Skip to content

“Identifying Jesus as Yahweh” as heresy

Check out this exchange between Islamic apologist Paul Williams and evangelical Christian apologist Jonathan McLatchie.

Williams makes the reasonable point that for a (consistent) trinitarian, Jesus is not the Trinity, while God just is the Trinity. So then, for the trinitarian, Jesus is not God (not numerically identical to God); the relation between Jesus and God is going to have to be something less than that. Most evangelical apologists simply choose not to think about this difficulty. Battling the infidels with stock rhetoric and a fistful of proof-texts is far more enjoyable than working out the problems with one’s own theories.
Double face, photo by jDtntThe Trinity issue too is generally rushed past, with a nod to the old catholic language, or to recent simplifications of it. Most evangelical apologists more or less ignore the plethora of Trinity theories and instead focuses all on “the deity of Christ,” i.e. the claim that Jesus is God himself, that Jesus and God are numerically one. You see this in pop evangelical spirituality constantly in prayer, when the names “God,” “Father,” and “Jesus,” are swapped just for matters of good style, as if they’re just interchangeable, co-referring terms.

They then move (as in the last half of this video) to show that New Testament writers are always slyly (but in their view clearly) asserting the numerical identity of Yahweh (pronounced YAH-hu-way) and Jesus. They employ here what I think is a beginner’s mistake in reading the NT – what I call the fulfillment fallacy. (I’ve lampooned it here.) In the clip Bart Ehrman quite correctly resists the confusion. All NT writers habitually and clearly distinguish God and his Son as two selves and two beings.

But the important point is this: Mr. McLatchie’s confidence is misplaced. There have been plenty of Christians who’ve denied that Jesus and God are one and the same. One sort of case would be mainstream (catholic) Christians who defended logos speculations c. 150-381. These were opposed by “monarchians,” some of whom allegedly identified God and his Son, even using the term “Son-Father.” McLatchie’s statement reminded me of a passage feature in a recent podcast, from famous church historian and theologian-bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, expressing a view which was the majority view at least in the East in his time, and which was expressed by many councils.

But why do I dare essay a hopeless task, to recount the mighty works of the Word of God, and describe an energy which surpasses mortal thought? By some, indeed, he has been termed the Nature of the universe, by others, the World-Soul, by others, Fate. Others again have declared him to be the most High God himself, strangely confounding things most widely different; bringing down to this earth, uniting to a corruptible and material body, and assigning to that supreme and unbegotten Power who is Lord of all an intermediate place between irrational animals and rational mortals on the one hand, and immortal beings on the other.
On the other hand, the sacred doctrine teaches that he who is the supreme Source of good, and Cause of all things, is beyond all comprehension, and therefore inexpressible by word, or speech, or name; surpassing the power, not of language only, but of thought itself. Uncircumscribed by place, or body; neither in heaven, nor in ethereal space, nor in any other part of the universe; but entirely independent of all things else, he pervades the depths of unexplored and secret wisdom. The sacred oracles teach us to acknowledge him as the only true God, apart from all corporeal essence, distinct from all subordinate ministration. Hence it is said that all things are from him, but not through him. (Ch. 11-12 here.)

This “supreme source” is God, aka the Father (note the allusion to 1 Corinthians 8:6 at the end). So yes, there have been many Christians – mainstream ones, in good standing with the majority, and even leading thinkers – who asserted that it is a serious mistake to identify the eternal Son with his (and our) God. Eusebius is no oddball here. Other examples would be the outstanding catholic apologists of their generation, Tertullian and Origen. (Many like Origen also distinguish this Son from the man Jesus, but they’d say it’d be at least as great a mistake to identify the man Jesus with his God too.)

If McClatchie wants to hold out for a council statement, here’s one in which a distinction between God and Jesus is implicit, but clearly drawn, in this creed, widely used and reaffirmed c. 342-359. (Here, section 25.) It’s subtle, though. The distinction takes the form here of (1) declining to describe the Son as “true God,” (2) omitting the claim that God and his Son are one ousia, and (3) describing the Son as “begotten,” which they take to imply that he’s another being than the one who eternally caused him. In the context of this catholic controversy, their point was that God and his Son are two beings, not one (historians call this “duohypostatic” theology).

