The diciples of Christ not only gave him the titles of Jehovah or Deity but the also attributed to him powers that only God
possesses. The NT writers declare that Jesus raised the dead (Jn 5, 11), and yet the OT declares, "Jehovah Killeth, and maketh alive" ( 1 Sam 2:6; cf. Deut. 32:39). Isaiah pronounced Jehovah as "the everlasting God...the Creator of the ends of the earth" (4:9) and Jerimiah clalled him the "former of all things" (10:16); the NT writers speak of all things being created through Christ (Jn 1:2; Col 1:16). Likewise, for the Jews "who can forgive sins but God alone?"; and yet without hesitation the NT writers attribute this power to Jesus (acts 5:31; 13:38). Such attribution should removed all reasonable doubt as to whether they believed in the Deity of Christ.
Reply: Elijah also raised the dead (1 Ki 17; 2 Ki 4) as did Peter (Acts (9:37-40) and Paul (Acts 20:9-12). Once someone had only to touch Elisha's bones to live again.
This brings to an interesting area. As we have noted above, others have, in the Bible, not only been favorably referred to as gods, but also as Jehovah. We have even seen angels accepting the divine name for themselves. The fact is, a representative of God bears his name and authority. Let's take a look at Moses and Aaron. Ex 16:2 says, "And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron in the wilderness", but then at v. 6 it says, "Your murmurings are not against us, but against Jehovah." As representatives, Aaron and Moses could speak thus. This was repeated in Christian times. Speaking of the apostles, Acts 5 says, "And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be overthrown: but if it is of God, ye will not be able to overthrow them; lest haply ye be found even to be fighting against God." 38-40
This speaks of the close relationship God has with his servants. "For thus saith Jehovah of hosts...he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye." So his representatives have spoken for him, and as him. "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets many times and in many different ways. But now in these last days God has spoken to us through his Son. God has chosen his Son to own all things, and through him he made the world. The Son reflects the glory of God and shows exactly what God is like. He holds everything together with his powerful word. When the Son made people clean from their sins, he sat down at the right side of God, the Great One in heaven." Heb 1:1-3 (NCV)
Claim...from an email: Some very important things we must now close with concerning the Deity of Christ. The first is Jn 1:1, the second is Jn 1:18; 8:58; 20:20, the third is Jesus was considered to be the Creator of the universe, and last Jesus was obeyed and worshiped by angels. Why can we not accept "the Word was a god?" On top of Hartley's great advise lies a very simple and concrete objection. The theological context, viz., John's monotheism, makes this rendering of 1:1c impossible, for if a monotheist were speaking of the Deity he himself reverenced, the singular THEOS could be applied only to the Supreme Being, not to an inferior divine being or emanation
as if THEOS were simply generic. That is, in reference to his own beliefs, a monotheist could not speak of THEOI nor could he use THEOS in the singular (when giving any type of personal discription) of any being other than the one true God whom he worshiped. On the other hand, when the polytheistic inhabitants of Malta affirmed that Paul was Theos, they were suggesting that he had or deserved a place among their owm patheon of gods. "They said that he was a god" is therefore a proper translation of Acts 28:6.
Reply: Murray Harris says that "the Word was a god" is grammatically possible, and W.E. Vine calls it the most literal rendering of the phrase, but both, like you, say it shouldn't be translated that way because it contradicts monotheism. Let us take a further look at this. The monotheistic Jews had no problem interchanging the word angel with god, and this can be proven by comparing the Masoretic Text with the LXX at Ps 8:5; 97:7; 138:1. The Jewish Christians had little problem with this either at Hebrews 2:7. Therefore the Jew had no problem with putting a lesser being in this divine position. But what does this have to do with a Trinity? Nothing! In fact the opposite. Here is what one Jew has to say about it, "The Old Testament is strictly monotheistic. God is a single personal being. The idea that a Trinity is to be found there or even in any way shadowed forth, is an assumption that has long held sway in theology, but is utterly without foundation. The Jews, as a people, under its teachings became stern opponents of all polytheistic tendencies, and they have remained unflinchingly monotheists to this day. On this point there is no break between the Old Testament Scriptures and the New. The monotheistic tradition is continued. Jesus was a Jew, trained by Jewish parents in the Old Testament Scriptures. His teaching was Jewish to the core, a new gospel indeed, but not a new theology." L.L. Paine, A Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism (Boston and New York; Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1902), 4.
