Tuesday 22 September 2015

God/Jesus distinctions

In my paper Trinitarian Interpretations, I address some aspects of the God/Jesus distinctions provided by the New Testament authors, although I'd love to look into them more. On Bart Ehrman's blog, someone posted about 24 distinctions that he had found with their references. This was my response:

I was able to find around this number just for the strand: "God raised Jesus" anthem we find in the NT. But don't waste time on Jesus distinctions with "the Father", Trinitarians have a quick and "easy" response to that, unless of course you want to wrestle with the "Father/God" interchangeability.

For the interchangeability, I think the strongest evidence can also be found in John. "The Father sent me". "God sent me", etc. Trinitarians can only claim a one-way relationship between Jesus and God. Jesus is [OF the divine eternal] God [essence]. The confusion arises out of the removal of these square brackets, because if you don't have them, it is not obvious why the opposite cannot be true, i.e. that Jesus and God are not synonymous. That confusion is not present when you read John. For John, Jesus' notion of God is that he is Father, and that this Father, that he has in some sense "discovered", is also God, ho Theos. For John, there IS interchangeability.

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