Posts by aqwsed12345

posted

66
"outside of time" argument
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
this is going to be very brief but a user recently tried to argue an argument that has already been refuted many times - the logic is somewhat sound but falls apart when the definition to the word used it looked and its usages in the bible.the word in question is "aionas" found in the scripture in question hebrews 1:2 .

(https://biblehub.com/hebrews/1-2.htm#lexicon)for starters look at the biblehub translations - do any of them state "outside of time" or that time was "created" in this moment - no because this seems to be heavily inspired by greek philosophy rather than the bible itself.note: i am not saying this word does not mean eternity or anything of the sort, i am saying this scripture some of the claims i dispute and can easily disprove, hence the argument is laughable.. bill mounce defines the word as:pr.

a period of time of significant character; life; an era; an age: hence, a state of things marking an age or era; the present order of nature; the natural condition of man, the world; ὁ αἰών, illimitable duration, eternity; as also, οἱ αἰῶνες, ὁ αἰῶν τῶν αἰώνων, οἱ αἰῶνες τῶν αἰώνων; by an aramaism οἱ αἰῶνες, the material universe, heb.
aqwsed12345
Blotty
You just listed a bunch of names here, but without specifying when, where, and in what context they stated what, it's vague and imprecise. I highly doubt that any serious New Testament Greek linguist would ever claim that there is an aorist in John 1:1a ("en archē ēn ho Logos"). By the way, it contradicts that the WTS itself simply translates "ἦν" in the Greek text as "was" in the NWT, since the imperfect here corresponds to the English simple past.
In itself, self-taught knowledge does not in principle preclude someone from making relevant comments, but looking at the WTS apologist sites you also recommend, it is clear that they are looking for "evidence" for their "a priori" idea, rather than drawing conclusions from the evidence. For example, they quote the dictionary form of a certain word from a dictionary (which lists up to 8-10 different meanings), highlight the one they like in bold and underline, and then carry it around like a victory wreath saying "DO YOU SEE? Even according to 'the scholars' it can also be translated that way!" Well, this is anything but a scientific approach.
Furthermore, if someone does not have a scientific qualification and does not know the methodology of the given field, the studies that are born in it, he cannot even judge to what extent a study is an accepted consensus or not. A good example of this is George Howard's hypothesis, which he himself cautiously formulated as a suggestion (and most of his colleagues considered unfounded), yet the Watchtower has been bragging about his name for decades, at the same time creating the false impression that their method is based on scientific there is a consensus. Well, no, not by a long shot.
The lack of distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters is important, because the ancient reader reading the New Testament in the original could not have thought at all that if "THEOS" is mentioned in connection with Jesus, then some inferior demigod ("archangel") category must be thought of here.
This is even more so, since there was no canonized "Bible" in the first centuries, as we know it today, before the invention of book printing, mass production was out of the question, so the converts heard the Holy Scriptures not in writing, but orally. Faith comes from hearing, through the preaching of the apostles (Romans 10:17). The word was always preached by the apostles and not written down (1 Cor 15:1.11). Let the teaching that we heard from the apostles be our ideal (2Tim 1:13).
Accordingly, tinkering with initial letters is not only linguistically unfounded, but also anachronistic.
I don't call JWs "Arians" based on their organizational or doctrinal continuity with the 4th century Arians, but on the basis of their Christological similarity. The JWs have no doctrinal and organizational continuity, most of their specific teachings (two-class salvation regime, etc.) were never professed by anyone before, and even they only introduced them decades after their founding.
However, the true Church was not established in 1879/1881, but on the Pentecost of 33 AD. According to them, God had no people for almost 1900 years then. The followers of Chirst were simply called Christians in the NT (Acts 11:26), and according to Ignatius of Antioch the Church was called καθολικός since the Apostolic Age.
The fact that the Catholic Church was established in the 4th century can be, for example, Dan Brown says in The Da Vinci Code, but not a serious historian.
All Constantine did was free Christians from persecution and allow them to preach the gospel freely throughout the Roman Empire. He never combined the dogmas of the Church with politics and never interfered in the affairs of the Church or the Church in its political affairs. But we have already published many related articles on this question in more detail, especially on the role of Constantine the Great in the affairs of the Church.
In the Scripture itself, we can see that other emperors also show goodwill towards God's people, which the Scripture never condemned! Take the Persian ruler, Cyrus, for example. The Scriptures say that God moved the heart of Cyrus (an idolatrous king!) to rebuild the destroyed temple of God in Jerusalem and even return the sacred vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had stolen (Ezra, chapter 1). Does the idolatrous king's favor to the Jews (especially to rebuild God's temple) prove that Israel was at that time turned away from the truth? The Scriptures clearly answer NO, because God said this about the idolatrous king Cyrus: “He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt,” and of the temple, “Let its foundations be laid." (Isaiah 44:28). So the Scriptures clearly indicate that God can use even worldly powers to accomplish His will (Proverbs 21:1). The same thing happened with Constantine the Great: God turned the favor of the idolatrous emperor in favor of the Christians and used him as an instrument to end the state's persecution of the Church and allow the Gospel to spread unhindered throughout the Empire.
That the teaching of the Christian Church has "changed" or "corrupted", especially that the Church was created then, is completely unfounded. The apostles wrote about the True Church that it will remain unbroken until the coming of Jesus, and although false teachers come and go, they will never take over the Church, which "not even the gates of hell can prevail against". Consequently, true Christianity did not need to be "restored" by anyone in modern times.
That the only difference between "born" (tikto) / "begotten" (gennao) and "created" (ktizo) / "mae" (poio) is that the former is "directly" created, the and the latter with the "help" of an archangel, but what supports that beyond the Watchtower ideology? I don't see any substantive, qualitative difference between the "direct" and "indirect" creation, which would justify the strict distinction in word usage that we can read in the NT. Also: if the fact that the Son is only a creature and an angel is such an important and clear teaching, why does the Scriptures not state this ANYWHERE. Taking into account other statements, it stands out much more that the origin of the Son is quite different from the Father, qualitatively different from the creation of creatures.
""But there is no temporality, temporal succession in God...it is impossible that there was a time when he did not possess, lacked something." - precisicly my point, the very verb implies this meaning, therefore if you are 100% honest and this symbollically refers to the son - then there was a time he didnt exist or atleast wasnt with God." - However, the book of Proverbs is part of wisdom literature, and during the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures, the context, the role of the given book in the whole revelation, and its genre characteristics must always be taken into account. In Proverbs 8, if you read it all the way through, it cannot be evaluated as a definitive revelation of doctrinal truth at all, but rather a literary twist, and nowhere is there any indication that this happened in time. The following text lists a number of other verbs which also indicate that the statement "CANANI BRESITH DERCHO" here does not prove the Arian thesis that there was a time when Wisdom did not exist. This is personification and a literary genre.
It is also an absurd statement that God was not always wise and was not always Father, which follows from the principle of immutability of God. God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time. By saying that God is eternal we mean that in essence, life, and action He is altogether beyond temporal limits and relations. He has neither beginning, nor end, nor duration by way of sequence or succession of moments. There is no past or future for God — but only an eternal present. If we say that He was or that He acted, or that He will be or will act, we mean in strictness that He is or that He acts; and this truth is well expressed by Christ when He says (John 8:58 — A.V.): "Before Abraham was, I am." Eternity, therefore, as predicated of God, does not mean indefinite duration in time — a meaning in which the term is sometimes used in other connections — but it means the total exclusion of the finiteness which time implies. God coexists with time, as He coexists with creatures, but He does not exist in time, so as to be subject to temporal relations: His self-existence is timeless.
In Isaiah 44:24, the most important part is not "Who was with me?", but that YHWH God "alone" "by himself" created the world. So angels may be ascribed presence, but not participation in the work of creation. If YHWH God creates with the "help" of an (arch)angel (now this is another question, that is also a conceptual impossibility), then the statement that he created "alone" is not true. If I claim that I built the house "alone", but in fact an "agent" did it, then I can hardly say that I built it "alone".
The fact that YHWH God creates "alone", i.e. without the "help" of angels, archangels, or secondary creator agents, is stated in the Scriptures in other places as well, cf. Job 9:8, Neh 9:6, Isa 45:12, 48:13, Psalm 95:5-6. Hebrews 1:10 explicitly states that Jesus' participation in creation is not just a secondary "helping agent" role. So if the Son is creator, and "only" YHWH God creates, then it also follows that the Son is also a true and real God. Hebrews 3:4 says the same thing: the one who creates, is God.
Neither Jesus nor the apostles identified the wisdom in Proverbs 8 with the Son by letter. Moreover, Proverbs 8 is nowhere cited in the New Testament. This is a typology that occurs frequently in the New Testament. If you were to take the countless statements about "wisdom" in the Old Testament and apply them all to Jesus, you would probably come up with quite absurd conclusions.
Catholic theology does not define the concepts of God based on the created world, it draws analogies, strictly stipulating that we can only talk about God analogically.
The infallibility of the Nicene Council and the ecunemical councils follows from the fact that:
- Mt 28:20 - Jesus promised: he will be with us forever, every day.
- Lk 10:16 - Christ speaks through the Church.
- Jn 14:26 - The Holy Spirit teaches us everything and brings everything to our mind.
- Jn 16:13 - Through the Holy Spirit we come to know the whole truth.
- Acts 15:28 - The apostles make decisions with the help of the Holy Spirit.
- Jn 14:16 - The Holy Spirit remains with the Church forever.
- Eph 3:9-10 - Through the Church, God's manifold wisdom has been revealed
- 1 Tim 3:15 - The Church is "the pillar and sure foundation of truth."
- 1Jn 2:27 - He teaches the Church through the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
- Acts 16:4 - believers must keep the decisions of the apostles, councils and superiors.
The exact translation of the word αἰών is difficult because these are ancient Greek concepts, which can be roughly described as: "the worlds", "the eras", "the ages", etc. By definition, it also includes the time, the temporality, which is also a created reality. The Council of Nicaea asserts (in Greek) that the Son begot from the Father before all αἰώνs (plural). You can hardly refute this statement in Greek on the basis of the New Testament, once it claims that even they were created by the Son.
An archangel is not fundamentally different from an angel, since an archangel is also an angel, just as an archbishop is a bishop. The WTS' claim that there is only one archangel (Michael) is also not true, since the Scriptures reveal that Michael is just "one of the chief princes" (Dan 10:13), so there are several spirit creatures of the same rank as him, i.e. archangels. Even the ancient Jewish tradition also always spoke of several archangels. The "arch-" prefix does not denote a difference in nature, but the priority of the task/mission, so it is a question of respect here, not of two separate "angel species".
"you omit part of Col 2:9 - selective quoting, "God was pleased"" - In addition to the fact that the Nicene Christology also affirms that the Son received both his existence and divinity from the Father (however, not in time and not in an accidental way, which can be peeled off from him, in an ontologically inferior way), the 1:19 cited here by the Watchtower, the Greek text has no trace of it being an accidental will of the Father, on the contrary, the Fullness wanted it that way: "hoti en autō eudokēsen pan to plērōma katoikēsai". This fullness is, according to the immediate precedent, the fullness of deity, not some vague, diffusive, and indistinct divine "nature" fullness. Your denomination is trying to restrict this to some undefined attributes, which the apostle does not do.
"at one point Jesus didnt have authority - at another he did." - The dual nature of Jesus can indeed be significant, but it can only be understood after his Incarnation, his becoming flesh, the scene described in Jude 9 about the dispute over the corpse of Moses, by definition, is dated to the time immediately after the death of Moses, by definition long before the incarnation of Jesus. So, at the time of Moses' death, Michael had no authority condemn Satan. And Jesus only at his incarnation was made "lower than the angels" (Hebrews 2:7)
1 Thessalonians 4:16 speak generally, without an article, "en phōnē archangelou" (with voice of (an) archangel), and does not call Jesus' voice the voice of the archangel at all.
By saying that God is eternal we mean that in essence, life, and action He is altogether beyond temporal limits and relations. He has neither beginning, nor end, nor duration by way of sequence or succession of moments. There is no past or future for God — but only an eternal present. If we say that He was or that He acted, or that He will be or will act, we mean in strictness that He is or that He acts; and this truth is well expressed by Christ when He says (John 8:58): "Before Abraham was, I am." Eternity, therefore, as predicated of God, does not mean indefinite duration in time — a meaning in which the term is sometimes used in other connections — but it means the total exclusion of the finiteness which time implies.
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

