Response to Unitarians Dave Barron and Patrick Navas, Part 2

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Continuation of my response to Dave Barron and Patrick Navas from the November 29, 2011 Dividing Line webcast.

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Is Jesus God? Part 3

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So, with that as the background, we go back to the statements, and you'll see why
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I've put Isaiah 53 -2 in there. We'll look at that in just a moment. Listen to the comments.
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White's exegesis seemed to focus more on just the words, saw his glory and spoke about him.
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And so, with those words, he would try to link that back to Isaiah 6, but he did not deal with the fact that Isaiah said what he said, which was what
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John was speaking about, because Isaiah saw his glory and spoke about him.
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In other words, White isn't explaining how seeing God's glory and speaking about him served as the basis for what
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Isaiah said. To put it another way, White hasn't explained how what Isaiah said was dependent upon seeing glory, and speaking about him.
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Again, mountain out of molehill, these things, tal -ta -ipem, comes right after quotation of Isaiah 6 -10.
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That is an entire pericope. You cannot separate 10 from 1. No Jew would, because they all knew the
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Isaiah temple vision. And so, Isaiah saw his glory.
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Whose glory did he see? Yahweh's. And he spoke concerning him. Who is that? Yahweh. And yet, what application does
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John make? That it's Jesus. It's right there. I can't open eyes to see it, and as long as a person wants to reject who
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Jesus is, they can just close their eyes. Oh, no, no. Not going to believe it. Not going to believe it. But anyone with a Septuagint in their hand, which was
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John's original audience, would see it, and they would understand it, and if this was just one verse, but it isn't just one verse, this is the
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Gospel of John, folks. Even skeptics like Bart Ehrman recognize the Gospel of John presents the deity of Christ.
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Even unbelievers recognize it. Oh, come on. It's right there. I mean, how can you miss that? But, still, there's always a way to squint your eyes and to close them tightly shut so you don't see anything.
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Speaking about God in Isaiah 6. The reality is, though, that this is going to be very difficult for white, if not possible, because the words that are quoted weren't dependent upon seeing
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God and speaking about him. It was something that was told to Isaiah. There was also a command given to Isaiah.
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Which is exactly why John quotes these words about seeing his glory and speaking about him. It's irrelevant. He didn't have to say all that.
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This whole verse doesn't even need to be there. So that was the basis for what
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Isaiah said, him being told it, him being commanded. It was not seeing glory, seeing
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God, or speaking about him. Which is why John actually emphasized those words, but never used the word commanded.
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Like I said, reading out of the text, that which is there, because it doesn't fit with our tradition. Gnomes made a really good point in that typically the
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Messiah's seen glory within the book of John refers to his works, what he has done.
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So that this would carry forward into John chapter 12 is certainly very probable.
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Interestingly the most... In other words, what he's saying there is, well, we can see the glory of God in the works of Jesus, of course.
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But that doesn't explain why John says what he says in verse 41 about Isaiah spoke these things.
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So here's a quote. Here's a quote. Isaiah said it because he saw his glory and he spoke concerning him.
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Messianic fulfillment? You bet. But who did Isaiah see? The Unitarian says, um, it wasn't
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Joe, but no, no, don't notice that part. No, he, no, it can't be that. It can't be that because we don't believe that.
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That's why it can't be that. Catch catch how that's working folks.
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It'll help you to follow along. Immediate occurrence prior to John 12 41 is in John 11 40 where God's glory is spoken of and that also is glory seen through works.
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White really hammered on the verbal parallel, but of course it's meaningless. Meaning first can't deal with because, and it really, the verbal parallel also exists in Isaiah 53
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Isaiah 53 too. It says I DOS auto and so he says we saw him.
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So that same concept of seeing is there present in Isaiah 53 he goes on to speak.
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Now let's, uh, let's, let's provide Mr. Barron with some, uh, remedial Greek one
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Oh one here. Um, because he's a mistranslated. Isaiah 53 to provided in the blog article.
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You do see I DOS auto. That does not mean we saw him. Uh, we saw him is item in Alton, which is a little bit later on.
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Um, if Mr. Barron were to actually translate the phrase there, he would have noticed that right before I DOS auto is
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Euston, I DOS auto UDA DACSA, which means he had no form to him.
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Neither glory. Uh, I DOS means a form or appearance at that point.
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Uh, it is not a verb. So, um, I don't know if Mr. Barron has ever been trained in Greek.
