 10:8; 11:5; Matt. 27:52, RV (AV, "arose"); Mark 12:26, RV; Luke 7:22; John 5:21; 12:1,9,17; Acts 26:8; 1 Cor. 15:29,32, RV; 15:35,42-43 (twice),44,52; 2 Cor. 1:9; 4:14; Heb. 11:19.” Vine’s

[7] Note v. 22, God “raised [egeiro] up David to be their king”. Not from the dead but onto the scene of human history to serve as God’s anointed king.

[8] Thus Ehrman, who argues on the basis of the perceived inconsistencies he finds in the Lukan accounts where the writer predicates christological titles at “different critical moments, or junctures, of [Jesus’] existence [highlighting the tensions] consistently found throughout Luke’s portrayal of Jesus [in his Gospel and book of Acts].” This leads to his conclusion that “Acts 13.33 states that he became the Son of God at his resurrection.” Orthodox Corruption, pp 64-67, 1992. Cf. Dunn, Christology, pp 35-36.

[9] Texts vary between “my Son”; “my (the) Beloved”; and “(only) elect”. See WBC verses cited.

[10] “The allusions in the remarks of the text recall Ps 2:7…” NET Bible Online, Mar 1.11.

[11] TDNT, gennao.

[12] Margaret Barker, ‘The High Priest and the Worship of Jesus’, The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus, ed., C.C. Newman, J.R. Davila, G.S. Lewis, p. 99, 1999. Emphasis mine.

[13] Green, Joel B.; McKnight, Scot; Marshall, I. Howard: Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. Intervarsity, 1992, S. 70.

The word was...?

2010-11-24T12:25:00.000-08:00

The writer of the Gospel of John was Jewish and therefore relied on an already established Hebraic way of thinking. This is reflected in the opening chapter to his Gospel where, in line with Jewish poetic prose, he personifies the concept of the logos.[1] A personification and not a person![2] This logos is identified with “God the Father” throughout the NT: “the God and Father of the lord Jesus Christ”[3].

Good evidence for this can be found in the “Hebrew prepositions im [‘with’, alone = in one’s consciousness, whether of knowledge, memory or purpose[4]] or et meaning ‘with’ [which can] describe the relationship between a person and what is in his heart or mind.”[5]

As a result, it comes as no surprise to find that other qualities of God are personified as well.[6] For example: wisdom[7]; the law[8] and so on. At times, these qualities/personifications of the one God are given “a quasi-existence” of their own[9]. Such is the case with God’s "word". For example, Dunn notes in his Christology in the Making [pp129f.] that “in Rabbinic Judaism…there was a clear tendency to hypostatize [personalize] the name of God[10] and the glory of God[11]. Here we might mention also the Memra [word] of Yahweh which is regularly named in place of Yahweh in the Targums …”[12]

In Ps 105.19 “the word of God” is said to have “tested” the patriarch Joseph whilst in captivity; in Isa 2.3; Micah 4.2 “the word goes out from Jerusalem”; in 2Chro 18.4 the king of Israel is told to “enquire [seek the council of] the word of God”[13]; and in Isa 55.11 God says “my word will not return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it”. We also have modern-day expressions in English that personify “word”, for example “my word is my bond,” “I give you my word,” etc.

“…the characteristic force of its central term, ‘the Word’ or ‘Logos’, appears to be derived from Hebrew, not Greek, sources and from the atmosphere of Palestine rather than [the philosophical language] of Alexandria…[in the] early Jewish paraphrases on the Old Testament [the Targums],[14] the ‘word’ of Jehovah (‘Memra’, ‘Debura’) is constantly spoken of as the efficient instrument of divine action, in cases where the Old Testament speaks of Jehovah Himself. ‘The word of God’ had come to be used personally, as almost equivalent to God manifesting Himself, or God in action…this means that the phraseology of [John] has its roots not in Platonic or Stoic idealism, but in the Jewish belief in the word of God, the manifestation of His will in creation or in revelation.”[15]

From this we can understand how the writer is relying upon Jewish concepts that predate even his own. This extends across the NT and the way the writers portray the one God and Father of the lord Jesus Christ.

It is because of these simple facts that some Bible versions render the last phrase of John 1.1c as: “…and what God was the word was.”[16] The logos when taken in context should be identified as God. That is to say, the subject of the prologue is God’s word, which is obviously not independent of that very same God! To try and make a distinction where there is none loses not only the style of the prologue but most importantly the writer’s intention and original meaning.

Grammatical points
Most translations inappropriately introduce the male pronoun ‘he’ into John 1.1-2 where ‘he’ replaces ‘this one'[17]. This prompts the reader into the mistake of thinking “the word” is a distinct person from its subject/source, God. Although Greek uses grammatical gender [meaning nouns are masculine or feminine or neuter], this does not mean the reader should assign personhood to them. For example, just because “word” [logos] in Greek has to be accompanied by masculine pronouns, it does not mean it is a person! To render it this way would be grammatical suicide!

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology notes that the phrase “in the beginning”[18] in relation to “the word”, refers to the “eternal pre-existence of the Word whose true sphere was not time but eternity”[19]. This should alert the reader to the simple fact that the writer has the person of God in view, since God is said to be the only One who is inherently immortal. This is in line with Jesus’ reference to God as “the living Father”[20] Who “has granted that same life-giving power to his Son”[21].

Furthermore, the word translated “with” [pros] in the phrase: “the word was with God” in John 1.1b “does not imply any movement or action on the part of the Logos”[22], as if it were talking about one person next to [“with”, para(23)] another, in this case God. Hence the translation above that best captures the meaning and intent of John 1.1c: “what God was the word was”; i.e. it was God’s word!

Apart from these grammatical points, the simple fact remains that in English “word” is an “it”, and not a “he”. The eight English translations from the Greek [not from the Latin Vulgate], before the 1611 KJV, all have “it” instead of “he”.

“It was the Roman Catholic Douay/Rheims version, translated from the Latin by Gregory Martin in 1582, which first rendered John 1:3, ‘all things were made by him,’ rather than ‘by it’ (the ‘word’)."[24]

J.D.G. Dunn in his Christology in the Making notes:

“…it is only with verse 14 [‘the word became flesh’] that we can begin to speak of the personal Logos. The poem uses rather impersonal language (became flesh), but no Christian would fail to recognize here a reference to Jesus—the word became not flesh in general but Jesus Christ. Prior to verse 14 we are in the same realm as pre-Christian talk of Wisdom and Logos…dealing with personifications rather than persons, personified actions of God rather than an individual divine being as such.

“The point is obscured by [translating the] masculine Logos as ‘he’ throughout the poem. But if we translated Logos as ‘God’s utterance’ instead, it would become clearer that the poem did not necessarily intend the Logos of vv. 1-13 to be thought of as a personal divine being. In other words, the revolutionary significance of v. 14 may well be that it marks…the transition from impersonal personification to actual person.”[25]

In John 1.1 “the word of God” is not a person apart from the one God. This would inevitably lead to a blurring of the One Person of God and a serious error on the part of the reader as to “how many” God is. As Prof. Dunn once again observes:

The point is that Christ is the incarnation of this Wisdom/Word. To speak of Christ as himself preexistent, coming down from heaven, and so forth, has to be seen as metaphorical; otherwise it leads inevitably to some kind of polytheism--the Father as a person, just like Jesus was a person...

...what a Wisdom/Word christology claims is that Jesus is the person/individual whom God's Word became. Even to speak of the incarnation of the Son of God can be misleading, unless the Son christology of John is seen as it was probably intended, as an expression of the same Wisdom/Word christology; otherwise, there is the danger of a too literal translation of Father-Son language once again into a form of polytheism...[26]

Footnotes

[1] Understood as “God manifesting His power in the world of matter or mind; a term used especially in the Targum as a substitute for ‘the Lord’ when an anthropomorphic expression is to be avoided.” Memra, jewishencyclopedia.org.

[2] “Philo's ‘divine thought,’ ‘the image’ and ‘first-born son’ of God, ‘the archpriest,’ ‘intercessor,’ and ‘paraclete’ of humanity, the ‘arch type of man’…paved the way for the Christian conceptions of the Incarnation (‘the Word become flesh’) and the Trinity.” The Logos, jewishencyclopedia.org.

[3] 2Cor 1.3; Rom 15.6; 1Pe 1.3; John 20.17; Rev 1.6.

[4] Brown, Driver and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, p. 768.

[5] Im: Num. 14:24; 1 Kings 11:11; 1 Chron. 28:12; Job 10:13; 15:9; 23:10; 23:14; 27:11; Ps. 50:11; 73:23. Et: Gen. 40:14; 2 Kings 3:12 (cp. John 17.5; 2 John 2; Gal. 2:5; Isa. 59:12; Jer. 12:3; 23:28; 27:18; 14:5; Prov. 2:1; 11:2. Buzzard, Hunting, Doctrine of the Trinity, pp. 195-96.

[6] Cp. Isa 40.10; 62.11; cp. Rev 22.12.

[7] Job 12.13, 16; Pro 1.20-23; 8.1-9, 12, 22-31.

[8] Isa 2.3; 51.4; Micah 4.2.

[9] Doctrine, p. 284.

[10] Yoma 3.8; 4.2; 6.2; and strikingly also in the Similitudes of 1 Enoch—39.7, 9, 13; 41.2, 6; 43.4; 45.2f.; 46.6-8; 47.2; 48.7, 10; etc.

[11] The Shekinah—e.g. Sanh. 6.5; Aboth 3.2; Targ. Onkelos on Ex. 33.14f.; 34.6, 9.

[12] G. H. Box, ‘The Idea of Intermediation in Jewish Theology: A Note on Memra and Shekinah’, JQR 23, 1932-33, pp. 103-19. Examples in Strack-Billerbeck 2, pp. 303f. Details of the usage in Targ. Neofiti and its possible significance may be found in R. Hayward, ‘The Memra of YHWH and the Development of its Use in Targum Neofiti 1’, JJS 25, 1974, pp. 412-18.

[13] Cp. Ps 33.4 “the word of God is right and true, He is faithful in all He does”.

[14] “In the Targum the Memra figures constantly as the manifestation of the divinepower, or as God's messenger in place of God Himself…” Memra, jewishencyclopedia.org.

[15] “In regard to this idea it must not be forgotten that, as found in some of the [Church] fathers, e.g. Justin and the Alexandrians, it has much closer affinities to Greek philosophy than it has in St. John.” Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God: being the Bampton lectures for the year 1891, p. 69-70. Emphasis added.

[16] New English Bible [NEB]; Revised English Bible [REV].

[17] houtos, see the TEV, LB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NAB, AND the AB.

[18] “It is not by accident that the Gospel begins with the same phrase as the book of Genesis. In Genesis 1:1, ‘In the beginning’…In both works of creation the agent is the Word of God.” F.F. Bruce, The Gospel of John (William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1983) pp. 28-29.

[19] Brown, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 4 vols; pp. 1204-05.

