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Jael,
“Yes, Andrew, the gospel of John is highly suspicious as you point out.” But my point is that the gospel of John was around before the trinity doctrine and without it the trinity doctrine may not have come to be,so it can’t be said John is trinitarian addition,if that was what you were saying.
I understood what you were saying about the gospel of John. When I read Jael’s response to what you said, I didn’t understand how his response lined up with what you wrote. I figured that he just did not clearly comprehended your post.
Please post your questions and responses to my answers here so our discussion has some continuity: https://heavennet.net/forums/topic/lightenupjael-discussion/#post-818593
LU, please address the post question in this thread.
I am not after a one on one debate with you – I posted this thread as an open discussion.
Hi Jael,
I do not want a debate with you either and I did not invite you to a debate. I invited you to a one on one discussion so that our questions and answers would be easier to follow for me. You have a lot of questions in your posts. I will take them one at a time. It is easier for me to keep track in that thread that I made for a one on one discussion. You can participate in it or not but I have several of your questions that I will attempt to answer there. I don’t mean to be obstinate, really. I easily get bogged down when barraged with so many questions at once. This is too important of a topic to take carelessly.
I will further address Hebrews 1:5 there.
Thanks!
Hello, I will answer this question of yours to me, in our discussion thread, next:
You say that you BELIEVE that the son was always existent in The Father. Yet when I ask you to show where you get this inappropriate idea from you fail to respond.
Lu, I do not require a one-on-one discussion on the issue raised.
Can you just add your opinion here instead of moving off this thread. After all, the thread is about the fallacy of the son being equal to the Father – it is not about your unsubstantiated (and frankly, fantastically self made ideology) concerning the son being incubated by the Father and therefore somehow being the same and equal to him who incubated him…
Lu, add a summary if you like but the thread is as the opening statement and line of discussion goes.
In fact, answer this: Is the FATHER equal to the SON?
Further, is the HOLY SPIRIT equal to the SON…?
What purpose is there to THREE entities that are completely EQUAL to each other?
And if they even were to perform different FUNCTIONS would that not mean EACH other then are unable to perform that different function?
Or else why can’t ONE SINGLE ENTITY which, after all, has ALL THE POWER AND AUTHORITY required, perform ALL THE FUNCTIONS?
Consider that even PAGAN DEITIES are GODS (by their own belief system) and are therefore COMPLETELY EQUAL to each other (by the trinitarian belief system).
And PLEASE do not bring any old pointless trinitarian arguments about pagan gods not being REAL GODS… To pagans, the Christian God is NOT A REAL GOD… The arguments cancel each other out.
Hi Jael,
I will respond to you here if you ask one question at a time, ok? I will answer this question of yours:
Is the FATHER equal to the SON?
They are equal in essence. You are also equal in essence to your father. They are two distinct persons. You and your father are two distinct persons. The Father has authority over the Son. Your father has/had authority over you, yet you are equal in essence. What you father is in essence, you are also that same thing in essence. Likewise, what the Father is in essence, the Son is the same thing in essence. The difference between the Father and the Son is this: the Son was inside the Father as an offspring. He had no beginning but was always within the Father until He was begotten from the Father before creation.
1 John 1:1What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life— 2and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us— 3what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
John 17:8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
You say that this understanding is unique to me, really. Andrew set you straight on that. Most people who call themselves Christian confess that Jesus is eternal in the past like the Father and that He is a true Son begotten of the Father, i.e., the Father’s offspring.
LU, you seem to have realised the essential fallacy in your (and the trinity) ideology, namely that The Father is MOT Equal to The Son…
Yes, when I ask this question from trinitarians I INVARIABLY get no answer because they realise they cannot say that GOD ALMIGHTY is equal to Jesus Christ. If you notice from ALL WRITINGS IN DEFENCE of equality of the three that NONE EVER qualifies the Father as being equal to the son (nor the holt spirit) – they only ever claim that the Son is equal to the Father…
Why? Because it is not a THEOLOGICAL claim… It is a TRINITARIAN CLAIM OF A (supposed) JEWISH CLAIM …there is absolutely no reference to a son being equal in any text, verse, research or otherwise anywhere in the history of the Jewish nation. So the question is: ‘Where and how did the Jews comes to make this claim where it is made in the gospel of John?
And you are wrong about your claims of Jesus being incubated in almighty God: the Father. The verses you cite are not implying that Jesus was in God and then manifested in flesh. The scriptures tells us that God knew there would be a need for a saviour for mankind: ANYONE WHO DESIGNS A SYSYEM MUST PREPARE FOR A RESOLUTION TO PROBLEMS IN THAT SYSTEM. God prepared our system for OPEN OPERATION…he gave us autonomy and authority over it… He did not restrict us over it so ANYTHING was possible: even a failure (which happened). Every credible system made by man has failsafe, error-correction, ‘firefighting’, backups, SECONDARY systems etc, type resolutions against problems.
