I’ll look forward to your posts on the NT teaching of Christ’s pre-existence.

A man cannot exist before he exists. The term is self-contradictory.

Well, sure. But mainstream theology can take one of two ways out. First, they can hold that it is possible for the divine nature to be united to a human nature at a certain point in time. Alternately, they can just deny that everything that’s a human is essentially a human. No obvious contradictions here – nothing existing and not existing at the same time. They can even just deny that it is essential to every human that it come into existence at a time, I suppose, though that one’s a harder sell.

I have to agree with you both that many of the texts sometimes offered as “proof” of Christ’s pre-existence don’t really support that claim. I agree that some do have to do with divine foreknowledge and foreordination. Still, I think that parts of the NT teach Christ’s pre-existence.

Traditional Socinian ways to get around passages like John 1 – that “the beginning” there means the beginning of the gospel or the “new creation” – are sometimes hard to swallow. But I agree that it’s debatable. Maybe some future posting(s) will be devoted to this, and some of the “biblical Unitarian” arguments that are relevant.

Exactly my point! “Notionally pre-existent” is the term for it. Not that Jesus literally existed (in some non-human form) before he existed as a human.

From John’s gospel:

“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad” (8:56)

“These things said Isaiah because he saw his glory and he spoke of him.” (12:41)

“For if you believed Moses, you would believe me for he wrote of me.” (5:46)

The clear meaning of these texts, when taken together, is that Jesus was ‘foreknown’. This is made apparent when other NT texts are considered:

“Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” (Eph. 1:4)

“Whom he foreknew he also foreordained to be the image…” (Rom. 8:29)

“For that God chose you from the beginning.” (2 Thess. 2:13)

“Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.” (Heb. 4:3)

“When it testified beforehand the sufferings of the Christ and the glories that should follow them.” (1 Pet. 1:11)

“The Christ indeed who was foreknown before the foundation of the world.” (1 Pet. 1:20)

“Come ye enter the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world.” (Matt. 25:34)

If being “foreknown’ is the essential qualification, then witnesses, brethren, God’s rest, the Kingdom, the redeemed, and many others, would have a claim to be ‘pre-existent’.

I think you’re right that the NT teaches the pre-existence of the Son before his human conception or birth. Thus, a kind of modalism that has the Son-mode coming into existence back in 6 BCE or whenever, would be inconsistent with the NT. This is indeed a problem for UPC theology. My point was just that modes, per se, *could in principle* be a vehicle for genuine revelation of how God really is.

I’m not sure I agree that being a NT Christian – being saved – helps one to understand the essence of God. I think that the better understanding would be had by our closely studying the NT. Only a person filled with and guided by God’s Spirit may discern his workings, his ways, but that is different (e.g. Paul saying it takes a spiritual person to understand “spiritual things”.)

If there’s a time when we’ll understand God’s nature much better, I’d think it be after the resurrection, when we’ll know as we’re known – what changes there, I think, is our experience of God, but maybe our very epistemic faculties will be different as well.

So, when it comes to texts like Schwarz, I cannot declare that I’m surprised. Perhaps what is so disappointing, is that a patient read of even (and only?) the Athanasian Creed might grant some vision and joy for communicating the nature of God and his reign: and that would stand in distinct opposition to folks like Schwarz and his followers/readers.

I believe that would be accurate if we assume the premise that God can be represented by interpersonal relationships that have not eternally existed. However, scripture surely argues otherwise, to wit, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit exist as three eternally distinct persons.

I have not fully thought this next thought through entirely, and perhaps you may offer some foil against which I may further develop it. And that is this. I agree that Trinitarianism is more clear (if it is true) in the NT than the OT. But if God is relational in his essense ( as I believe God is) then the relationship of the three persons of the trinity (as God) would be more readily grasped when man’s reconcilliation to God had been accomplished (via the atonement). For only then would man more fully know God as God is without the distraction of shadows and archetypes.

What do you think?