The authority of Jesus

[Francis]

@Waynec

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us(Trinity Equal) make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being

1 Peter 3:22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Revelation 22:13 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

2 John 1: 9 Everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond it, does not have God; whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10 Do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who comes to you and does not bring this teaching; 11 for to welcome is to participate in the evil deeds of such a person.

 

[dougp]

I’m afraid I didn’t make myself clear.
John 10:30 is often given, as here, as a prooftext for the Trinity. Of course it can’t be, because there’s no mention of the holy spirit.

It can be taken as support for two thirds of it, anyway, taken as the usual meaning of “are one”.
But there is another way to take it in ordinary, secular conversation, that two people or things or ideas are virtually the same, without taking them as the same in any mystical sense. That can be the case here also; there’s no doubt that Jesus is very close to his father. He said so. Mt 26:42; Heb 10:7,9 (his dedication prayer, foretold at Ps 40). None of these require him to be in “hypostatic union” with Yahweh (or whatever the scholastics called it).

Is there a possibility that Jesus meant what I’ve suggested? I believe John 17 makes it more than a possibility. Please look especially at v. 11. “So that they [the disciples] may be one like us.” NJB
V. 21 goes further. “May they be all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you.” Nothing hypostatic about that; that’s true unity! Except … the disciples are to be part of it. That makes them God as well, IF we take the passages to be trinitarian-literal.

If not, we have to fall back on common sense, ordinary rules of grammar and so on. I don’t mind; do you?

The point: If there is a Trinity, we must agree that John 10:30 has nothing to do with it.
In other words,

Father and Son are [indeed] of the same mind and not equal.

What we want for a scriptural Trinity is a passage that cites all three “persons” unequivocally and pronounces that the three are ‘in one’ or ‘are one’ or some such. Is there one?

I’m still learning the commenting s/w here; I hope this posts clearly.

 

[dougp]

Whoo-eee! Some big words there!
Predicative nominative, ontological, sigma; I don’t understand them or how they are used. Sorry.

Given that handicap, do you mind if I look into John 1:1 with the ordinary words the translated Bible does give us, using ordinary words to ask questions? I’m basing my request on John 1:18 NJB. Thank you.

NJB: “In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

Dividing the second part into two clauses, I read
“the Word was with God”, plus
“AND the Word was God”

If I understand prepositions [big word!], then “with” means there are at least two nouns involved, one WITH the other. ‘Harold is WITH his father.’ ‘They saw the child was WITH his mother Mary.’ John wore a garment … WITH a leather loin cloth…’
Always, in plain language, such sentences have at least two separate nouns, apart from each other.

Now, "and the Word was God’ is not your Trinity (only two parts), but it does establish two thirds of it. IOW I’m not convinced, but you’ve got me interested. HOWEVER, I see a contradiction here, and we’re taught that the word of God cannot do this.

Either Yahweh and Jesus were two persons WITH each other, or they are one person and could never be said - in plain language - to be WITH each other.

Another question, please. Our quotations of course are in Arial or similar, with upper and lower case letters. Some Bibles show lower case for “was god”. The renowned translator Edgar Goodspeed, in his American Translation NT says, “and the Word was divine”. This is consistent with his 1:18, “No one has ever seen [capital-G] God; it is the divine Only Son, who leans upon his Father’s breast, that has made him known.”
That makes Jesus something special, but not necessarily Yahweh. Please note that Psalm 82:1 refers to the assembly of Jewish elders or judges as “divine” and those elders as [small-g] “gods”. This view is confirmed by Jesus at John 10:34,35.
One might also note the use of Theon, God at “with God” (Jn 1:1a) and at “began to say [Paul] was a god” (Acts 28:6). The latter is certainly correct in inserting the English indefinite pronoun; why not at Jn 1?

My question is, from where do translators get their upper/lower case translating? From others? From manuscripts?

What do you think?

 

[dougp]

Consider this: You are correct, “God gave Jesus authority to do all the things that he did while on earth.”
First, please note that one person gives to another; two persons, not one.
Second, note that the natural understanding of your sentence is that the senior gives to the junior, or the boss gives to the employee, and so on. So, on that basis, it cannot be said that “God , Jesus … have the same authority and are equal.” (Holy spirit not mentioned here.)

We see the same ‘ranking’ in many other passages. See especially Rev 14:14-16, where the glorified Jesus sits outside the heavenly temple. An angel - a messenger - comes out to him with orders from God, which he immediately carries out.

 

[Hodos]

I am sorry that my answer was so technical regarding the actual Greek of the sentence, but if we are going to have an exegetical discussion of what John said, then it requires us to actually look at what John actually wrote. With regard to Edgar Godspeed I would say he is playing fast and loose with the Greek grammar and this is rejected by most scholars on both grammatical and historical grounds. First, if John was saying the word was divine, there is actually a Greek adjective that could be used here θειως. John doesn’t use the adjective θειως, he used the predicate nominative noun θεός. With regard to the capitalizations I think this is a ridiculous argument. First, the original manuscripts are written in the uncial form of Greek (all caps, no space, no punctuation). The capitalization of God is an editorial use of punctuation to emphasize where the divine name, the Tetragrammaton, might be referenced in Greek. However, the Tetragrammaton is a Hebrew construction so nowhere in any all of the NT is the Tetragrammaton mentioned, so this is an outright canard that makes no sense when you understand that the NT was originally written in Hebrew.