[20] John 5.36, New Living Translation.

[21] Cp. “the living God”, Deut 5:26; Joshua 3:10; Psalm 42:2; Jer 10:10; Daniel 6:20; Hosea 1:10; Mat 16.16; Acts 14:15; 2 Cor 3:3; 1 Tim 4:10.

[22] “Support for this view may be found in the NT parallels where pros with the acc. often following the verb einai denotes the linear motion but punctiliar [i.e, not moving] rest (Matt. 26.18, 55 vl.; Mk. 6.3 ( =Matt. 13.56); 9.19 ( = Lk. 9.41 but Matt. 17.17 has meth’ hymon); 14.49; 1Cor 16.6f.; 2Cor 5.8; 11.9; Gal 1.18; 4.18, 20; Phil 1.26; 1Thess 3.4; 2Thess 2.5; 3.10; Phlm 13; Heb 4.13; 1Jn 1.2).” ibid., Brown, NIDNT, p 1204. Emphasis added.

[23] “…elsewhere John uses para tini to express the proximity of one person to another (Jn. 1.39; 4.40; 8.38; 14.17, 23, 25; 19.25; cf. 14.23; note also meta tinos in Jn. 3.22, 25 f. etc.) or the nearness of the Son to the Father (Jn 8.38; 17.5), never pros tina.” Ibid., Brown, NIDNT, p 1205. Emphasis added.

[24] Buzzard, “John 1 and the word”, Focus on the Kingdom, v.9 n.12, Sept. 2007.

[25] J.D.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, p. 243.

[26] Dunn, The Christ & the Spirit: Collected Essays, p. 47.

Hebrews 1:10 and the Age to Come [reload]

2010-11-23T15:04:00.000-08:00

By Anthony Buzzard

On the recent radio discussions with Drs. James White and Michael Brown we learned how Trinitarians hope to persuade us. They turn to Hebrews 1:10. Here in a catena (chain) of proof texts, the Hebrews writer seeks to prove that Jesus, the Son of God, is superior to angels. This approach ought really to show immediately that the writer did not think Jesus was Jehovah! You don’t need 7 verses to prove that Jesus is better than all angels or better than Moses, if you believe that Jesus is God Himself. All you have to say is “Jesus is God.” That would be the end of the argument. And one really ought not to imagine that Jesus was ever an angel, after reading Hebrews 1!

The whole point of the argument is that Jesus is not and never was or will be an angel!

The whole point is missed if we do not grasp that Jesus is the begotten Son of God as predicted by the overarchingly important Ps. 2:7.

Hebrews 1:10 says of the Son of God that he “laid the foundation of the heaven and the earth.”

There are three “proof texts” addressed to the Son in Hebrews 1:8-13. These three make the same important point about how the Son began. There is no hint in the text that they refer to someone other than the Son. Verse 8 begins, “But of the Son He [God] says…” (Heb. 1:8) Then follow three different corroborating quotes. The series ends in verse 13 with a final proof that Jesus was not an angel:

“But to which of the angels did He [God] ever say…”

Psalm 110:1 is then quoted as referring to the Son, Jesus. That Son is the adoni of Psalm 110:1 who is not Yahweh. Psalm 110: 1 frames the whole discussion and shows that Jesus cannot be Yahweh. (though Jesus is of course His agent—see Anthony Harvey, Jesus and the Constraints of History and James McGrath, Early Jewish and Christian Monotheism, and James Dunn, Did The First Christians Worship Jesus? (2010)

Much of chapter 1 of Hebrews compares the Son of God with angels, showing that the Son was never an angel and is superior to them. This proves that the Son cannot be God! It is not necessary to prove God superior to the angels. It is obvious. Equally clear is the fact that the Son cannot be an angel or archangel as maintained by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Both angels and archangels (chief angels) are angels! Jesus was never an angel, because high priests are “chosen from among men” (Heb. 5:1). And holy angels are immortal (Luke 20:36), which would make the death of Jesus the Son of God impossible. The Son of God came into existence in Mary (Luke 1:35), his origin (genesis) is described in Matt. 1:18, 20. He was begotten, not just conceived, as stated in the Greek of Matt. 1:20. No angels were begotten in that way!

What then of Hebrews 1:10? In what sense is the Son the founder of the heavens and earth? How can this be since Jesus nowhere claimed to be the Creator and it was not Jesus, but God who rested on the seventh day (Heb. 4:4)? Did Jesus do all the work and yet not rest on the seventh day?

“God [not Jesus] made them male and female” (Mark 10:6) and “The Lord God [not Jesus] formed man of dust from the ground” (Gen. 2:7). Fifty texts say that God, the Father, created the heavens and the earth. Luke 1:35, Matthew 1:18, 20 and 1 John 5:18 (not KJV) say that the Son did not exist until he was created/begotten in Mary. Heb. 1:1-2 tell us that God did not speak in a Son during OT times. This is because the Son did not yet exist.

Was Jesus both six months younger than John the Baptist and billions of years older? Was Jesus 30 years old when he began his public ministry and yet really billions plus 30 years old? What part of Jesus was 30 and what part was billions of years old?

Jesus cannot be so divided up, split in two. Mary bore a human being. She did not bear an angel. She did not bear GOD. She did not bear “impersonal human nature,” as Trinitarian theory says. She did not take in a person from the outside. She conceived and bore a baby. Mary bore a lineal, biological son of David. Otherwise Jesus does not qualify to be the Messiah. Romans 1:1-4 says that God’s Son was a descendant of David, and he was later installed as Son of God with power at the resurrection, but he was not Son of God for the first time when resurrected. He was begotten as predicted by Ps. 2:7, in time, today, not in eternity.

God cannot be begotten, and the Son of God was begotten. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls speak of an expected time when God will beget (bring into existence) the Son of God. They too used 2 Samuel 7:14 and Psalm 2:7 to indicate the beginning of the expected Messiah. The immortal God (1 Tim. 6:16) cannot die. The Son of God died (Rom. 5:10). God cannot be tempted (James 1:13), yet the Son of God was tempted. Not to observe these category differences is to throw away precious biblical instruction.

Hebrews 1:1-2 says that God did not speak through a Son in the Old Testament times. Verse 2 also says that God made the ages through Jesus. This could refer to the ages of the new creation which Jesus introduced or it may refer to Jesus, as Wisdom, being the reason for God’s creation of everything. Hebrews 1:5, quoting the prophecy of Psalm 2:7, speaks of the coming into existence of Jesus, the Son:

“Today I have begotten you”
(so also the LXX of Ps. 110:3 and many Hebrew manuscripts).

The same first chapter of Hebrews speaks of 2 Samuel 7:14’s marvelous promise, given a thousand years before Jesus’ birth, that God “will be a father to him and he will be a son.” That promise was given to David and it referred to the Messiah who was to come. The beginning of Messiah’s existence is the moment when God becomes the Father of the Messiah. Acts 13:33 refers also to the beginning of Jesus’ existence, his "raising up" (not "raising up again" as wrongly translated in the KJV), and verse 34, by contrast, to his resurrection. The same beginning of the Son is exactly what we find in Luke 1:35 and Matthew 1:20 (“that which is begotten in her is from the holy spirit”).

Isaiah 44:24 says that God, unaccompanied, unaided, created the Genesis heavens and earth. He was entirely alone. “Who was with me?” At the time of the Genesis creation there was no Son with Him (cf. Heb. 1:1-2).

God spoke first in a Son in the New Testament. So then who said, “Let there be light”? It would be a flat contradiction of Hebrews 1:1-2 to say it was the Son. The God of the Old Testament is quite distinct from His unique Son. The latter had his genesis in Matthew 1:18 (“The origin of Jesus the Messiah was like this”, TNIV).

The Bible becomes a book of incomprehensible riddles if God can have a Son literally before He brings him into existence! Luke 1:35 describes how the Son of God came to exist. He was begotten. To beget in the Bible and in English is a word which of all words denotes a before and after. Therefore the Son had a beginning. There was a time before he was begotten, before he was. If he already existed, these testimonies in Matthew 1 and Luke 1 are nonsense. Mary bore a human being, not God or an angel. Human mothers bear humans. Mary certainly did not just bear “human nature,” and “human nature” as Mary’s son would not be the descendant of David and thus not the Messiah. (The creeds try to frighten us away from this beginning of the Son, telling us that if we say “there was a time when the Son did not exist” we are heretics and anathematized — see the anathemas at Nicea, 325 AD. No one wants to be cursed by the Church).

The notion that the Son of God was in fact God would strongly reduce the meaning of his whole struggle in obedience to God and on our behalf as Savior and model. The whole point of a High Priest is that he must be “selected from among men” (Heb. 5:1). He is the “man Messiah Jesus” in contrast to his Father (1 Tim. 2:5). The Father in John 17:3 is “the only one who is God,” as distinct from His Son who is excluded from that category. If God is the only one who is God, no one else is God except the Father, which is exactly what Paul declared when rehearsing the creed in 1 Corinthians 8:

“There is no God except the one God the Father”
(combining vv. 4 and 6).

He added, not “splitting the Shema" or expanding it as Tom Wright and others say, that Jesus is the one Lord Messiah! All that had been well said by Luke, who agreed with Paul when he spoke of the Lord Messiah (Luke 2:11) who is “the Lord’s Messiah” (Luke 2:26).

If the Son were God, there would be two Gods. To call Jesus God and the Father God is not strict monotheism, however much the label may be applied. The Bible nowhere uses “God” to mean a triune or biune God.

In Hebrews 1:10, there is a complication (requiring detailed study) due to the fact that the writer quotes Psalm 102 from the Greek version (LXX) and not the Hebrew version. The LXX (Septuagint) has a different sense entirely in Psalm 102:23-25. The LXX reads differently from the Hebrew text. LXX gives us God’s reply to the suppliant. The LXX, quoted in Hebrews 1:10, says:

“He [God] answered him [the suppliant]…Tell me [God speaking to the suppliant]…Thou, lord [God addressing someone else called ‘lord’].

But the Hebrew text has:

“He [God] weakened me…I [the suppliant] say, ‘O my God…’”

Thus the LXX speaks of a second "lord" who is addressed by God:

“At the beginning you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands” (v. 25).

The writer to the Hebrews had open before him the LXX and not the Hebrew (rather as today someone might quote the NIV instead of the KJV). The New Testament often cites the LXX Greek. F.F. Bruce in the New International Commentary on Hebrews explains:

"In the Septuagint text the person to whom these words [“of old you laid the foundation of the earth”] are spoken is addressed explicitly as “Lord,” and it is God who addresses him thus. Whereas in the Hebrew text the suppliant is the speaker from the beginning to the end of the psalm, in the Greek text his prayer comes to an end with v. 22, and the next words read as follows: “He [God] answered him [the suppliant] in the way of his strength:

‘Declare to Me the shortness of My days: Bring Me not up in the midst of My days. Thy [the suppliant’s] years are throughout all generations. Thou, lord [the suppliant, viewed here as the Messiah by Hebrews], in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth.’”