Claim...from an email: If you were to honestly look at Jn 1:1 you would find it clearly triadic: each of the three clauses has the same subject (HO LOGOS) and an identical verb (ANE). So far from being tautological, verse 2 gathers together these three seperate affirmations
and declares them all to be true EN ARCHN: "This LOGOS who was THEOS was in the beginning with God." Even though Jesus Christ is not explicitly mentioned until verse 17, the evangelist clearly assumes throughout the prologue that the Logos is none other than the "only Son" (monogenes, 1:14, 18) of the Father.. In the first proposition of the verse 1 John affirms that the Logos existed before all time and creation and therefore implicitly denies that the Logos was a created being.
Reply: Again, it is only with you trinitarians that words change meanings, in this case EN ARCH/In the Beginning, no longer means in the Beginning, but "Before" the beginning. Most Bibles cross reference John 1:1 with Genesis 1:1 where "the beginning" is when God created the heavens and the earth. There is nothing in the scriptures that supports a "timeless" EN ARCH, and this is only building on Greek philosophy where time was created with the universe (see Timaeus/Plato). I have come to that conclusion by looking honestly at John 1:1. John 1:1 also parallels Prov 8 where Wisdom (i.e. the Word) is a created being. I also consider "Only Son" to be a poor translation of MONOGENHS QEOS or even UION TON MONOGENH as God also had other sons (Job 1:6; 38:7 etc).
Claim...from an email: In the second, he declares that the Logos always was in active communion with the Father and thereby implies that the Logos cannot be personally identifying with the Father, [thus illustrating the error in using Colwell's rule to argue for a definite reading of 1:1c]. In the third, he states that the Logos always was a partaker of Deity and so implicitly denies that the Logos
was ever elevated to divine status. The thought of the verse moves from eternal preexistence to personal intercommunion to intrinsic Deity. Verse 1c states the basis on which vv.1a and b can be said to be true: only because the Logos participated inherently in the Divine nature could he be said to be already in existence when time began or creation occured and to be in unbroken eternal fellowship with the Father. This would justify regarding THEOS as emphatic, standing as it does at the head of the clause.
Whereever you place the piviotal point in the prologue, verses 14 and 18 are of paramount importance. Verse one stands in antithetical parallelism to verse 14 and in synthetic and climatic parallelism to verse 18. The Logos who "existed in the beginning" (v.1a), "came on the human scene (egeneto)" in time (v. 14a) [notice the difference in word choice between NV in verse 1a and EGENETO in verse 14a - it is the difference between timeless and within time - just like I've been saying all along - why did the evangelist use NV in v. 1a and EGENETO in v.14a if it was not to make that very crucial distinction?]. The one who was eternally
"in communion with God" (v. 1b), temporarily sojourned among us" (v. 14b). "The Word had the same nature as God" (v. 1c) is paralleled by the contrasting though that "the Word assumed the same nature as humans (SARKS EGENETO)" (v. 14a). Verses 1 and 18 share references to timeless existence (NV ter, v.1; HO WV, v. 18c), intimate fellowship (pros tov theov, v. 1b; eis tov kolpov tou patros, v. 18c), and predicated Deity (THOES, vv. 1c; 18b). Where v. 18 advances beyond verse 1 is in its grounding of the validity and accuracy of the Son's revelation (EXNGNSATO) of the Father in his oneness with the Father in nature (THEOS) and fellowship (EIS TOV KOLPOV). And, as you will see shortly, this 1c verse is strategically placed. It is the first of three stratigically placed verses to unveil the Nature of Christ in the fourth gospel (1:1c; 1:18; 20:28). These three verses unequivocally affirm the essential Divinity of Jesus Christ.
