Examining Scripture to see if Jesus was, and is, God.

by jonathan dough 204 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • designs
    designs

    Should I go back to chewing bark off of trees with my bare teeth............... As former heavyweight boxing champion Ken Norton use to say 'hit your opponent in the solar plexus early in the fight and see which way his eyes roll'...............yes, just having fun with you guys

    Jonathan, in the last two paragraphs you quoted above you can see the author undoing what he hoped to define as a distinction between the Trinity and Pantheism. The Essence of God is being as much of the God-ness thing as anything else of God's. Or to apply the 'essence' analogy to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit, what is being claimed in the Trinity is that these are God because they are filled with the God thing, so by that standard the 'Essence' of God which has just been admitted as pervading creation/universe should also be fully God....and by extension of logic creation then becomes pantheistic.

    There is an excellent chapter in the book 'The Book Of Jewish Knowledge' on how the early Christian community split early on between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Church and how similar the Gentile Church was to the philosphies and the trinities of Egypt under Ptolemy I and the Hellenization he brought to his realm. Read also the Dead Sea Scroll chapter 11Q13 for a comparison between the Jewish Christians and the Messianic Jews of this community.

  • jonathan dough
    jonathan dough
    There is an excellent chapter in the book 'The Book Of Jewish Knowledge' on how the early Christian community split early on between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Church and how similar the Gentile Church was to the philosphies and the trinities of Egypt under Ptolemy I and the Hellenization he brought to his realm. Read also the Dead Sea Scroll chapter 11Q13 for a comparison between the Jewish Christians and the Messianic Jews of this community.

    You don't have to convince me of the difference between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. It's the JWs who argue of their similarities, that it was one organization that ruled and is the justification for the Governing Body. Sounds like an interesting read, though.

  • jonathan dough
    jonathan dough

    YOU: in the last two paragraphs you quoted above you can see the author undoing what he hoped to define as a distinction between the Trinity and Pantheism. The Essence of God is being as much of the God-ness thing as anything else of God's. Or to apply the 'essence' analogy to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit, what is being claimed in the Trinity is that these are God because they are filled with the God thing, so by that standard the 'Essence' of God which has just been admitted as pervading creation/universe should also be fully God....and by extension of logic creation then becomes pantheistic.

    ME: I think you're stretching the logic again, inverting it, and almost begging the question. You're claiming creation becomes pantheistic (God is "in" everything) because the God thing fills the Trinity and Jesus and is everywhere because God is omnipresent, but I see three weaknesses here. First, the church is decidedly non-pantheisitic; God's omnipresence does not mean He is IN everything, but EVERYWHERE.

    "God is everywhere, say theologians and philosophers, by his power, his essence, and his knowledge. By his infinite power he is everywhere because he gives existence to all things. He is everywhere by his essence because what God is (his essence) isn't separable from what he can do (his power). God is everywhere by his knowledge because he knows all things at all times." http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/quickquestions/keyword/prayer/page11

    Secondly, your statement: "to apply the 'essence' analogy to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit, what is being claimed in the Trinity is that these are God because they are filled with the God thing," is an inaccurate description of the Trinity. With respect to immanent Trinity, the one triune God is not God because He is FILLED with the God thing, or essence, as though it were some container. It IS the God thing. Neither are the three Persons filled with the God thing. Nor do each of the Persons fill each other. They are the consubstantial essence, inseparably, because each is God, so there can't be a proper analogy with pantheism where God is seen as filling something and being IN all things.

    Third, as mentioned, the hypostatic nature of Christ, that He was/is God-man does not mean that the God part filled the creature flesh part like the pantheistic God who is seen to be IN all things.

    “If the pivotal assertion of the New Testament, “The Word was made flesh” (Jn 1.14), means anything, it signifies that two, the divine and the human, became somehow uniquely one in Jesus of Nazareth; that in Him was achieved a union, elsewhere unparalleled of God with man” (ibid., 918)." "The Church believes that Jesus Christ is true God, Son of God made man, the Second person of the Trinity, who took unto Himself a human nature and so exists not only in the divine but also in a human nature: one divine Person in two natures. The man who in His earthly life was known as Jesus of Nazareth was not a human person made one, as Nestorius said, in a unique way of moral unity, with the Person of the Son of God. He was God, Son of the Father, made man for men’s salvation. (ibid., 932) “His human nature, perfect and complete, was not a human person distinct from the Divine person of the Word … it was the human nature of a Divine Person."