This is God’s answer to the suppliant; He bids him acknowledge the shortness of God’s set time (for the restoration of Jerusalem, as in v. 13) and not summon Him [God] to act when that set time has only half expired, while He [God] assures him [the suppliant, called lord by God] that he and his servants’ children will be preserved forever.

(Bacon suggested that the Hebrew, as well as the Greek, text of this psalm formed a basis for messianic [i.e. future Kingdom] eschatology, especially its reference to the “shortness” of God’s days, i.e., of the period destined to elapse before the consummation of His purpose [the arrival of the yet future Messianic Kingdom on earth]; he found here the OT background of Matt. 24:22, Mark 13:20 and Ep. Barn. 4.3 (“as Enoch says, ‘For to this end the Master [God] has cut short the times and the days, that his Beloved [Jesus] should make haste and come to his inheritance’”).

But to whom (a Christian reader of the Septuagint might well ask) could God speak in words like these? And whom would God himself address as “Lord,” as the maker [or founder] of earth and heaven?

Reading the LXX the Hebrews writer sees an obvious reference to the new heavens and earth of the future Kingdom and he sees God addressing the Messianic Lord in connection with the prophecies of the rest of Psalm 102 which speak of “the generation to come” (v. 18) and of the set time for Yahweh to build up Zion and appear in His glory [the Parousia]. The fact that the One YHVH addresses another “lord” proves that the second lord cannot be YHVH.

The important article by B.W. Bacon (alluded to by Bruce above) stresses the fact that “The word ‘lord’ is wholly absent from the Hebrew [and English] text of Psalm 102:25.” But it appears in the LXX cited by Hebrews. Yahweh addresses another, who is not Yahweh, but another lord, in this case the Messiah. “He [Yahweh] answered him,… at the start you, lord, laid the foundation…” (LXX Ps. 101:24; Heb. Ps. 102):

[With the translation in the LXX “he answered him”] the whole passage down to the end of the psalm becomes the answer of Yahweh to the suppliant who accordingly appears to be addressed as kurie [lord] and creator of heaven and earth...Instead of understanding the verse as a complaint of the psalmist at the shortness of his days which are cut off in the midst, LXX and the Vulgate understand the utterance to be Yahweh's answer to the psalmist’s plea that he will intervene to save Zion, because “it is time to have pity on her, yea, the set time is come” (v. 13). He is bidden acknowledge (or prescribe?) the shortness of Yahweh’s set time, and not to summon Him when it is but half expired. On the other hand he [the Messianic lord] is promised that his own endurance shall be perpetual with the children of his servants.

This is exactly the point, and it can only be made clear when we see that ...

1) the Hebrews writer is reading the LXX, not the Hebrew text, and finding in the second half of the psalm a wonderful prophecy of the age to come (Kingdom, restoration of Israel, new creation) which fits his context in Hebrews 1 exactly, and that...

2) there is a Messianic Lord addressed by Yahweh and invited to initiate a founding of the heaven and earth, the new political order in Palestine, exactly as said in Isaiah 51:16. This is precisely the message the Hebrews writer wants to convey about the superiority of Jesus over angels. Jesus is the founder of that coming new Kingdom order. The Hebrews writer in 2:5 tells us expressly that it is about “the inhabited earth of the future that we are speaking.” (See also Isa. 65:17ff., 66:22, new world-order. Restored Israel, with the church by then immortalized will enjoy the new system, cp. Isa. 65:9, Ps. 69:35, 36: “For God will save Zion and build the cities of Judah, that they may dwell there and possess it. The descendants of His servants will inherit it [cp. Matt. 5:5], and those who love His name will dwell in it” (so also Ps. 37:9, 11, 18, 22, 29, 34).

The important points are these:

1) Psalm 102 is about the new creation and the “generation to come.” It is a Kingdom psalm and points to the great Messianic future. The psalm speaks of the time coming to build up Zion, when the nations will fear God’s name, and when God’s glory will appear, what we know as the Parousia of Jesus, God’s agent. Verse 19 of the LXX of Ps.102 speaks of a new generation, and a people who are going to be created. This is all about the new creation in Christ, of which we are now already a part. That new creation began with the ministry of the historical Jesus, who announced it and died to inaugurate the new covenant, to do with the new creation.

All this is really not so difficult when this difference in the LXX is explained. Both Psalm 102 and Hebrews 2:5 and indeed the whole of Hebrews 1 refer to the new order of things initiated by Jesus and it would not matter whether we think of the new order as initiated at the ascension (“All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me,” Matt. 28:18), or at the second coming.

The best option is that new creation began when Jesus ministered the Gospel of the Kingdom. Thus the new creation was initiated by Jesus even in this present age and it will of course be brought to a new stage of perfection in the coming age of the millennium, which is the first stage of the manifested, worldwide Kingdom of God.

Psalm 102 is all about the coming age of the Kingdom and the restoration of Jerusalem in the millennium (see vv. 13-22). The writer looks forward to the restoration of the city when God appears in His glory (v. 16). The Psalm is written for the “generation to come” (v. 18) and a newly created people of the future Kingdom on earth. Hebrews 1-2 is speaking not of the Genesis creation but the “economy to come” (2:5).

Hebrews 2:5: “The Economy, World to Come about Which We Are Speaking.”

The Oxford Bible Commentary (2000) is helpful when it notes that right up to Hebrews 2:5 the topic is the new creation in Christ. Hebrews 1:10 is included in that main subject: The writer should be allowed to tell us what he is talking about. It is not the Genesis creation but the new creation and covenant in Christ. Ps. 102 is also about the new creation.

“The text at the center of Heb. 2:5ff. is Ps. 8:4-6 and it exhibits thematic connections to the scriptural catena [chain] of the first chapter [i.e. Heb. 1:10 is all part of the same reference to the new creation]…Heb. 2:5 [“the inhabited earth to come of which we speak”] is an introductory comment continuing the contrast between the Son and angels. Its reference to the “world to come” reinforces the notions of imminent judgment and cosmic transformation intimated by Ps. 102, cited at 1:10-12.”

Isaiah 51:16 confirms this explanation. It speaks of an agent of God in whom God puts His words and whom He uses “to plant the heavens and earth.” The Word Biblical Commentary says:

"Yahweh introduces Himself again, but this time in terms of His control of the raging sea. He addresses the one He is using to put His words into his mouth and protecting him very carefully. The purpose of this care is to allow him to plant heavens and earth. That makes no sense if it refers to the original [Genesis] creation. It uses the word NaTaH [Jer. 10:12 + 10 times], stretch out, while the verb here is NaTA, plant [establish people]. In the other instances God acts alone, using no agent [Isa. 44:24]. Here the one he has hidden in the shadow of his hand is his agent. Heavens and land here must refer metaphorically to the totality of order in Palestine, heavens meaning the broader overarching structure of the Empire, while land is the political order in Palestine itself. The assignment is then focused more precisely: to say to Zion, you are my people.”

Thus both in Psalm 102 (LXX) and in Isaiah 51 the Messiah is the agent whom God will use to establish the new political order of the age to come. Hebrews 1:10 is a prophecy, written in the past tense (as customarily prophecies are), but referring to the “inhabited earth of the future about which we are speaking” (Heb. 2:5). That is the concern in Hebrews 1:10. Jesus is the “father of the age to come” (Isa. 9:6, Alexandrian version of the LXX).

Finally, in Hebrews 9:11 the writer speaks of “the good things to come” as the things “not of this creation.” By this he means that the things to come are of the new, future creation (see Heb. 2:5, the new creation). That creation is under way since Jesus appeared as the minister of the new covenant. Jesus as exalted (Ps 110:1 is now co-creator, under the Father, of the new creation, and has “all authority in heaven and earth” (Matt. 28:18). Even the millennial age of the future will be replaced by a further renewed heaven and earth (Rev. 20:11; 21:1). The present system will be “changed” (Heb. 1:10) but the Messiah will continue forever. Revelation 21:1 speaks of the heavens and earth as undergoing a further and presumably final change.

It is interesting that the writer of Hebrews, when mentioning “the age to come” (2:5 and 9:11) connects it with the new creation, i.e not this present Genesis creation. Heb. 1:10 is placed within that context. 9:11 reads:

“When Christ appeared as the High Priest of the good things to come (or the good things which have come), he entered in through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is not of this creation”–but of the new creation.

The book of Hebrews is all about the exalted Christ as head of the new creation and the writers speaks constantly of the “covenant of the coming age”(aionios)...

“...salvation of the coming age, judgment of the coming age, High Priest for the age, redemption of the coming age, spirit of the coming age, inheritance of the coming age.”

The Son is heir of this new creation (Heb 1:2-3).

Once again, eschatology is the great factor in revealing the truth. The Gospel of salvation is based on eschatology, what God has done and is doing and is yet going to do in Christ and in the saints of all the ages, the new community of the New Covenant, addressed as those who go by the canon of love, “the Israel of God” of Galatians 6:16. In this community there are no differences in nationality but all are “one in Christ.” God has a new creation in Jesus and we are to be new creatures in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). We are to join the one “new man” of the commonwealth of Israel (Eph. 2:12-13). The presently unconverted Israel will itself be renewed, at least a remnant (Mic. 2:12; Rom. 11), through the great tribulation and Jesus’ deliverance at his post-tribulation Parousia (Matt. 24:29-31).

The saints of all the ages will be immortalized at the resurrection after the end of the Great Tribulation which is still ahead.

There is of course no pre-tribulation gathering. Nor has the Great Tribulation been going on continuously since AD 70. The Great Tribulation is a future short period of agony just before the return of the Messiah to the earth. This event is not a drive-by episode. Jesus is coming back to the earth where as son of David he belongs installed on the throne of David.

Dan. 8:14 even tells us that the time for the temple to be finally set in order will be some 2 years, 8 months and five days into the millennium.

The world is going to be reborn and it will come under the supervision of Jesus and his followers (Matt. 19:28, Rev. 5:10; I Cor. 6:2, Dan. 7:14, 18, 22, 27, etc.)

We must resist the temptation to be looking backwards to Genesis when the whole book of Hebrews bids us look forward to the “inhabited earth of the future” (Heb. 2:5).

We have noted that in several places Hebrews speaks of the eternal redemption, inheritance, covenant, judgment, salvation and spirit “of the age [to come]” (aionios). Aionios refers to the Kingdom age to come and not just to eternity. Christians receive now the “holy spirit of the promise” (Eph. 1:13, NJB). We are to experience something of the future Kingdom age even now in the midst of trials and in a hostile world. Christians should not give away their inheritance to unconverted Jews! The church will inherit the land (Matt. 5:5; Rom. 4:13) and those who bless “the seed of Abraham” (Gen. 12) are those who bless the believers.

“If you belong to Christ [and only then] you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:19).

What a heritage is in store for those who endure to the end.

Meanwhile should we not have a heart for the billions of human beings who have not been exposed to the great truths about God and the Messiah and the Kingdom in process of restoration?