A similar meeting of bishops (discussed here) declares “Whosoever says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are one Person, be he anathema.” One self, one intelligent being (here, hypostasis), one God – yes, that’s what evangelical apologists like McClatchie constantly assert as NT teaching.

Perhaps Mr. McLatchie should withdraw his promise… 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

6 thoughts on ““Identifying Jesus as Yahweh” as heresy”

  1. Where does the Father numerically identify himself with Jehovah using his own name? This is what Unitarians assume. Nowhere does the bible say “in the beginning was the Father” but it says this of the Word, Jesus.

    1. Hi Paul. Good question. Of course, the word Jehovah/YHWH does not occur in the NT, because the Jews of that time thought it was impious to use that proper name. So no one would write about the Father saying “I am Yahweh” in that period. But in the whole NT, “God” (ho theos) is always the Father, unless there’s some specific reason to think the term refers to someone else. (Any good exegete will tell you this, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-God-Testament-Theos-Reference/dp/160608108X This identification is always assumed. e.g. John 1:1 – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with *the Father*.” That’s what that means. You can see Jesus assume the numerical identity of the Father and the one true God (=Yahweh) at John 17:1-3. Generally, you can observe that authors will swap out terms like “God” and “the Father” etc. just for stylistic reasons, that is, so as to avoid using the same word repeatedly. e.g. John 6:45-46, Acts 2:33. About this alleged controversial assumption: think about it. Why would “God” mean the Father 99% of the time, unless the writers are assuming their identity? Why else would we see that usage? To come at it from another angle: if they’re assuming that the one God is the Trinity, why would the never used “ho theos” for the Trinity, but almost always use it for the Father? That’s be surprising and hard to explain, no? What do you think?

      1. Dale,

        There’s no evidence in the scriptures that there was any “impiety” associated with the pronunciation of the word YHWH (as if it were some kind of sacred personal name for God). Rather, all the evidence simply shows that YHWH was a titular name (equivalent to the Greek title KURIOS, and thus translated correctly in the LXX and the NT).

        For example, if we rendered YHWH into English as something like “the Supreme Being” or “the Eternal One” it would make perfectly good sense of every single usage of the term in the Bible. Thus, insisting that YHWH was the Father’s personal name isn’t necessary.

        Moreover, one could argue based upon biblical naming convention that, if God the Father had a personal name, it would have been given to him by someone else. The implications of this may be the reason that there wasn’t a personal name for God himself. He merely identified Himself as YHWH just like Jesus identified him as “God” and “the Father.”

        1. Hi Rivers,
          I take the evidence to be this: they did not try to transliterate “Yahweh” when writing in Greek. Rather, they used the generic substitute that OT translators had come up with: the more generic title “Lord” (ho kurios). I’m not sure why you want to insist that “YHWH” is not a proper name. I mean, translating as “the Supreme Being” or “the eternal one” would be mistranslations. There are ways to say those things in Hebrew, but they are not “YHWH.” I’m also not sure why we should think that “if God the Father had a personal name, it would have been given to him by someone else.” That looks like a non sequitur to me. How to rule out that he picked his own name?

          Was “YHWH” at any stage a common noun like “adonai” or “kurios”? I don’t know. But we can see it being used as a proper name in much of the OT, can’t we?

  2. Nothing new from Paul and Yahya. Informed Trinitarains have always distinguished between the ‘One God’ (i.e. God the Father) who is the absolute source of everything else that exists, including the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. This distinction is found in many pre-Nicene and Nicene Church Fathers, and importantly, in the original Nicene Creed itself.

    As for the charge of modalism leveled in the video, that too is accurate, and has been acknowledged by a number of more consistent Trinitarians. For instance, Robert Letham in his 2004 contribution writes: “Today most Western Christians are practical modalists.” (The Holy Trinity, p. 5.)

    IMO, any form of Trinitarianism that does not begin with the Monarchy of God the Father—the teachings that the Father alone is, “the beginning (principium) of the whole divinity (i.e. fons totius divinitatis),”the principle without principle”—is doomed to either some form of modalism or tritheism.

    Grace and peace,

    David

Comments are closed.