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Uh, he certainly hasn't taught it. That's clear, but that's just a basic error on his part, a fundamental error that a lot of people wouldn't catch, but a fundamental error in his part.
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So notice what's happening here though. We have this clear citation of a text, clear, direct verbal parallels to a citation of a text.
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That's irrelevant. But if we go over here, um, I know there's no glory mentioned here, but, but, but, but, but the verb,
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I, it's right there item in Alton. So that's good enough to make the parallel.
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But the direct citation isn't, um, when you're, this is called doing gymnastics, all right?
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This is not exegesis. This is eisegesis. There's clearly an overriding, uh, thought here that is keeping you from actually allowing the text to speak for itself.
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Then of his lowly form, um, but then he speaks about his redemptive work. He says that he bears our sin and his pain, pain for us.
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So there in that redemption and his bearing our sins, the Messiah's glory is seen.
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So this addresses the, the matter of how his glory was seen and where it was seen.
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It was seen starting in Isaiah 52 where Isaiah speaks about the suffering servant and then on into Isaiah 53 where he continues to speak about him.
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With 1 Corinthians 8 .6, White took the petition that Paul was modifying the
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Shema of Deuteronomy 6 .4. Um, I was surprised that White, White didn't really grasp the force of Patrick's, um, point that Paul could have said.
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Uh, notice when they say you failed to grasp means you didn't agree with. Um, that's an inaccurate description.
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I fully understood Mr. Novice's argument. I did not find it to be meaningful. That does not mean that I did not grasp it.
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Uh, might want to be a little bit more accurate in your use of terminology. There is to us one God, the
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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He, he certainly could have done this and, you know, he says that the, the
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Trinity is revealed. But this is a creedal statement. Uh, if Paul is formulating a creed here by which the church can follow, this is the time to do that, to present the doctrine of God.
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He doesn't do that though. He says there is one God, the Father, and that would really encompass the
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Shema at that point. There, now catch that. Now let's, let's look at section B and let's examine
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Mr. Barron's, um, assertions. Section B gives you the
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Shema in the Greek Septuagint. Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Here of Israel, Yahweh is our
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God, Yahweh is one, heis, echad, in Hebrew. Akueh Yisrael, kurias hatheas heimon, kurias heis esten.
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That's, uh, and you shall, then the next line, Deuteronomy 6, 5, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and all your strength.
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And that is, of course, the Greek version of that. Uh, the reference didn't come through,
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I apologize for that. But the next line, beginning with al, is actually 1 Corinthians 8. Al hemin heis theas hapater, ex hu ta panta, kai heimais eis autan.
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Kai heis kurias yesus Christas, di hu ta panta, kai heimais di autu.
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And so, here you have, in 1 Corinthians 8, you've, you've, most, if you've done any work with, uh,
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Mormons, you already know this text. Because, you know, that Joseph Smith misused this text. Um, 1
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Corinthians 8, for even if there are so -called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are gods many and lords many, but to us, al hemin, heis theas hapater.
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Now, notice in the preceding, in the preceding verse, he has said,
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There are legaminoi theoi. There are so -called gods.
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Whether in heaven or upon the earth. Good description of the pagan deities of that day. And then he says, hosper eisen theoi paloi, kai kurioi paloi.
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So, now he has used both theoi, gods, and kurioi, lords.
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As there are gods many and lords many. Now, Paul is not saying there are many gods and many lords. He's saying that there are those who are called gods, who are called lords.
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And then he says, but, this is the adversative use of allah, but, to us, for us, for the
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Christian people. Heis theas hapater, from whom are all things, and we for him.
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Kai heis kurios, Jesus Christos, through whom are all things, and we through him.
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Now, I have used bold to show you why it is that, and again, and I don't think they have accused me of this, though I think sometimes they want to sort of present this idea a little bit.
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I'm not the first one to think of these things, okay? I'm a midget standing on the shoulders of giants.
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Many scholars, for a long time, have pointed out that for someone like Paul, who clearly is able to function in both
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Hebrew and Greek, he is bilingual. He would know the
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Shema like the back of his hand, because as a faithful Jewish person living at that period,
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Second Temple Judaism, it was a part of his daily life. But he also would have heard it in Greek.
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He would have known of the Diaspora synagogues, where it is he and Silas, and he and Barnabas go, and the rest of them, they go into the synagogues.
