Thomas... My Lord and my God

[mikesw]

No, I am not! All of the passages I cited are talking about the Lord God Almighty and are Messianic prophecies, so they do not reference the Father.

Doug

In addition to all other aspects of Isaiah 9:6 applying, the idea of Jesus as Father is sufficiently understood with Jesus as the father of all new creatures in Christ -- as the Last Adam

 

[TibiasDad]

In addition to all other aspects of Isaiah 9:6 applying, the idea of Jesus as Father is sufficiently understood with Jesus as the father of all new creatures in Christ -- as the Last Adam

Everlasting Father, is, to my mind, meaning to say the Father of Eternity. Father has the meaning of the supreme authority over eternity.

Doug

 

[Runningman]

You're repeating your Gaffe #10.

You're repeating your Gaffe #2 where the Greek word ἐσκήνωσεν establishes the connection between the Word and Jesus.

Huh? We are working from the beginning of John, his very first verse, and working forward from those foundational words. It's you who works backwards from John 17:3 thinking that verse is talking against Trinitarianism when it's talking about the prevailing Greco-Roman paganism at that time.

This has now been entered in the List as your Gaffe #11.

You forget about Genesis wherein God said "Let us make man in our Image". That proves that there are multiple Creator Persons.

You're repeating your Gaffe #7.

You're repeating your Gaffe #6 about 1 John 1.

That makes the Word God, not godly. Your attempt to rewrite John 1:1c from "the Word was God" to "the Word was godly" has been noted as your Gaffe #12.

You're repeating of Gaffes and your reluctance to address them is why I carry your List of Gaffes forward. Until you address your List of Gaffes properly, they will continue to convict you ad infinitum.

List of RM's Gaffes:

1. You mistake us for Modalists by falsely accusing us that we do not differentiate between the Word and the God (the Father).
2. Your ignorance of the Greek word ἐσκήνωσεν in John 1:14.
3. You have difficulty understanding the grammatical fact that pronouns implicitly point back to the Primary Subject as their Antecedent.
4. Your categorical mistake when you think that partaking of an item transforms your nature into that item.
5. Your ignorance of the Greek word κοινωνία,
6. Your ignorance of Greek neuter pronouns in 1 John 1.
7. You said that "the Word is not actually God" which flat out contradicts John 1:1c that says "the Word was God".
8. At no time does Jesus ever has to "partake" of divine nature. That's because he is God to begin with (John 1:1c).
9. The REV translates from God only knows which originals when they dreamt up the phrase "what God was the word was".
10. Your ignorance of the Word of God in the OT (1 Kings 12:22 and 1 Ch 17:3).
11. You ignore the prevailing Greco-Roman paganism at that time when you mistakenly present John 17:3 as being against Trinitarianism.
12. Your attempt to rewrite John 1:1c from "the Word was God" to "the Word was godly" was denied.

This List makes for a tidy even-dozen set of RM Gaffes.

These are all false accusations. Feel free to increase the list to 100 if you want.

Doesn't make a difference to me.

Keep in mind the Bible context. What we have its literally every page of the Old Testament with no one there named the Word saying or doing anything. We also have the entire New Testament, where the Word never said or did anything. We also never have Jesus being called the Word. Your interpretation is very narrowly focused on John 1:1.

The problem is you are working backwards to attempt to represent the entire Bible around one verse. When has that ever been a good in theology or Biblical disucssions? Never, right?

Here's what I am doing. I am taking the entire Old Testamnet where God is exhaustively identified in the singular as a He, Him, His, etc. I am taking this precedent about who God is and carrying it into the New Testament where God is once again called a He, Him, His, the only true God, the one God, etc. The Bible is clear, explicit, and exhaustive about God being a singular person. Yet God is never referred to as a they or them, referred to as more than one person, never said to be three persons, etc.

So John 1:1 is not about the Word being God. If that was the only thing apostle John ever said, you may have a point, but that isn't all he said. In Acts 4:23-31, John was clear he did not believe Jesus is God or the Creator, but rather God's servant. In 1John 1:1-3, John was clear that the Word is a thing called eternal life.

I believe @synergy put it best several comments back where he made the argument that the Word posesses the qualitiies of God and that makes the Word godly, but not God. Hence, John 1:1 ultimately shows that the Word is not The God. John 1:1 is totally in line with Unitarianism.

