First let me clarify how I went total knee-jerk on your quoting of Isaiah 44:6, knowing that you regard there to be a ‘God the Father’ and a ‘God the Son’ in that verse, I resorted to sarcasm, instead of presenting it as I believe it. (I will partly blame that on the fatigue that this week of extensive trucking has given me...and trying to maintain a conversation with my wife while typing. But hey, you make exuses for not answering questions, so I guess I’m entitled to one.)
Compare other verses to Isaiah 44:6:
45:11 Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker.....(the Christ is speaking the Words of his Maker, who dwells in him).
55:5 ...shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel.
The Son is holy because of the invisible Father that is in him. You can call it ‘my interpretation’, but, that is mostly what you offer, ...interpretations; as when you say the Father is in ‘unity’, but not literally one with Son, and not literally in him, contrary to what the Son spends half of the book of John explaining.
The man Jesus Christ can speak as God the Father because he has been GIVEN the authority to speak those words:
“I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him.” And they understood not that he spake to them of the Father. Jn 8:26,27
“..I told you, and you believed not: the works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me........neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is GREATER than ALL, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are ONE.” Jn 10:35-30
The Jews then wanted to stone him, for they knew that God was not a man. They were right about that, but, they could NOT grasp that the Father is in Christ, giving him all power; giving him the Words and works to prove the annointing.
I honestly don’t know how anyone can read this passage and not see that God the Father is THE omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent source of the Christ power:
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the WORDS I SPEAK unto you I speak NOT of myself: but the FATHER that DWELLETH in me, HE DOETH THE WORKS. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.
There is no need to interpret those words, unless one wants to suit a desire for separate ‘persons of ‘God’.
**You are quoting Ephesians 4:6, you incompetent, nor is it speaking of the Father alone, but of “God.”**
You’re interpreting. Then you should put a comma in there where there currently isn’t (in the KJV anyway).
**Eph 4:10 He (Christ) that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.**
That is made possible by God the Father; defined by the Christ as a Spirit (Jn 4:23,24)
The MIND of Christ IS the Father. (remember, the man Christ Jesus said the words were not his own). The Son had his own will, but, it was tied to the flesh, just like ours is. The BIG difference is this: With the Father IN him, he had the power to remain sinless, and do the will of the Father.
**The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all coequal and living. The relationship is thusly: The Father begs from eternity; the Son is eternally begotten; the Holy Spirit proceeds from both. None are created, but all exist in this way from eternity.**
That is what I mean by ‘your interpretations’. “Eternally begotten”....??
“The Holy Spirit proceeds from both”.....Do you mean that one can send the Holy Ghost out on a mission if the other is too busy to?
You see....Jesus Christ HAD to go away, OR the Comforter wasn’t going to come. He had comforted the disciples with his physical presence, fully displaying the power of the Father. “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you”. The Father is so completely knit with the soul of the Son (they are one), that the Father can share that ‘mind of Christ’ in the baptism of the Holy Ghost (which proceeds from the Father).
**Notice that the Father not only calls Him God, but continues by declaring “You, Lord,” that is, the Son whom He is still speaking with, “laid the foundations of the Earth...”**
Yes, God the Father, who begat the Son, has appointed him heir of ALL things, BY whom (the Son) also he (God the Father) made the worlds. Who (the Son) being the brightness of his (the Father’s) glory, and the express image (the Son) of his (the Father’s) person.
**The Son is not the Father, nor does He claim to be the Father,**
But he claims that the Father is the source of all thing divine.
**but is always a distinct individual:**
The Son is the express image of the invisible God.
Notice, that all the salutations to the saints, call God the Father, and Jesus Christ as Lord. Notice the comma is after ‘Father’, NOT after ‘God’. Or else the salutations would be “God, the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”; which seems to be the way you portray it.
**However, the image of the Father is also God**
Interpreting again?
“God was IN Christ reconciling the World unto himself”. Jesus Christ says that God the Father is a Spirit. Jn 4:23,24.
And the Son of God told his disciples: “..handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have”. Luke 24:39.
I said: You brought up John 1:4, and I answer it with the Christ’s own explanation (”For as the Father hath LIFE in himself; SO hath he GIVEN to the SON to have LIFE in himself; and hath GIVEN him authority...”. John 5:26,27),
You replied with more ‘yopios’: **Christ is speaking of the power and authority He received from the Father as man in the giving of eternal life, not of that life and authority that He has as the “Almighty”, who was “made flesh, and dwelt among us.”**
I’ll offer an interpretation of ‘made flesh’: “The express image of the invisible God”.