Who is Christ to Adam: he is THE SECOND ADAM. A MAN.
Your error is that almighty God had ‘IN MIND’ a CHRIST… And ‘in the fullness of time’ God ‘BROUGHT FORTH’ a SECOND ADAM because no existing offspring of the first Adam could be found to do the job of the resolution. God created a NEW MAN in the form of the first man…
Jesus said he came forth from God. This is the same as being sent.
A emmisary can ‘Cone forth from the King’ to do a task in a situation. Does this mean the King incubated the emmisay?
Lu, think again… Please.
Jael,
When I read that God sent His only begotten Son into the world and this only begotten Son was the eternal life that was with God, His Father in the beginning, I understand this only begotten Son as a true Son that was truly an offspring that was eternally alive. How could anyone, including the Father, be eternally alive, exactly, I cannot fathom. I do not have to understand this concept to believe it because I believe it is Biblically taught and also the most logical explanation there is for our creation and existence. I can see in nature the evidence of asexual reproduction which demonstrates how an offspring is equal to the parent in essence yet distinct in number. I know that Jesus and the Father and the Bible teach that He is the Son of God and I believe it in the truest, purest sense possible. You do not. That is your opinion. You believe he is the adopted son of God and you deny that God can even have a son in the truest, purest sense. You offer no logical reason that God cannot have a son in the truest, purest sense of the words ‘son of.’
I assume that you recognize God the Father as having the highest essence of any essence possible. Right? Please answer this question.
I believe that the Son also has this highest essence of any essence possible because I believe He is truly an offspring in the truest and purest sense. Even creation shows us that the essence of the parent is identical to the essence of the offspring in asexual reproduction. Think of asexual cell reproduction for instance. The parent cell, after begetting the offspring cell clearly shows two identical cells in their essence…cells that are one in essence, two in number. I believe that the Father and the Son are one in essence, two in number. You are not addressing that.
Jael,
“Jesus said he came forth from God. This is the same as being sent.”
But Jesus claimed in John 8 that he existed before Abraham and the Jews tried to stone him. If he would’ve just said well I was in God’s mind before Abraham was they probably wouldn’t have reacted so harshly. And you know John claims the preexistence of Jesus throughout.
So how was he sent before Abraham? Jesus was not yet fifty years old and he saw Abraham?
Andrew, Jesus did not say he existed before Abraham.
The Jews asked Jesus if he was greater than their forefather, Abraham. Jesus’ answer was indirect in that he alluded to the Jewish ordinal reflected in saying of John the Baptist: ‘He that comes after me is greater than I’.
Consider:
1) Everyone puts on a concert with support FIRST and the greater main act AFTER.
2) ‘He who is to be FIRST must put themselves LAST…!’
3) ‘..The spiritual was not first. The flesh was first and then the spiritual!’
In all these examples, that which came AFTER was GREATER than that which came before. Yet that which is greater was also FOREKNOWN before the lesser: ‘…he that comes after me is greater, because he was before me’… John the Baptist was OLDER in time (6 months) than Jesus. Yet Jesus (CHRIST) was foreordained: ‘I will send my servant before me to prepare my way…’.
‘Before Abraham was…’ is not a reference to a chronology but spiritual ordinance.
Abraham was the greatest of the Jewish forefathers (not the prophets) Yet scriptures declares that Abraham saw ‘the day’ of the coming Christ: Abraham was great – but Christ WOULD BE GREATER.
Jesus’ words of, ‘Before Abraham was, I am’, are nothing to do with claiming to be Almighty God. Only a complete desperado could ever imagine such words are claims of an ultimate deity when even a few verses later Jesus DENIES a ‘supposed’ claim of such from the Jews: ‘I said only that I was the son of God…yet even Almighty God called those to whom his word came, GODS.’
Just in case you start claiming that the son of God IS GOD, Jesus went to SAY who the son of God is: ‘If I am not doing the works of my Father then do not believe me …’
The reaction of the Jews is natural. Of course they were horrified to hear someone who they saw as ‘A mere man’ suddenly claim to be greater than their greatest forefather… And, of course, they could only think CHRONOLOGICALLY therefore mistaking Jesus to be saying he was OLDER than Abraham: it makes NO OTHER SENSE for them to say, ‘You are not yet 50 yeas old and you have seen abraham?’ (50 years old is just a reference to old age – not a literal 50 years. Large Numbers in Jewish talk are more long periods of time than literal hours, days, weeks, months, years… How many times does ’40 days’ or ‘forty years’ or ’40 thousand’ used to refer to respective long periods…would be a strange coincidence if they were literal figures, wouldn’t it?)
Andrew, I think you have a long way to go towards the realisation of the truth if scriptures. The spirit is not yet with you and so the shackles of your trinitarian lessons is still raw in you.