 

[mikesw]

His technique is a Blitzkrieg style offence. He thinks that his rapid-fire copy and paste will win the day. His other technique, as you noted, is to ignore what we say in the hopes that his points overwhelm our truthful points. A running list of his failures will confront him as to how he's gone wrong and the fact that he can no longer run away from his failures until they're addressed.

We can all pool our lists together and confront him with that list. Hopefully he won't be true to his name and just run away.

I think runningman runs into a general error of persuasion. He seems to think that certain verses are so convincing of a unitarian reading that his repetition of them will eventually make people leap over to his viewpoint even without him addressing the bigger problems of his view.

 

[Peterlag]

The literal reading is “the God and Savior of us, Christ Jesus.” There is only one pronoun and it follows the statement in question. You cannot separate the identities as two distinct entities. They are a unified nomenclature.
If the intention is as you say, there would need to be two pronouns, one for each designation. But the actual Greek syntax does not allow this.

Doug

This is what I found...

“our God, and our Savior Jesus Christ.” It is standard that the New Testament Epistles open with a salutation from both God and Jesus Christ, and so it is logical that 2 Peter would open with a statement that recognized the work of both God and Christ. However, Trinitarian versions usually translate the verse, “our God and Savior Jesus Christ,” and Trinitarians usually claim that this verse is an example of Jesus being referred to as God. But that is unlikely for a number of reasons.

For one thing, Epistles usually open with greetings from both God and Jesus (Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3; Galatians1:3, etc.), and so it would be unusual for this one to open with a statement that Jesus is God.

Furthermore, Peter speaks of God and Jesus in the same verse on a number of occasions, and never equates Jesus with God in them, but speaks of them as being different (1 Peter 1:2, 3; 2:5; 3:21; 4:11; 5:10; 2 Peter 1:2). Not only that, but God and Jesus are referred to as separate in the other epistles, which would make this an unusual reading.

Also, there are many non-Trinitarian ways to translate 2 Peter 1:1, as the following translations show:

• “of our God and the Saviour Jesus Christ” (ASV)
• “of our God, and the Saviour Jesus Christ” (Concordant Literal New Testament)
• “of our God and of our Deliverer Yeshua the Messiah” (CJB)
• “of our God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Weymouth)
• “of our God, and [our] Saviour Jesus Christ” (Rotherham; margin)
• “of God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Noah Webster Bible)
• “of our God, and of Jesus our Lord” (The Better Version of the New Testament)

Another thing that is noteworthy is that there are textual variants to 2 Peter 1:1 that may well represent the original reading. That would mean that the reading in the majority of the Greek texts is a later alteration to the text. There are Aramaic, Latin, Coptic, Sahidic, and Greek manuscripts (including Sinaiticus and 044) that have “Lord” instead of God, and read, “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Translations from the Aramaic read: “our Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

 

[FreeInChrist]

I think runningman runs into a general error of persuasion. He seems to think that certain verses are so convincing of a unitarian reading that his repetition of them will eventually make people leap over to his viewpoint even without him addressing the bigger problems of his view.

This, or perhaps repetitious because of the need to firm them in his mind, lest he forget?

 

[Runningman]

If I were a one verse holder of the divinity of Christ, John 1:1 would be decent. However, it is just the clearest for those who wish to understand Christ's true divine nature.
I do not reject those who have looked at broad scripture and found the Triune God in all the glory of God. I just reject the hyper-literalist unitarians who deny so much of scripture to end up with a heresy.
John took a concept used in first century Judaism and applied it more directly to Christ Jesus. He only would need to be super clear on this point one time rather than repeating enough that the unitarian might recognize Christ's divinity. It is not like John was writing primarily to the die-hard unitarians.

You do not have sufficient background knowledge to create this new experimental unitarian doctrine

John 1:1 doesn't help you make a case for the deity of Jesus at all. It doesn't even mention Jesus and the Word is not The God. Are you saying your god is not The God? Scripture teaches that your god is not The God.

Did you notice what John did not say? John didn't say "He who was from the beginning... who we have heard... He is the Word of life... we have seen him...the eternal life who was with the Father..."

John is flatout calling the very Logos mentioned in John 1:1 a non-person thing. This is probably the biggest defeat for logos theology and leaves trintiarianism and binitarianism looking rather silly.

