Classic Arianism tends to present Trinitarian
Christians with three biblical observations:
1 – IF JESUS IS GOD, WHY THE FATHER NEVER
SUBMITS TO THE SON, BUT THE SON IS ETERNALLY SUBMITTED TO THE FATHER?
“When all things are subjected to him,
then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in
subjection under him, that God may be all in all.”
(1CORINTHIANS 15:28)
2 – IF JESUS IS GOD, WHY DOES NOT HAVE
THE SOURCE OF LIFE IN HIMSELF, BY RECEIVES LIFE FROM THE FATHER?
“For as the Father has life in himself,
so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”
(JOHN 5:26)
3 – IF JESUS IS GOD, WHY DOES HE CALL
THE FATHER “MY GOD”?
“The one who conquers, I will make him a
pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write
on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new
Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.”
(REVELATION 3:12)
Here I will try to answer these objections from the Trinitarian
perspective. It is assumed the reader is familiar with Trinitarian doctrine, so
it will not be explained in detail.
Here some brief answers:
1 – 1CORINTHIANS 15:28
ANSWER
In true biblical and traditional Trinitarian
theology, the ONE and UNIQUE GOD, manifests Himself in three different divine
beings, called in the NT, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
(Matthew 3:16-17;
28:19; John 1:1; 1John 5:7; Revelation 1:4-5, 8, 11-13; 2:8).
However, this triune manifestation of God is not
chaotic, rotative or over posing in the Scriptures, it has an order.
The one we call Almighty Creator, Eternal Most High
God of the Universe, God of Adam, Abraham, Jacob and Moses, the God of Israel
and the Temple, is not an unknown being hidden behind three diffused secondary
characters, but He can be known, spoken and dealt with as Elohim, El Elyon, El
Shaddai, YHWH, or The Father.
The Father is the direct manifestation of God, eternal
and prime source of everything else existent, even the source of all other
manifestations of this eternal God (Genesis 21:33; Psalm 48:14; Job 36:26), as
it is the Word, known as The Son, manifested in human form in Jesus of Nazareth
(John 1:1, 14); and the Spirit, known as Holy Spirit, also known as The
Advocate. (John 14:16).
All other manifestations of this eternal God, that
come from YHWH, or The Father, also known as “hypostases”, even though all
share the same divine nature with the Father, they are subjected to Him alone
in function, not in nature. Very much like an adult man, being as much human as
his father, is nevertheless subjected out or respect and relational correspondence
to his own elderly father always, without being a lesser kind of human.
In the same way, the Son is eternally subjected to
the Father in relational correspondence, even when his divine nature is as
eternal, sacred and mighty as the Father.
2 – JOHN 5:26
ANSWER
This expression of the Lord implies two different
meanings.
The first one it is closely related to the order of
the Trinity, as explained in the answer above. Since the Son emanates from the
Father (Commonly term used is “begotten”), all life and divinity is an extension
of the life and divinity that resides eternal in the Father. The life force
that resides in the Son, eternal as it is by nature, comes originally from the
Father alone and out of his Free Will from eternity, very much as human
offspring inherits human nature from their progenitors, thus becoming truly human
on their own right from the very moment of conception.
The second reason has to do with Jesus’s human
nature.
As a human being, Jesus of Nazareth was not a kind
of “super-human”, but a human like any of us, only free of original and
personal sin, and in a pre-adamic state, that is, incorruptible, immortal,
unable to age or get sick. However, He had to be “anointed” as Messiah in the
human sense, to perform his messianic ministry. This happened at the descend of
the Holy Spirit at his baptism.
This does not mean He had no super-natural
power and insight from birth, He was always and at all times God, but as “Son
of Man”, He needed in human terms, to be granted by YHWH, the Messianic status,
and with it, all the redemptive rights, not power, to perform his ministry. One
of these, was to be the reason of salvation to humans who would come to
repentance and faith in Him and his atoning sacrifice. By being Him the source and
channel of salvation, Jesus uses the expression to have been given life in
Himself, because from believing in Him, humans could aspire now to eternal life
according to the Father’s Will, who granted this role of Saviour to the man
Jesus of Nazareth.
3 - REVELATION 3:12
ANSWER
Jesus refers to the Father as “his God” for two similar
reasons as written above.
As an emanation from the Father, or as a ‘begotten
Son”, and having received all his divine nature and attributes from the Father,
who alone is unbegotten and non-proceeding from anyone or anywhere else, the
Son also refers to his own Father as “his God”, because everything He is, comes
from a deliberate act of will of the Father.
This should not give reason to Arians and semi
Arians to think then, that the Son had a time measured beginning. Divinity
cannot be hold in time, neither can have a beginning or and end, neither can be
‘passed on” as an attributed to created beings. God cannot “make” another God. Nobody can be “made”
or “become” God.
Certainly the Son, as begotten from the Father has a
moment when the begetting happens, but being all of this occurring within the
Divine Nature of the Almighty, this process of begetting happens outside time
and space, in an uncreated, unconceivable, unplaced, untimed reality, unable to
be held by any created being, be they humans or angels or any other nature.
All limited intelligence can perceive, is through
human terminology that can refer to us similar concepts that we can understand.
In this sense, YHWH is the God and Father of the Word, the Son, because all his
nature was born from YHWH. Without the Father, there is no Son.
Another reason why Jesus the glorified man calls
YHWH his God, is because the glorification of his humanity, within the whole
process of incarnation and salvation, also known as “Paschal Mystery”, is
willed and executed under the command and desire of the Father. So truly
speaking, when speaking as mere human, YHWH is truly the God of Jesus of
Nazareth.
Neither of these two expressions and concepts affects
or diminishes the divine nature of Jesus, who directly in the Old and New
Testaments is called God:
“For to us a child is born, to us a son
is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be
called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Isaiah 9:6 (Compare with the Hebrew
expression in Isaiah 10:21)
“For in him the whole fullness of deity
dwells bodily”
Colossians 2:9
“He is the radiance of the glory of God
and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of
his power.”
Hebrews 1:3
Omar Flores
Comments
Post a Comment