You would certainly not be put to death for your beliefs like the ones in the Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. They had a much different confession than you. Have you ever read that book? That alone should make you wonder about what you believe.
Jael,
You say-‘..The spiritual was not first. The flesh was first and then the spiritual!’ but remember we are talking from John’s gospel in which that spiritual Logos,which is Christ,was before all things. Christ tells those Jews in 8:51 that if a man keeps his saying he will never taste death.Their response is Abraham and the prophets are dead,so are you greater than they were? Who do you claim to be? Jesus tells them a couple verses later that your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad. How could Jesus know such a thing unless he’d seen Abraham? And in this context both sides are accusing each other of being liars.Jesus told the Jews they were liars for saying they knew God even though they were children of Abraham. So was Jesus lying when he claimed to see Abraham? Is that what he was saying? the Jews ask outright,you are not yet fifty years old and you claim to have seen Abraham? Jesus answers in the affirmative that yes before Abraham was born, or existed he was existing,or I am.
You say “And, of course, they could only think CHRONOLOGICALLY therefore mistaking Jesus to be saying he was OLDER than Abraham” -If they mistook him then why did he not honestly correct them? Yet Jesus answers them with a chronological term “before”. He could’ve said “no I didn’t see him but he saw me”,which according to your way of thinking is what he should’ve honestly said.
The idea in John is that the Logos-Jesus,always was,before Abraham and before creation and the Logos is called God in John 1.It’s a consistent theme in John that Jesus is the logos which is God,albeit not the Father,who was not just an idea or plan but a personal entity. “In the beginning” is also chronology.
Oh no…..! Not ‘John 1’???
Andrew, Andrew, Andrew… You lose!!!
When any trinitarian starts quoting ‘John 1’ or ‘Before Abraham, I am’, as a defence for their theology, it is a sure thing that they HAVE NO WORTHY THEOLOGY.
But just to humour you…
I just gave you full and frank examples from scriptures that demonstrate the theme that Jesus presented to the Jews. They knew these things because it is part of their philosophy: Did they understand John the Baptist when he said: ‘…the one to come is greater than me because he was before me’?
Of course they did. How? What is the philosophy of the Speaker? He who speaks LAST is remembered MORE; the LAST cannot be BETTERED; the LAST cannot be IMITATED: he who laughs LAST laughs loudest. Jesus is the LAST ADAM.
‘Jesus is the LAST ADAM’… If Jesus already existed, how can he be THE LAST?
Andrew, do you read the scriptures and tie what you read into what you believe?
‘Abraham longed to see my day, and saw it and was glad’.
Do you not see it in the scriptures in the Old Testament? Do you think it was only spoken by Jesus or do you not know that the Jews knew of this saying?
Yes, they knew all about their great forefather and knew that a Christ, a messiah, was coming — But, Andrew, they expected a WARRIOR CHRIST… They expected a HERO would come with all guns blazing and blast away their enemies (the Romans in particukar) and establish a Jewish kingdom ON EARTH. They expected someone of (human) noble birth, high and mighty. Who was thing simple looking man – Abraham stood out as a leader of men (Flesh) – now this man, who we know as a son of Joseph the carpenter, comes speaking of things of God (Spiritual) saying God sent him!!! Is this man greater than our forefather, Abraham?
Jesus invokes the Jewish principle of ‘precedence’: He who comes after is greater than he who was: Abraham was great but he who is to come, and now IS COME, is greater!!!
There is absolutely no suggestion in anything Jesus said that would indicate that he EXISTED BEFORE Abraham. The scriptures TELLS US that there would be a coming messiah… This is PROPHECY:
‘God speaks of things as if they have already taken place’!
Andrew, ….
….Pray for the Holy Spirit to guide you to the truth.
Jael,
Andrew, Andrew, Andrew… You lose!!! And just how do I lose? Your examples are ideas you get from other places and try to read into the verses we are discussing. You don’t expound the verse at all. I don’t see any reference to last Adam in John 8; that’s something from Paul. And neither is the saying “the first shall be last” from the synoptics,in John 8.
Do I lose because you consider my theology unworthy? I’m not telling you my theology but what I see the verses in question as saying. So maybe everyone is a loser if they don’t agree with or belong to your little sect? So what’s new,is that not what all the sects of Christianity think? And yes you do humour me.
And when I was a trinitarian I considered anyone who didn’t believe in Trinity as a heretic and lost.I no longer think that way and am no longer a trin but I don’t consider those who do believe it as lost or unworthy either.
So what about what the Baptist says in John 1:30 This is He on behalf of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’ NASB read it in any translation you like or in Greek and the connotation is the same. and how about Jon 1:10 KJV He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. and vs15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. Now why do you think it’s worded this way only in John and not in the other gospels? Heres what Luke says in 3:16 John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: yes John claims Jesus is greater than he but no mention of coming before.