Of course, Jesus was not human before the Incarnation, he did not have human nature, his human nature cannot be retroactively applied to the pre-existent Son. Check THIS too.
Translating the term 'Theotokos' (Θεοτόκος) as "Mother of God" can lead to misunderstanding, it is more correct to translate it as "God-bearer", or rather "the bearer of God", a close paraphrase would be "[she] whose offspring is God" or "[she] who gave birth to one who was God". It is natural that God as such could not have a mother. But because Jesus was both God and man in one person, it is therefore perfectly correct to call the Virgin Mary "Theotokos". Because although God as such did not have a mother, he was the mother of that Jesus who was also God. The Pope's mother is also rightly called the Pope's mother, although she gave birth to the Pope not as a Pope, but as a small child.
No one said that the term 'Theotokos' is in the Bible, but the expression "the mother of my Lord" (Luke 1:43) is, even though Jesus received the title "the Lord" according to his human nature too, only after his resurrection and ascension to heaven (Philippians 2:9-11).
The divine Logos is not eternal in the same way that the saved have "eternal life". Absolute eternity, (aeternitas) is the state of completely unchanging divine existence, where there is no succession: there is no beginning and end, no before and after, so an undivided and standing present. It follows of the Son was "was begotten from the Father, before all αἰώνs" (cf Hebrews 1:2).
You will hardly be able to deal with scholasticism with the Watchowerite excuse that it is "philosophy". Anyway according to my belief "the philosophy" is usually not some satanic horrible thing in itself that has to be feared. According to Catholic Teaching, "faith seeks understanding, reason seeks faith" ("fides quaerens intellectum..."), and this fideist-fundamentalist-bibilistic approach is anything but a Christian requirement. I recommend reading the works of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, whom I consider the greatest theologian of the 20th century.
"There are also signs of a resurgence of fideism, which fails to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief in God. One currently widespread symptom of this fideistic tendency is a “biblicism” which tends to make the reading and exegesis of Sacred Scripture the sole criterion of truth." (John Paul II - Fides et Ratio)
The statement in John 1:14 ("And the Word was made flesh") is not the same as Paul's understanding in 1 Corinthians 15:20, where "Flesh and blood" means the current mortal body, which cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, because corruption cannot be incorruptibility at the same time. Sinlessness in itself does not mean divine nature, the fullness of deity (Col 2:9) is much more than that, Jesus' sinlessness is to be understood as his humanity, since the principle of God cannot sin.
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

Blotty
I was talking about Hebrew, where the "H" (he, ה‎) is often pronounced softly, and is practically silent at the end of a word. So they mark the "H" but often don't pronounce it. Thus, when pronounced, Yahweh sounds: /ˈjɑː(h)weɪ/ - thus a weak, almost silent [h] in in the middle, and silent one at end, and the "e" pronunced long, like in the word "café".
In Greek, it is just the other way around, [h] is not spelled out, but pronounced, but not strongly, like the letter J in European Spanish.
The biblical names are inteed spelled and pronounced differently today in modern languages than they were in their time. E.g. Yirməyāhū -> Yeremias -> Jeremiah. But these names are not sacred names in the sense that the Holy Tetragrammaton is. If you really want to utter it, you can definitely do it only the way it was originally done, or at least in the form closest to it. So the English "J" is an impossibility just because there is no "J" sound in Hebrew.
Can you say to that, but then the name of Jesus is not sacred? Yes indeed, on the other hand, there is already a biblical precedent for the Greekization of his name, since the New Testament itself establishes that we do not call him Yeshua (or Yeshu) according to the original pronunciation, but as Iēsous in Greek, Latin Iesus let, develop this further in other languages, such as "Jesus" in English. However, there is no biblical precedent for such a pronunciation-changing transliteration of Yahweh's name.
In fact, the entire denomination of Jehovah's Witnesses is a very good example of how correctand the logic of the Jews was regarding the non-pronunciation: on the one hand, the JWs pronounce it wrong, they have no liturgy (so liturgical use is out of the question, what remains is, in fact: profane), and they don't even understand its content (which means that he is "Who Is", not the one who "becomes" into this and that). The purpose of the name YHWH was to educate the Jews on monotheism and the pure theistic understanding that he is the transcendent absolute, the actus purus. In comparison, the JW image of God is antopomorphistic.
In the Gospels, Jesus applies Psalm 110 to himself differently than Paul later applies to him in the epistle. By definition, Jesus took on human nature only at the time of his Incarnation, before that he was only God. Therefore, if the pre-existent Son is David's Lord, it can only be understood in terms of his divine nature.
At the same time, according to Jewish interpretation, David wrote the Psalm 110 in the third person about himself, to be sung by the Levites in the Temple in Jerusalem, from a Jewish perspective the Levites would be saying that "the Lord spoke to my master", i.e. to David.
However, at the same time, Jesus as a human Messiah-King received the title "Lord" due to his ascension to heaven, and the so-called communicatio idiomatum (communication of properties) also comes into play here, which means due to the hypostatic union, divine and human attributes can be asserted about the person of Christ according to his divine and human nature. The ἰδίωμα, ἰδιότης is a reality aspect in Christ, which is characteristic of one nature excluding the other. Since Christ is the personal, independent, and self-possessed owner of the divine and human natures, and ultimately the subject of every statement is the independent entity (suppositum, hypostasis) in the order of being, therefore the two sets of predicates (the divine and human attributes) can be communicated through the person, so that divine attributes can be asserted of Christ who is human, and human attributes can be asserted of the same Christ who is God. This is the communicatio idiomatum (κοινοποίησις, ἀντίδοσις ἰδιωμάτων, ἰδιοτήτων).
The bearer of the two natures is the eternal Son, the person of the Logos. Only those who assume two subjects in Christ, like Nestorianism, can oppose it. Indeed, it was against this that the Church had to expressly defend the communication at the Council of Ephesus (Mary may be called the God-bearer, "theotokos"), after the Church had already widely practiced it in the Apostolic Creed and elsewhere.
This manner of speech is used in the New Testament books (Lk 1:35; Jn 1:14; Acts 3:15; Rom 1:3; 9:5; 1 Cor 2:8; Phil 2:6), and can also be found in early church documents. The Scripture not only asserts divine and human attributes about the same one Christ in various places, but also in one sentence: "They crucified the Lord of Glory" (1 Cor 2:8; cf. Rom 8:32, Acts 3:15, 20:28, 1 Jn 3:16); and conversely: "Jesus said to them, 'Before Abraham was, I am'" (Jn 8:58; cf. 3:13).
Theological consideration finds that the interchangeability of attributes directly follows from the dogma established by the Council of Chalcedon: "two distinct natures in one person". If Christ is indeed one independent entity and two sets of predicates (divine and human) can be pronounced about him, they can be communicated through the common subject. If, however, Christ is two subjects, of course, there is no place for a real communication (Nestorianism). And if Christ is not only one entity, but also one God-man nature, the attributes themselves also intermingle, become God-man, and again, a true statement communication is impossible (Monophysitism). From this follows the rules of the interchange of attributes, the knowledge and conscientious consideration of which is so significant for correct Christological thinking and expression.
Basic rule: If we name Christ either from some aspect of the divine or the human nature with a concrete name (not an abstract name; which includes the names about the parts of Christ's humanity in substance, if not in form, such as: Christ's body, soul, imagination, etc.), we can assert divine attributes of Christ named on the basis of humanity and human attributes of Christ named on the basis of divinity. Therefore, it is permissible to say: The Son of God was hungry, cold, born of a woman, suffered; Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the Virgin Mary, is omniscient, omnipresent, etc. Since the ontological basis of the communication of properties is the personal unity of the man Christ with the Word, every communication that feeds on Nestorian or Monophysite thought is erroneous.
In ancient Christological debates, Gregory of Nyssa already differentiated between the use of concrete and abstract concepts (Contra Eunomium 5). Augustine regularly elaborated on the possibilities of assertion. When debating with Nestorians, the distinction played a role in determining to what extent Mary can be called Christ-bearer and to what extent she can be called God-bearer (theotokos). They went so far as to assume that there were essentially two persons in Christ, the divine and the human, and these were only incidentally united with each other. Against them, Cyril of Alexandria fought particularly. The Monophysites formally did not deny the communicatio idiomatum, but they gave it a meaning that indicated a mixture of the two natures. Adoptionism rejected the communicatio idiomatum. John of Damascus saw the basis for the hypostatic union in the mutual permeation of the two natures.
In the Middle Ages, Scholastic theology developed the appropriate rules from traditional elements:
1) The properties of the two natures can be asserted about the same subject.
2) The basis for interchangeability is one person, not the two natures, therefore it is not valid in the opposition of the two natures (e.g., it cannot be said that the deity died on the cross)
3) The interchangeability is only understandable if the concrete is related to the concrete, but not if we connect the abstract to the abstract or to the concrete.
4) The testimonial statements must be formulated absolutely about the person of Christ, with negative ones supplemented restrictively.
5) Statements about the establishment of personal unity cannot be applied to Christ as a man.
These rules help to express faith correctly and point to the mystery of the incarnation.
66
"outside of time" argument
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
this is going to be very brief but a user recently tried to argue an argument that has already been refuted many times - the logic is somewhat sound but falls apart when the definition to the word used it looked and its usages in the bible.the word in question is "aionas" found in the scripture in question hebrews 1:2 .