Matthew 24:14 is most relevant.

Christology in the Making quotes

2010-11-13T12:14:00.000-08:00

A New Testament Inquiry Into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, 2nd Edition, 1996.

J.D.G. Dunn

Is then thought of Jesus’ birth as the incarnation of a pre-existent Son of God implied here [in Gal 4.4]? Would Paul’s readers have drawn such an inference? Could Paul have expected his readers to recognize such an implication? …there seems to have been little real precedent for such an idea of incarnation, very little which might have prompted such an inference or invited such an implication[1]...such language only appears in Christian writings of the second century subsequent to the ideas of virginal conception in Matthew and Luke and the sending of the pre-existent Logos in John and as the harmonization of them (Ignatius, Eph. 7.2; Aristides, Apology 15.1; and especially Justin, Apol. 1.21.1[2]; 32.10-14[3]; 63.15f.[4]; Dial. 45.4[5]; 84.2[6]; 85.2[7]; 127.4[8]). It follows that if Paul intended to imply what we now call the doctrine of incarnation in Gal 4.4 he would have been taking a radically new step, something his readers could hardly have expected to come from a Jew.

[The closest parallels would mislead rather than illuminate Paul's meaning. In particular, if the language had indeed suggested the idea of a 'miraculous' birth, anyone familiar with the Jewish scriptures would presumably have thought of births to women who were barren or past child-bearing age, like Sarah (Gen. 17.15f. – ‘God said to Abraham...“I will give you a son by he’”') or Rachel (Gen.30.22 – ‘God opened her womb’.]

And if he [Paul] intended to take that step we would have expected his earliest recorded intimation of it to be a much more explicit and careful exposition (cf. the care he takes to expound his understanding of who the seed of Abraham really are – Gal. 3).

Had Paul indeed taught a doctrine of incarnation (the pre-existence of the Son of God, the man Christ Jesus) in his mission it would inevitably have been open to misunderstanding and abuse…so that a greater clarification and fuller exposition of it would almost certainly have appeared elsewhere in his writings. It does not seem a very sound basis for an exegesis of Gal 4.4 to argue both that Paul had already taught an explicit doctrine of incarnation, and also that such a novel teaching caused scarcely a ripple in the often troubled waters of the Pauline mission. In short, it would appear unwise…that Paul’s readers would have at once recognized an allusion to a specific and already well established Christian teaching on Jesus as the incarnate Son of God.
One further and rather surprising consideration seems to emerge from all this. Since what certainly became the Christian idea of incarnation would probably have sounded strange to Paul’s hearers (and to Paul?), perhaps Christian keenness to find an incarnation interpretation here has pushed exegesis in the wrong direction. Perhaps indeed ‘born of woman’…is to be understood as a denial of a simplistic view of Jesus as a divine being come to earth. The one sent as God’s Son was one ‘born of woman’, (simply) a man, not a divine being metamorphosed into or appearing as a human being…perhaps the Christological thrust is simply that ‘God sent forth (directly, not by an angel) his Son (not some heavenly being, but one) born of woman, born under the law…’

It has become steadily clear that Gal 4.4 cannot be taken, as it so often is, as making a straightforward assertion or embodying an obvious presupposition that Jesus was the incarnation of a pre-existent divine being, the Son of God in that sense…In short, we cannot safely conclude from Gal 4.4 that Paul believed in or was already teaching a doctrine of incarnation. [pp. 42-44]

§6. JESUS’ DIVINE SONSHIP IN THE POST-PAULINE WRITINGS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

§6.2 Matthew…Son of God is the most important Christological affirmation for Matthew [14.33; 16.16]…confirmed by the considerable expansion of talk of God as Father in the sayings of Jesus…

At two points Matthew perhaps comes closer to attributing pre-existence to Jesus as Son of God than any Christian writer before him…by appending 11.28-30 to the Q passage (11.25-7/Luke 10.21f.), he identifies Jesus as Wisdom, and though thought of pre-existence is not present in this context it is but a step away, since Wisdom was already familiarly thought of as pre-existent…though here too it should be noted that [in Mat 28.19] the idea of pre-existence is absent…

One of the oddest features [in the account of the virgin birth] is the absence of Son of God terminology; in the birth narratives Jesus is called ‘son (of God)’ by implication only at 2.15, where the flight to Egypt is taken as a step towards his fulfillment of Hos. 11.1…But closer analysis of Mat 1-2 makes it quite clear, as R. E. Brown’s masterly study shows, that Matthew’s intention in chapter 1 is to give an account of the divine origin of Jesus—not mere Son of David, but also Son of God; descended from David sure enough (1.1-17), but more important, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit (1.18-20)[9]…this was an unheard of step to take, for, as Justin Martyr rightly insisted long ago (Apol. 1.33), it claimed for Jesus a unique conception—the offspring of a human mother, but through an act of God’s creative power, not through sexual intercourse with a divine being. The point which bears upon our study is that Matthew presumably understands this as Jesus’ origin, as the begetting (= becoming) of Jesus to be God’s Son (1.16, 20). As Brown notes, there is in Matthew ‘no suggestion of an incarnation whereby a figure who was previously with God takes on flesh’.[10]

In short…Matthew has extended the understanding of Jesus’ divine sonship by dating it from his conception and attributing that to the (creative) power of the Spirit… [pp. 48-50]

The desire to find and maintain a single Christian orthodoxy always tempts the Christian to harmonize and synthesize where possible…That might be argued…on the ground of some dogmatic premise, but not into terms of exegesis. [‘Son of God’, pgs. 61-62]

Now Adam was certainly not thought of as pre-existent though perhaps strictly speaking as pre-historical, or, being the first man on the earth, as transhistorical/typical….If Christ walks in Adam’s footsteps then Christ need be no more pre-existent than Adam…Nor indeed is there any implication that Christ was contemporaneous with Adam, acting in a similarly transhistorical situation…Christ always presupposes Adam, Christ’s odyssey presupposes the plight of Adam, of Adam’s offspring. As 1 Cor 15:45ff insists, the temporal order is clear: Adam first, Christ second – Christ is last Adam, Adam precedes Christ. Adam was not a copy of a pre-existent Christ, but a “type of him who was to come” [Rom. 5:14]…The Philippian hymn does not intend to affirm that Jesus was as historical or as pre-historical as Adam, but that the choice confronting Christ was as archetypal and determinative for mankind as was Adam’s; weather the choice was made by the pre-existent Christ or the historical Jesus is immaterial to the Philippian hymn.” [‘The Last Adam’, pgs. 119-120]

Footnotes:

1. Cf. G. Dalman, The Words of Jesus, ET 1902: 'The statements as to preexistence in the Similitudes of Enoch, of 2 Esdras, and in Pesikta Rabbati, do not presuppose any human birth of Messiah. He is to make his appearance upon earth as a fully developed personality. And this is quite distinct from the later Jewish doctrine of the pre-existence of the souls of all men. Judaism has never known anything of a pre-existence peculiar to the Messiah antecedent to his birth as a human being. Baldensperger, [Das Selbstbewusstein Jesu im Lichte der messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit2 (1892), 85. In other points, too, the statements of this book on Jewish matters require careful revision.] nevertheless, holds that from the date of the Similitudes of Enoch, “the heavenly pre-existence of the Messiah” attained the position of a “dogma in apocalyptic circles.” But we have seen that after the Similitudes of Enoch the only representatives of the idea independent of Enoch are 2 Esdras in the first Christian century, and the Appendix to Pesikta Rabbati, independently of both these sources, in the seventh or eighth century. The dominance of the idea in any Jewish circle whatever cannot seriously be upheld.’ (p. 131-32)

2. “…we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth [first born] of God, was produced without sexual union…”

3. “…those men who believe in Him [Jesus] in whom [abides] the seed of God, the Word…He who should appear would have blood, though not of the seed of man, but of the power of God. And the first power after God the Father and Lord of all is the Word, who is also the Son…He took flesh and became man…the blood should not be of human seed, but of divine power…And Isaiah, another prophet, foretelling the same things in other words, spoke thus: ‘A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a flower shall spring from the root of Jesse; and His arm shall the nations trust.’ And a star of light has arisen, and a flower has sprung from the root of Jesse—this Christ. For by the power of God He was conceived by a virgin of the seed of Jacob…”

4. “Now the Word of God is His Son, as we have before said. And He is called Angel and Apostle… so much is written for the sake of proving that Jesus the Christ is the Son of God and His Apostle, being of old the Word, and appearing sometimes in the form of fire, and sometimes in the likeness of angels; but now, by the will of God, having become man for the human race…The Jews, accordingly, being throughout of opinion that it was the Father of the universe who [spoke] to Moses, though He who [spoke] to him was indeed the Son of God, who is called both Angel and Apostle…the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God. And of old He appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an angel to Moses and to the other prophets; but now in the times of your reign, having, as we before said, become Man by a virgin, according to the counsel of the Father…”

5. “…Christ, Son of God, who was before the morning star and the moon, and submitted to become incarnate, and be born of this virgin of the family of David…”

6. “…the prophecy, 'Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,' was uttered respecting Him. For if He to whom Isaiah referred was not to be begotten of a virgin, of whom did the Holy Spirit declare, 'Behold, the Lord Himself shall give us a sign: behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son?' For if He also were to be begotten of sexual intercourse, like all other first-born sons, why did God say that He would give a sign which is not common to all the first-born sons? But that which is truly a sign, and which was to be made trustworthy to mankind,—namely, that the first-begotten of all creation should become incarnate by the Virgin's womb, and be a child…as if great events were to be inferred if a woman should beget from sexual intercourse: which indeed all young women, with the exception of the barren, do; but even these, God, if He wills, is able to cause [to bear]. For Samuel's mother, who was barren, brought forth by l the will of God; and so also the wife of the holy patriarch Abraham [Sarah]; and Elisabeth, who bore John the Baptist, and [others]. So that you must not suppose that it is impossible for God to do anything He wills. And especially when it was predicted that this would take place, do not venture to pervert or misinterpret the prophecies, since you will injure yourselves alone, and will not harm God.”

7. “For every demon, when exorcised in the name of this very Son of God—who is the First-born of every creature, who became man by the Virgin…”

8. “Therefore neither Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any other man, saw the Father and ineffable Lord of all, and also of Christ, but [saw] Him who was according to His will His Son, being God, and the Angel…whom also it pleased Him to be born man by the Virgin; who also was fire when He conversed with Moses from the bush.”

9. Brown, Birth, §5; see also, K. Stendahl, ‘Quist et Unde? An Analysis of Matt. 1-2’, Judentum, Urchristentum, Kirche, 1964, pp. 94-105; R. Pesch, ‘Der Gottessohn im mattaischen Evangelienprolog (Matt. 1-2)’, Biblica 48, 1967, pp. 395-420 (particularly pp. 408-19); Kingsbury, Matthew, pp. 42-53.

