podcast 261 – How to Argue that the Bible is Trinitarian – Response to Bowman

4qmmt,

Your comments above are a lot like Christ Date’s comments in the debate about “reading between the lines”. I don’t want to impose upon you something you haven’t said, but unitarians in general flip flop on their literal/figurative readings of Jesus’ words. When it comes to passages like John 6:38, 8:58, 10:30, 17:5 and 20:28; a figurative interpretation is given so that the words don’t mean what seems obvious on the surface. However, when it comes to something like John 14:28 or 17:3, Jesus suddenly is speaking literally in the most absolute sense.

The gospel of John is very clear to me. The prologue would make no sense if it’s main character, the Word, is not the same as the main character of the gospel. The Word is obviously the Son of God who existed in the beginning with God the Father, who is God and is the active instrument in the creation of all things that have been created. That points to an eternal person who came down from heaven to save His people from their sins.

As far as the Jew’s understanding of Jesus is concerned, seeing they did not see and hearing they did not hear, but that didn’t mean they didn’t understand what Jesus was implying. They just were not thinking by the Spirit, and so, could not believe Him. When I converse with atheists, they understand my arguments, but seeing they don’t see and hearing they don’t hear because the Spirit has not changed their hearts from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh.

Blessings…

In the sense that “mode” means “a way in which a thing exists”, the Son is a mode of YHWH. Just not in the “modalist” sense.

“The Stallone analogy fails because Sly has not always been all three personages, nor does he exist eternally.”

for arguments sake , lets just say
sly did exist as all three, would sly be three differing persons or one person ? so will rocky tell sly “hey sly, i’m you, and you me”

sly says “yo rocko, you r me and i u, we are one”

sly has the full experience of rocko and rocko has the full experience of rambo and rambo has the full experiential knowledge of sly, we do not see that the son has the full experiential knowledge of being father and father has full experiential feeling of being the son, we see three beings who are NOT each other. same powers, DIFFERENT persons, different EXPERIENCES.

i see three beings man.

this is not the conversation we see in the trinity. we see three individuals who are not each other, on the other hand sly is rocko.

“The Father is a person who expresses His thoughts through action.”

so he cannot be a mode/way of existence; it is a separate mind/consciousness , it is not one mind/once consciousness which expresses. this cannot be “way of existence”

Ill give 2. 1st Corinthians 8:6 and John 20:28. John is an unambiguous assertion that Jesus is the God of the disciples and 1st Corinthians 8:6 is linking Jesus with the Shema. I go in depth on the latter passage in the book.

Shalom to you as well

I guess the way the page works with replies is how they indent to the right. Once it goes so far to the right and runs out of room, the reply option isn’t available. Are you not a Christian? I ask because I don’t know any Christians that avoid typing the “o” in “God”.

Ok:
1) Most would agree that this (20:28) is the climax of John’s theology. According to Jesus, Thomas was “not believing”. Upon recognizing the risen Lord, Thomas immediately “answered Him”. The words are directed to Jesus and there is simply no evidence that Thomas was looking up or anything of the sort. The passage is unambiguous to whom the words are directed.

2,3) I see this not as a scene of astonishment, but a confession of what Thomas believed (see vs 29). The next verse (30) gives us a purpose statement that tells us what we are to believe for salvation. That Jesus is the Christ (“my Lord”; Ps 110:1) and the Son of God (“my God”; John 1:1c). I believe, with good evidence that when John says “Son of God”, he means “God” (19:7).

4) I’m not sure how GS rule would be applicable here. The fact that Thomas “answered Him” gives us the referent of his subsequent words. Remember, this is a confession of Thomas’ belief followed by a purpose statement of what to believe. John tells us that he wrote the book so that we would believe something, not in “my Lord”/Jesus and “my God”/ God, but the focus is on one person, Jesus.