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And not everybody there knew Hebrew. And so, what would the
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Shema be for him? Kurios hatheas heimon kurios heis esten.
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What are the words? Kurios, Lord. Theos, God. Heimon. Heimon is just the genitive form of heimin, which is the second word in 1
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Corinthians 8. So the idea that, well, I'm not convinced that this is actually having anything to do with the
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Shema. Well, again, you can read that out if you want. It's obvious. It's right there.
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The idea that a monotheistic Jew who said the Shema over and over again could write these words and go, oh, what?
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Look at that. That looks a lot like the Shema. I didn't mean to do that. It's ridiculous, but if that's where you want to go, then you can go there.
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But for those who are serious about the study of the text, it's obvious that what Paul is doing here is he's not...
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I don't think this is something that once this was read at the church in Corinth, they all went, wow, we've never heard of that before.
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He's actually referring to something that would have been something that he had already taught them. And so what is the
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Christian version of the Shema here? Well, you have hais theos hapater.
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One God, the Father. And what you just heard Mr. Barron said, ah, that would be it for the Shema right there. That's it. Again, that's it?
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You don't read the rest of the sentence? Because clearly what Paul is doing is he says, there is only one
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God. The Father, from whom, ex who, from whom, tapanta, same thing we're going to see in Colossians 1, all things, and we, for him, ais auton, which by the way is going to be used of Jesus, the
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Son in Colossians 1. Ais auton. All things are ais auton. Kai, and this is where Mr.
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Barron and Mr. Novice miss it. There's a Kai here. Oh no, that's something else.
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Don't worry about that. Don't pay attention to the sentence behind the curtain or whatever it else. But to us, one
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God and one Lord. Oh no, that's a separate thing. It wasn't in the
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Shema, was it? Kurios hatheas haimon, kurios hais esten. And one
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Lord, Jesus the Messiah, di who, through whom, tapanta, and we, di autu, we through him.
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Now he uses different prepositions, which fits exactly the role that the
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Son has taken. Not only is the instrumental means by which creation takes place, all of creation, meaning he cannot be in the created order, as we'll see when we get to Mr.
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Barron's false assertion of the part of Genitive in Colossians 1. We'll get there. We've got, still got an hour and 15 minutes left, and I may not get,
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I may not even get to start my other two series, but I'm going to finish this. We are going to be consistent and thorough and move on.
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Very clearly, we have a beautiful New Testament expansion.
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What you've got is the Shema, and it's still there. There is no contradiction. But what have
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I said over and over and over again? What have I said over and over and over again? The revelation of the doctrine of the
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Trinity is in the Incarnation and the outpouring of the
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Holy Spirit. And so now, what is 1 Corinthians 8 .6?
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It is the Shema in the fuller light of the Incarnation, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ, and now the coming of the
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Holy Spirit. You say, well, where's the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit doesn't testify of himself, he testifies of Jesus. And so this is what he's doing right here.
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And so you, there is absolute precision and purposefulness in Paul's ascription to the
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Hais Theos and the Hais Kurios, all of creation, all of creation. Because when you take
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Ex Hutapanta, and we for him, and Dehutapanta, and we for him, through him, that is the very description of the activities of God, and we can follow those very same prepositions into the discussion of Colossians 1, as we will a little bit later on.
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And so, when you hear Barron saying, oh, well, you know, that Hais Theos, that's enough for the
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Shema, it's just blindness, just putting your hands over your eyes saying, I will not see it, yes, there's a
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Kai there, I don't care, my Unitarianism will not allow me to see that. But it's right there.
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And for he who has ears to hear and eyes to see, that Kai is right there.
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And one Lord, the Holy Spirit. Doesn't say that. I'm not convinced, however, that Paul is making use of the
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Shema at this point. We'll notice that in verse 5, there's a contrast between many gods and many lords, and then into verse 6, and that contrast is made with the one
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God and our one Lord. Well, if Paul was making use of the Shema at that point, Lord in the
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Shema, of course, was the Tetragrammaton, it was Jehovah. So there was Jehovah, our God, Jehovah is one.
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Or one Jehovah. Here, however, it's apparent that Paul is not saying that Jesus is the one
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Jehovah. Rather, he is contrasting those many lords to the one
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Lord. Just as there were many gods, for example, the angels, they were properly called God.
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The judges of Israel were properly called God. There were many of those, and there were also many lords. This might not...