10. Brown, Birth, p. 141; Fuller, ‘Christological Moment’, p. 39. Matt. 1.23, ‘”His name shall be called Emmanuel” (which means, ‘God with us’), does not affect this conclusion, since the child of whom Isaiah speaks would have been understood to be simply a symbol of God’s purpose for Judah. Matthew would see it fulfilled in complete measure by Jesus, but not in a literal sense as though he were identifying Jesus with God, only in the sense that Jesus is the full (fulfilled) expression of God’s presence [purpose] with His people (Brown, Birth, p. 150 n. 52).

God the Son, Truth or Fiction?

2010-10-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

“It has been standard teaching in historic Christology that the Logos, the Son, existed before the incarnation.”1

The claim by Trinitarians that Jesus existed as “the Son…before the incarnation”, one of the three “Persons” that make up the one triune God, is hard pressed in view of the biblical evidence. The simple fact is that nowhere do we find this teaching in the Bible. The only reference to “the Son” is in connection with Jesus of Nazareth who, from his birth some 2 000 years ago, is said to be “the unique Son [monogenes huios]” and last spokesman for the one God of Israel, YHWH. When we carefully analyze the NT references to Jesus as “the Son”, we will see how this “historic Christology” is simply not true!

Where is “God the Son”?
Hebrews 1 says that “in many places and in various ways” in ancient times, God spoke to the fathers by His human prophets. Another way was through spiritual figures called “angels” [Gk. angelos]. And although these spiritual figures were called “sons of God” [Gen. 6.4; Job 1.6; Ps 29.1] and had individual names [Gabriel, Michael, see Dan 9.21; 10.13]”2, they were never referred to as God’s “unique Son”. These were not “begotten” [gennao] by God [Heb 1.5; cp. Ps 2.7 below].

God goes on to say that the reason for the creation of His angels was so that they could function as “public servants/ministers” [leitourgos, Heb 1.7]. This means that angels were created to serve us, the public, by ministering to our needs. So if the Son before his incarnation was an angel, this would not fit in with his Trinitarian title “very God of very God, begotten, not made…the Son eternal”3. (NOTE: Heb 8.2 says that Jesus is the present heavenly High Priest who ministers "in the holy places-sanctuary, in the true tent-Tabernacle that the Lord [God] has set up, not man". Referring to the Son's new ministerial role in the presence of his God and Father's throne. Remembering that angels cannot be said to serve as High Priests since they are chosen from "among humans...For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer." Heb 5.1; 8.3)

In their attempt to force the existence of an eternal Son into the Hebrew Scriptures, Trinitarians argue that Jesus was the “angel of the LORD (YHWH)” [Ex 3], perhaps without even realizing that this is the same claim espoused by various other groups like the JWs. The mind boggles at this claim since Hebrews 1 is all about how “the unique Son of God” has been made so much greater than even God’s many angels, who were created to minister to humans like him. The text goes on to explain how God never said to any of them what He says about His “unique Son”, Jesus of Nazareth:

“You are my son, this day have I fathered you [gennao].” Heb 1.5; Cp. Ps 2.7

The Complete Word Study Dictionary remarks that the usage of the word gennao [procreated/begotten] in reference to the creation of “the Son” marks the “relationship between God and the Messiah, called His Son. The designation of this relationship by words with a temporal notion [i.e. “this day…”] has troubled theologians, who have proffered various explanations.” One of these was the extra-biblical meaning that was given hundreds of years later by the noted “Church Father” Origen when he used this verse to refer “to the Son's relationship within the Trinity…Because His generation is as eternal and everlasting as the brilliancy which is produced from the sun. For it is not by receiving the breath of life that He is made a Son, by any outward act, but by His own nature.”4

At this point, let’s ask a few questions regarding this topic:

• How could Jesus, said to be “in very nature God” [as it is mistranslated in the NIV/TNIV, see Phil 2.6] function as a “public servant”? Isn’t this contrary to his title as “very God of very God”?

• Shouldn’t we be talking about a tripartite [God-angel-man] Son as opposed to a double nature Son [God-man]?

The origin/creation of “the Son”
The next problem for this doctrine is the fact that the NT tells us that “the unique Son” is said to have an “origin” [genesis, Mat 1.1, 18] that occurred when he was caused to come into existence [gennao-ginomai, Luke 1.35; Rom 1.3] in the womb of a young Jewish virgin called Mary.

It is self-evident that this account is often neglected or just plain ignored, since both virgin accounts in Matthew and Luke explain in detail the means by which this miraculous and long-awaited event took place. For example, note the technical nature of the words used by the writers to describe the origin/creation of the unique Son of God:

“This is an account of the origin [genesis] of Jesus the Messiah…The origin [genesis] of Jesus the Messiah was like this. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit…the angel [Gabriel] said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son…He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High…The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. For this reason the child will be the Son of God…All this took place to fulfill what the Lord [God] had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth [tikto] to a son…’” Mat 1.1, 18; Luke 1.31, 35; Mat 1.22-23

(Compare the above with Gal 4.4; Rom 1.3 [Phil 2.7] and “note the deliberate and unusual use of ginomai to express the beginning of existence, not just birth.”5)

According to the IVP Bible Background Commentary, Luke 1.31 “follows the typical Old Testament structure for a divine birth announcement”6. The story echoes the miraculous accounts of the patriarch Isaac, whose parents were too old to conceive [Gen 21], and Samson, whose story closely parallels that of Jesus [Judg. 13]:

“The point of [Luke] 1:36–37 is that God, who acted for Elizabeth as he did for Sarah, could still do anything (Gen 18:12–15).”7

What many fail to see when it comes to the belief in “the Son…before the incarnation”, are the clear Gnostic-pagan overtones that this introduces to the biblical text. As many scholars note, “what we find in Matthew and Luke is not the story of some sort of sacred marriage (hieros gamos) or a divine being [“the Son”] descending to earth…in the guise of a man…but rather the story of a miraculous conception without aid of any man, divine or otherwise…As such this story is without precedent either in Jewish or pagan literature, even including the OT (Machen).”8

(This biblical fact regarding Jesus’ uniqueness [monogenes] also speaks against “the straw man argument” used against those who do not believe in this doctrine, accusing their opponents of making the Son a “mere man”.9)

Note the technical words used to describe “the holy child to be born”. The first is the word tikto, variously translated “to bring forth, give birth”. This word is related to another that is often used in reference to the Son, prototokos [“firstborn”] as well as gennao [“cause to exist”] and used synonymously with ginomai [“come into existence”]. The latter introduces us to dio kai in Luke 1.35, describes the cause and effect of the Son miraculously created by God through His spirit [“for this reason precisely”]. This explains why throughout the rest of the NT Jesus is identified by both spiritual beings [the Devil, Mat 4.1,3] and humans [the Baptist; Nathaniel, John 1.34; 49] as the unique Son of God.

Similarly to the Word Study Dictionary comments above regarding the word gennao, Matthew’s use of words “with a temporal notion” [i.e. genesis] has long “troubled theologians”. Some early scribes who were uncomfortable with “genesis” (“engendering”) changed it to “gennesis” (“birth”). Textual critic Bart Ehrman explains why.

“Both genesis and gennesis can mean ‘birth’, so that either one could be appropriate in the context. But unlike the corrupted reading, genesis can also mean ‘creation’, ‘beginning’ and ‘origination’. When one now asks why scribes might take umbrage at Matthew’s description of the genesis of Jesus Christ, the answer immediately suggests itself: the original text could well be taken to imply that this is the moment in which Jesus Christ comes into [existence]. In point of fact, there is nothing in Matthew’s narrative, either here or elsewhere throughout the Gospel, to suggest that he knew or subscribed to the notion that Christ had existed prior to his birth.”10

So, according to the virgin birth narrative, our only source describing the precise point at which the Son began to exist, there is no evidence that “the Son…existed before the incarnation”—“eternally generated…begotten of the Father before all aeons”11—only found in the later Catholic/Protestant creeds.

• If Jesus of Nazareth is the only figure given the exclusive title “the unique Son”, why is he never ascribed the added appellative “God”, “Lord our God” or “Almighty God”?

• Why is this figure given no recognition at all in the OT, let alone a voice?

Does “the Son” know “all things”?
The way early Trinitarians tried to get around the clear biblical fact that the Son is said to lack knowledge of “all things” [ta panta] is by creating the doctrine of double nature at the council of Chalcedon in 451AD. The ESV Study Bible note on Mat 24.36 is particularly enlightening, since it seeks, but fails, to teach what frankly cannot be taught. Here I quote it in full:

“In his incarnate life, Jesus learned things as other human beings learn them (cf. Luke 2:52; Heb. 5:8). On the other hand, Jesus was also fully God, and, as God, he had infinite knowledge (cf. John 2:25; 16:30; 21:17). Here he is apparently speaking in terms of his human nature. This is similar to other statements about Jesus which could be true of his human nature only, and not of his divine nature (he grew and became strong, Luke 2:40; increased in stature, Luke 2:52; was about 30 years old, Luke 3:23; was weary, John 4:6; was thirsty, John 19:28; was hungry, Matt. 4:2; was crucified, 1 Cor. 2:8).

Taking account of these verses, together with many verses that affirm Christ's deity, the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451 affirmed that Christ was ‘perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man.’ Yet it also affirmed that Jesus was ‘one Person and one Subsistence.’ With regard to the properties of his human nature and his divine nature, the Chalcedonian Creed affirmed that Christ was to be ‘acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved.’ That meant the properties of deity and the properties of humanity were both preserved. How Jesus could have limited knowledge and yet know all things is difficult, and much remains a mystery, for nobody else has ever been both God and man. One possibility is that Jesus regularly lived on the basis of his human knowledge but could at any time call to mind anything from his infinite knowledge.”

But a big monkey wrench is thrown in the works once we analyze the text. For example Mat 24.36 says “of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone”. In other words, it cannot be argued from the doctrine of double nature that in this instance Jesus is “speaking in terms of his man/human nature” since neither the “man” or “human nature” are in view here [equated with “Jesus Christ, son of man”], only the “God/divine nature” [“the Son”].

Just like the word “genesis” in Mat 1.1, 18, the problem [called a “mystery” by the ESV note above] this posed for the Chalcedon component of the doctrine of the Trinity is reflected in the textual history of Mat 24.36. According to textual critics, the “longer reading” in Matthew [“nor the Son”] appears only in “some important witnesses, including early Alexandrian and Western mss.”12 Bruce Metzger, in his Textual Commentary on the NT, says that a shorter reading without “nor the Son…appears in the majority of the witnesses of Matthew, including the later Byzantine text [due to the] doctrinal difficulty” the longer phrase exposed. (The NET Bible refers to it as an “intentional change on the part of the author [given its] theologically significant issue”.) But the majority of NT scholars today support “the originality of the [longer] phrase” [Metzger again] not only due to the appearance of it in the Markan text [Mar 13.32, which is uncontested] but simply on contextual consistency alone.