(https://biblehub.com/hebrews/1-2.htm#lexicon)for starters look at the biblehub translations - do any of them state "outside of time" or that time was "created" in this moment - no because this seems to be heavily inspired by greek philosophy rather than the bible itself.note: i am not saying this word does not mean eternity or anything of the sort, i am saying this scripture some of the claims i dispute and can easily disprove, hence the argument is laughable.. bill mounce defines the word as:pr.

a period of time of significant character; life; an era; an age: hence, a state of things marking an age or era; the present order of nature; the natural condition of man, the world; ὁ αἰών, illimitable duration, eternity; as also, οἱ αἰῶνες, ὁ αἰῶν τῶν αἰώνων, οἱ αἰῶνες τῶν αἰώνων; by an aramaism οἱ αἰῶνες, the material universe, heb.
aqwsed12345

Bernhardinus de Moor: Eternal Generation Defended against Arianism
But that Generation is overturned in the worst way: by the ancient Arians, having their name from Arius, a heretic of the Fourth Century, a Presbyter of Alexandria, ejected from the Church in the year 322, whose followers were in turn divided into various names and sects, and some receded farther than others and erred more grossly, as Ecclesiastical History abundantly shows. They maintained that the Son of God was created, ἐκ μὴ ὄντων, out of what was not, and so was a made God, less properly called the Son of God, not ὁμοουσίον/homoousios/consubstantial with the Father, yet in a more excellent manner than others, since He was the first, most glorious Creature, created before the Mosaic Beginning, yet no from eternity, but through which as an Instrument all other things in the Mosaic Creation were made. The Fathers condemned this error in the First Ecumenical Council, held in Nicea, metropolis of Bithynia, in the year 325. What is argued in favor of this error is of no great moment. Namely,

They Object: α. Proverbs 8:22, where the Septuagint has, Κύριος ἔκτισέν με, the Lord created me. But, I Respond,
a. These Interpreters did not enjoy the Holy Spirit’s inspiration and infallible guidance, and so they were able to err. Aquila,[1] Symmachus,[2] and Theodotion[3] better expressed the Hebrew קָנָנִי by ἐκτήσατό με, possessed me.
b. The verb κτίζειν, to create, is able also to be expounded in a looser sence concerning Generation, just as the words to Create and to Generate are also used interchangeably in other passages: thus וְעַ֥ם נִ֜בְרָ֗א, in Psalm 102:18, and a people which shall be created, is a people which shall be born. Contrariwise, the Generations, the nativities, of heaven and earth are put in the place of the Creation of the same, in Genesis 2:4, אֵ֣לֶּה תוֹלְד֧וֹת הַשָּׁמַ֛יִם וְהָאָ֖רֶץ. Now, how miserably the Fathers, on account of their ignorance of the Hebrew Tongue, torture themselves in resolving this doubt, BUDDEUS indicates in his Isagoge ad Theologiam universam, book II, chapter VII, § 4, tome 2, pages 1034, 1035.
They Object: β. That the Son of God is called in Colossians 1:15 πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως, the firstborn of every creature; in Revelation 3:14 ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κτίσεως τοῦ Θεοῦ, the beginning of the creation of God.
I Respond,
a. That on the prior passage, a. ERASMUS on that passage suggests that the accent is able to be changed, and to be πρωτοτόκος πάσης κτίσεως, and that thus the sense is going to be, He first produced all things, and every creature was born of Him. He observes that what follows, that in Him were all things created, etc., verse 16, does not poorly cohere with this sense.
b. Others observe that the Son of God is here said to be begotten, not created, to have been before every creature, just as in verse 17 it is simply said πρὸ πάντων, before all things; and, that AMBROSE discoursed upon this opinion, the same ERASMUS just now cited advises. But this, according to the opinion of others, could be more easily admitted, if πρότοκος or προτερότοκος were read: but they think that a superlative in composition is never taken for a positive, and in comparison with other things is everywhere used of things of the same sort with which it is compared. Nevertheless, it is able to be considered, whether this criticism be more subtle than just, and whether this passage is able to be compared with John 1:15; 15:18
c. And so, with respect had to the superiority and privileges of the Firstborn formerly, they maintain that the Firstborn of every Creature is metonymically nothing other than the Lord of creatures: just as Cæsar was indeed the name of a family, which name adhered to Julius Cæsar on account of his birth from this family; but on account of the dominion that he here obtained, this cognomen was bestowed upon subsequent Emperors because of their succession in the same empire. CALVIN, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book II, chapter XII, § 4,

“I do indeed acknowledge that in the first order of creation and the whole state of nature Christ was put in charge of angels and men as head: for which reason He is called by Paul the firstborn of every creature, Colossians 1:15.”

And in § 7

“For Osiander[4] quite unadvisedly snatches at what no sane person will concede, that supremacy over the Angels does not agree with Christ, that they might enjoy Him as Prince, except as He is man. But it is easily elicited from the words of Paul, Colossians 1:15, that He, as He is the eternal word of God, is the Firstborn of every creature, not because He was created, or ought to be numbered among creatures: but because the whole state of the world, which sort from the beginning was manifest in consummate beauty, had no other beginning: then, that He, as He was made man, was the firstborn from the dead. For in one, brief context the Apostle sets forth both for consideration, that all things were created through the Son, that He might have dominion over the Angels: and through Him man was made, so that He might undertake to be his redeemer, Colossians 1:18, 16.”

Again, chapter XIII, § 2,
“Concerning the name of Firstborn they ignorantly agitate controversy. They allege that God ought to have been born immediately from Adam in the beginning, so that He might be the Firstborn among brethren. For Primogeniture is referred, not to age, but to degree of honor and eminence of virtue.”

Add FRANCISCUS JUNIUS’ Locos Communes theologicos, chapter XXVII, column 59, opera, tome 2; and especially WESSELIUS’ Nestorianismum et Adoptianismum redivivum confutatum, chapter XII, § 157-159, where you may read among other things:

“For no other reason does the Apostle call Him the Firstborn of every Creature, Colossians 1:15, than because He is the Lord of it. Which Universal Dominion, since it springs immediately from the creation of all things, Paul immediately subjoined in verses 16, 17, for through Him were all things created, etc. But, since that Same Dominion was first founded in the Superiority of His highest Deity and His Natural and eternal Filiation, Paul set down beforehand, who is the Image of the invisible God, etc. But I would have this especially to be observed, that a Genitive added to the word πρωτότοκος/firstborn, that is, when it connotes the genus that is rightly to be attended to, expresses, either the parent, as if I should say, He is the Firstborn of Abraham, of Jacob, of Mary; or collateral sharers of the same nature of Origin…. But the Genitive in this Title, the Firstborn of every creature, is not able to express the Parent, because thus the Son of God would be said to have been begotten of all created things; which is absurd and impious. Neither is it able to signify Collaterals, because then it would denote such Brethren as are of the same essence and specific generation from the Father with the Firstborn Brother…. Therefore, because the Genitive, of every creature, is here able to expres neither the Parent, nor Brethren and sharers of the same specific nature, one of which it ought to signify according to the common manner of speaking, if generation from the Father be connoted in this Title of Firstborn; with good reason I conclude that that Title, here given to Christ, does not connote His divine descent and generation from the Father, but only expresses His Dominion over every Creature, which He made and bears by the word of His power.[5] Certainly then all things flow easily in the Text and Context, when the Firstborn of every Creature is determined to be the same thing as the Prince and Lord of every Creature.”