    Remember, the creature Jesus, the created humanity who was not the Almighty, did not become God because God filled the flesh with the God thing. The Almighty did not insert Himself in the flesh in order to make the flesh God. That is not proper Trinity teaching. So I t

  • designs
    designs

    Joanthan,

    What I was proposing was that the Trinity inadvertantly, even as it claims not to venture into pantheism, does so by its very wording on 'Essence' and the definition it gives to Jesus as the God/Son. Read the formal theological writings you have posted from an objective stance and it jumps out rather demonstrably.

    The Hellenization of the Gentile Christian Church began incorporating the philosophies and language, which the formal Creeds use and the writings of the early Bishops, of Paramenides and Aristotle.

  • frankiespeakin
    frankiespeakin

    Jonath,

    Just for discussion and not to win any theological arguments, I would like to ask:

    1)What is your position on the biblical cannon today, do you feel it is the unerring word of god?

    2)And do you feel the early church fathers were completely unbiased in their choice as to what books got included in the bible?

    3)Is it possible that political agendas and power struggles among these men had anything to do with their choice of books worthy to be part of the bible cannon?

    You seem to have some knowledge of the early history of Christianity I just wondering how much.

  • jonathan dough
    jonathan dough
    What I was proposing was that the Trinity inadvertantly, even as it claims not to venture into pantheism, does so by its very wording on 'Essence' and the definition it gives to Jesus as the God/Son. Read the formal theological writings you have posted from an objective stance and it jumps out rather demonstrably.

    You're assuming I'm not reading this objectively, but so be it. Your reading would make Satan God. I don't think Trinitarians believe or teach that. And let's not forget that most "formal theological writings" never made it into official church doctrine.

    Even if, for the sake of argument, you are right, can you explain how your theory proves that Jesus was/is NOT God? Isn't that the issue here?

    http://144000.110mb.com/trinity/index-2.html#9

  • jonathan dough
    jonathan dough

    Yes, and another reason why Jesus was, and is, God.

    Philippians 2:6 says that the Word existed in the form (Greek morphe) of God prior to His incarnation. Here, form (morphe) means nature or essence, but not in the abstract, subsisting in the individual (Strong and Vine’s, 167). “It includes the whole nature and essence of deity” (ibid.). And at 2 Corinthians 4:4, the “image of God” means that Christ is “essentially and absolutely the perfect expression of the Archtype, God the Father” (Strong and Vine’s, 77).

    [I]n Colossians 1:15, “the image of the invisible God “gives the additional thought suggested by the word “invisible,” that Christ is the visible representation and manifestation of God to created beings; (5c) the likeness expressed in this manifestation is involved in the essential relations in the Godhead and is therefore unique and perfect; “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” John 14:9. (ibid., 77)

    http://144000.110mb.com/trinity/index-6.html#27

  • designs
    designs

    It is done in one part through the wording on Essence. The Trinity's assertions of the things that make Jesus God inadvertently make it true of everything even while asserting it is a unique feature of Jesus.

    There is a bit of extraordinary confabulation to say God is everywhere but is not in everything. You are back to a dimished Godness in some areas when that is attempted even if the dynamism isn't as intense in some manifestation as in another..

  • jonathan dough
    jonathan dough
    It is done in one part through the wording on Essence. The Trinity's assertions of the things that make Jesus God inadvertently make it true of everything even while asserting it is a unique feature of Jesus.

    But that wouldn't prove that Jesus is NOT God but that everything else IS God, according to your theoretical extrapolation.

    There is a bit of extraordinary confabulation to say God is everywhere but is not in everything.

    No confabulation here. To interpret essence as meaning God is IN everyting in a pantheistic fashion actually conscribes God, limits him, and that is why omnipresence is interpreted to refer to presence, place, and not being IN creation.

    http://144000.110mb.com/trinity/index-6.html#27

  • jonathan dough
    jonathan dough

    Because the Word was before all things (Colossians 1:17) and he created all things (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16), it excludes His being created. He is the source of all creation, the active force.

    http://144000.110mb.com/trinity/index-6.html#33

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