“That the phrase in Matthew was seen as problematic by Christian scribes is demonstrated with particular clarity by the history of codex Sinaiticus. The original hand of the manuscript included the phrase, a corrector erased it, and a second corrector restored it. The reason scribes in general found the phrase problematic should be self-evident: it suggests that the Son of God is not all-knowing...”13

(Similarly, Jesus doesn’t know the name of the “unclean spirit” [“demon”, Legion] who identifies him as “Jesus, the Son of the Most High God” [Mar 5.7; Luke 8.28]. NOTE: later on Jesus does not know who touches him [Mar 5.30; Luke 8.45]. For other examples where ‘Jesus only’ is in view see Mar 9.16; John 11.34; 21.17.)

The subordination of “God the Son”
The subject of subordination when it comes to “God the Son”, who is said to be “coeternal/uncreated/infinite”14 with the other “Persons” of the Godhead, is also made difficult by 1Cor 15.24-28.

In Patrick Navas’ detailed study of 1Cor 15.28, he quotes many evangelical scholars who admit that “some Nicene expositors, in their anxiety to defend the hardly yet established doctrine of the Trinity, resorted to the desperate expedient of interpreting ‘the Son’ as the Church, His body, as in 12:12, where the word Christ means the Church.”15 Yet others try to gloss over the text by arguing that the occurrence of the word “God” on its own [“God may be all in all”, v.28] somehow refers to the “triune God”. But “as in Old Testament texts, Paul states here that the Son will reign over all else as God’s viceroy but remain subordinate in role to the Father (Ps 110:1; Is 9:6–7; Dan 7:14)…God’s being ‘all in all’… meant merely that God is creator and ruler of all (Ecclus 43:27).”16 The writer here identifies the ‘creator God’ as “the Father”.

In yet another detailed work, scholar M.J. Harris states that it becomes clear “that the NT writers have ho pater [the Father] in mind unless of course the context makes this sense of (ho) theos impossible…the differentiation made between GOD (o theos) as the one who speaks…and SON (uios) as His final means of speaking shows that in the author's mind it was not the Triune God of Christian theology who spoke to the forefathers by the prophets…for the author of Hebrews [1.1]—as for all NT writers—one may suggest ‘the God of our Fathers’, YAHWEH, was no other than 'the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ'. (cf. Acts 2:30; 2:33; 3:13, 18, 3:25, 26; 5:30). Such a conclusion is entirely consistent with the regular NT usage [1300 times] of o theos. It would be inappropriate for Elohim or YHVH ever to refer to the Trinity in the OT when in the NT theos regularly refers to the Father alone and apparently never to the Trinity.”17

Jesus, the only figure described as “the Son”, attests that he could “do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” [John 5.19]. The Son did not stop being subordinate even after his resurrection from the dead [Acts 1.7]! This is a difficult proposition for the Nicene-Chalcedonian theology which dictates that the "eternal Son" “returned” to his formerly heavenly glory as pre-incarnate Son. (Note: “John 13:3, 16:28 and 20:17 have been mistranslated in the NIV to give the impression that Jesus was "going back" to his Father [see KJV, RSV].”18 The original koine Greek simply says that he was “going” or “ascending” to his Father.)

While it may be easy to pick apart the doctrine of the Trinity as a whole [3=1?], it further deteriorates under the light of scrutiny when we expose its philosophical technicalities and permutations. And once confronted with the simple facts and figures of scripture its supporters try to slip their way out by hanging doctrine upon doctrine [“hypostatic union, kenosis” etc]. The simple fact is that Jesus’ human-only title of “the Son” [in connection with “the son of man/the Christ/Messiah”, Mar 14.61-62; Mat 26.63-64; Luke 22.67-70], disproves the fictitious nature of “the Son [who] existed before the incarnation”.

“Does it matter whether Jesus believed himself to be ‘the incarnate Son of God’?...Others might answer in the negative: it does not matter. For myself it does. It matters what Jesus thought about himself. For if we can uncover something at least of that self-understanding, and if it differs markedly from subsequent Christian doctrine of Christ, then we have discovered a serious self-contradiction at the heart of the Christian doctrine of incarnation itself.”19

Footnotes:

1.Bernard L. Ramm, An Evangelical Christology: Ecumenic and Historic, 1983, reprinted by Regent College Publishing, 1993, p. 47.

2. Angelology: JewishEncyclopedia.com.

3. Nicene-Athanasian creeds.

4. Origin De Principiis 1.4.

5. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, p 147. Ed. Emphasis added.

6. Keener, Craig S.: The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Intervarsity, 1993, S. Lk 1:31

7. Ibid. S. Lk 1:36.

8. Green, Joel B.; McKnight, Scot; Marshall, I. Howard: Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. Intervarsity, 1992, S. 70.

9. See further One God & One Lord, Graeser, Lynn, Shoenheit, 2003.

10. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, p 75-76, 1993.

11. Nicene Creed, 325AD.

12. NET Bible online, Mat 24.36, f. 53.

13. Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption, pgs. 91-92, 1993.

14. Athanasian Creed, 6th century AD.

15. Quoting Gordon Clark in Divine Truth or Human Tradition, p 187.

16. Keener, Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. S. 1 Co 15:27

17. M.J. Harris, Jesus as God, The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus, pp. 42, 47.

18. http://www.focusonthekingdom.org/articles/john3.htm

19. J.D.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, forward to 2nd edition, xiii, 1996.

Sebastián Castellion on Servetus killing

2010-09-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

To kill a man is not to protect a doctrine, but it is to kill a man. When the Genevans killed Servetus, they did not defend a doctrine, they killed a man. To protect a doctrine is not the magistrate's affair (what has the sword to do with doctrine?) but the teacher's. But it is the magistrate's affair to protect the teacher, as it is to protect the farmer and the smith, and the physician and others against injury. Thus if Servetus had wished to kill Calvin, the magistrate would properly have defended Calvin. But when Servetus fought with reasons and writings, he should have been repulsed by reasons and writings. To seek truth and to utter what one believes to be true can never be a crime. No one must be forced to accept a conviction. Conviction is free...

Paul calls sound doctrine that which renders men sound, i.e., endowed with charity, unfeigned faith and a good conscience; but unsound, that which renders them meddlesome, quarrelsome, insolent, ungodly, unholy, profane, murderers of fathers, etc. (1 Tim. 1:5,9), and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. But they observe the law, for they take for sound those who agree with them about Baptism, about the Supper, about Predestination, etc. Such men, though they be covetous, envious, slanderers, hypocrites, liars, buffoons, usurers, and whatever else opposed to sound doctrine, are easily endured, nor is anyone killed for men's vices, unless one has committed murder or theft or some atrocious crime of this sort, or has displeased the preachers, for this with them is just like a sin against the Holy Spirit, as is now said in a proverb everywhere common...

...But if one disagrees with them about Baptism, or the Supper, Justification, faith, etc., he is a Heretic, he is a Devil, he must be opposed by all men on land and sea, as an eternal enemy of the Church, and a wicked destroyer of sound doctrine, even though his life be otherwise blameless, yea gentle, patient, kind, merciful, generous, and indeed religious and god-fearing, so that in his conduct neither friends nor enemies have anything to complain of. All these virtues and this innocence of life (which Paul did not think it unseemly to approve in himself) cannot with them protect a man from being regarded as wicked and blasphemous, if he disagrees with them in any point of religion.

Calvin: Anti-Trinitarian? by Stanford Rives

2010-08-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

In the Institutes, after the 1553 execution of Servetus, Calvin tried to weave a version of Christology that appeared Trinitarian. He saw Christ as subordinate to the Father only in His humanity, etc. However, the different views of Calvin were in numerous commentaries.

For example, in Calvin's Commentary on Zechariah, it appears he clearly holds the identical view of Servetus for which he had Servetus executed in 1553. (It is unclear when this commentary was written.) Servetus believed Jesus was the Eternal Word (resident in Jesus), but not the Eternal Son for to make this claim would make it appear there are two Gods from eternity. This precise argument is accepted in Calvin's Commentary on Zechariah (1849) at 75:

“Whenever then Christ announces his own divinity, he takes the name Jehovah; but he also shows, that there is something peculiar and distinct belonging to him as the messenger of the Father. For this reason, and in this respect, he is inferior to the Father; that is, because he is sent as a messenger, and executes what has been entrusted to him. These things do not militate the one against the other, as many unlearned and turbulent men think, who entangle themselves in many vain imaginations, or rather in mere ravings, and say, “How can it be, that there is one eternal God, and yet that Christ, who is distinct from the Father, and is called his angel, is a true God?” So they imagine that the origin of divinity is God the Father, as though the one true God had begotten, and thus produced another God from himself, as by propagation. But these are diabolical figments, by which the unity of the Divine essence is destroyed. Let us then bear in mind what the Prophet teaches here clearly and plainly,—that Christ is Jehovah, the only true God, and yet that he is sent by God as a Mediator.”

In this quote, Calvin clearly says Jesus was God, just as Servetus did (in an indwelled sense), and that Jesus was sent by the Father, just as Servetus said, but Calvin says, just as Servetus said, is it is improper to say Jesus was “begotten” (as Son) in his divine essence because that would constitute “two” Gods. This was exactly Servetus's argument against believing in an “eternal Son of God”, for which later Calvin had Servetus killed.

Calvin says a similar thing in the Institutes that refutes Jesus could be the eternal Son of God begotten by God (and thereby imparted divinity) for this would lead to the notion that they were separate beings from one another and both God:

“Whoever asserts that the Son owes his essence to the Father, denies him to be self-existent…If we admit the whole essence to be solely in the Father, either it will be divisible, or it will be taken away from the Son; and so, being despoiled of his essence, he will be only a titular God. The divine essence, according to these triflers, belongs solely to the Father, inasmuch as he alone possesses it, and is the author of the essence of the Son. Thus the Divinity of the Son will be a kind of emanation from the essence of God, or a derivation of a part from the whole…Although we confess, in point of order and degree, that the Father is the Fountain of the Deity, yet we pronounce it a detestable figment that the essence belongs exclusively to the Father, as though he were the author of the Deity of the Son; because, on this supposition, either the essence would be divided, or Christ would be only a titular and imaginary God. If they admit that the Son Ls God, but inferior to the Father, then in him the essence must be begotten and created, which in the Father is unbegotten and uncreated.” John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 1. chap. 13. 23, 24. (Quoted in Unitarian Principles Confirmed by Trinitarian Testimonies at 266)

Edward Wightman: Last English Martyr

2010-07-15T02:30:00.000-07:00

“If, then, dead books may be committed to flames, how much more live books, that is to say, men?”[1]

This is the story of Edward Wightman[2], a name unknown to modern bible students, yet known to history as the last person in England to be burned at the stake for heresy[3]. Like most cases of this kind, it is a story dominated by the religious and political climate of its time, an environment firmly controlled by men who held sway over all matters pertaining to the Christian faith. Most sources are biased in their portrait of the ‘heretic’ as some kind of demon-possessed, deranged mind. Yet Wightman was a well-respected business man and community leader, whose zeal for his faith and freedom of expression ultimately took him to the attention of the King of England, James I. His own religious zeal as the “Defender of the Faith”, led him to sign the last known execution for burning via the stake.