And this exegesis is certain very probable. What things HERMAN VENEMA[6] discusses in Exercise IV de Vera Christi Divinitate, § 8, pages 157-159, are also able to be considered and weighed.

b. In Revelation 3:14 the Son of God is called,

a. not the Passive Beginning of Creation, but the Active, in comparison with Revelation 1:8; 21:6. Indeed, Christ is not able to be called the Passive Beginning of Creation, nor the first Creature; for either according to the human Nature He ought thus to be called, or according to the divine. But such He is not able to be called according to the human Nature; He is not the first Creature in this manner, but at length in the fullness of time He was made of a woman, Galatians 4:4: still less according to the divine Nature; for thus He is very God. But according to the same Nature not without contradiction and the greatest absurdity is Jesus able at the same time to be called God and Creature, since God and Creature are immediately and contradictorily opposed. According to the divine Nature was the Son of God before the beginning of the Creation, and that, not by Creation, but by divine Generation, Colossians 1:17; Proverbs 8:24-26. But He is the Active Beginning or the Efficient Cause of Creation, just as κτίσις also denotes Creation elsewhere, Mark 10:6;[7] 2 Peter 3:4.[8] And thus ἀρχὴ/beginning in Greek here shall come to the same sense as רֵאשִׁית in Hebrew, Proverbs 8:22;[9] it is also able best to be taken in this sense: let ARISTOTLE’S Metaphysics, book V, chapter I, be brought for comparison, in which he relates that all Causes are also ἀρχὰς:
πάντα γὰρ τὰ αἴτια ἀρχαί. πασῶν μὲν οὖν κοινὸν τῶν ἀρχῶν τὸ πρῶτον εἶναι ὅθεν ἢ ἔστιν ἢ γίγνεται ἢ γιγνώσκεται: τούτων δὲ αἱ μὲν ἐνυπάρχουσαί εἰσιν αἱ δὲ ἐκτός
for all causes are principles. Therefore, it is common to all principles to be the first thing from which a thing either is, comes to be, or is known.

Or,
b. The beginning of the creation of God, will indicate the Prince, Lord of every creature; as ἀρχὴ/beginning is also found elsewhere in the place of ἄρχων/ruler, Ephesians 3:10;[10] Colossians 1:16:[11]and κτίσις signifies Creature, no less than Creation, Mark 16:15;[12] Romans 8:19-22;[13] Hebrews 4:13.[14]

* * *
Footnotes:

[1] Aquila of Sinope produced his Greek version of the Old Testament in the second century of the Christian era. Aquila’s translation champions the cause of Judaism against Christianity in matters of translation and interpretation. The product is woodenly literalistic.

[2] Symmachus (second century) produced a Greek translation of the Old Testament, which survives only in fragments. Symmachus’ work is characterized by an apparent concern to render faithfully the Hebrew original, to provide a rendering consistent with the rabbinic exegesis of his time, and to set forth the translation in simple, pure, and elegant Septuagint-style Greek.
[3] Theodotion was a linguist and convert to Judaism, who translated the Hebrew Scripture into Greek in the middle of the second century AD. His translation appears to be an attempt to bring the Septuagint into conformity with the Hebrew text.

[4] Lucas Osiander (1534-1604) was a Lutheran theologian. He produced an edition of the Vulgate with supplemental annotations and corrections, inserting Luther’s translation in the places in which the Vulgate departs from the Hebrew. He was also an accomplished composer of music.

[5] See Hebrews 1:2, 3.

[6] Herman Venema (1697-1787) was a student of Campegius Vitringa, specializing in Old Testament exegesis and Church History. He served as Professor of Theology at Franeker (1723-1774).

[7] Mark 10:6: “But from the beginning of the creation (ἀπὸ δὲ ἀρχῆς κτίσεως) God made them male and female.”

[8] 2 Peter 3:4: “And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation (ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς κτίσεως).”

[9] Proverbs 8:22: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning (רֵאשִׁית; ἀρχὴν, in the Septuagint) of his way, before his works of old.”

[10] Ephesians 3:10: “To the intent that now unto the principalities (ταῖς ἀρχαῖς) and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God…”

[11] Colossians 1:16: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities (ἀρχαί), or powers: all things were created by him, and for him…”

[12] Mark 16:15: “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature (πάσῃ τῇ κτίσει).”

[13] Romans 8:19: “For the earnest expectation of the creature (τῆς κτίσεως) waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature (ἡ κτίσις) was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature (ἡ κτίσις) itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation (πᾶσα ἡ κτίσις) groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”

[14] Hebrews 4:13: “Neither is there any creature (κτίσις) that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

slimboyfat
"can any Trinitarian explain why Jesus as “Lord” adoni/kyrios is distinguished from and subordinate to YHWH in Psalm 110.1?"
On the one hand, this distinction exists only in Hebrew, and according to the original context of the Psalm, it referred to David, a man.
It's very simple: the Messianic King is the one in whom change can take place, in whom there is a novum, that after his resurrection and ascension he was seated at the "right hand of the Father". Jesus is the Messianic King according to his human nature, so his human nature is exalted and glorified. And according to his human nature, he is indeed not God, not YHWH, but a man.
You are asking the same question as stated in Matthew 22:45: "If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" The answer is simple: The Messiah is the son of David according to his human nature, and his Lord according to his divine nature.But the Pharisees considered their expected political Messiah to be a wonderful king sent from heaven, but not the son of God.
Psalm 110 prophesies the eternal royal and priestly dignity of the Messiah-King and is of a strictly messianic nature. This was the interpretation of Jewish scripture, the New Testament authors, and even the Jesus himself, who applied the first verse of Psalm 110 to himself during a dispute with the Pharisees and also testified to the suggested intent of the psalm (Matthew 22:43, 44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42, 43). Peter interpreted the first verse of Psalm 110 as referring to the Ascension of Jesus Christ in his first Pentecostal speech (Acts 2:34, 35), Paul deduced the eternal rule of Jesus Christ according to his human nature from the same Psalm verse (1 Corinthians 15:25), and proved the Savior's divinity (Hebrews 1:13), as well as his eternal priestly dignity (Hebrews 10:12, 13). All New Testament passages where it is mentioned that Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of the Father (Acts 7:55; Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:20, 22; Hebrews 8:1; 12:2; 1 Peter 3:22; Revelation 3:21; 5:1, 7) are referring to Psalm 110:1. The fourth verse of Psalm 109 is the basis for the exposition in the seventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, which states that the New Testament priesthood is superior to the Old Testament priestly order; the same psalm verse is quoted in Hebrews 5:6. The Church Fathers and Christian commentators in general apply this psalm directly to the Messiah without exception. Added to this is the fact that certain expressions of Psalm 110 could not possibly apply to any earthly ruler or high priest (e.g., sitting at the right hand of God, having a share in God's world domination, being an eternal high priest). Therefore it rightly can be listed this Psalm among the messianic psalms.
Psalm 110 is one of the most important parts of the Old Testament from a dogmatic point of view, because it teaches most clearly the royal power, world domination, priestly dignity of the Messiah, and thus the cessation of the Old Testament priesthood of Aaron and the establishment of the New Testament priesthood.
In this Psalm, a majestic king is glorified, whom God has taken as a co-regent (verses 1 and 2), who, surrounded by holy warriors (verse 3), not only holds royal, but also the priestly dignity in the order of Melchizedek (verse 4), and those who do not want to submit to his rule, he crushes with the mighty power he gained in poverty and warfare (verse 7) (verses 5 and 6). That this glorious king is the Messiah was unanimously believed by the ancient Jews, as Matthew 22:43, Mark 12:36, and Luke 20:42 reveal, where Jesus assumes this belief in them and proves the superhuman nature of the Messiah from this psalm to the Jews of his time. Just as Jesus in the mentioned places, so the apostles in Acts 2:34, 36, 5:31, 1 Corinthians 15:25, Ephesians 1:20, Hebrews 7:17, as well as the church fathers and the entire church have understood this psalm from the beginning as referring to the Messiah.
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

