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How to Talk to Believers about
The Nature of God
Audio MP3
“These are
written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John
20:31).
James Parkinson
There
are conflicting views of the na-ture of God: Arian, Trinitarian, and Unitarian.
The common Arian view of God is that He is the Creator and that he created the
mighty archangel, called the Logos (or Michael, meaning, “Who is Like
God”). Together, these two greatest beings in the universe created the heavens
and the earth, angels and animals and man.
Trinitarian views of God may span a spectrum, from an Arian-like view of
separate and distinct beings to a Modalist view (first God was the Father, and
then God appeared as the Son [Jesus] on earth, and then as the Holy Spirit after
He was resurrected). The common Trinitarian dogma is that there are three divine
persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and together they constitute one God, or
“Godhead.” How this can be so, is called a mystery.
Unitarian views are that Jesus Christ had no pre-human existence. The Socinian
form of Unitarianism says that the resurrected Jesus is still flesh, though in
some way he has been glorified and is immortal. But which view does the Bible
teach?
The Apostle John in his first epistle sets down only three intellectual
requirements concerning Jesus: “Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus
is the Christ [Messiah, Anointed]?” “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is of God.” And, “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus
is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God” (1 John 2:22, 4:2, 15).
The Bible imposes no further requirements concerning our understanding of the
nature of Jesus than these, although religious men often impose dogmas that go
beyond the Bible.
A man with a good conscience toward God will be wary of the sentiment that says
to him, Welcome to our church; check your brains at the door. Rather, he should
be attracted if he hears, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah [or,
the LORD]”
(Isaiah 1:18
ASV).
Questions
Trinitarian views raise some evident questions:
•
Matthew
1:18 says, “Mary ... was found with child of the Holy Spirit.” But if the Holy
Spirit were a personality, then Jesus would have been the Son of the Holy Spirit
and not of God the Father, would he not?
•
If the
earliest manuscripts of John 1:18 subordinate “an only begotten God” (RVIC;
NAS)
to “God,” does that not also distinguish the two in John 1:1?
•
It is
sometimes argued that, because Jesus is the Son of God, that proves he is God.
Yet, if being the son of David does not make him David, how would being the son
of God make him God? (Revelation 22:16).
Recent Books
There
are some recent books on this subject, which may be of interest.
•
One
author tabulates from the Old and New Testaments that:
— God is declared to be the Father: 56 times,
— Jesus is declared the Son of God: 77 times,
— Jesus is distinguished from God: 326 times,
— Jesus says that he is God: 0 times.
Lonzo
Pribble, Theology Simplified, God, His Son, and His Spirit: Why the Doctrine
of the Trinity is Neither Reasonable nor Biblical. All Trinitarian
Arguments Refuted, (2001). About fifty arguments for the Trinitarian
position are addressed. The possibility of a change of nature is not considered.
Good scripture index.
•
Jason
David BeDuhn, Truth in Translation, Accuracy and Bias in English Translations
of the New Testament, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003.
Includes chapters on
translations of Philippians 2:5-11, Colossians 1:15-20, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8,
John 8:58, John 1:1. Seems to rank accuracy, in descending order, for seven
tests:
NWT,
NAB,
NASB,
NRSV,
NIV,
LB,
AB,
TEV
(of which Living Bible and Amplified Bible are paraphrases, more than
translations).
•
Patrick Navas, Divine Truth or Human Tradition?, Bloomington, IN:
AuthorHouse, 2011, spends 534 pages examining in detail thirty or more
scriptures claimed by Trinitarians, including John 1:1, 8:58, 10:30; Matthew
28:18-20; Acts 20:28; Philippians 2:6, Colossians 2:9; 2 Peter 1:1, and in the
Old Testament, Genesis 1:1,26; Isaiah 9:6, 43:10-13, 48:12-17.
Arian Scriptures
In the classical work on the history of dogma are listed many of the popular
Arian scriptures, “The passages so frequently cited later on by the Arians
[listed below] ... [were] thus [probably] already used by Arius himself” (Adolph
Harnack, History of Dogma, Volume IV, page 20, Dover).
Deuteronomy 6:4
— Hear, O Israel: Jehovah
{1}
is
our God,
Jehovah is one.
Deuteronomy 32:39
— See now that I, even I, am he, And there are no gods with
me.
Proverbs 8:22
— Jehovah
{2}
acquired me as the beginning of his way, The first of his works of
old.
Psalms 45:8
(Luther, 45:7 English) — Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness:
Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above
thy fellows.
Matthew 12:28
— But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of
God come upon you.
Mark 13:32
— But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only.
Matthew 26:41
— Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is
willing, but the flesh is weak.
Matthew 28:18
— And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been
given unto me in heaven and on earth.
Luke 2:52
— And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
Luke 18:19
— And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? None is good, save
one, even God.
John 11:34
— Where have ye laid him? They say unto him, Lord, come and see.
John 14:28
— Ye heard how I said to you, I go away, and I come unto you. If ye loved me, ye
would have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father: for the Father is greater
than I.
John 17:3
— And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and
him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
Acts 2:36
— Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath
made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.
1 Corinthians 1:24
— unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of
God, and the wisdom of God.
1 Corinthians 15:28
— And when all things have been subjected unto him, then shall the Son also
himself be subjected to him that did subject all things unto him, that God
may be all in all.
Colossians 1:15
— [the Son] who is an image of the invisible God, a firstborn of all creation;
Philippians 2:6
and following — [Christ Jesus] who, existing
{3}
in the
form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be
grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,
{4}
being made in the likeness of men.