Wightman’s parents hailed from Burton-upon-Trent, near Staffordshire. He was born there in 1566 and like most residents was baptized in traditional orthodox fashion[4]. He attended Burton grammar school and entered the clothiers business of his maternal family[5]. In 1593 he married Frances Darbye[6].

He became involved with the Puritans and in 1596 was chosen as one of the leaders assigned to the investigation of demonic possession by 13 year old Thomas Darling[7]. This suggests that by the mid-1590s Wightman was an important and well-respected public figure, taking part in the newly formed movement that began to hold sway over Burton’s society and politics. His involvement in the Darling case proved a turning point in his life, making him entirely amenable to the possibility of unmediated spiritual intervention. Darling claimed not just to be possessed by the devil, but engaged in a series of ‘spiritual wars’ in which both demonic and angelic voices were said to emanate from him[8]. This was something that, as we shall see, affected the way Wightman later perceived traditional orthodoxy.

His initial descent into heresy involved his understanding of the mortality of the soul, a view that progressively became more radicalized and unorthodox[9]. Between 1603/4 and 1610/11, his behavior grew increasingly bolder and louder. According to court records, he was a prolific writer, although none of his writings is yet to be found[10]. He came to the attention of the local church authorities and a warrant for his arrest was issued. The order instructed the constables of Burton to immediately bring him before Bishop Richard Neil for interrogation[11].

He set about in putting together a compendium of his theology for his upcoming hearing and defense. Perhaps thinking that he would at least be allowed time to plead his case, he delivered copies of it to members of the clergy in an effort to shore up support. But then, perhaps as a last resort, he delivered a copy to King James I[12], a move that would ultimately seal his fate.

James I came to the English throne in 1603, “thinking himself a competent judge of religious questions and disposed to take seriously his title of ‘Defender of the Faith’”[13]. Since 1607 he had been engaged in a battle of books with Roman Catholic apologists over the Oath of Allegiance, both personally and by encouraging others to write in his defence. “One of the central planks of the king’s case was the preservation of his catholic orthodoxy through his adherence to the three great creeds of the church, the Apostles’, the Nicene and the Athanasian.”[14]

Wightman was fully aware of the King’s firm Catholic stance, yet he set about to willfully combat both his State and Church. Of the handful of fragments of his defense treatise that have survived, he refers to the doctrine and “heresies of the Nicolaitanes[15]…most of all hated and abhorred of God himself…the common received faith contained in those 3 inventions of man, commonly called the Three Creeds…the [Apostles’], Nicene and Athanasius Creed, which faith within these 1600 years past hath prevailed in the world.”[16]

Wightman had by now totally isolated himself from all other groups, calling into question all aspects of Christian truth, arguing “that the baptizing of Infants is an abominable custom…the practice of the Sacraments as they are now used in the Church of England are according to Christ his Institution… [and affirming that] only the sacrament of baptism [is] to be administered in water to converts of sufficient age of understanding converted from infidelity to the faith”[17].

But what finally spelled his end was his grievous departure from the Trinity and the nature of God. It was presumably on these points that he so vehemently rejected the formulae of the Nicene Creed of 325 and the subsequent ‘Athanasius’ Creed of 381[18]. He claimed that the doctrine was a total fabrication stating that Christ was only a man “and a mere Creature and not both God and man in one person… [Although this did not mean that Christ was a man like all others but] only a perfect man without sin.”[19] King James was by now more set than ever in securing the execution of Wightman, since in the intervening years he had launched a dual campaign against heresy at home and abroad[20].

After months of being subjected to a series of conferences with “learned divines”, Wightman was finally brought before Bishop Neil for the last time. According to Wightman, the Bishop told him “that unless I did recant my opinions he would burn me at a stake in Burton before Allholland day next.”[21] The final verdict and list of charges included “the wicked heresies of Ebion, Cerinthus, Valentinian, Arius, Macedonius, Simon Magus, Manichees, Phontinus, and of the Anabaptists and other arch heretics, and moreover, of other cursed opinions belched by the instinct of Satan”.

He was ordered to be placed “in some public and open place below the city aforesaid [and] before the people burned in the detestation of the said crime and for manifest example of other Christians that they may not fall into the same crime…”[22]

When he was finally brought to the stake his courage had all but left him. As the fires were lit he is said to have quickly cried out to recant, although by then he had been “well scorched”. But this would not last, since 2 or 3 weeks later he was again brought before the courts and, no longer fearing the searing flames, refused and “blasphemed more audaciously than before”[23]. The King quickly ordered his final execution, and on April 11, 1612, he was once more led to the stake.

“[Wightman] was carried again to the stake where feeling the heat of the fire again would have recanted, but for all his crying the sheriff told him he should cost him no more and commanded faggots to be set to him whence roaring, he was burned to ashes.”[24]

In the months that followed his execution, a number of religious radicals nearly met the same fate[25], even though the downfall of the bishops and abolition of the High Commission in 1640–2 did not bring about any changes to the constitution[26]. In May 2, 1648, a new ‘Ordinance for the Punishment of Blasphemies and Heresies’ was created[27]. Opposition from Independents and sectaries, however, meant that the ordinance was never enforced[28]. And only with the passage of another act in 1677 [“forbidding the burning of heretics” [29]], was Wightman’s position in history ‘as the last person in England to be burned at the stake for heresy’, secured [30]. Mention of his case came almost 100 years later by a handful of writers in the wake of the 1689 Toleration Act[31]. The only immediate result was that of a minority opposition to his execution, a shift in public opinion which may have led to a relative decline in the practice[32].

Meanwhile, King James I seemed to have lost faith in this method of discouraging heresy[33] and seeing that heresy still survived, “publicly preferred that heretics hereafter, though condemned, should silently and privately waste themselves away in the prison rather than to grace them, and amuse others, with the solemnity of a public execution”[34].

Footnotes
________________________________________
[1] ‘Matthieu Ory, Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity for the Realm of France, Paris, 1544’. Lawrence Goldstone, Nancy Goldstone, Out of the Flames, Broadway, 2003.
[2] “In the King’s letter, under the privy seal, as well as in the warrant for his execution, he is called ‘Edward Wightman, of the parish of Burton-upon-Trent, in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield’.” Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, E.T. Whitfield, 1850, p 567-568.
[3] Narrowly edging out another accused anti-Trinitarian and heretic, Bartholomew Legate, burned in London three weeks earlier.
[4] “…in the parish church of Burbage, in south-west Leicestershire.” Leicestershire Record Office, Bodleian Library, ms Ashmole 1521 B, 7, 16–17; The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004.
[5] Eventually, he served an apprenticeship as a woolen draper in the town of Shrewsbury. A. Macdonald, A Short History of Repton, London, 1929, p 86, 91, 244.
[6] Staffordshire Record Office, marriage recorded as Sept. 11, 1593.
[7] D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits, London, 1981, p 56; J. Bruce (ed.), Diary of John Manningham, Camden Society, 1st series, 99, 1868, p 169.
[8] “As I know at this present for a certainty, that I have the spirit of God within me: so do I with the like certainty believe, that in my dialogues with Satan, when I [quoted] sundry places of scripture, to withstand the temptations he assaulted me with: I had the spirit of God in me, and by that spirit resisted Satan at those times, by [quoting] the scriptures to confound him.” S. Harsnett, A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practices of John Darrel, London, 1599, p 290.
[9] In one of his early public messages he claimed that “the soul of man dies with the body and participates not either of the joys of Heaven or the pains of Hell, until the general Day of Judgment, but rested with the body until then” M. W. Greenslade, ‘The 1607 Return of Staffordshire Catholics’, Staffordshire Catholic History, 4, 1963–4, p 6–32; Clarke, Lives of Two and Twenty English Divines, p 147.
[10] Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, E. T. Whitfield, 1850, p 567-568.
[11] Durham Dean and Chapter Library, MS Hunter 44/17, fo. 216r.
[12] Collections for a History of Staffordshire, Staffordshire Record Society, 1982, p. 176.
[13] Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism, Harvard, 1945, p 177.
[14] F. Shriver, ‘Orthodoxy and Diplomacy: James I and the Vorstius Affair’, ante, lxxxv, 1970, p 453–4; James VI and I, The Workes of the Most High and Mightie Prince, Iames by the Grace of God, King of Great Britaine, London, 1616, p 302.
[15] The Nicolaitans are mentioned in Rev 2:6, 15 as a heretical group who apparently taught that Christians could eat meat offered to idols and practice sexual immorality, and of whom the churches at Ephesus and Pergamum are warned. The Church Fathers (notably Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Eusebius) added little to this understanding of the group, beyond seeing the Nicolaitans as libertines or antinomians.
[16] Bodleian Library, ms Ashmole, A True Relation of the Commissions and Warrants for the Condemnation and Burning of Bartholomew Legate and Thomas Withman, 1521 B, 7, 1a–1b, London, 1651, p 8.
[17] Bodleian Library, ms Ashmole, A True Relation of the Commissions and Warrants for the Condemnation and Burning of Bartholomew Legate and Thomas Withman, London, 1651, p 8-9, 23.
[18] Both of the Creeds had been structured primarily as responses to Arian denials of the Trinity. And like the Arians of the 4th century, Wightman flatly denied them.
[19] All quotes, Bodleian Library, ms Ashmole, A True Relation of the Commissions, p 5.
[20] Wightman’s trial was played out against the backdrop of the so-called “Vorstius Affair”, involving the intense opposition on the King’s part to block the appointment of the German academic Conrad Vorstius to the University of Leiden. Vorstius was being accused of atheism, Arianism and heretical opinions about the Holy Spirit. James Doelman, King James I and the Religious Culture of England, DS Brewer, 2000; Ralph Anthony Houlbrooke, James VI and I: Ideas, Authority, and Government, Ashgate, 2006.
[21] Lincolnshire Archives Office, D & C, Ciij/13/1/2/2, fo. 1r.
[22] All quotes, Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, E. T. Whitfield, 1850, p 567-568.
[23] All quotes, ibid.
[24] All quotes, George Birkhead, Michael C. Questier, Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p 153.
[25] Champlin Burrage, The Early Dissenters in the Light of Recent Research (1550-1641), vol. I, p 169-171.
[26] “The act of the Long Parliament which abolished the Court of High Commission used such very general words that, if it did not abolish the old ecclesiastical courts, it practically deprived them of their power. At the Restoration, however, by statue passed in 1661 (13 Car II, c. 12) it was ‘explained’ that this was not the desired result; the Court of High Commission was not to be re-established, but the old ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts was to be exercised as of old.” F.W. Maitland, H.A.L. Fisher, The Constitutional History of England: A Course of Lectures, Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2001, p 522.
[27] “…principally those of the triune God, the resurrection, the last judgment, and that the Bible is the Word of God…relapse is to be punished as felony with death without benefit of clergy.” Felix Makower, The Constitutional History and Constitution of the Church of England, Ayer, 1972, p 193.
[28] C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, 3 vols., London, 1911, p 1133–6; H. J. McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England, Oxford, 1951, p 163–217.
[29] Burning at the stake remained on the statute book in England until 1790, as the punishment for a woman who murdered her husband. A. Aspinall, A. Smith, English Historical Documents 1783-1832, Routledge, 1996, p 339f.; F. E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550-1700, Cornell, 1994.
[30] M. Fisher, The Constitutional History of England, p 522.
[31] G. Croese, The General History of the Quakers, London, 1696, 2, 193; E. S. De Beer, The Correspondence of John Locke, 8 vols., Oxford, 1976–89, 6, nos. 2621, 2631, 2653; Truth brought to Light: Or, the History of the First 14 Years of King James, London, 1692.
[32] The case “much startled the common people”. Thomas Fuller, J.S. Brewer, The Church History of Britain: From the Birth of Jesus Christ until the Year 1648, University press, 1845, p 506-508.
[33] His actions owed more to a thaw in his private attitude to Roman Catholics than to any feelings about the impropriety or inadvisability of burning heretics. A. J. Loomie, ‘Bacon and Gondomar: An Unknown Link in 1618’, in A. J. Loomie (ed.), Spain and the Early Stuarts 1585–1655, Aldershot, 1996, ch. 10.
[34] Ibid.