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Of course, Paul wasn't talking about proper usages of the plural theoi. He was saying legaminoi theoi, those that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth.
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And, of course, just as in John 12, you have to go, well, that's not...
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Isaiah wasn't talking about Jehovah. Now you have the very language of the
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Shema, which was about Jehovah. Well, no, that's not about Jehovah either. It's like the
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Jehovah's Witnesses New World Translation. You know, they had these things called the J documents when they mistranslated the
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New Testament, and they put the word Jehovah in the New Testament 237 times, but they don't ever put it in where it would refer to Jesus, even though many of the sources they derive from, including the
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J documents, which they quote, actually had places where Jehovah was used of Jesus. But they hid those.
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They didn't put them in the footnotes. You know, that's just deceptiveness, and this is just spiritual blindness.
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Paul might have had in mind here, for example, we know in one early Jewish text that certain angels were called lords.
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Perhaps that's what he's contrasting, the many of those with the one who is
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Jesus, our one Lord. Yeah, that's why he says there's one God. We're not really talking about the true God here.
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We're just talking about, you know, in comparison, false gods. And all things through him, that really wouldn't be about Jehovah any more than dehu, all through him, are all things.
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No, you see what happens when you just chop the text up and you don't allow it to have any flow, you don't allow one phrase to inform the meaning of the preceding phrase, or the following phrase.
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See what happens? It's, uh, it's... You can make anything you want out of the text.
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Next, they went on into Hebrews chapter 1, and I think... Section C. ...we have a strong case here, and White just didn't seem to grasp it.
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Yeah, I didn't grasp it. White argued that God's nature is eternal, speaking about verse 3, and so when it calls
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Jesus the exact representation, or the copy, or the reproduction of God's being, White insisted that Jesus, therefore, must be eternal.
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Now, let me, uh, it is interesting, it is somewhat educational for me to hear what
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Unitarians hear me saying over against what I actually argue. And the one thing that's very clear is that Patrick Navas and Mr.
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Barron and these others, they're not overly self -reflective on the role of presuppositions in their own thinking.
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They, they... And how many times have we run into that? Um, here's the situation. Look at, look at Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3.
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It's section C, uh, in, uh, in the notes on, uh...
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And if you're just joining us, please go to the blog at aomin .org, and, uh, you'll see a, a blog article documentation for today's, uh, program.
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And of course, it'll stay up there, so when you listen to this at other times, you'll be able to look at this. Section C, uh,
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Hebrews 1, 3. He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature and upholds all things by the word of His power.
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When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Uh, now,
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I've given you that in the Greek, and the, the primary, uh, phrase that was focused upon...
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Remember, we, we had seven minutes. I covered all of Hebrews chapter 1 in seven minutes.
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And Mr., Mr. Navas was not good at, at, at timekeeping. I don't know if he didn't have a timer in front of him or something like that.
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He kept going over time. Um, and he... And this is where experience helps.
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I'm able to look at the clock and go, okay, I've got so much to cover, and so I can only give so much time to each section, and I can just sort of do that on the fly.
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And I got all the way through. I was able to present all the positive argumentation from Hebrews chapter 1 in seven minutes.
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That's not easy to do, but I, I managed to do it. He didn't even get to verses 10 through 12, which is the key text, which applies
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Psalm 102, 25 to 27, um, which is about Yahweh and Yahweh alone to Jesus.
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We're gonna see that Mr. Barron has a really interesting way... Well, he didn't come up with it. Uh, it's, uh,
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Anthony Buzzard has used it, and others, and, you know, they borrow from each other. But interesting way to try to get around that, which we will debunk in just a few moments.
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It's the quote that will help us to do so is right there on the screen in front of you. Anyway, but first...
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The issue is the meaning of karakter. Has 'on ap 'algazma, teis dakseis kai karakter, teis hupas taseos autu, is the first phrase of Hebrews 1 -3.
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Who being, and please notice, I did bold on. I bolded that for a couple reasons.
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It's not an heiress. In fact, it's the same phrase in Ego Ami HaOn in Exodus 3 -14.
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Who being the radiance, or the effulgence of his glory, and the karakter, the imprint, the exact representation of his person, nature, being, depends on the context of use, so on and so forth.
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Now, if you listened to my debate with Greg Stafford from back in 2004, as I recall, you know that modern day
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Arians take this and they say, well, that means Jesus is a copy.