The pronunciation "YHWH", no matter what vowels we add to it, the "H" sound is weak, almost silent, so the scientific consensus already says "Yahweh", but it's actually more like "Ya'wee".
The Tetragrammaton refers to every person of the Holy Trinity, thus Jesus and the Holy Spirit as well. This follows from the meaning of the Name. According to Scripture, God once named Himself and sees the expression of His own essence in existence: "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14). He then continued: "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: the 'I AM' has sent me to you'" (Exodus 3:14). This means that God possesses all existence, in other words: God necessarily exists, He is the most real existence, pure existence, Existence itself, the self-existing being (ens a se). If Jesus is God, then these also apply to Him. Moreover, Jesus also says: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father." So, His name too. This also follows from His divinity. "He is the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15) This is exactly why the Jews wanted to stone him: "You claim to be God." If Jesus is the son of the Almighty God, then He inherits God's power, rights, and Name. This is why Eastern icon painters write the letters 'Ho ón' (who is) into the halo of Christ.
The Tetragrammaton is also a sacred name for Christians, which is why we use it in our churches, but according to Ecclesiastical tradition only rarely, and with the greatest respect. Therefore, we believe it was correct that in the Bible translation they used the Lord instead of the name Jehovah, just as the Jews read Lord (Adonai) instead of Jehovah. The Jehovah word is actually the result of this practice. YHWH consonants with Adonai vowels. The Catholic truth is therefore in the middle: We neither say that the Name cannot be pronounced, nor that it can be used indiscriminately, as is the case today in some modernist-liberal theological faculties, or among the JWs.
The Mosaic Law indeed did not require the Jews to read Adonai instead of YHWH, but it was a pious tradition which embodied "do not take the Lord's name in vain!" Let's not go into what it means to take the Lord's name in vain.
When we say God, depending on the context of the text, we mean either the Father, or the other persons of the Holy Trinity, or the most supreme Trinity. Generally, if we say God in prayer, and it is not expressly aimed at any one person, then I think of the Trinity, who is three in unity and oneness in Trinity.
The teaching of the Holy Trinity is perfectly justifiable based on the Bible.
Arius also used the alleged distinction between 'theos' - 'hó theos' to support his claim. He just couldn't answer to the fathers of Nicaea how Scripture could sink into idolatry by consistently presenting a man as a little god.
For example, Jn 1:18 ("No one has seen God") uses 'theos' (well, here "theon") without an article, yet it is clearly about God. Even the Jehovah's Witnesses' own translation brings "God". This immediately topples their logic. But this is just one example of many.
The incarnation of the Holy Tetragrammaton is the name Jesus. The Sacred Tetragrammaton expresses the essence of God, thus as a Name it refers to the WHOLE Holy Trinity, each divine hypostasis specifically possesses it, and it was pronounced in Christ, who is the image of the invisible God.
On the other hand, the Holy Tetragrammaton is "unpronounceable" in human or angelic language because it is a mystery, not because it is a taboo. God's essence surpasses the world. In comparison to Him, we do not exist. Huber rightly writes about this, that the purely linguistic variant of the Holy Tetragrammaton was used by other Semitic peoples, and even the Jews before Moses. However, this embodiment into a purely human word was a prefiguration of the embodiment into Jesus, just as the burning bush was a prefiguration of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. If we deny the incarnation of Christ, it leads to denial of the Holy Tetragrammaton. They just utter a Semitic god designation generally used, moreover, in the Latin reading of the Latin Holy Tradition (Iehovah => read in Latin the Holy Tetragrammaton), so they just do as if someone would scrutinize Jesus' human nature, which is possible, because he was truly human. However, this way they don't reach the essence of the Holy Tetragrammaton, only its "garment", and they never pronounce it, like heretics, for they can't "possess" the knowledge of the Name, they can only scorn it. This also confirms that they really don't know the Shem-ha Mephorash, as they deny the Incarnation.
This, as well as the interpretation of the Name in Jewish tradition, and even in Kabbalistic interpretations, are reflections of God's inner, essential emanations. Moreover, this led to prefigurations of the Trinity in the Old Testament, so we can rightly say that there is a kind of Trinitarianism in the Old Testament.
It's important to note that one cannot rely solely on the Scripture, as it was written, compiled, approved, declared as revelation, i.e., divinely inspired by Christ's Church, and it's the Church that has always interpreted it, because that's its mandate. This is also reflected in the Scripture itself, which means, even if we were to start with the Scripture alone, we would inevitably have to arrive at the Church. That is, at minimum, we cannot disregard the word of the Church and the Holy Tradition preserved by it. The Nicene and other councils clearly, and the Christian writers preceding them unanimously, testify to the divinity of Jesus, and they have consistently rejected the Arian heresy. We must not let doubts arise because of sophistry (2 Pet 3:15-16) and "foolish controversies" (Tit 3:9).
Regarding the Tetragrammaton, we must consider that God does not have one Hebrew name, as He transcends all languages and, in fact, He does not need a name, or more precisely, He cannot have one, because He is Everything, the Alpha and the Omega. So what are we talking about? Hebrew names were primarily not used as nominal emblems to distinguish someone from others, or to define, identify someone (as in the modern age), but in every case they expressed a certain description, characterization of the person's essence, attributes, etc. (like in the case of Native Ameircan names: "Swift Arrow", "Rising Sun", "Big Bear"). God revealed His name in this sense, which stands the same in every language: His name is YHWH, i.e., "Who Is", "Who Exists", "Who Is Existence". He revealed Himself to the Jews, so it became YHWH, however, if He had done the same to the Greeks, His name would be "Ho Estin" (if to the English, then "Who Is"). The parallel to this can be found in the New Testament in the 'egó eimi' (i.e., "I Am") declarations of Jesus. This is most visible in Jn 18:5-6, where when Jesus says "I Am", they retreat and fall to the ground. But see also Jn 8:24-28 (cf. also Mt 14:27; Mk 6:50; 13:6; 14:62; Lk 22:70; Jn 4:26; 6:20; 13:19).
The Greek-language New Testament uses the word Kurios instead of the Hebrew YHWH (or we could say the Jehovah, created by the Masoretes in the 9th-10th centuries AD) – following the practice of the Septuagint, made for Jews around 300 BC – (cf. for instance, Deut 6:5 – Mt 22:37) (this also shows that there is no NEED to refer to God in Hebrew). And this word Kyrios is also used for Jesus (many times, e.g., Mk 16:19-20; Acts 5:14; 9:10-17; Rom 14:8; 1 Cor 6:13-14; Col 3:23-24; Eph 6:6-11; as a confessional formula: Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3; cf. 8:6; Phil 2:11, especially: Jn 20:28).
Jesus did not reject the Jewish tradition altogether. He specifically stated what He objected to, and where we need to follow His word. He said nothing about the Sacred Name. It doesn't matter whether the Jews thought, whether by mistake, that the Sacred Name could or couldn't be pronounced. (This should not be seen as a scandalous mistake, but as a pious mistake.) As can be seen from the above, it can be pronounced, but it's not necessary to refer to God only in this way. Out of respect for its own tradition, the Church does not use the Name. This was confirmed again by the Congregation for Divine Worship in 2001 and 2008: it should not be used in liturgical occasions, scripture translation, and outside of these with respect only.
In addition, Jesus is also referred to as "ho theos": E.g. Jn 20:28; Rom 9:5; Heb 1:8; cf. also Tit 2:13; 1 Jn 5:20; 2 Pet 1:1. In some Eastern Christ icons, the inscription "Ho Theos" can also be found in Christ's cross-divided glory.
The Holy Tetragrammaton is, on the one hand, a revelation, on the other hand, a refusal of the Name. God's essence, His existence is fundamentally different from this world, so we cannot "essentially" know God - we can only say "what He is not". He is unnameable. This is spiritual emptiness (kenosis), the theology of asceticism - apophatic (negative) theology. The "hidden divinity", sought by the prophet in everything, and finally found in the gentle breeze.
This emptiness (kenosis), "darkening", the "dark night of the soul" stands in blindness from the Light (three apostles on Mount Tabor), "gnophos" and not "skotos". This leads to the theology of mysticism, the cataphatic theology, which is filling up with God - theosis -, enlightenment (phótismos).
Then we experience God as a Reality existing in three Persons, a Flow of Love, in His "activity" (énergeia) permeating the world.
And the fact that Jews did not pronounce God's name is not superstition, and I don't know of Jesus speaking against it. What we do know, however, is that Apostle Matthew - obviously under the influence of inspiration - preserved this Jewish custom. He never pronounces God's name, in fact, he doesn't even use the word God (cf. what is Kingdom of God in Luke, is Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew).
We do not know the exact pronunciation of YHWH. One thing is for sure: "Jehovah" was never the correct pronunciation. The Jews - due to the second commandment, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain" – eventually decided that since it's sometimes hard to determine what constitutes taking the name in vain, they rather would never utter it. Once a year, the High Priest would pronounce the Name in the Sanctuary, so by Jesus' time, common people couldn't know exactly how to pronounce it, since Hebrew writing only records consonants, not vowels. The vowels were added to sacred texts (with dots under, next to and above the letters) around the 9th-10th century AD (in many cases in Europe) to prevent further text corruption. The vowels of the word Adonai (= Lord) were dotted under the sacred four letters, so that the reader would immediately remember not to say the word, but to read Adonai instead. Christian readers, not highly educated but having learnt the Hebrew alphabet, read the vowels of YHWH and the vowels of Adonai (a-o-a) together, and through the inevitable phonetic change, this produced "Iehovah". This is a simple misunderstanding arising from a lack of familiarity with scripture and the Hebrew language. The Old Testament calls God by several names: YHWH, El, Elohim, Adonai - and that's not even mentioning other names (Lord of Hosts, Most High, Majestic, etc.). Of these, only the first was not pronounced, because it's the name Moses inquired about in the burning bush episode, and God Himself denied its pronunciation - this is when He says: "I am who I am," in another translation: "I am that I am". So, behind the prohibition to pronounce it is the deepest respect, based on God's decision - He did not publicly reveal this name, it could only be voiced inside the Sanctuary, once a year, only from the mouth of the High Priest, without ear-witnesses. This is a sign of the deepest respect for the infinitely Majestic God, whom no human word can describe or comprehend. He is ineffable (Deus ineffabilis, as phrased by the Latin Church). When we say God, it's not His name, but His nature (like we have a name, say Nicholas, and we have a nature: we are human). In other words, we Christians also do not pronounce God's name. Pope Benedict XVI recently reminded us several times that Christians must also respect God's name, and therefore warned against the irresponsible use of the form YHWH, even more so against its irresponsible pronunciation. The four letters often appear in churches because it is God's name, the incomprehensible Mystery, the ultimate Mystery before which we also kneel in adoration. We only write down the consonants, so the exact pronunciation remains hidden, and we do not pronounce it. It is also written like this on the pages of the Bible. The Bible translations - following the millennial tradition - translate it as Lord (Adonai) wherever it encounters the Sacred Tetragrammaton.
Indeed, when the New Testament uses the expression 'ho theos' (the God), it almost always (apart from the exceptions mentioned above) refers to the Father. The form without the definite article, referring to Christ, appears several times (Jn 1:1c. Tit 2:13). However, this does not affect the question of divinity; it is a question of usage. The Redeemer's name was Jesus; "Christ" is not a name but a title, a titulus, and theologically a function. In a word: the term "Christ" in New Testament theology clearly refers to the Anointed One (Messiah), sent by God, equal with God, of the same essence. Therefore, the word "Christ" - just like the word "theos" - is used with a definite article (Iésous ho Christos, literally: Jesus the Christ).
God's name is not a name in the sense that the names of the ancient gods were, which could be invoked at any time. God revealed Himself to Moses as "I am who I am (ehyeh asher ehyeh) ... I am (ehyeh) has sent me... the LORD [YHWH] has sent" (Exodus 3:14-15). Hebrew writing only recorded consonants, and when the Jews read the Scripture aloud and reached the four letters (YHWH), they respectfully said Adonai (the Lord, my Lord) instead, causing the precise pronunciation to be lost. According to scholars, the word originates from the verb "to be", so the currently most probable variant Yahweh essentially means the future tense, causative form of the verb "to be": "He who will cause to be" = He who will sustain life? (This is grammatically acceptable, though an unused form.) Most modern Old Testament translations indicate the word Yahweh as "LORD", using small capital letters. The "Jehovah" variant, known from the older translation, literature, and Jehovah's Witnesses, is a theological term of medieval origin. They wrote the vowels of Adonai under the consonants of YHWH, so that one reading YHWH would say Adonai, but certain medieval theologians read the consonants of YHWH together with these vowels. This is how the variants Iahovah or Iehovah etc. were created.
Even today, Jews call God "the Name" (ha Shem). In biblical Hebrew, there is no word for "person", so the word "name" is used: e.g., "to call upon the name of God" = to call upon God Himself; "to exalt the name of God" = to exalt God Himself for who He is. This unusual usage of language also passed into the New Testament, e.g., Acts 1:15 "the company of persons was in all about 120" (literally "the number of names together were about 120") or Acts 4:12 "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" = there is no one else.
In Hebrew thought, a name not only distinguishes (a way of addressing someone), but also expresses the character and qualities of the person. God also has many names based on His attributes and actions, and the experiences of the faithful, e.g., the Lord, the Almighty, the Most High, King, God of Comfort, God of Tender Love, Rock, Father, etc.
In the writings of the Watchtower, they consistently confuse the justified demand to indicate in the translation at appropriate places in the Old Testament that Yahweh or Jehovah - and the fabricated demand that they should also attempt this at the 200+ places in the New Testament set by them, even though here they are completely devoid of even the slightest semblance of manuscript and historical evidence.
These insertions are only described as "easier" and "reasonable" reading by the Watchtower. In reality, it is a sectarian stigma: the brand pressed onto your group body by the "wise slave" out of an insatiable desire to be different. The shameless setting aside of the Greek text at hand. Double standards. Because they do the same thing as the "great harlot" they condemn, only they are in theory willing to give up their custom and release many translations that abound in the name Yehovah / Jahweh, while the Watchtower is not willing to do the opposite.
The fact that the New Testament refers to the Old Testament in certain places does not make your underlying assumption a fact, a text, or data that in the original apostolic-evangelist text, YHWH was also present. However, you yourself say in your own writings (although you cannot defend this in a factual argument) that "apostate copyists" omitted the Name etc. But you cannot provide a single New Testament manuscript that would support you here. The "apostate copyist" hypothesis is good for everything and for nothing. With this method, one could also prove that reincarnation was in the Bible, but those damn "apostate copyists" left it out.
Don't forget: the authors of the New Testament often quote the Septuagint, not the Masoretic Hebrew text. And despite a few manuscripts the refer to, the Septuagint contains the tendency (and not only as a sideline but as a mainstream, and well before the New Testament was written) to replace the YHWH name with the word "Lord". One may argue with this tendency and qualify its cause as superstitious - but it seems the authors of the New Testament did not consider it superstitious or offensive to God, because whenever they quote the Old Testament, they do not transliterate the tetragrammaton into Greek letters, but call it Lord. Therefore, they approved of the Jewish custom you call superstitious. And they at least testify against you that the YHWH name in the New Testament is so important and indispensable that without proclaiming it, the Church itself would collapse.
In response to the question that if it is permissible to rewrite the YHWH name in our translations of the Old Testament, why it is not permissible for you to "rewrite" it in the New Testament, I answer this: you overlook a very important aspect. We are free to consistently write out the YHWH name as Yahweh or Jehovah in our translations (like J. N. Darby, for instance), and we don't bite off the head of anyone who perhaps, out of excessive fear due to the "do not take in vain" commandment or for some other reason (e.g., not wanting to mispronounce it) prefers to circumlocute the Name. So there is freedom with us: the saying (not) and translating (not) of the YHWH name is not a matter of faith with us. Moreover, newer translations also distinguish between Lord (Adonai) and LORD (YHWH), so anyone who wants to can reconstruct the original for themselves by looking past the usual substitution.
You can't use this freedom of ours to justify the way you falsify the New Testament Greek manuscripts, which - as I just demonstrated - deal just as coolly with the tetragrammaton and translate it into Lord as freely as we do. What's more, you "brand" anyone who removed the YHWH name from both covenantal documents as "apostate". But it turns out that this accusation of yours hits the apostles first. For if they had considered it a matter of faith, what you take as such, they would have avoided the Septuagint like the plague.
No one has claimed against you that "YHWH is not the name of God". Only that it is not the only name of God, and not an indispensable name for him. Learn to understand your opponents' claims in the sense they represent, and don't project some concocted, obviously easily attacked nonsense in their place. And don't expect me to defend this nonsense on behalf of everyone. No: it is your schizophrenic, either-or logic that has led you astray, which shouts in your ear that God can only have one true and indispensable name (the YHWH), and whoever denies this is already denying that the YHWH name is God's.
Has God changed? The answer is a clear no. God did not change when he said that his YHWH name was not yet known to the patriarchs. And he did not start to change when he declared himself in Jesus as Father (as the Father of Jesus Christ and our Father). This would lead to another thread of debate, so I won't elaborate on it here.
Since it is undeniable that the YHWH name does not appear in the existing manuscripts of the New Testament, apart from the four Hallelujahs*, but only the transcription of Kyrios (Lord), what prevents us from keeping these in the translations of the New Testament? The fact that the New Testament writers (following the Septuagint) grecianized the names of Jeremiah and Jesus, why wouldn't we accept their grecianization of the YHWH name into "Kyrios" as well? And it can't be argued against this that "apostate copyists left out the YHWH name from the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament", because 1. there is no evidence for this, 2. why couldn't anyone say that "then let's also restore the names of Jeremiah and Jesus in the New Testament to Hebrew!"?
* According to this, those "apostate copyists" were not vigilant enough to weed this out as well. These four examples actually weaken the JW's case, because while it preserves the name 'Yah' in the New Testament in a liturgical formula, it's not a pervasive use. So the copyists could not have been led by superstition or pagan prejudice, as JWs are prone to presume.
I see the storm with which JWs force the YHWH name onto the New Testament as very recent and artificial. How the Septuagint and today's translations have dealt with it, I don't consider it a matter of salvation, and I read Darby as willingly as the King James. I don't know if this is a laid down program with them, but I feel that the JWs were the first to make this a matter of salvation. If the debate has come to this point (that one party brands the other as heretical and apostate based on (among other things) their wanting to translate the YHWH name into Kyrios, LORD, or Eternal), then those who wanted to maintain their previously free and innocent custom as a custom feel quite helpless. Because we acknowledge that with us it's not a law, not a matter of salvation, and in principle could change at any time (of course, rewriting translations doesn't happen overnight, especially if there's no compelling reason) - but they attack us and label us all sorts of things because of it.
The Watchtower and its apologists often refer to the discovery of some very old fragments of the Greek Septuagint, which were in use in the days of Jesus, and that these fragments can be found with the form of YHWH in Hebrew characters. The question is how this script, which was not universally known in Jewish circles according to various sources, could have made its way into the New Testament in such a way that not a single instance has survived. One of the Bodmer papyri (p66) contains the section from Jn 1:1 to 6:11 in its entirety, including for example Jn 1:23: "I am a voice crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord, as Isaiah the prophet said." According to the JWs, the tetragram should be here. Well, this papyrus dates from the 2nd century, and we have hardly any longer New Testament sources from before that time. I haven't checked what text witnesses there might be for the places in question, but you already have to place the "apostate copyists" team's flawless operation at a very early date.
The Watchtower is sitting on the horns of a dilemma here. Because if that stack of Greek manuscripts, on which it is forced to base the authenticity of God's Word in other respects, fell victim to the tendentious "apostate copyists" at this point, then what stopped them from inserting whole doctrines into the Scriptures elsewhere so that they appear uniformly in all surviving copies? And then the JW's own sect is compelled to make itself the measure of authenticity not only with regard to the New Testament occurrences of the YHWH name, but also in regard to many other text-critical and theological questions. However, this would indeed be a real FDS "papacy".
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