On 1 Cor 8:6, I once asked a committed orthodox Jew this question. “If I were to ask a 1st century believing Jew, ‘Who is the one Lord, through who are all things?’ What would he say?” He said, “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” That is crushing for the unitarian. This is clearly a reference back to the Shema. The key terms are there (Lord, God, one) and it is a statement of Christian commitment over and against the surrounding pagan world. The Shema is a statement of Israel’s covenant commitment over and against the surrounding pagan world. The parallel is clear.

The harmony is provided in that as the Son is the “one Lord” for Christians, the Father is also “Lord”. As the Father is the “one God” for Christians, the Son is also “God”. Jesus is “our only Master and Lord” (Jude 4). Does that mean that the Father isn’t? Of course not. The Father is the “only true God” (John 17:3). Does that mean the the Son isn’t? Of course not. See John 1:1 and 20:28.

Blessings…

Andrew, I’m not replying to myself but to your last comment:)

I’m actually trying to keep this relatively short 🙂

1/2/4. I think you are straining quite hard to make John 20:28 say what you want. The context is about Thomas’ disbelief that Jesus was resurrected as the others said. You really don’t think he was absolutely stunned to see Jesus alive?

John 20:16 – essentially the same situation and she calls him rabboni (my rabbi).
John 20:17 – Speaking to Mary, Jesus says he is going to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.
John 20:20 – The disciples rejoice, no mention of claims of deity. In fact, if they thought he was God, why did they worry about anything? Why would they be surprised?
John 20:23 – Jesus gives them his authority.
John 20:25 – Thomas explains that he must see the physical person alive before he believes that they have seen him alive. Why? Of course, because resurrection would be an absolute miracle.
John 20:26 – Jesus shows up eight days later. How much doubt about their seeing Jesus alive do you think Thomas had by then?
John 20:27 – Jesus tells him touch me and believe, believe what? That I am alive, of course.

*John 20:28 – If Thomas was simply exclaiming astonishment at seeing a dead man alive, what would you expect him to have said?

*If Thomas was stating his theological belief, I would expect him to have said something like the centurion (27:54) “Truly you are my Lord and my God.”

John 20:31 – John tells us in his words (not a quote) what he wants us to believe – Jesus is the messiah, the son of God. No mention whatsoever of Jesus being G-d, why not?

My original point was that the verse is certainly too ambiguous to make it the ‘sure fire go to proof text’ for Jesus being deity. Furthermore, I think simply reading what the story (text) says makes a very strong case that it has nothing whatsoever to do with deity claims. It is simply a story point that Jesus did in fact resurrect – a completely shocking moment in all history, no?

Are you sure your interpretation is not being influenced by your presupposition about Jesus’ deity?

3. His use of the common “how much more then” formula is meant to say that if other ‘men’ can be called ‘gods,’ then how much more then that he could be called ‘son of God,’ because son of God is even a lower title than ‘god.’

The whole power of life is an issue of authority, which is the central issue of the NT. He is claiming to be a man who was anointed and given all authority by God – a thoroughly outrageous claim! But then he backs it up by what he does, right?

5. I agree with you that the NT portrays Jesus as being given unique authority, that much is abundantly clear as we have numerous direct statements with regard to that. But I think you are straining a lot of gnats to make him something he isn’t, nor does he need to be in order to be the messiah. There is plenty there without making a man god.

But perhaps the best thing is to simply ask this:
What should be written in the Bible if Jesus is not God?
What would we expect the Bible to say if Jesus is G-d?

Though I believe Jesus was who he said he was, there is little else I have in common with what has been Christianity for the last 1900+ years or how Christians read the Bible.

Shalom

I agree, we are influenced by our own presuppositions, and so we are reading the same texts differently, that’s all. But to be frank, I don’t really care what people think nearly as much as I care about what they do. And so even though we may disagree, I’m sure your time is valuable and I much appreciate the fact that you took the time to thoughtfully and respectfully lay out your case and address mine. That rare act on the internet is telling:)

Shalom

Hi Buddy,
I think even some unitarians are being influenced far too much by trinitarians with regard to Thomas’ statement. I’ve believe that I have heard Dr. Tuggy even say that he thinks that John 20:28 is one of the few places that Jesus is called God. That is why I laid out the context. It is a narrative and is therefore describing actions, not theology. Notice that John makes no editorial comment either to affirm or clarify the meaning, such as he does in passages like, John 9:22-23, John 12:6, John 13:11, and John 21:19.

