At the Stand to Reason blog (this is the apologetics ministry founded by the inimitable Greg Koukl) I’ve been interacting with a few people on the question: Where Did Jesus Claim to Be God?
In the current evangelical style, the poster Melinda Penner seems to understand this as equivalent to claiming to be God himself, to saying “I am God.” Never mind whether or not this is good trinitarianism. It’s a very popular view with evangelicals and especially with their apologists nowadays. In her view, Jesus repeatedly and clearly implies that “I am God.”
I don’t think any of the implications are there. Each falls apart on a careful reading of the text, with an understanding of the book in question as a whole, and the 1st century Jewish background of all involved. We have addressed a great many of these misreadings here at trinties, such as John 8:58, John 10 (also here), and the whole gospel of Mark (also here). It’d be tiresome to try to link them all. Every NT book assumes the distinctness of Jesus and God.
What bothers me the most is that this whole strategy perversely ignores the explicit, central, repeated, emphasized point of all the gospels, which is Jesus is the Messiah, God’s anointed. The assumption here is that God’s anointed isn’t God himself. God has no need to send, authorize, endorse, or empower himself. Anyway, when you interpret a book, you go with the clear thesis when there is one; you don’t hunt for hints of a claim that seems to contradict the explicit thesis. But this is what many evangelicals do. But these books are very straight up in what they assert; there’s no hidden message, as with prophetic and visionary writings, no secret gnosis only hinted at or told to the inner circle only. But tradition wreaks havoc here. People selectively hint-hunt, and ignoring obvious counter-evidence in the texts.
See the replies to my replies by “WisdomLover”. A lot of it concerns this passage. Do you see a problem there for the claim that Jesus is God?
“WisdomLover” ends up making some pretty desperate moves, and pretty clearly makes Jesus and God (the Father) one self, against every New Testament book. When he loses patience he starts abusing and declares himself the obvious winner, but before this point, some of the exchanges may be worth your while. You’ll have to read down a way to see why I picked an image of the Hulk for this post. 🙂
Interesting OP 🙂
I don’t know why wisdomlover would say that “immortality” or “athanasian” could mean eternity, if Paul meant eternity he would have said it, he also used the same word in 1 Corinthians 15:53,54, it clear means “without death” there, and it applies to the saints, so why would it’s usage in 1 Timothy 6 be any different? I don’t know where wisdomlover is getting this notion from, certainly not from any usage of the Greek term itself or its actual meaning, he’s just positing it Ad Hoc, I mean if you want to redefine words then I don’t know what the point of arguing over biblical exegesis I is. It would be one thing if there were no Greek terms for eternal, but there are, and Paul didnt use them, he used the word for deathless.
And this argument that God could not be omniscient unless he tasted death, I mean common … Does that apply to sin also? Get real. Omnisciency is not a biblical term, and very often these philosophical add ons to scripture don’t help, the new testament is not a boom of analytic philosophy, so we can’t read it as if it is.
As for his argument that it can’t mean deathless because in 1 Corinthians the saints will also be deathless ignores the fact that 1 Timothy 6 is talking about the deathless state now, while 1 Corinthians 15 is talking about the future. Also in 1 Timothy immortality is had … Where as in 1 Corinthians immortality is put on.
I do think however that 1 Timothy 6:16 could refer to Jesus, he received immortality after he was resurrected, and at that time he was the only one who had immortality, (of course other than God, but that would have been a given.) who dwells in the light (God or glory of God) which no man can see.
Wisdomlover either way has no case, Paul didn’t make a typeO he wrote immortality rather than eternity be used that’s what he meant.
I’ve heard somewhat the same idea from an AoG minister trying to defend the doctrine of eternal conscious torment. Immortality does not have a different meaning than immortality. It does not mean glory (as he claimed).
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