Reply: Well, you have alot of grammatical acrobatics above to prove...what is it exactly? A Trinity? Again, does any of the above really prove that Jesus is part of a Triune relationship? If John had wanted to place hO LOGOS prior to the beginning, then he would have used the preposition PRO (before) instead of EN (in). If one is IN something, be it a place or time, one is not necessarily before it. For example when the LOGOS in Jn 1:10 was in (HN) the world, he was not ALWAYS in the world, because as 1:9 shows us he was in the process of coming INTO the world before that point. You are assuming something not there. As someone else has put it earlier: "Consider John 1:10 EN TWi KOSMWi HN KAI O KOSMOS DI AUTOU EGENETO. Here we have a grammatical parallel to the EN ARXHi HN hO LOGOS with the preposition EN (IN) being followed by the dative. This dative is locative while John 1:1 is temporal, but the concept is still 'in or in the realm of'" (see Porter's Idioms 156). Take note that even though the world EGENETO through the Word, that the HN does not indicate that the Word was "in the world" from all eternity. This verse simply means what is says. While it is true that the state is continuous it is equally true that the Word did not remain in the world for all eternity nor was he there from eternity. The period of time is made visible by the writer even though the aspect is continuous. Now let us look at John 1:3-4 hO GEGONEN EN AUTW ZWH HN KAI H ZWH HN TO FWS TWN ANQRWPWN. This example is a bit of an enigma, however when one takes a look at the syntax of the phrase which includes both GINOMAI and HN one can see that it does not necessarily prove a difference between what "was made" and what "was." Using the punctuation as accepted by most modern scholars, we find that what came into existence (hO GEGONEN) is said to enter into the state of HN, which happens to be the complete opposite of the Trinitarian theory that beings with these properties are mutually exclusive. Others have come to the same conclusion that the LOGOS is not eternal, like Bultmann (The Gospel of John, 21); Moses Stuart, (Exegetical and Theological Examination of John 1:1-18), who himself says, "To say, as some have said, the HN[was] of itself denotes timeless existence....seems not to be well founded in the laws of grammatical usage."
We know also that the angels were present at the beginning of creation (Gen 1:26, Job 38:7), but to say that "in the beginning were the angels/EN ARCHE ESAN HOI ANGELOI means that the angels are eternal is just ridiculous. In the part of the LOGOS, this is a desperate attempt to try to put a 4th or 5th century philosophy into the plain reading of scripture.
I will let John A. T. Robinson finish this off nicely, "The Greek runs: KAI QEOS HN hO LOGOS. The so-called Authorized Version has: 'And the Word was God.' This would indeed suggest the view that 'Jesus' and 'God' were identical and interchangeable. But in Greek this would most naturally be represented by 'God' with the article, not QEOS but hO QEOS. But, equally, St. John is not saying that Jesus is a 'divine' man, in the sense with which the ancient world was familiar or in the sense that Liberals spoke of him. That would be QEIOS. The Greek expression steers carefully between the two. It is impossible to represent it in a single English word, but the New English Bible, I believe, gets the sense pretty exactly with its rendering, 'And what God was, the Word was.' In other words, if one looked at Jesus, one saw God--for he who has seen me, has seen the Father . . . Through him, as through no one else, God spoke and God acted; when one met him one was met . . . by God" (Robinson 70-71).
Since the scriptures do not speak of Jesus/LOGOS as having existed from eternity, we must rely on what IS revealed. What is revealed is that Jesus/LOGOS is described with temporal terms such as Son, only-begotten Son/god (John 1:18, 3:16 MONOGENHS), firstborn (Col 1:15), and beginning (Col 1:17, Rev 3:14). Since the bible describes the LOGOS with these temporal terms, this therefore is strong evidence that he has not existed from eternity. To do so one needs to redefine the term "begotten," which indicates a beginning, the opposite of eternal begetting! In view of the Bible's use of this kind of language regarding Jesus, we must consider this strong evidence of the Son's temporal origin. John 1:1c distinguishes the godship of the LOGOS from HO QEOS because the LOGOS was *with* hO QEOS. They are not presented as two equal gods. In fact, John 1:18 adjectivally modifies the godship of the LOGOS by calling him the *only-begotten* god, rather than QEOS in an unqualified sense. This subordinate only-begotten god had a beginning ("only-begotten"), which is in perfect harmony with the monotheism of the first century. Even if you prefer "unique" for MONOGENHS, it raises the question of how the godship of the LOGOS is "unique" in comparison with HO QEOS.
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