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Now, when we think of a copy, you know, we think of photocopiers, which can make sometimes really good copies, but very often really not so good copies.
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You can tell they're copies. You know, sort of like using the fax machine to make a copy. It's got the black lines in it, so it's readable, but you can tell it's a copy, right?
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And they want to take that term copy, and here's where, again, I hope by investing this time
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I am helping you to think through things and see where arguments, see the unspoken, the unspoken presuppositions of arguments that are bad arguments.
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The argument from the Unitarians is if Jesus is a copy, then he has to be a creature, because a copy, by necessity, comes after the original.
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What is the unspoken assumption there? What's the unspoken assumption there? The unspoken assumption is that the term charakter, in its meaning and application at this point, refers to a point of origin, that it has a temporal element to it.
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Well, of course, a copy, the original has to come before a copy, as if the process of copying in a photocopier is in the mind of the writer of the
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Hebrews, which, of course, it is not. What's in the mind of the writer of the
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Hebrews is the exactness of the charakter.
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A charakter. I've told the story before, but I'll tell it again. If we have to go a few minutes long, it's
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Ralph's birthday, and Ralph would be happy if we did that, so I'm not going to rush it. But I've told the story before.
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I remember one of my favorite memories of the holidays when
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I was a kid was my mom, who had beautiful handwriting, had this huge Christmas card list, and that's pretty much gone the way of the dodo bird, to be honest with you.
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And she would write these Christmas cards to everybody. And then, for a while, she had this neat set of candles, wax candles, and you'd light it, and a drop of wax would go down onto the back of the envelope, and you'd blow it out, and then she had this metal
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W, fancy W, that she would press into the wax on the back and it would form a seal, really cool -looking seal, on the back of the envelope.
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We just don't do stuff like that anymore, you know, we've lost that. And every once in a while, she'd let me do that, and you had to wait a little bit until it gelled just a little bit, and then she'd let me push it in there, and I just thought it was great.
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The impress of that W in the wax is the caractere, and it was an exact mirror image of what was in the metal stamp.
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Signet rings would be used in the same way, you'd press it into the wax, and that would seal something, and that was something that would have been understood by the people of that time.
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I just realized we do need to take a brief break at the top of the hour, if we can, I'll let you cue that up and keep going, let me know when you're ready to go, because I want to keep recording this, and it's going to stop here in a few moments, so I need to continue on, because I'd like to put at least some of this up on the web.
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That's what this is talking about. And if Mr. Navas and Mr. Barron and these guys really wanted to be honest with Hebrews, they would notice the context.
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Are you saying that the glory of God began at a point in time? Because you're saying caractere means, is referring to a point in time where an inferior copy was made.
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But was God always glorious? Has there always been an effulgence of His glory?
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Of course. Then where do you get this idea that character means created at a point in time?
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It's an assumption. I've never heard them back it up with anything other than a photocopier analogy, which would not be in the mind of the writer.
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But there's something more. As I pointed out, they don't really believe caractere.
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Because I asked, is, and this is, interestingly enough, all that Mr. Barron heard, but didn't fully understand,
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I asked, is eternality a definitional part of God's nature?
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He said, yes. I said, is Jesus eternal? No. Then He's not really the caractere, is
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He? Because you see, to avoid the implications of the position, they have to diminish the meaning of caractere.
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They have to turn it into a bad photocopy. That's not what the writer of Hebrews ever intended.
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Remember, this is, this is the very presentation of the supremacy of Christ.
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The beginning of it, which is going to end at the end of chapter 1 with the identification of Jesus as Yahweh.
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So the idea that this is some created concept makes absolutely no sense in the context of Hebrews chapter 1.
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I will, number 2 and 58 .62
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in the blog article are definitions of caractere. The first is from Bauer, Donger, Arndt and Gingrich, and the second is from Lowe and Nita, if you want to have that.
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Okay? We'll continue on with Mr. Barron's presentation and our refutation thereof right after we take a short break.
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Welcome back. I was talking, but no one could hear me. We are responding to a video that was posted on YouTube, comments on the debate that I had with Patrick Novis on Friday evening.
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If you are just joining us, please go to the blog at aomin .org and you will find there the notes that I have provided, which are helping us to deal with these issues and to explain some of the things that we're talking about.
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It's a little bit on the complicated side, but we want to be able to tackle these things and hopefully it's useful to you.
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Let's continue on. But that goes against the very definition of what a copy or a reproduction is.