Like I said before, if you believe that the flesh of the Son is a separate and distinct person of God, then you must believe that Mary is the ‘mother of God’.
**And yet, the scripture explicitly declares that He has been seen, even in human form: Gen 16:13; Gen 32:30; Exo 24:10-11, Exo 33:14, Exo 33:19-23; Num 12:8; Deu 5:24, Deu 34:10; Jdg 6:22-23, Jdg 13:21-22; Isa 6:5; Joh 1:18; 2Co 3:18, 2Co 4:6; Gal 1:6; Eph 1:17; Col 1:15; 2Ti 1:10; Heb 11:27. The one seen in all these instances, therefore, must be....the Son, who is the same God, while the Father remains invisible.**
So when the Son says that God the Father is a Spirit, and John, who I certainly trust WAAYYY more than you, declared: NO man hath seen God at any time. 1Jn 4:12
**All three are active, performing their own unique roles in salvation, not one of them being an “it” or a mere “visual”: 2Co_13:14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen. **
So, you have three Spirits in you when you are born again?
Well, I’ll be looking for the book you’re going to write that tells what Spirit can do this thing, but not this or that other thing, which only the other Spirit can do, etc. What Spirit of the three gives the fruit of the Spirit, if thou canst tell? Or maybe they divided them up.
**And we are commanded to baptize in the name of all three, confirming their equality and personhood:**
So, the apostles completely blew it by baptizing in the name of Jesus everywhere they went. That, or they understood that the name of Jesus covers the requirements.
Repeating a command is not necessarily obeying a command: My boss can tell me to “go and deliver that shipment to the customer in the name of the Founder, CEO, and felloworker of this Company. His name is none of those; they’re titles. (His name is on the trucks, too).
**This is in reference to Christ as man, who is made “both Lord and Christ.” The Word is made flesh, but the Word is from the beginning, and is therefore eternal (John chapter 1). When Christ is risen up and placed above all things, He is returning to where He was before: Joh_17:5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.**
Well, at least you’re getting closer to verses where the Son calls the Father ‘the only true God’. To which you replied:
**Christ also declares that only God is good:**
That’s your answer? Tell me you’re not a politician!
**Luk_18:19 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God. Is Christ good, true or false?**
I will interpret, since you like to debate that way:
I believe the Lord was testing the young ruler, to see if he would confess to knowing that God was in Christ. How could Christ be good without the Father? But, we don’t have to worry about that.
**False, since Christ isn’t just called the “Son of God,” though the Pharisees understood this as declaring equality with God.**
So, the phrase ‘God the Son’ is used by the Son, and by the Apostles in the scriptures. And what version of the Bible would that be? So, you (and those likeminded, believe that you are better than they at defining God?
**More technically, the Holy Spirit is in Christ: Luk_4:1 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
But the Spirit is called the Spirit of God and Christ, if you recall.**
So, which of the three Spirits (you have indicated the three persons are divine Spirits) is the one which led him into the wilderness?
I said: When the Christ said that the Father is in him doing the works (Jn 14:10), was he telling the truth?
You say: **Dr. Gill notes that the phrase is “expressive of the sameness of nature in the Father and the Son; of the Son’s perfect equality with the Father, since the Son is as much in the Father, as the Father is in the Son.”**
If Gill is using that interpretation to describe the witness of the Son, who said “the Father that DWELLETH IN ME, he doeth the works”, then Gill apparently doesn’t want to take the Son at his word, and has probably made a comfortable living selling his interpretations.
**Is the Son in the Father, true or false?**
Can’t miss on that. Since the Father is omnipresent, the Son is definitely in the Father. And the Father is in Son, GIVING the Son all power in heaven and in earth.
Care to try again on this?
Jesus Christ declared throughout the book of John that EVERY single thing divine is sourced back to the Father. THE CHALLENGE IS FOR YOU: SHOW ME WHERE HE POSSESSSED ONE SINGLE DIVINE ATTRIBUTE THAT DID NOT COME FROM THE FATHER. SHOW ME ONE SINGLE DIVINE ATTRIBUTE THAT THE FATHER RECEIVED FROM THE SON.
Read my post again and tell me why and for what reason I used it in the first place, and then tell me that you "know" how I regarded it. You knee-jerk twice in a row. Well, even worse, for example:
Compare other verses to Isaiah 44:6: 45:11 Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker.....(the Christ is speaking the Words of his Maker, who dwells in him).