slimboyfat
Origen (Commentary on Psalms 2.2) said "In the more accurate exemplars the (divine) name is written in Hebrew characters; not, however, in the current script, but in the most ancient." (thus paleo-Hebrew letters) While Pietersma interprets this statement as referring to the Septuagint, Wilkinson says one might assume that Origen refers specifically to the version of Aquila of Sinope, which follows the Hebrew text very closely, but he may perhaps refer to Greek versions in general (Wilkinson, Robert J. (2015). Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God: From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century., Andrew Phillips: "The Septuagint").
So Origen did not see any Greek Old Testament that contained ΙΑΩ, only ones that contained 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄‎. By the time of Origen, the Jews no longer used the Septuagint, but largely returned to the Hebrew version in the spirit of closure, or they used Aquila's translation. Jews corrupt the Synagogue Septuagint Tanakh: Jews altered the LXX, then abandoned it forever. So your claim that the Jews were using the Septuagint containing ΙΑΩ at the time of Origen is wrong.
Furthermore, not only does Origen not mention a single New Testament manuscript containing the name YHWH, but no one has ever claimed to have seen one. According to them, you are not only accusing the copyists of the earliest centuries of changing the text, but that someone destroyed the previous one.
The fact that there were many versions of the manuscripts also proves that there was no direct will or central authority that wanted or was able to make a single established version of the NT text exclusive and destroy all others without a trace. So in Christianity there was no such figure as, like Uthman in Islam, who ordered the compilation of the standard version of the Quran, and destroyed other versions.
By the way, I think that this "ΙΑΩ" does not refer to the fully pronounced Tetragrammaton ("Yahweh"), but to its short, liturgically preserved form (יָהּ‎, Yāh), which is also preserved in mainstream Christianity in the form "Halleluyah" (Alleluia). While pronouncing the tetragrammaton is forbidden for Jews, articulating "Jah"/"Yah" is allowed, but is usually confined to prayer and study (Clifford Hubert Durousseau, "Yah: A Name of God" in Jewish Bible Quarterly). A similar thing can be observed in Syriac Christianity, where the Lord is marked as "maryah" in the Peshitta. According to linguists, this is a combination of "mar" (master/lord) and "yah", and in the Peshitta NT, Jesus, the Son, is also referred to as "maryah" ("Lord Yah"). So the statement of the Watchtower that the early Christians "hated" the divine name YHWH and destroyed all manuscripts containing it with fire and iron is not true either, nor that they used "Yah" exclusively for the person of the Father, and would have been contrasted with the demigod-archangel Jesus of the WTS.
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