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Yeah, a modern definition. Not what caractere means, but what a modern definition would mean, which you would have to demonstrate caractere means that in Hebrews 1 .3.
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And that it is always temporarily after the original. It always comes after that one.
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That's just definitional to what a copy is. So White's presuppositions came to bear there.
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Actually, my exegesis came to bear there and his presuppositions were just exposed. He also couldn't grasp how the language of Hebrews 1 .10
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-12, which is a quote from Psalm 102, how that could apply to a creature. Now let me stop here, because if it's been a while since you have read
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Psalm 102, 25 -27, might I read it to you?
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Because, you know, it just strikes me as being pretty obvious.
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Let's listen to it. Yeah, I think that's a very, very good description of the immutability of Yahweh, the one creator
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God. And I just want you to consider how could you ever apply those words to a created being.
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To a created being. You, created being, laid the foundation of the earth.
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You, created being, the heavens are the work of your hands. Well, what is this created being? When was he created?
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If he created the earth and the heavens, did he create himself? They, created things, will perish, you created thing.
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But you, created thing, will remain. Because you're not really a created thing, maybe? I don't know. They will all wear out like a garment.
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You will change them, created thing, like a robe, and they will pass away, even though you are like them.
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But you are the same, created thing, even though you're not always the same, because you came into existence at a point in time, and your years have no end, even though they had a beginning.
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Ah, yeah, that's what the psalmist had in mind. Okay. So, now, it's obvious to me, and it's obvious to the vast majority of the listeners of this broadcast, what is being discussed there.
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But, there is a sneaky little way around this. And we have discussed this before in the program, but we're going to discuss it again.
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Let's listen. The author of Hebrews would never have done that. But the reality is, is that application to another, to a creature, came much earlier, and it's actually that application that the author of Hebrews is drawing from, from the
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Septuagint. Where in the Psalm, it's reinterpreted and reapplied to what is apparently the psalmist who is interpreted to be the
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Messiah. This text is in the Septuagint, applied to one other than Jehovah, and it actually has
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Jehovah speaking to that one. So we find right there, the reapplication of it.
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So, what he's talking about is that there is a minor difference in the
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Greek Septuagint and the Masoretic text. If you want to hear a fuller discussion of this, see my sermon on this relevant text, sermon audio in the
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Hebrews series. But I provide you an entire quotation, and for those who don't get to follow the notes,
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I'm going to go ahead and read FF Bruce's commentary at this point. There's many of you who listen on a podcast, you're driving down the road, or doing what
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I do, riding a bicycle someplace, or running, or something like that. And so let me go ahead and read this for you, so you know what is being referred to.
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Bruce, I believe this is in the NICNT, which I just got, thanks to the Lord, on Kindle.
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I wanted this in electronic form for a long time, and finally got it. The words in which the psalmist addresses
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God, however, are here applied to the Son, as clearly as the words of Psalm 45, 6 following were applied to him in verses 8 and 9.
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What justification can be pleaded for our authors applying them thus? First, as has already been said in verse 2, it was through the
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Son that the universe was made. The angels were but worshipping spectators when the earth was founded. But the
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Son was the Father's agent in the work. He therefore can be understood as the one who is addressed in the words. Of, moreover, in the
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Septuagint text, and here's the point. In the Septuagint text, the person to whom these words are spoken is addressed explicitly as Lord.
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Thou, Lord, in the beginning, didst lay the foundation of the earth. And it is God who addresses him thus.
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Whereas in the Hebrew text, the suppliant is the speaker from the beginning to the end of the psalm.
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In the Greek text, his prayer comes to an end with verse 22, and the next words reads as follows.
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Hmm. He, restoration of Jerusalem, is in verse 13. I may have had a, a, um, problem here in cutting and pasting.
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I apologize for that. As in verse 13, and not summon him to act when that set time is already half expired while he assures him that he and his servant's children will be preserved forever.
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Something obviously got missed there. I apologize for that. That sometimes happens when cutting and pasting.
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I will double check the citation and fix it after the program. Uh, I continue on anyways.
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But to whom, a Christian reader the subject might well ask, could God speak in words like these?
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And whom would God himself address as Lord, as the maker of earth and heaven?
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Now you just heard Mr. Barron say, well this is, this is probably the Messiah. Oh, so God calls the
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Messiah Lord and says the Messiah is the maker of heaven and earth. Certainly it's not the psalmist.