‘Abraham longed to see my day, and saw it and was glad’. Do you not see it in the scriptures in the Old Testament? Do you think it was only spoken by Jesus or do you not know that the Jews knew of this saying? Please show me where this is in the OT,what do you think John had in mind?
” There is absolutely no suggestion in anything Jesus said that would indicate that he EXISTED BEFORE Abraham.”- John 17:5″And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. ” It seems to me this Jesus thought he existed before the world and if so then that was certainly before Abraham.
“yes John claims Jesus is greater than he but no mention of coming before.” I there meant Luke not John;and neither Matthew or Mark use the chronological term “before”, but ” he who comes after me is mightier than I” not because he was before me but because he baptizes in the Holy Spirit.
So why is John the only one who says “he was before me” when he could’ve just worded it like the other gospels did? According to you Jael, they all mean the same thing right? and John still brings out the fact of Jesus baptizing in the Spirit in Jn 1:33
Andrew, if you write something like: ‘John CLAIMS (my emphasis) that Jesus is greater than him’ then I understand that you are a pure skeptic. Nothing shown to you is going to make any difference to your wayward opinion – if you even had one.
You ask (me?) why John is the only writer to say …’he that comes before me’… Well, the answer is obvious, isn’t it?
Every individual who writes his version of an event writes what he feels are the important constituents of that event.
And, as we agreed before: ‘The Gospel of John is SUSPICIOUS’.
The concept of ‘The greater coming after the lesser’ is, as I said, scripturally a Jewish concept. Trinitarians would naturally try to poke in an untimely attempt at claiming what was not said. So, tampering with the scriptures could be the answer.
However, there is nothing wrong with saying, ‘he was before me’. The Jews did not run away when John said this – they came and were baptised by him. SO CLEARLY they did not envisage that John was talking about a man who was born before him …because they UNDERSTOOD the concept of ‘Coming before’… Perhaps like, ‘AHEAD OF ME’!
Think about it: doesn’t scriptures say, ‘I will send my servant who will prepare my way before me’?
The servant starts the works of HIM and the people are amazed and asks the servant if he is the expected one. The servant declares that, ‘You think these things are great?? Just you wait….!! He that comes after me is [even] greater than I. His greatness was spoken of before mine! (he was before me)’.
At no point except in trinitarian fallacies does anyone imagine John was speaking of a pre-eternal person…
Andrew, was anyone shocked by John? Even when John said, ‘This is he of whom I spoke of…’, did anyone say, ‘Oh right, yeah really… He’s just a man and younger than you, at that! I thought you said he was OLDER, in fact ETERNALLY OLDER, than you??’
Oh, by the way, Andrew, please read Galations 3 and you will see several times where reference is made to Abraham (fore)seeing Jesus’ day — BY FAITH in what YHWH said to him that through his, abraham, seed a saviour would come.
Double by the way… Jesus DOES NOT SAY that he SAW ABRAHAM…. Jesus said that ABRAHAM SAW HIS DAY!!!
Think about that in question of what the Jews asked Jesus: ‘You are not yet 50 years old – and you have SEEN Abraham?’
Anomalie???
Jael,
Andrew, if you write something like: ‘John CLAIMS (my emphasis) that Jesus is greater than him’ then I understand that you are a pure skeptic.” That’s not anything skeptical at all.Just re read how I wrote it. And I misread my own writing because i did mean to say John like I said;my point being John Baptist says in Luke that Jesus is greater than he,with nothing about him being before him.When I said John claims it’s the same as saying John says in Luke.So doesn’t John the Baptist CLAIM Jesus is greater than himself in the gospels? Just like Paul claims to be or says he’s an apostle?
Jesus DOES NOT SAY that he SAW ABRAHAM…. Jesus said that ABRAHAM SAW HIS DAY!!! You are right but the Jews took it that way and Jesus answered them in the affirmative with before Abraham was I was or I am. The theme of John is to show Jesus divine nature which includes preexistence and is taught through the whole gospel. I understand if you don’t want to believe it,but why deny what it says and try to make it say something else?
So how do you explain away Jn 17:5? It’s so amazing how people like to say the Bible means what it says until it doesn’t..And I never agreed with you that John was suspicious,I simply made the point that without John’s gospel the doctrine of Trinity may not have come about.I said that after you seemed to say it was trinitarian addition. Is that what you were saying?
“please read Galations 3 and you will see several times where reference is made to Abraham (fore)seeing Jesus’ day — BY FAITH in what YHWH said to him that through his, abraham, seed a saviour would come” That’s what I was expecting;that is Paul’s interpretation of Abraham. So the saying “Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad” is nowhere in the OT as you formerly claimed.The Jews knew nothing of it. But I do agree that the author of John probably got his ideas from some such teaching like Pauls in Galatians.
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