The verse says no such thing. The speaker is Jehovah, who is both the Holy one of Israel and the Maker of Israel. He is not speaking of some other maker, nor talking about some other maker within Him who is speaking. From Young's Literal translation:
Isa 45:11 Thus said Jehovah, The Holy One of Israel, and his Former: Ask Me of the things coming concerning My sons, Yea, concerning the work of My hands, ye command Me.'
55:5 ...shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel.
This verse does not declare your previous claim either. It does not call the Son "holy because of the invisible Father that is in Him." I'll also mention your claim later that Christ is not Himself good, but is only good "because of the Father that is in Him." This is interesting too, as you are denying that Christ is Holy, even though the Spirit specifically calls Him a Holy thing to be born:
Luk_1:35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
Note that the Spirit is not claiming that the "holy thing" is the Father within the Son. The "holy thing" is the Child Himself.
You also deny that Christ is sinless:
Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. (Heb 4:14-15)
If Christ was sinless because it was the Father in Him, then it was the Father who was "tempted like as we are" in the flesh, yet "without sin." Christ Himself, as you claim, is not good, but only the God that is in Him is good. In that case, Paul's lengthy discourse on the humanity of Christ is meaningless, since the humanity had nothing to do with our salvation at all, or with Christ sinlessness.
This is the height of sophistry, which you are reduced to because you know that if you admit that Christ is good, as the scripture teaches, that He must be God.
You can call it ‘my interpretation’, but, that is mostly what you offer, ...interpretations
Not true at all. As a matter of fact, I offer my verses without interpretation. When the scripture has Christ described as the "First and the Last" and the "Almighty," or the "Word" that was "with" God and is God, I understand it plainly. It is you who must "interpret" it, which, in the way you use it, is a concession that you make it say things it does not actually say. This is true for all your claims. Nowhere in the entirety of scripture will you find it explained or taught or even implied that when Christ is called God, that really, it's referring to someone other than Christ.
when you say the Father is in ‘unity’, but not literally one with Son, and not literally in him, contrary to what the Son spends half of the book of John explaining.
This is pure distortion. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are "literally" one God, and I have declared that the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son. Learn our theology before daring to speak of it.
The man Jesus Christ can speak as God the Father because he has been GIVEN the authority to speak those words:
That goes without saying, as Christ who is in the "form of God," yet confirms Himself to the role of a servant. This does not negate His deity, no matter how hard you try to run from those verses. Your own verse betrays you when you try to claim that the "giving" of His words indicates inferiority. If the Father and the Son are indeed "one," then they are equal.
The Jews then wanted to stone him, for they knew that God was not a man. They were right about that, but, they could NOT grasp that the Father is in Christ, giving him all power; giving him the Words and works to prove the annointing.
Yet that is not what your own verse says:
"I and my Father are one."
If Christ was merely saying that God was in Him, then this has been true for all the Prophets since the beginning of revelation. He would have directly said "The Father is in me." The Jews understood that He was claiming to be God, which is exactly what they say:
Joh 10:33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
Your view can only work if the Jews themselves meant "You blaspheme because you say God is in you." But that's stupid. Why would it be blasphemy to say what is true for all the prophets?
I'll also add that no one else every understood these verses as you do. No one out there is reading these verses of Christ being called and saying to themselves that it means something else. Only you are so deluded that you can read such direct claims and say something different.
Ignatius, for example, who was a disciple of the Apostle John who died between 95AD and 115AD, never held to any of your teachings:
". . . united and elect in a true passion, by the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our GOD" (Ignatius, First Epistle to the Ephesians)
So why did it take 2000 years for you to figure out what the Jews and everybody else misunderstood? And why is taking something at face value no longer a valid way of reading anything?
I honestly don’t know how anyone can read this passage and not see that God the Father is THE omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent source of the Christ power:
This is another irrelevant argument. When I said that Christ is eternally begotten, obviously I mean that there is a priority in the Godhead, with the Father "begetting" His Son, His Word, from eternity. There is a priority in the Godhead, but not a superiority and inferiority, as there cannot be more than one "Almighty," or more than one "Self-existant one'. The only thing the Father can "beget" must of itself be divine, and the Father is the sustaining and simultaneous cause of the Son, yet, this from eternity. There was never a time that the Father was without His Word. The same language Christ uses of His Father, is used by the Father towards the Son, who calls Him specifically "Yahweh".
Compare the quotation of Psalm 102:22, which Paul describes as the Father's speech to the Son. The LORD in our KJV in that Psalms is Yahweh, the name of God.
yeh-ho-vaw' From H1961; (the) self Existent or eternal; Jehovah, Jewish national name of God: - Jehovah, the Lord. Compare H3050, H3069.