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And so what is the unfounded presupposition, which once again our Unitarians have immediately thrown into it?
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Oh, the Messiah is a created being. Because he said, oh, see it's used here of a creature. And so God calls the
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Messiah Kurios, Lord? Really? Same terminology used of Yahweh?
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Now, if the Septuagint, and if the writer is picking up on this, then he's picking up on this as a further identification as of Jesus as Yahweh.
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And that's exactly how Bruce takes it. Notice, and whom could God himself address as Lord, as the maker of heaven and earth?
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Our author knows of one person only to whom such terms could be appropriate and that is the Son of God. That our author understood this, quotation from Psalm 102, as an utterance of God, seems plain from the way in which it is linked by the simple conjunction and, to the preceding quotation from Psalm 45.
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Both quotations fall in the same rubric, but to the Son, God says. If in the preceding quotation the
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Son is addressed by God as God, in this one he is addressed by God as Lord. And we need not doubt that our author, for our author, the title
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Lord, conveys the highest sense of all, the name which is above every name. No one of the Son has ascribed to him a dignity which surpasses all the names angels can bear.
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Nor is our author the only who has the right to ascribe to Christ the highest divine names, or to apply to him
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Old Testament scriptures, which in their primary context refer to Yahweh, and he gives a footnote there, number 105, compare the application of, to Christ, Isaiah 45, 23, in Philippians 2, 10 and following, and of Isaiah 8, 13,
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Yahweh of hosts, him you shall sanctify, in 1 Peter 3, 15, sanctify Christ in your hearts as Lord.
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So, Bruce, even in noting the Septuagint issue here, does not in any way, shape, or form take it as a diminishment, and does not support the idea that this is applied to a creature.
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I repeat myself, you cannot apply categories of immutability and creatorship to mere creatures, and yet, they are applied to the
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Son. There's no question about it, it's right there, it is, in fact, very, very clear.
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When they moved on into Colossians 1, and this is section D, if you want to go to the notes, section
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D, beginning with the quotation of Colossians chapter 1, verse 15.
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I think Patrick might have been initially a bit confused with some of what's questioning White Cup, pressing him on how
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Jesus could be excluded from Ta Panta, and still be created. Were that the case,
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I think... The fact of the matter is, the wheels fell off for Mr.
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Novice during the cross -examination on Colossians 1 .15. Because his position simply makes no sense, and he evidently had not thought through it clearly enough.
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What I asked him was, is Jesus a part of Ta Panta?
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And he said, no. And I said, alright, then is
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Jesus a part of what's in the heavens, or the earth? Because what does it say?
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If you look at D, in the notes, Hati enauto ectiste
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Ta Panta entois urinois cae epitesces. For by him were created
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Ta Panta, all things. And then you have a series of expressions meant to define
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Ta Panta. The things in heaven, and upon the earth, visible or invisible, whether thrones or lordships or principalities or authorities.
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Ta Panta deautu cae ais auton ectiste. All things were created through him, and for him.
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We saw for him before. Remember we saw for him? Ais auton. That was said of the father.
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Up there in 1 Corinthians 8 .6. I mentioned we'd see it again. I'd like to hear an explanation from our
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Unitarian friends about how you can exchange such phraseology. But there it is.
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What Paul's doing is he is making sure to close off all avenues of escape for the false teachers who are coming into Colossae.
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And presenting a dualistic view of creation. And so I asked okay, if he's not part of Ta Panta and his creative activity extends to the heavens and the earth, then where is
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Jesus? If things in the heavens were created by Jesus, and things upon the earth were created by Jesus, then where was
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Jesus created at? Where does he live? Where was his creation at? And there really wasn't much of an answer.
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Now I think what Mr. Barron is doing is some damage control at this point.
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And trying to patch things back up. But what he's going to do is he's going to take, and again it's something that's been refuted for a long long time.
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What he's going to do is he's going to say, well you need to go back to Prototokos. Prototokos posses
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Tisoos which is at the end of verse 15. And what you need to see is first born actually means first created.
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Because first born normally just refers to creation. And that's clearly what's going on here in Colossians 1.
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Yeah, there's some places where in Wayne's 1 having preeminence about Israel and David, but we don't want to worry about the connections between David and Messiah and stuff like that.
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And Israel is God's first born. It means first created.
