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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1594 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 17, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I don’t find this compelling.

there's no lack of New Testament passages that identify Jesus as God, using theos (no definite article) as a predicate to describe the nature of Jesus — that is to say, Jesus is God, or divine, or of the same nature as The God, his Father. See, for example, John 1:1, 20:28, Romans 9:5, Titus 2:13, Philippians 2:5-8, Hebrews 1:8, 2 Peter 1:1, or John 1:18.

Even this is too much. John 1 doesn’t tell us what happened to the Word upon becoming flesh, or in what sense the word became flesh, or even to what extent it became flesh. The exclamation of Thomas is just as likely to be the exclamation of someone having witnessed the power of God in Christ, of referring to God generally due to the shocking experience (as we say “my God” today). Romans 9:5 is just as easily read as a doxology to God the Father https://biblehub.com/commentaries/romans/9-5.htm

There are similar interpretative issues with the other mentioned passages. Hebrews 1:8 is the most compelling, but it quotes a psalm which itself speaks about David. Jesus himself teaches us how to understand this, when the Pharisees falsely accuse him of labeling himself a god despite being mortal:

“Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?

Thus, the appellation of “god” applied to a mortal as used in the psalms should normally be intepreted as an exaggerated title of honor. This cannot refer to anything more, because “scripture cannot be broken”. The passage is telling: Jesus rebukes the idea that he is divine, and instead comes calling himself “son of God”. This was a title used to refer to those of supreme righteousness in the Book of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, which were important works circulating at the time. This is crucially important: no one at the time would have interpreted “son of God” as indicating a being as equally God as the Father is God.

Or in Mark 10

a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him

Note that the man revises the title of Christ according to Christ’s teaching. Christ is Good because God is good, not because he is God/god/ sharing in the divine nature or anything else. This passage makes virtually no sense in a Trinitarian understanding, because if Jesus is equally God he is equally omnibenevolent, inherently good. Well, that’s obviously not what Jesus is saying. All mortals are good only insofar as we radiate the glory of God, allowing ourselves to be sealed by His imprint (Hebrews 1:3).

What you do not find — and would never find, in either biblical literature or in the writings of the Greek-speaking Church fathers, who were abundantly clear about the divinity of Jesus

The way in which Jesus is seen as divine (I would choose “heavenly”) is not as clear as you would expect. In the Shepherd of Hermas you find:

he is Lord of the people, having received all power from his Father. But hear why the Lord took his Son and the glorious angels as counselors concerning the inheritance of the slave. The preexistent holy spirit, which created the whole creation, God caused to live in the flesh that he wished. This flesh, therefore, in which the holy spirit lived, served the spirit well, living in holiness and purity, without defiling the spirit in any way. So, because it had lived honorably and chastely, and had worked with the spirit and had cooperated with it in everything, conducting itself with strength and bravery, he chose it as a partner with the holy spirit, for the conduct of this flesh pleased the Lord, because while possessing the holy spirit it was not defiled upon the earth. So he took the Son and the glorious angels as counselors, in order that this flesh also, having served the spirit blamelessly, might have some place to live, and not appear to have lost the reward of its service. For all flesh in which the holy spirit has lived will, if it proves to be undefiled and spotless, receive a reward. & Now you have the explanation of this parable."

This is divine in an adoptionist sense, though the passage isn’t clear about when this adoption takes place (some verses in epistles seem to indicate after death).

the Creed goes on to confess belief in the Son, who is of the same nature as the Father: That is to say, Jesus is divine in the same way the Father, who begat him, is divine — just as I am human in the same way that my father, who begat me, is human

This is not a good argument, because Jesus is clear that we are all born again from God, that we all become a son of God with the same oneness as Jesus is the son of God (John 17:22-23). Of course we are not turned into sons of God in the sense that we are suddenly turned into a divine being. Neither are we the preeminent Son of God, the firstfruits. But it’s totally anachronistic to make this into an argument for his being God, and it just reads as someone trying to trick those unfamiliar with how words were actually used at the time period.

Ultimately, the importance of adoptionism and “low Christology” is not because it’s the oldest and original, but because it’s essential for the religion to actually have an effect. The Christian must imagine Christ the Man tortured and slain. Truly dying. Truly identifying with him. Complicating this by turning the man into something unimaginable makes identification impossible, destroying the power of the cross. We cannot imagine a divine being with two natures dying on the cross and having this mean anything to us. That’s like telling us the Terminstor died for us. What do you expect the congregant to feel here? Does the mortal Christ have “locked in” syndrome as the divine nature impassibly does whatever is perfect without suffering? This does not inspire any feelings. It’s no longer a drama or tragedy, it’s just worthless philosophical syllogism.

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