Works Cited:
Aspinall, Anthony Smith, ‘Debate in the House of Commons on the Bill for altering the sentence of burning women’, English Historical Documents 1783-1832, Routledge, 1996.

Bodleian Library, ms Ashmole, A True Relation of the Commissions and Warrants for the Condemnation and Burning of Bartholomew Legate and Thomas Withman, London, 1651.

D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits, London, 1981.

E. A. Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism, Harvard University Press, 1945.

Felix Makower, The Constitutional History and Constitution of the Church of England, Ayer, 1972.

F. W. Maitland, H. A. L. Fisher, The Constitutional History of England: A Course of Lectures, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2001.

G. Birkhead, M. C. Questier, Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

J. Loomie, ‘Bacon and Gondomar: An Unknown Link in 1618’, in A. J. Loomie (ed.), Spain and the Early Stuarts 1585–1655, Aldershot, 1996.

Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone, Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World, Broadway, 2003.

M. W. Greenslade, ‘The 1607 Return of Staffordshire Catholics’, Staffordshire Catholic History, iv, 1963–4.

A. Macdonald, A Short History of Repton, London, 1929.

Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, E. T. Whitfield, 1850.

S. Harsnett, A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practices of John Darrel, London, 1599.

Staffordshire Record Society, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 1982.

T. Fuller, John S. Brewer, The Church History of Britain: From the Birth of Jesus Christ until the Year 1648, University press, 1845.

Calvin on Psalm 110.1

2010-06-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

“Might not God have raised up someone of human race as Redeemer to be David’s Lord and Son at the same time? For it is not God’s most essential name that is used, but only Adonai (Lord), which in fact is often applied to men. I reply that Christ takes it for granted that He who is taken out of the number of men and elevated to the extent of headship over all in the Church is no more man, but endowed as well with the Majesty of God.

The eternal God who takes an oath to Himself and affirms that in His presence every knee shall bow swears also that He will not give His glory to another (Isa. 45.23 and 42.8). On Paul’s testimony, when Christ ascended into His Kingdom there was given Him a name which is above every name, that before Him every knew should bow (Rom 14.11; Phil 2.9). And although Paul never said it, the fact is that Christ took rank above David and all other kings, for he also excels the angels: and this could hardly be for a mortal man unless in His flesh God were also manifest. I admit that His divine essence is not expressed exactly and in so many words, but we can readily infer that He is God, who is placed above all creation.” Calvin’s NT Commentaries: A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark & Luke and James & Jude, v. 3, p 43, John Calvin, David W. Torrance, A. W. Morrison.

19th Atlanta Theological Conference

2010-04-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

April 25-28, 2010

Sunday, April 25
4:00 Registration
5:30 Evening meal
7:15 Welcome
7:30 Dan Gill: “A First-Century Gospel – in the 21st Century”

Monday, April 26
8:30 Breakfast and Late Registration
9:15 Joe Martin: “They’ve Gone Too Far: Being Heterodox in a Homodox Ghetto”
10:30 Kent Ross: “Recovering a Theological World in Disarray”
11:30 Lunch and free time
1:30 Robin Todd: “From Being Scattered to Being One”
2:30 Break
3:00 Faith stories
4:00 Free time
5:30 Evening meal
7:00 Gregg Prettyman: “The Kingdom Parables of Jesus”

Tuesday, April 27
8:30 Breakfast
9:15 Faith stories
10:30 Dustin Smith: “The Gospel of the Kingdom and the People of God”
11:30 Lunch and free time
1:30 Joel Hemphill
2:30 Break
3:00 Faith stories
4:00 Free time
5:30 Evening meal
7:00 Dwight Anderson: “Keeping the Human Mind in Bondage”

Wednesday, April 28
8:30 Breakfast
9:15 Kermit Zarley
10:30 Anthony Buzzard: “Helping the World Count to One and Believe the Gospel of the KG”
12:00 Lunch

God is a Person

2010-04-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

Every so often I come upon Christian networks [blogs] or listen to commentaries or debates on whether or not the God of the Bible [aka. YHWH of the OT] is a “Person” or a “spiritual being” — as if there is any real difference in the simple meaning of the word “person” [one individual being, in other words, a person(1)] as it is used throughout the scriptures in relation to YHWH God.

This whole debate is a product of the deeply ingrained and grammatically incomprehensible Trinitarian doctrine, which some of its most famous exponents, such as the German theological Karl Rahner in his The Trinity [1970, pp 113-14], teach as “the one God [of the Jewish-Christian Shema, Deu 6.4; Mar 12.29] subsisting [existing] as three distinct persons [hypostasis]…the Father, the Son, the Spirit…hence these ‘three’ are not the same ‘one’”. This doctrine is a product of the ancient Catholic creedal statements composed during the 4th-6th centuries first under the pagan, turned Christian sympathizer, Roman Emperor Constantine.

Apart from the fact that such Trinitarian statements have obvious theological holes, I’d like to argue from scripture [and not from Catholic creeds] why YHWH, the God and Father of our lord Messiah Jesus, is not a “What” [an essence, ousia] but one “Who”!

Similar to His creatures, YHWH is described in the Bible as having a “soul” [Lev 26.11, 30; Zech 11.8; Isa 1.14; Jer 32.41] and a “spirit” [Gen 6.3; Isa 42:1; Neh 9.30]. The word often translated “soul” comes from the Hebrew nephesh, a “feminine noun [that] is used 753 times in the Old Testament and has a broad range of meanings. Most of its uses fall into these categories:

• breath, literally or figuratively (Jer 15:9);
• the inner being with its thoughts and emotions (Jdg 10:16; Pro 14:10; Eze 25:6);
• and by extension, the whole person (Gen 12:5; Lev 4:2; Eze 18:4).”

Now the word translated “spirit” is likewise a “feminine noun [which also signifies breath and wind]. The word is used to refer to the "Spirit of God" or "the LORD"…properly referred to as the Holy Spirit (Psa 51:11; 106:33; Isa 63:10-11).”[2] The point is that these words are expressive of the whole person of God [cp. Deu 26.16; Joshua 10.39].

When scripture describes YHWH in such terms it should communicate to the reader that we are dealing with one single personal being, and not some non-personal “spiritual nature” — certainly not one “what” or one “essence.”

It is important to define God as a “Person.” We must not represent the God of the Bible as one What. The developed doctrine of the Trinity led to non-biblical, philosophical language of nature, being, substance and redefinition of “persons” as found in the creeds.

The Holy Spirit is the spirit of the particular individual whose name is YHWH. It is not some “third…distinct person existing within the One Godhead” composed of “the Father and the Son” — thus making up “the one [triune] God”.

Scripture tells us that although YHWH is described as a “spiritual being”, He is also said to have this spirit within Him. This concept may be confusing for some since Jesus tells us that “God is spirit” [John 4.24]. So we must keep in mind that the spirit of God [an expression of His character, mind and Person] is the one and the same Person of God.

In other words, while “God is spirit”, God also has a spirit that is said to work and communicate to us [cp. John 14.15f.]. This is parallel to the Johannine saying that “God is love” [1 John 4.8] or “God is light” [1 John 1.5]. Again, these are qualities that are perfectly expressed and manifested in the one personal God.

“But God has revealed [His promise, purpose, plan, gospel etc.] to us through the spirit, for the spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so [in the same manner] the things of God no one has known, except the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is from God, in order that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God.” 1Cor 2.10-13[3]

The first thing to note in this passage is the personal quality that is given to “the spirit of man…who” is said to be “in him”. This example is in turn contrasted with that of “the Spirit of God” Who is the one “who knows and searches the deep things of God”. This makes sense only within the Hebraic thinking of the Bible writers who see both “the spirit” and “the man” [in this instance] as representative of the one whole, human person. The same can be said for God in this passage. God's spirit as an extension of His Person!

The same idea is also present in the NT when the Apostle Paul prays “that the God of peace Himself…keep your whole spirit and soul and body” holy until the coming of the lord Jesus Christ [1Thess 5.23].

“Spirit, soul, and body represent the entirety of [a human person]. It seems unlikely that this is a tripartite division of human nature into body, soul, and spirit, where ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ would refer to different parts; more likely Paul is simply using several terms for emphasis. For similar ways of expressing the totality of [a human person] see Matt. 10:28; Mark 12:30; 1 Cor. 7:34.”[4]

When it comes to the infinite, “self-existing” person Who is God [Ex 3.14], His qualities are likewise infinite and varied [wisdom, prudence, word, etc.] yet, they remain expressive of the one Personal God. These personifications should not be confused with distinct persons.

The Biblical God is not an abstract idea, never an essence, as pagan religions would like us to believe [leading to the aberrant Trinitarian concept of the “triune nature of God”]. God is a Personal Being described by singular personal pronouns. Yet it is clear that just because YHWH God is described as having a “soul” and “spirit” [hence described as a “Person”, in the secular and biblical sense of the words] He is unlike His creatures in so far as God is not a human being, animal nor an angelic spirit.

Nonetheless, YHWH, the God and Father of our lord Messiah Jesus, is one Person!

Thousands of singular personal pronouns describe Him, not it, as a singular Person.

“YHWH, the God of the breath of all flesh…In His hand is the life of every living thing and breath of all mankind…For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry, for the spirit would grow faint before Me, and the breath of life that I made.” Num 27.16; Job 12.10; Isa 57.16

Footnotes:

[1] See Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

[2] All quotes from nephesh & ruach found in The WordStudy Dictionary.

[3] Revised English Version by Spirit & Truth Fellowship International.

[4] ESV Study Bible.