1 John 1
1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have gazed upon and touched with our own hands—this is the Word of life. 2And this is the life that was revealed; we have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.

3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And this fellowship of ours is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.

 

[Runningman]

Do you agree that the unitarian god that is one person is neither stated or described in Scripture?

Will some of you Uni's admit that ?

The entire Old Testament, John 17:3, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Ephesians 4:6 are our checkmates as far as proving who God is from a Scriptural perspective.

 

[Runningman]

No, I am not! All of the passages I cited are talking about the Lord God Almighty and are Messianic prophecies, so they do not reference the Father.

Doug

Stop looking at John 1:1 only. It's bad scholarship to just focus on one verse and ignore everything else. John said the Word is a thing in 1 John 1:1-3 and was a non-believer in the deity of Jesus as evidenced in Acts 4:23-31. Trinitarians don't know how to understand John 1:1. @synergy learned that recently when I just schooled him. He's now stonewalling me by just copying and pasting the same replies repeatedly.

 

[civic]

The entire Old Testament, John 17:3, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Ephesians 4:6 are our checkmates as far as proving who God is from a Scriptural perspective.

nope doesn't say what you claim.

 

[Runningman]

Maybe we should all carry forward everything @Runningman ignores, in note form, in the hopes that he might finally address them, in the fullness of time, instead of running away from them.

I can't say that his name didn't warn us of his tendencies to run away from reality.

That's exactly what you did. All of your talking points were addressed until you ran out of steam because you simply can't carry a discussion past John 1:1.

 

[mikesw]

John 1:1 doesn't help you make a case for the deity of Jesus at all. It doesn't even mention Jesus and the Word is not The God. Are you saying your god is not The God? Scripture teaches that your god is not The God.

Did you notice John did not say? "He who was from the beginning... who we have heard... He is the Word of life... we have seen him...the eternal life who was with the Father..."

John is flatout calling the very Logos mentioned in John 1:1 a non-person thing. This is probably the biggest defeat for logos theology.

1 John 1
1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have gazed upon and touched with our own hands—this is the Word of life. 2And this is the life that was revealed; we have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.

3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And this fellowship of ours is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.

Uh. When the scripture talks about properly dividing the word, Paul is not about cutting verses out of context. That is the mistake you are doing with John 1. You keep referring to John 1:1 as if the next 17 verses are a separate topic. Like synergy repeatedly posts, you forget the clear equating of Jesus and Word in verse 14.
Again, you try to divide 1 John 1 from his testimony in John 1 as if John changed his mind who Jesus is. John Stott in his commentary on 1 John 1 notes that a change of focus appears in 1 John 1, namely on the concept of "eternal life." Like mentioned before, you cannot take a specific word and assume it controls the context under which it appears. Stop cutting up scriptures in abnormal ways to obtain your readings.

 

[Runningman]

nope doesn't say what you claim.

Yes they do. John 17:1-3 says the Father is the only true God. 1 Cor. 8:6 says there is one God, the Father.

Here's a little secret. You can't win. You will never win. Nothing you can do can change it. All of your arguments amount up to only arguments. Scripture is precise and clear about the exclusive deity of the Father.

 

[Runningman]

Uh. When the scripture talks about properly dividing the word, Paul is not about cutting verses out of context. That is the mistake you are doing with John 1. You keep referring to John 1:1 as if the next 17 verses are a separate topic. Like synergy repeatedly posts, you forget the clear equating of Jesus and Word in verse 14.
Again, you try to divide 1 John 1 from his testimony in John 1 as if John changed his mind who Jesus is. John Stott in his commentary on 1 John 1 notes that a change of focus appears in 1 John 1, namely on the concept of "eternal life." Like mentioned before, you cannot take a specific word and assume it controls the context under which it appears. Stop cutting up scriptures in abnormal ways to obtain your readings.

I have been waiting for it to move past John 1:1 and no one has wanted to. Right off the bat after John 1:1 proves the Word is not The God, John 1:2,3 proves the Word is not the Creator. Rather, the God the Word was with is the Creator.