If the Father calls the Son self-existant, then He is God. With the Father, the Son has always existed, is always "begotten," is always in the bosom of the Father. And the Father is never without a Son, never without His Word, never without His Wisdom, never without His power. And the Holy Spirit, who filled the Son on Earth, and fills us now, who is the Spirit of God and of Christ, was never not proceeding from the Father and the Son.
There is no need to interpret those words, unless one wants to suit a desire for separate ‘persons of ‘God’.
The hypocrisy of this is that you have created seperate "persons of God," you just refuse to call them God, even though that's what the scripture quite clearly says of them.
That is made possible by God the Father; defined by the Christ as a Spirit (Jn 4:23,24)
If God is making someone else omnipresent, then He has made a separate God, as this is a divine attribute. The scripture teaches there is only one God. The Son is omnipresent because He is God, exactly as the scripture teaches.
The MIND of Christ IS the Father. (remember, the man Christ Jesus said the words were not his own). The Son had his own will, but, it was tied to the flesh, just like ours is. The BIG difference is this: With the Father IN him, he had the power to remain sinless, and do the will of the Father.
You deny the pre-existence of the Son from eternity if you claim He had no will, or that His will was "tied to the flesh". He is described as being both "with God" and as God from the beginning, and that He was only "made flesh", as described in John 1, later.
That is what I mean by ‘your interpretations’. “Eternally begotten”....?? “The Holy Spirit proceeds from both”.....Do you mean that one can send the Holy Ghost out on a mission if the other is too busy to?
Christ is said to be "eternally" begotten, because it is not possible for the Father to exist without His Wisdom, His "Logos," or His power, or to even be a Father at all without a Son. This is not interpretation in your style, where you have nothing. This is based on the scriptures I've referenced all throughout, which say what I have claimed quite clearly. As for your comment about the Holy Spirit, I thought you said you were educated in the Trinity? If you don't know what I mean, then you lied to me, or you are deluded about how much you thought you knew.
You see....Jesus Christ HAD to go away, OR the Comforter wasn’t going to come. He had comforted the disciples with his physical presence, fully displaying the power of the Father. “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you”. The Father is so completely knit with the soul of the Son (they are one), that the Father can share that ‘mind of Christ’ in the baptism of the Holy Ghost (which proceeds from the Father).
This is confusion: If the Father and Son are "one", then you repudiate your Jehovah's Witness claim of the Son being created, but declare the Son to be a different mode of the Father. This is back again to Oneness heresy, which is sorted with John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God..." If the Son is with God and is God, He did not cease His existence and get absorbed back into the Father. He returns to being "with" God, and maintains being "God," the second member of the trinity. Furthermore, Christ specifically declares that He has not ceased to exist, but is standing on the right hand of the Father, glorified again to what He was "before the world was," as previously quoted.
Yes, God the Father, who begat the Son, has appointed him heir of ALL things, BY whom (the Son) also he (God the Father) made the worlds.
The Father identifies Christ as Yahweh who "laid the foundations" of the Earth. This clearly indicates that Christ is God, and not merely a "tool" of God, like a wrench or a hammer. You seem to move back and forth between Modalism and the JW view. You should pick one and keep it. The Son is the express image of the invisible God. Notice, that all the salutations to the saints, call God the Father, and Jesus Christ as Lord. Notice the comma is after ‘Father’, NOT after ‘God’. Or else the salutations would be “God, the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”; which seems to be the way you portray it.
An empty statement, as Christ is clearly called God, which is why you must resort to the sophistry of Him only kidding whenever it is so applied.
Tit 2:13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
And the Son of God told his disciples: “..handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have”. Luke 24:39.
Are you denying again the pre-existence of the Son? If the Word was made flesh, He was not flesh beforehand.
You’re interpreting. Then you should put a comma in there where there currently isn’t (in the KJV anyway).
I'm not interpreting, the passage does not require a comma.
You replied with more ‘yopios’:
What, did you morph from Jehovah's Witness to Oneness Pentecostal to Catholic all in one post? Where's your magisterium? Don't copy the Catholics with their "your own personal intepretation of scripture" just because you see them in this thread. They all think you're going to hell too, and it makes no sense when someone like you, who does not even know the theological arguments of his cult, uses it. You are the definition of "your own personal interpretation of scripture."
I’ll offer an interpretation of ‘made flesh’: “The express image of the invisible God”. Like I said before, if you believe that the flesh of the Son is a separate and distinct person of God, then you must believe that Mary is the ‘mother of God’.