Yes, there are those who argue in favor of this, while others (who are the majority) say that this is a later reading. What is certain is that there is a total of ONE manuscript containing such ΙΑΩ, from which no far-reaching conclusions can be drawn without any doubt. The fact is that all five of the oldest manuscripts of the LXX now extant (in fragmentary form) render the Tetragrammaton into Greek in a different way.
What is already a matter of faith is that, if God had attached such a degree of importance to this, as according to the Watchtower, then he would have surely ensured its safe survival. But he didn't, in fact Jesus didn't even condemn all the traditions of the Pharisees in general, he only objected to certain, concretely marked practices and attitudes, that is, only those faulty human traditions that are contrary to the divine Law ("your traditions" - Mt 15,3; "human traditions" - Mk 7:9; Col 2:8) he rejected, but not the rejection of "the" tradition itself, which Christ and the apostles left us ("tradition handed down" - 1 Cor 11:2; "tradition received" - 2 Thess 2:15; 3:6)
"Because that is when the New Testament was written and where we must go to establish the most likely original text."
No, the most significant part of the books of the New Testament (practically all of them apart from the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistles to the Galatians and to the Hebrews) were written to the Gentile Christians, so why should we go back to the Judeo-Christian branch? The "original text" can only be established by textual witnesses, not based on speculations. What about the biblical promises that God's word will always endure? Where is it mentioned in the Holy Scriptures that the "true faith" must be "restored" some two thousand years later?
66
"outside of time" argument
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
this is going to be very brief but a user recently tried to argue an argument that has already been refuted many times - the logic is somewhat sound but falls apart when the definition to the word used it looked and its usages in the bible.the word in question is "aionas" found in the scripture in question hebrews 1:2 .

(https://biblehub.com/hebrews/1-2.htm#lexicon)for starters look at the biblehub translations - do any of them state "outside of time" or that time was "created" in this moment - no because this seems to be heavily inspired by greek philosophy rather than the bible itself.note: i am not saying this word does not mean eternity or anything of the sort, i am saying this scripture some of the claims i dispute and can easily disprove, hence the argument is laughable.. bill mounce defines the word as:pr.

a period of time of significant character; life; an era; an age: hence, a state of things marking an age or era; the present order of nature; the natural condition of man, the world; ὁ αἰών, illimitable duration, eternity; as also, οἱ αἰῶνες, ὁ αἰῶν τῶν αἰώνων, οἱ αἰῶνες τῶν αἰώνων; by an aramaism οἱ αἰῶνες, the material universe, heb.
aqwsed12345