I would ask you just how many Gods (capital G) are you suggesting that John, a first century Jew believed created all things. If your answer is more than one, you are a polytheist. If your answer is only one, well then you have to acknowledge that John referred to Christ as God, even though he makes distinctions between the persons of the Father and the Son. In that case welcome to Biblical trinitarianism and Christianity.

 

[dougp]

“dig deeper into actual historical events of how, who, when, why the 27 books became canonized.”
That means, sooner or later, you’ll have to dig into the Council of Trent. Not recommended for the squeamish. The lengthy account of that lengthy gathering can be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia at newadvent.org and elsewhere.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15030c.htm

It was set up, situated, recorded and shut down over many years, amid constant controversies.

First, the original manuscripts are written in the uncial form of Greek (all caps, no space, no punctuation). The capitalization of God is an editorial use of punctuation to emphasize where

Correct; correct. Therefore god and God can be influenced by the translator’s inherent biases, like the comma placement at Lu 23:43. (That one is easy to correct because the wrong placement flatly contradicts Jesus’ and the Bible’s own statements.)

Now, though, we confront a bigger problem.
on). “The capitalization of God is an editorial use of punctuation to emphasize where the divine name, the Tetragrammaton, might be referenced in Greek. However, the Tetragrammaton is a Hebrew construction so nowhere in any all of the NT is the Tetragrammaton mentioned, so this is an outright canard that makes no sense when you understand that the NT was originally written in Hebrew.”
What? In Hebrew? Even Jerome, who had seen Matthew’s gospel in its ‘original Hebrew’ doesn’t make that claim, and he was 1600 years closer to the originals than you are!
Please explain.

 

[Hodos]

Correct; correct. Therefore god and God can be influenced by the translator’s inherent biases, like the comma placement at Lu 23:43. (That one is easy to correct because the wrong placement flatly contradicts Jesus’ and the Bible’s own statements.)

Yes, which is why I look at the Greek and have justified my reading of the text based on the Greek and the fact that the author credits the logos or pre-incarnate Christ with creation (an act only attributed to God - capital G in this sense), not the English translator’s use of capitalization.

Now, though, we confront a bigger problem.
on). “The capitalization of God is an editorial use of punctuation to emphasize where the divine name, the Tetragrammaton, might be referenced in Greek. However, the Tetragrammaton is a Hebrew construction so nowhere in any all of the NT is the Tetragrammaton mentioned, so this is an outright canard that makes no sense when you understand that the NT was originally written in Hebrew.”
What? In Hebrew?

Right, we both agree that Greek linguists didn’t write in Hebrew, so again this is a canard.

What? In Hebrew? Even Jerome, who had seen Matthew’s gospel in its ‘original Hebrew’ doesn’t make that claim, and he was 1600 years closer to the originals than you are!
Please explain.

We were discussing John 1:1, not sure why you are jumping from John 1:1 which by every account was originally written in Greek, to the theory that Matthew, which wasn’t being discussed, was originally written in Hebrew based on an off-hand comment by Papias that most commenters recognize can be read in different ways. In other words, the writer of Matthew’s gospel may have been relying on oral testimony by Matthew in Aramaic, but again, the vast majority of linguists side with me that there is no evidence of the gospel in Matthew being originally written in Aramaic. On the contrary, the Aramaic copies we do have are far newer by hundreds of years, and bear the marks of a translation, rather than an original composition. Additionally, Jerome did not claim to have seen Matthew’s Hebrew gospel, but a translation from the Greek to Aramaic. Huge difference.

 

[dougp]

Sorry, Jason, you’re too subtle - or something - for me. You claimed the entire NT was a Hebrew composition. I asked for confirmation and you give me something about Aramaic, but no answer to my question.

Perhaps a more direct question will help. At Rev 3:12 the glorified Jesus refers four times to one he calls “my God”. What part of the Trinity is that God? What is his name? Isn’t one’s God necessarily above him, not equal or identical to him?

 

[adf417]

In other words, “in union with” and “are one” are equivalent at ch. 17; why not at ch. 10?

Why? Why must God be limited to your understanding?

Peace!!!

 

[adf417]

John 10:30 is often given, as here, as a prooftext for the Trinity. Of course it can’t be, because there’s no mention of the holy spirit.

I think you are mistaken about Catholics using prooftexts. There actually is no such thing. The proof came well before the text. We only use text to back up certain thoughts and it would take the whole bible to fully “prooftext” what the Catholic church teaches if someone really wanted to “prooftext”.

Peace!!!

 

[adf417]

“dig deeper into actual historical events of how, who, when, why the 27 books became canonized.”
That means, sooner or later, you’ll have to dig into the Council of Trent. Not recommended for the squeamish.

Why stop digging there? Whats wrong with digging past Trent, say, Florance, Carthage, Hippo, Rome? Are you afraid of getting down right sick with history? Its probably not recommended for the hard of hearts.

Peace!!!