Hebrews 1:4
— [a Son] having become by so much mightier than the angels, as he hath
inherited a more excellent name than they.
Hebrews 3:2
— [Jesus] who was faithful to him that appointed
{5}
him, as also was Moses in all his
{6}
house.
John 12:27
— Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour?
But for this cause came I unto this hour.
John 13:21
— When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in the spirit, and testified, and
said, Truly, Truly, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.
Matthew 26:39
— And he went forward a little, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, My
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless not as I
will, but as thou wilt.
Matthew 27:46
— And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama
sabachthani? that is, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
After his resurrection Jesus said, “All authority hath been given unto me...” So
before he was given such power he could not have had the nature of God.
The Plural God
In Genesis 1, the word for God is Elohim, which is plural; “And God
{7}
[plural] said [singular], Let us [plural] make man in our [plural] image, after
our [plural] likeness.” However, it is singular in both Psalm 22:1 (“My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?”) and Matthew 27:46. Hence, taking the Logos
(subsequently Jesus) away from the plural “God” leaves God singular. So the Holy
Spirit can hardly be a third personality in God.
The Hindu concept of Trimurthi (Trinity) has God composed of Creator, Preserver,
and Destroyer — all three equal and equally necessary. In the Arian concept, the
Destroyer (Abaddon and Apollyon in Revelation 9:11) is not only unequal and
unnecessary, he will be bound for a thousand years and later destroyed. (By
contrast, the ancient Chinese had a word, Shang-Ti, for the supreme God, but
when the missionaries came they had to invent a character for Trinity.)
Immanuel:
Joseph was told, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus,” meaning “Jehovah is
salvation.” Then “they shall call his name Immanuel; which is, being
interpreted, God with us” (Matthew 1:21, 23
ASV), or “... God
is with us” (RVIC,
NEB,
CJB,
Lamsa). (Theologians commonly assert only the former and then insist it means
Jesus is God.) Christ has already been called “Jesus” for two thousand years,
but people will know him as “Immanuel” — “God is with us” — only beginning in
His thousand-year kingdom. After the thousand years “God himself shall be
with them, and be their God” (Revelation 21:3).
The Trinitarian formula of 1 John 5:7-8 was apparently translated from Latin
into Greek (manuscript #61) by the rival Complutensian Polyglot editors (Alcala
University, Spain) to discredit Erasmus’ first printed Greek New Testament. The
words, “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are
one, And there are three that bear witness in earth,” are rejected by all but
the most ardent “King James only” people today; they appear in only nine late
Greek manuscripts (in seven different forms), as against five hundred that omit
the words. This forgery further discredits the case for the Trinity doctrine.
The Socinian view (e.g., our Christadelphian friends), that Jesus had no
pre-human existence, and that since his resurrection he remains a man, albeit
somehow glorified, raises a different set of questions:
How can we understand, “Before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:58
ASV)?
(To translate it, “I am he” (i.e., the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed)
is not driven by grammar nor by context; it seems to be driven only by
theology.)
Hebrews 1:1-11 and Colossians 1:12-18 would also need to be explained by any
view that says Jesus had no prehuman existence in the spirit realm and that he
does not have the divine nature — the nature of God Himself — since his
resurrection. Also, 1 Corinthians 15 strongly distinguishes a celestial body
from a terrestrial (earthly) body.
There are two apparently strong scriptures for the Socinian view of Jesus since
his resurrection. God “will judge the world in righteousness by a man
whom he hath ordained” (Acts 17:31). However, the Greek word is ane¯r,
meaning a male (as distinct from female), whereas the Greek word anthro¯pos
would have been the word to distinguish a man from a spirit being (as
in Matthew 9:8).
And 1 Timothy 2:4-6, which may be literally translated, “God our Saviour; who
would have all men to be saved, and come to a full knowledge of truth.
For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself
having been a man, Christ Jesus the one having given himself a
ransom for all” (RVIC).
Here the bone of contention is the tense of the supplied verb, “having been,”
which is more appropriately taken from the tense of the Greek verb in the next
clause (“having given”) rather than from the closest preceding explicit verb
three clauses earlier (“come”
{8}). The
supplied tense here suggests how Jesus Christ is the ideal mediator: Jesus has
been human, but thereafter he has the nature of God evermore — he has been on
both sides of the fence!
“Ye were bought with a price.” “The bread which I will give is my flesh, for the
life of the world.” (1 Corinthians 6:20, John 6:51
RV).
For Christ to take back his flesh would be to take back the redemption price,
and all people would be abandoned to the Adamic death penalty. The man
Christ Jesus gave himself a ransom for all; the resurrected Jesus is in the
nature of God.
___________
(1) Or, “Jehovah our God, Jehovah is one:” or, “Jehovah
is our God, Jehovah alone:” or possibly, “Jehovah our God is one
Jehovah:”
(2) Or,
“possessed me in the beginning of his way, Before his works of old.” Or, “bought
me,” etc. Septuagint, Aramaic, Targum, read “created me,” etc.
(3) Or,
“in the form of a god”
(4) Greek,
“becoming in the likeness”16 17 July / August 2012
(5) Greek,
“made”
(6) That
is, “God’s house” (see Numbers 12:7).
(7) Note:
“God [Elohim, plural] said [singular] Let us [plural] ...”
In Hebrew, the singular verb with a plural subject may be used to express that
the plural individuals work in full harmony.
(8) However, the nearest
antecedents, “to be saved” and “come,” in the Greek are in the Aorist tense (a
general past tense); so these also do not imply a present tense for “a man.” |