Forward a bit to John 1:9,10 and there is another key passage that proves the True Light was coming into the world in the present tense while Jesus was already 30 years old. So Jesus had been alive for 30 years already before the True Light was coming into the world. John 1:14 teaches Jesus was created, John 1:18 teaches Jesus was begotten. John 1:30-31 calls the Lamb of God a man.

Context kills all of the arguments. The Word or Jesus are not God the Creator. It only gets more sobering for Trinitarainism the more of the Bible we read.

 

[civic]

Yes they do. John 17:1-3 says the Father is the only true God. 1 Cor. 8:6 says there is one God, the Father.

Here's a little secret. You can't win. You will never win. Nothing you can do can change it. All of your arguments amount up to only arguments. Scripture is precise and clear about the exclusive deity of the Father.

And there is One Lord the Only Lord identified as the Son. The same Lord who created all things.

So much for your strawman, exposed once again

Next fallacy

I feel like MC Hammer: can’t touch this

 

[mikesw]

Everlasting Father, is, to my mind, meaning to say the Father of Eternity. Father has the meaning of the supreme authority over eternity.

Doug

Sure. I wanted to show there are ways that "father" can apply here that is distinct from the use in the NT. In the OT, God as a father seems to appear only a half-dozen times and only in prophetic areas of scripture.

 

[Runningman]

And there is One Lord the Only Lord identified as the Son. The same Lord who created all things.

So much for your strawman, exposed once again

Next fallacy

I feel like MC Hammer: can’t touch this

Ahhh, now I know your error. You think God and Jesus are the same Lord, but they are not. I am aware the Bible says there is "one Lord" but in example that isn't the case. You can rightly divide the Bible until you understand what it means by there being only one Lord.

The one and only true God is the Father. God is a distinct Lord from Jesus. Let me show you a very clear example of God and Jesus not being the same Lord.

Acts 3
20that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus, the Christ, who has been appointed for you.

 

[civic]

Ahhh, now I know your error. You think God and Jesus are the same Lord, but they are not. I am aware the Bible says there is "one Lord" but in example that isn't the case. You can rightly divide the Bible until you understand what it means by there being only one Lord.

The one and only true God is the Father. God is a distinct Lord from Jesus. Let me show you a very clear example of God and Jesus not being the same Lord.

Acts 3
20that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus, the Christ, who has been appointed for you.

The One God, One Lord and the same One God which includes both Father and Son.

That’s the error uni’s don’t understand. Spiritual truth evades them. The very god of this works has blinded the uni to the truth hidden in Christ and His glory as per 2 Corinthians 4:3-4. It has been hidden/ veiled/ blinded from uni’s.

 

[Runningman]

The One God, One Lord and the same One God which includes both Father and Son.

That’s the error uni’s don’t understand. Spiritual truth evades them.

No they are not the same Lord. You ignored Acts 3:20 as I figured you probably would, because it refutes you completely.

Here's another example of God and Jesus not being the same Lord:

Matthew 11
25At that time Jesus declared, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.

 

[mikesw]

I have been waiting for it to move past John 1:1 and no one has wanted to. Right off the bat after John 1:1 proves the Word is not The God, John 1:2,3 proves the Word is not the Creator. Rather, the God the Word was with in the Creator.

Context kills all your arguments. You still cannot include John 1:14 without contradicting what you say of John 1:1. Your blindness to that context becomes too evident. I know that the points contrary to your belief make it hard to accept John 1:14. We are here to help you beyond that blindness.

Forward a bit to John 1:9,10 and there is another key passage that proves the True Light was coming into the world in the present tense while Jesus was already 30 years old. So Jesus had been alive for 30 years already before the True Light was coming into the world.

I assume by your confusion that you do not comprehend vivid descriptions. Again you divide the scripture as if trying to conquer and destroy it instead of trying to accept it. We have Jesus as the Light.

John 8:12 (ESV) Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

It is not as if John distinguishes John 8:12 from John 1:9-10. Stop chopping up the scripture. Keep it properly divided.

John 1:14 teaches Jesus was created, John 1:18 teaches Jesus was begotten. John 1:30-31 calls the Lamb of God a man.
.

Stop it. Your persistent weird interpretations almost are funny. Maybe you forget that the humanity of Jesus is recognized along with his divinity. Again, you try to chop up scripture as if the previous 29 verses of John disappeared suddenly. You are too eager to deny who Christ Jesus is.