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Jesus is a part of the creation. And what that means is that posses
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Tisoos, which is in the genitive, is taken as a partitive genitive, so that Prototokos is a part of the creation.
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And it's interesting, I gave a quotation um of Patrick Novis in the notes.
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And I wanted to bring this up during the there's a lot of things that I caught in Mr.
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Novis' book where he made errors. Just factual, historical, Greek, whatever it might be.
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That would have been useful, but I didn't you know, I wanted to stick with the subject. Quotation of Patrick Novis is found on the blog there, although Jesus is identified by Paul as the first born of all creation.
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Protokos posses Tisoos. A few Trinitarian Bible translators have actually attempted to change the translation to first born over all creation,
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NIV and NKJV. But that is not a literally accurate or necessary translation. In a typical effort to defend
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Trinitarian concepts, John MacArthur advanced two interpretive ideas in his commentary on this verse, and it goes on from there.
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Now you get some of the language. You know, I've pointed out, for example, that I am very frequently in Mr.
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Novis' book identified as a Trinitarian apologist. But when he quotes
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Unitarian apologists like Professor Badoon or Greg Stafford or Anthony Buzzard, he never once uses the term
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Unitarian apologist. They're Greek scholars and Bible students and stuff like that.
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The spin is really thick. Really, really, really thick. Great inconsistencies there.
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But you'll notice Mr. Novis, when he says, actually attempted to change the translation, well, that's not even an accurate way of expressing it.
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If you think that firstborn over all creation is wrong, then you would say it's mistranslation.
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It's not changing a translation. It's not like they have a translation and they're changing it to something else. That's not even a proper way of expressing it.
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But what I've provided you below that, and I really did want to ask this, it just didn't come up, unfortunately.
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The questions on Colossians 1 went too well to even have interrupted them. I only had three minutes for questioning.
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If I'd had more time for questioning then I would have asked him about this. Mr. Novis, in your book, you said that the
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NIV and the NKJV are changing the translation to firstborn over all creation. Mr. Novis, do you know what the agenda of subordination is?
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Now, I do not know how far Mr. Novis got in Greek. If you do first year
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Greek, you will not do syntax or lexicography.
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And I found lots of places where to someone who knows syntax and lexicography, it's obvious Mr.
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Novis does not know syntax and lexicography. And this is one of those places.
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And when you get to the genitive, and even if you learned it in the 8K system as I did, even when you separate the genitive out from the ablative uses in the
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Greek, there are so many syntactical categories for the genitive.
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I think, if I recall correctly, one of the texts I cited, 22. And that's not including the ablative uses.
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So, Dan Wallace, who's sort of known, he's written that big, thick book on Greek syntax.
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Actually used as one of his examples of genitive subordination specifically translating it as the
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NIV and NKJV do, first born over all creation, Colossians 1 .15.
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So you have Patrick Novis, oh, these translators are changing things. And then you've got
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Dan Wallace, who's been teaching Greek for almost as long as Patrick Novis has been alive, saying, no, that's not how it works.
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And by the way, the other reason that I, the other quote I gave there, I also wanted you to see something,
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I think it's really neat. Notice Romans 11 .36, I provide that it's under D, because X autu and D autu and Is auton taponton to him be the glory forever and ever.
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From him and through him and unto him are all things, to him be the glory forever and ever. We know that D autu is used of the son,
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Is auton is used of the father and the son, and X autu is used of the father. All the time,
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Mr. Novis kept saying, nowhere in the New Testament is there any place where you have God in the
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Trinitarian sense, and yet if you were to actually seriously look at Romans 11 .36
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in Paul's own usage, how else could you understand it? Because if you say this is only of the father, then why is both
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D autu and Is auton taponton used of the son? Of a mere creature.
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One of those questions that I didn't get to in my stuff.
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But we continue on, because if we don't keep going here, this is going to be an uber mega jumbo marathon deal, and I didn't have lunch, so The confusion wasn't eventually cleared up.
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Patrick explained that Jesus could not be included in Tapanta, because there, in that context, that Tapanta was being created in and through him.
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Did you catch that, folks? That Tapanta, when you remember what
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Tapanta means, all things, well that all things, Jesus isn't included in that because he created it.
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So it doesn't really mean all things. Caracter doesn't mean caracter, and Tapanta doesn't mean
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Tapanta. When Unitarians get busy in the text, be ready for redefinition of everything.
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Because they don't believe the text. They're in rebellion against the text. They don't believe what the