You are right about the Greek, but in English we simply say ‘my x’ to denote possession. Your point about ‘elohim’ is also a good one, though I don’t think it is applicable here.

The most interesting thing that you are bringing out though is that in the Greek there is no verb in his statement. That is not a trivial issue. If Thomas was making a statement of identity, we would expect him to have said something along the lines of what the centurion said in Matthew 27:54; something like: “Truly you are my Lord and my God.”

If John wanted his readers to think that Thomas considered Jesus to be any type of god, all he needed to do was include a small verb. He didn’t. That is very telling, especially when only 3 verses later he gives us his summary statement of Jesus’ identity and it in no way includes God.

In addition, comparative textual analysis supports reading this as a simple statement of astonishment to be the best approach.

First, the apostles would have been speaking Hebrew (possibly Aramaic, though not as likely), certainly not Greek. In Hebrew, what Thomas said is only two words: Adon’i ve’elohai. Though in Hebrew the present tense ‘to be’ verb can be implicit, in this case there is no nominal sentence here because it includes the ‘ve’ = ‘and.’ Without the ‘and’ it could read “my lord is my God” but it makes no sense to say “my lord is and my God.” Thus, what we have here are essentially two separate vocatives, and the ‘and’ makes most sense if it is simply connecting two separate statements, as in Thomas said, “my Lord!” and “my God!”

‘Elohai’ is even translated as the vocative “O my God” on many occasions, eg. Ps. 3:7 (3:8 in Heb), Ps. 22:2 (21:3 in LXX) and Ps. 83:13 (83:14 in Heb, 82:14 in LXX). The LXX translates these exactly as we see in John 20:28 – ‘ho theos mou’ – thus we actually have good grounds to translate it in John 20:28 as ‘O my God!” Of course, you won’t find it translated that way because the translators are trinitarians 🙁

Look at the earliest Greek manuscripts and you will also see that there is no punctuation and the ‘and’ (kai) could be functioning in this same manner to connect two separate vocatives. In other words, a perfectly legitimate (and sensible) way to translate John 20:28 is “Thomas responded and said to him, “My Lord!” and “O my God!” Of course, in this case, there is nothing that requires that the second phrase “my God” or “O my God” be directed at Jesus.

If Thomas was simply exclaiming astonishment at seeing a dead man alive, what would you expect him to have said?

Hi Buddy,

My point was not to suggest that in those references I gave they were saying “Oh My God!” as in a sense of astonishment, but rather that they were vocatives spoken as exclamatives, simply meaning they were understood as vocal expressions of emotion aimed at the specific person mentioned in the expression. There are a variety of emotions being expressed in those and the similar passages. In John 20:28, Thomas is likely saying to God something like ‘O my God’ as in ‘O my God, it is true!’ which is expressing joy and thankfulness to God, the One who raised Jesus from the dead. Something that likely happened a lot – Acts 13:30-31.

I agree with you that there is nothing technically wrong with Jesus being called ‘god’ as Moses and other men were at rare times, but in this case, unlike all the rest, there is no identity statement made here. If there were, I would agree that your reading here would be plausible. But there is no verb. There isn’t even a a mention of Thomas kneeling or falling down or anything else to suggest that he was making a statement of identity about Jesus, so trying to turn this into a statement of factual identification is rather futile.

Andrew,

Could you tell us what the differences are between the Father and the Son? If they both have all the attributes of eternal deity in what way are they different? Surely they have to be different somehow to be distinguished as Father and Son? What is that/are those difference(s)?

“Imagine a “time” when all that existed was God. There is no when or where, all that exists is God. This existence is infinite having no spaciotemporal boundaries. Three beings could not exist this way as each being would be an ”

now it sounds like you are making the “threeness” into singular “oneness”

3 is dissolving into oneness?