The doctrine states that God is completely unchangeable.
Already at the Council of Nicaea, anyone who says that the Son of God is changeable (against the Arians) is excommunicated. Similarly, at the Fourth Lateran and the First Vatican Council ("God is an unchangeable spiritual entity"). Opponents include not only the Arians but also pantheists, Gnostics, and even Orthodox Protestants, partly for supposed religious-moral interests: God changes His previous condemnatory attitude towards the penitent; and partly in the manner of the Arians: The Incarnate Word, in order to be a real human, renounces the excellences of his divinity, empties himself. The modern-day Jehovah's Witnesses also deny this, they have a deeply anthropomorphic image of God. They initially interpret the name YHWH as "I Will Become What I Choose to Become" or "He Causes to Become". The Watchtower's interpretation of the YHWH name comes from a Hebrew verb that means “to become" (ha·wah). However, it actually comes from the verb "yahway," which means "to be," "to exist." The Hebrew Bible explains it by the formula 'Ehye ašer ehye' ("I Am that I Am"). The word אֶהְיֶה‎ (’Ehyeh) is the first person singular imperfective form of הָיָה (hayah), 'to be'. So, God does not "become" anything, since he does not change. The Watchtower's image of God is anthropomorphic: He has a body, he literally dwells in the sky, he is not innately omniscient but has the "capability" to foresee "the future" if he so desires.
In fact God is the actuality of every actuality (or pure Act, actus purus) and the perfection of all perfections. God's immutability also follows from God's simplicity: He is the completion of existence (actus purus), therefore there is no potential existence in him that would still be waiting for unfolding or realization, likewise, he cannot lose anything. His existence and everything he possesses are with eternal necessity, and it could not be otherwise. He cannot gain anything new, neither in knowledge nor in value. His outward acts do not change Him either. The act of creation in Him is such a free act that has always been in Him, is one with his essence, and has its temporal effect outwardly. When he communicates himself in grace, it is not he who changes, but man enters into a new relationship with him and perceives his supernatural effects. The mystery of the Incarnation must be understood in the same way. It was not the deity or personality of the Son that changed, but the humanity of Christ entered into a unique relationship with him.
a) The Scripture generally states that God is always identical with Himself, unlike the creatures: "In the beginning, O Lord, thou foundedst the earth: end the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish but thou remainest: and all of them shall grow old like a garment: And as a vesture thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art always the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail." (Psalm 102:25-27) "Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration." (τροπὴς ἀποσκίασμα, James 1:17) Cyril of Alexandria comments on this: "But what else would it be than change and gross variability, if God were to migrate from potency to actuality?" (Cyr. Al. Dial. ad. ar. 2.) The Scripture even identifies the metaphysical basis of unchangeability: "I am the Lord, and I do not change". (Malachi 3:6; cf. Augustine, Sermo 7:7)
b) However, Scripture, more often in its usual method of discussion, concretely and in detail describes God's immutability in His individual actions and positions: "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor as the son of man, that he should be changed." (Numbers 23:19) "Though she remains the same, she renews everything." (Wisdom 7:27; cf. Sirach 42:16.) The Lord's plan remains forever, His heart's intent from generation to generation". (Psalm 33:11; cf. 1 Samuel 15:29, Proverbs 19:21) God alone is uncorruptible and immortal. (Romans 1:23, 1 Timothy 1:17, 6:16, Psalm 35:10)
Therefore, the strong anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms of Scripture, especially the Old Testament (God shows anger, regret, etc., Genesis 6:6, Psalm 106:40, Hosea 1:6, etc.), must be measured and adjusted to the basic truth of faith of God's unchangeability. These, i.e., are spoken not because of the similarity of the observable effect to the emotion. Therefore, "God regretted making man" means: what God did because of the degradation of people shows effects like when people regret their actions. The church fathers specifically defend the unchangeability of God against the Arians, who distinguished the changeable Son from the unchangeable Father; against the Gnostics, who argue that God creates the world of spirits through emanations emitted from His own essence; and against the Stoics, who attribute emotions, passions, especially anger, to God; finally against the Patripassians. (See especially Tertullian, Prax. 17; Augustine, Civ. Dei XI 10 k.; XII 17, 2; Conf. XII 7; in Jn 23, 9.)
Reason thus concludes:
a) God is utterly simple. But what changes is essentially complex, at least metaphysically; because if change occurs, something remains and something else becomes (quidquid mutatur, quantum ad aliquid manet, quantum ad aliquid transit).
b) God is infinitely perfect. But what changes either gains or loses perfection; therefore, it is not the most perfect.
c) God is self-existing. However, what changes is changed by something else; therefore, the changer in his change is not self-existing but from something else. The first proof of God of Thomas Aquinas, infers the first unchangeable cause from the changing being (primum movens immobile). Denying or obscuring God's unchangeability falsifies the Catholic conception of God and sooner or later leads to monism; if God is changeable, then He is not wholly transcendent, but shares with that world which shares in its most noticeable property, changeability. A question arises here: If God is unchangeable, how does He change the things? According to Aristotle, God as a final cause moves the world: by attracting the spiritual heaven (the primum mobile) directly as a goal, which then communicates its movement to the other heavens and ultimately to the earthly beings; however, it itself remains motionless and inactive. According to Plato and the Platonic school of thought, in spite of His immutability, God as an absolute fullness of being is also absolute and constant activity. This is also the understanding of revelation: "Wisdom is quicker than any motion… she is one, yet can do all things; remaining in herself, she renews all things". (Wisdom 7:24–27) Here is the main weakness of Aristotle's conception of God.
Difficulties.
1. God is free in the creation, governance, salvation of the world, and in the establishment of the supernatural order of existence. But if He is free, He could establish another world and world order, and could govern the existing one differently. Therefore, He is changeable (at least in thought: He could change His intentions); or else, He is not free.
Solution: The essence of freedom is to take a stand based purely on the real value of things, excluding all foreign perspectives and influences not related to the matter. The more the decision is based on the actual value of things and the more full of mental energy it is, the freer it is; changeability is not essential; after all, the highest degree of experiential freedom, moral freedom, is manifested in the steadfast moral behavior of a mature character. Now, God makes His eternal decisions based on the fullest knowledge and assessment of all possibilities and perspectives, and with His absolute power, He carries them out exactly as He conceived them. Therefore, there can be no new perspective or event that He has not considered since eternity, and which could therefore prompt Him to revise His decisions; nor can any external difficulty or obstacle arise, which would induce Him to try to realize His plans in a different way. God's intentions are free; but precisely because they were born out of the fullest freedom, they are unchangeable. The decisions of creatures can be changed, partly because new perspectives may arise, which were not previously considered, partly because obstacles to realization may necessitate the modification of original plans.
2. God's outward works change. Not only does the world, maintained and governed by God, continually change in big and small ways, but God intervenes in the world's course through miracles, and what's more significant: He created the world in time, the second divine person became flesh in time. Therefore, if God continually creates new works in time, He does something He has not done before; that is, He changes.
Solution. Three aspects can be distinguished in God's outward activity:
A) The decision regarding outward activity. As an immanent fact of God, it is eternal and unchangeable.
B) The change; this takes place in God's works, it does not affect God Himself. With the creation of the world, with the incarnation of the second divine person, God Himself does not change; nothing new happens to Him; because this aspect: "in time" the world should be created etc. was also included in His eternal unchangeable decision; only the creature enters into a new relationship with Him, just as the Sun does not go through a change because it makes winter or summer on Earth.
C) The creation of the changing work, that is, the divine activity that carries out the eternal and unchangeable divine order relating to change. This activity, viewed from the side of God, is identical with God's essence and does not represent a change in God, but only in the result of divine activity. When a doctor not only prescribes medication for a patient but also specifies the time to take it, this provision is the cause of a change that occurs at a specific time; but when it occurs, it does not cause a change in the prescriber; and if the doctor's will were absolutely effective, the patient's time-bound medication intake would occur without the help of any foreign factor, simply as a result of that medical order. That is, the result appearing in time does not necessarily mean a change in the cause. The divine provisions containing changes, however, contain the change only as an intention, as a thought; even in humans, thoughts relating to change do not represent the same type of change for the thinker: if I decide to run, I am not physically running yet. In any case, it is not easy to imagine how the unchanging God creates changes; because our perception is stuck in the world of changes. But there is no logical stumble in the concept. Indeed, if we consider how difficult it is to conceptually process the concept of change, it is logically easier to conceive of God's immutability than the changeability of the creature. That's why the Eleatics and Plato considered being itself to be unchangeable, just like the thinkers of Vedanta.
3. In governing the world, God often adapts to the changing behavior of creatures: He hears the cry of the needy, gets angry at the sinner, is appeased against the penitent. So, He changes.
Solution. It's true, and indeed a matter of faith, that God behaves this way. However, these significant practical truths cannot be interpreted in a way that contradicts the equally fundamental, dogmatic assertion of God's unchangeability. Nor is it necessary, because God does not make and execute decrees on the course of the world in the manner of human beings. He does not first set certain goals and then search and select suitable means; He does not first devise the abstract universal law, and then tailor and apply it to specific cases. Instead, He relates and assigns all events to each other with one overview and decision, providing them with the appropriate levels of value, bringing every path and end, every goal and means, every individual being and individual case, and every general law into perfect harmony. No new element can then arise that was not already considered, which would subsequently require the course of the world to be supplemented or corrected. In this immutable eternal divine decree, every human need and every human prayer were taken into account, and the course of the world is aligned with it; every individual sin was known, and every aspect of the moral order has been adjusted accordingly: the merits and punishments, praises and reprimands, salvations and condemnations. Therefore, prayer, sin or repentance, justification or damnation does not change God, but the creature's relationship to God, in the words of St. Augustine: God "changes if you change"; "the same light is painful to the weak eye, pleasant to the strong." (August. Serm. 22, 6; cf. Trinit. V 16, 17; XIII 11, 15; in Jn 110, 6; Origen De orat. 3–15; Ambr. Noe et arca 4, 9; 45. § 3.)
4. If God is completely immutable, and looks down on the course of the world like some harsh formula or law, then the immediacy and intimacy of religious life freezes before His Medusa-like face. The harsh law and logical formula are deaf to pleas, unyielding to entreaty, indifferent to pain and misery, unresponsive to loyalty, trust, and sacrifice.
Solution. God is not a senseless harsh law, as Hegel's pantheism teaches, nor is He a Shylock who rigidly represents the letter of the law with merciless one-sidedness. Although He is entirely true and holy, meaning He is utterly devoid of caprice, irrationality, whim, or bias (there is no "irrational" or "non-putarem" in God, see Lk 20:15), He still stands as a Creator opposite each of His creatures, each of their existential moments. He created everything with the utmost care, wisdom, and gentleness; He is incomparably closer to each of His creatures than any two creatures are to each other, and therefore He has the most profound love and interest for all their manifestations, including their religious aspects. As an absolute personal being, He takes everything into account in its proper place and for its own value. The fact that He overlooks the entire order of existence does not diminish the strength of His devoted interest and sacred stance against any aspect of existence. Just because He sees the repentance of the sinner as well and incorporates it into His world plan, sin is no less abhorrent to Him; just because He has established the whole course of the world with all its aspects, the righteousness of the righteous and their plea do not become of lesser value to Him. It may happen to people that, due to their constraints, they do harm or injury despite their best intentions by handling a certain aspect one-sidedly (e.g., parents' monkey-love, a clumsy friend's desire to help at all costs); God, because He thinks about everything and everyone, judges man best in individual cases.
Indeed, God's immutability provides new and irreplaceable impetus to religious life. God's immutability is most directly manifested to man in the reliability of His promises and the immutable sanctity of His holy will, the moral law; thus, it is the root and foundation of trust in Him. True, God is not as malleable as humans, He does not adapt to the tastes and moods of people at any given time, and He is not willing to measure with the measures of humans. This is often unpleasant for humans, who, in their stubbornness, whimsicality, and weakness of principles, would inevitably like God to be less holy, to act according to less universal perspectives, and to become biased (see the vine-growers and the prodigal son's brother). But precisely because God is in no way similar to humans, the person leading a serious religious life is most effectively called upon to adapt to God in everything. Our only refuge against the stubbornness of our own nature and the transience of life is the eternal Silent Ocean of divine immutability, where all the noise of passions, party fights, and hustles fade away, where the tossing soul finds its peace. "And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." (1 Jn 2,17; cf. 4,16.)
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It is also dogma that God is eternal in absolute sense. This is a tenet of faith according to the teachings of the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Fourth Lateran Council, and the First Vatican Council, against all those who denied God's immutability and thus cast doubt on His eternity.
Divine eternity is God's perfection in relation to time, and it negates the following: that the divine existence has an end, a beginning, or a sequence; it affirms: God is the creator of time; it increases: whatever positive content is in time, it is infinitely present in God. Time is the real possibility of real connection between causes and effects; in God, who is the creator of time and eternal, timeless existence is not emptiness, but the fullness of activity, as Boethius's classic definition says: eternity is the complete and perfect possession of endless life (interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio). And in this sense, God is eternal.
The Scriptures often denote a very long duration with the term "eternity" (עוֹלָם, αἰῶν = ἀεὶ ὂν, ἀίδιον), mainly infinity (e.g., Gen 17:8, Lev 3:17, Ps 5,12. In this sense, the Creed says: "I believe… in eternal life."), and that's why it often attributes it to creatures, especially spirits. (Mt 25:46, Lk 1:3 etc.) However, it calls God eternal in the above-defined sense, and Him alone; not formally, but in terms of content.
The Scripture denies the elements of time about Him: the beginning, the end, the succession, and declares Him to exist before all time: "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God." (Ps 90,2; cf. 2,7, 102,27.) "Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am." (Jn 8,58.) "I the Lord, the first, and with the last; I am he." (Is 41,4; cf. Gen 1, Ps 93, 102,26–28 Deut 32,40 Dan 7,99 [ʿatīq yōmīn, antiquus dierum, the ancient of days], Rev 1,4–18.)
God and time are not commensurate quantities: "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." (2 Pet 3:8; cf. Heb 1:10, Gen 1:14–19, Deut 33:26, Job 36:26, Ps 74:16, 90:4, 119:89–91, Is 43:3, 48:12, Jer 10:10, 1 Tim 1:17, Rev 4:8–11, 10:6.)
The Church Fathers, already against the pagans, emphasize and regularly discuss divine eternity, especially frequently and wittily by St. Augustine (Tatian. Graec. 4; Athenag. Legat. 4 10; Iren. III 8, 3; Tertul. Marc. I 8; III 28; Nazianz. Or. 38, 7; 45, 3; August. Conf. XI; Ver. relig. 49; in Ps 101: 2, 10 et al.).
Reason also sees that
a) eternity is the direct consequence of immutability. Time is indeed the measure of change based on succession (numerus motus secundum prius et posterius); there is no change in God, so there can be no time either.
b) It is also a consequence of self-existence: self-existence excludes in God the conjunction or succession of potentiality and actuality. However, time only exists with these: the present is potential compared to the past, the future compared to the present. Therefore, God is above temporality (Thom I 10; Gent. I 15 III 68.).
Questions.
The relationship of divine eternity to temporal entities. – God, by virtue of His eternity, is outside and above all time, but as its author, He is present at every moment of time; there is no moment in the flow of time, neither past nor present nor future, in which God does not exist simultaneously; in every actual or thought time, we must say: God is now. Some theologians (like Halens. Summa I 12, 1, 1.) call this God's always-existence (sempiternity) and rightly compare it with ubiquity (omnipresence). Thus, the eternity of God equals each moment of time and the entire timeline, and coexists with it; not like a long line is parallel to a shorter line, but like the center of a circle is with every single point and arc of the circumference (Anselm. Monol. 18; Thom Gent. I 66; Less. Perf. IV 4.). However, this relationship should not be understood as if a part of the timeline, or even the entire timeline, would correspond to a shorter or longer duration in divine eternity; there is no duration in God; eternity is not an infinite sum of durations, as Aureolus thought; time, as the projection of change, cannot be asserted about God in any form.
The coexistence of temporal things with divine eternity. – Temporal things, when they actually exist, are simultaneous with divine eternity. For God is present at every single moment and duration of time; therefore, every single temporal thing is also present before God at every moment of its existence and throughout its duration; and since the eternity of God does not allow time gaps, temporal things are present with the entire divine eternity throughout the duration of their existence; of course, not as commensurate quantities, not like a mayfly or a fly spends a period of time with a longer-lived human, but only as a creation, as a work that essentially and intimately depends on its creator, its thought and sustaining activity. Can it also be said that things are present not only during their actual existence but also before and after their existence with God's eternity, which has no past or future, but only an eternal present («nunc aeternitatis»), which extends over every created moment and duration of time with its power? Thomas Aquinas answers yes (Thom 1 dist. 19, 2, 2 ad 1.). Other theologians, however, see this as endangering both the temporality of creatures and the absolute simplicity of eternity, which excludes even the concept of time intervals.

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Bernhardinus de Moor: Eternal Generation Defended against Arianism