IOW, you are accusing me of saying that Christ is "fully man," when I only ever said that Christ is truly man and truly God. I did not claim that the Word lost His divine nature and became purely a creature of flesh. This is again more evidence that you know nothing of Christian theology. You are either ignorant of our position or purposely distorting it.
So when the Son says that God the Father is a Spirit, and John, who I certainly trust WAAYYY more than you, declared: NO man hath seen God at any time. 1Jn 4:12
A stupid response. Instead of interpreting 1 John 4:12 in light of all the passages which declare that God has been seen, you are asking me to believe that one verse is more scripture than the others.
The MIND of Christ IS the Father.
Are you saying that Christ had no mind? And there is no verse which says this. The Father is the Head of Christ, and Christ is our Head, but we are not mindless (1 Co 11:3). This is your invention.
So, you have three Spirits in you when you are born again? Well, I’ll be looking for the book you’re going to write that tells what Spirit can do this thing, but not this or that other thing, which only the other Spirit can do, etc.
More distortion, I said that we have the Holy Spirit, who is called both the Spirit of God and of Christ. You also didn't respond to the point of that verse: If the Holy Spirit dwells in us, and we are called the temples of God, then the Holy Spirit must be fully God.
So, the apostles completely blew it by baptizing in the name of Jesus everywhere they went. That, or they understood that the name of Jesus covers the requirements...Repeating a command is not necessarily obeying a command: My boss can tell me to “go and deliver that shipment to the customer in the name of the Founder, CEO, and felloworker of this Company. His name is none of those; they’re titles. (His name is on the trucks, too).
This is merely diversion. The Apostles baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as commanded. Nowhere does it say that they did not do this. Nor does your objection answer the problem posed by the verse:
That the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are differentiated and equalized in the baptismal formula. Unless that verse is not scripture, then this is a nut you must chew on. If the "Son" and "Holy Spirit" are merely titles of God, then you must believe that the Son and Holy Spirit are properly God, even though you confound the persons. If you confound the persons, why are they separated, and why are they always separated in scripture? Lastly, you again revert back to a Oneness Argument, after spending most of the post arguing that the Son isn't God at all, or God hiding under a different title.
How can I take you seriously when I find myself debating a Jehovah's Witness sometimes, and then a Oneness Pentecostal on other times, when these differing arguments destroy each other? Are you able to think rationally enough to understand the problem of claiming that Christ is not God, and then claiming that Christ is a mode of God?
I believe the Lord was testing the young ruler, to see if he would confess to knowing that God was in Christ. How could Christ be good without the Father? But, we don’t have to worry about that.
Well of course we do. We have to worry about it because you are saying that Christ (who is sometimes God and sometimes not in your claims) expected the young ruler to know something He never explained, and absolutely contradicted, when calling Himself God. You even claim that you know you are "interpreting," which, in your usage, means you're making up random stuff that is nowhere actually explained.
So, the phrase ‘God the Son’ is used by the Son, and by the Apostles in the scriptures. And what version of the Bible would that be? So, you (and those likeminded, believe that you are better than they at defining God?
A sad diversion, but one I expect from the cultists of FR. When nailed to the wall, they shut their eyes. Is Jesus Christ called God? Do the Pharisees recognize the term "Son of God" as declaring equality with God? Yes or no? It's that simple. Though, with you, I suspect it will not be so simple.
So, which of the three Spirits (you have indicated the three persons are divine Spirits) is the one which led him into the wilderness?
You accused me of being a politician, and yet, you not only distort my position but you ignore the problem. When the scripture declares that Christ was filled by the Holy Ghost, was it telling the truth? Yes or no?
This will cause you a problem depending on whether you are in Jehovah's Witness mode or Oneness Pentecostal mode. Were you a JW who converted to Oneness?
I said: When the Christ said that the Father is in him doing the works (Jn 14:10), was he telling the truth?
It is most certainly true, and Christ is here referring to His miracles, which were done with the power of the Holy Spirit. On Earth, Christ did not use His own power, but lived the perfect human life. He "took upon the form of a servant," and lived accordingly. This is not a claim that Christ has no existence or being. That is your "interpretation", based on your own assumptions, which ignores Christ's divinity and pre-existence, depending on whatever theological theory you are holding to at the moment, anyway.
Can’t miss on that. Since the Father is omnipresent, the Son is definitely in the Father. And the Father is in Son, GIVING the Son all power in heaven and in earth.
A pure example of sophistry: So, in other words, the Son is not really in the Father in the same way that the Father is in Him. Is that what you are saying? True or false?