A Defense of the Deity of Christ w/Chris Date

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today I have with me my friend Chris Date, who is excited that he's here, and we're gonna be talking about a very important topic, the deity of Christ.

And I've entitled this interview, this discussion, as Jesus is God, deal with it. Okay, this has been the position of the Church, it's the Orthodox position of the Church. You can't be a Christian if you deny the deity of Christ.

This is kind of Christianity 101, and we're not gonna just simply appeal to Church tradition, but there's a reason why the Church has held this position so strongly and so clearly throughout its history.

And so I wanna talk a little bit about how do we defend this core doctrine, and why it's a core doctrine, and how do we defend it against folks that hold to a Unitarian position, when we think in terms of proponents of Islam, or you know, someone like Dale Tuggy, who's a noted Unitarian, and Chris has debated in the past, how do we engage those sorts of objections against, you know, this idea that Jesus is God, and we might even talk a little bit about the Trinity, because that's always related in some way, the idea of the Trinity.

So let's just see where the discussion goes, and I hope it's beneficial for those who are listening in. So thanks for coming back. I'm sure your contributions.

I said, I'm sure your contributions will be helpful for the viewers. We'll see if mine are.

Well, thank you. Well, welcome back, folks. We'll recognize you've been on a couple of times, and I'm not sure if people know, but you've actually done a debate on my channel a while back on the resurrection within the context of full preterism.

Ah, yeah, but don't ever call that full preterism in my company again. It's hyper preterism.

Hyper preterism, okay. And.

It's full of something, but it's not full of preterism. That's the point.

Okay, well, not the topic of today of today's discussion. But if you guys want to see Chris in the context of a debate, I mean, I think he Wow, like that was an excellent, an excellent discussion. And I think Chris did an amazing job.

And so you can get more of your your fill of Chris date if you check out that debate, and he's got a bunch of other ones as well on YouTube. So.

How are you doing, man? I'm doing all right. Thanks for asking. I appreciate it. How are.

You doing? I'm doing good. As I was before we went live. I told you I my summer vacation is coming to an end. So that's a little sad. But other than that, I'm just happy to be here. And I love this topic.

I really enjoy listening to debates on this topic, informal discussions and formalized debates. And so I know that you've done a few debates, and you've actually wrote a book on this topic. You want to speak to that for a few moments?

Well, so it's actually the.

Book form of the live in person debate that I had with Dale Tuggy. I want to say it was back in like to 17 2017 or something like that. We did a live in person debate, knowing going into it that we would expand on it in written form in a published book.

And so we did that we got the book published and I think it's awesome. We got a Catholic scholar named Timothy Paul to do the foreword. Unfortunately, the publisher closed its doors and transferred the rights back to Dale and me.

However, Dale and I have just finished signing contracts with Wipf and stock to reprint the book so before before too much longer, maybe within a month or so viewers would be able to purchase a copy of that book that Dale Tuggy and I co wrote from Wipf and stock.

So if people keep an eye on my website, Chris date .info, they'll be able to see it when it's available. Sure. Excellent.

The Clarity of the Deity of Christ in Scripture

So so let's jump right in then Jesus God deal with it. Is the doctrine of the deity of Christ clear, simple and straightforward in scripture? Or is it one of those sorts of things that we have to kind of wiggle around us, us sneaky proponents of the deity of Christ have to extract or read into, you know, read into the scripture something that's not there?

How clear do you think is the teaching of the doctrine of the deity of Christ in the text of.

Scripture? I think it's unmistakably clear. It's absolutely clear. And I think it takes more work to read it out, like to remove it from the text to read it in such a way that it's not reflected in the text than it does to recognize it in the text.

So yeah, I think it's extremely clear.

So in your estimation, then what is what is the clearest passage if you can go to like one specific passage? And we're going to hopefully cover a bunch of passages. But what passage do you think is a go to passage for someone to bring into the discussion once they kind of hit this brick wall of like, well, Jesus isn't God.

That's not what the scriptures teach. You know, where does the Christian go from there? Where do you think is the best place to.

Focus on in terms of the text? Yeah, I mean, I remain convinced that the best text to go to is the Carmen Christi and Philippians two, both because it makes the point with crystal clarity, and because it is an extremely early text, which captures an even earlier hymn, something that was well known around the church already, but when Paul reproduced it in this letter.

So I'll just read the verses five to eight, which are the verses in question, Paul is writing to the Philippians. And he says to them, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

So the reason why this text makes the point with crystal clarity is that it uses the language of both equality with God, and form of God, and ascribes those things to Christ in his pre-human existence.

Dale Tuggy and other Unitarians will try to argue that form of God and equality with God referred to something other than true deity. Form of God, for form of God, for example, Dale Tuggy used to, I don't know if he still does, but he used to argue that, and here he was sort of trading on Jimmy Dunn, or is that his name, Jimmy Dunn, James Dunn, who argued that what Paul is describing here in Christ is Christ being a bearer of the divine image.

He's like the second Adam, and he bears the divine image in a way that Adam did in a pristine way before he fell. But the problem is that the form of God is language that contemporaneous Jewish authors don't ever use of anybody except for God himself, and the same is true of the phrase equality with God.

So this text says that, and we could get into the details of the Greek grammar if we wanted, but just on the surface of it, the text is saying that although Christ shared equality with God and was in the form of God, he nevertheless emptied himself and took the form of a servant, becoming a human.

And the key here, the reason why I think this is so powerful, this text is so powerful, is because, besides what I've already said, is that the critics of the deity of Christ will argue that the text says that Jesus didn't count equality with God something to reach out and take.

Some translations, like the King James will say, he didn't count equality with God robbery, something to reach out and grab. But even the ESV's translation, a thing to be grasped, certainly could be understood to mean held on to, right, clung to, but it also could be read as reaching out and grasping.

And people who take that view think that what Paul is saying is Jesus didn't consider trying to reach out for equality with God in the way that Adam did when he ate from the fruit, knowing that it would open his eyes and he would be like God in that respect.

But the problem is that the particular grammatical construction did not count. And then equality with God, that's what's called the direct object of the verb count. And then the object complement, the second accusative in the construction, a thing to be grasped.

What we see in contemporaneous Greek literature is that when this word harpazo, I think it's the word if I'm remembering correctly, a thing to be grasped, when that noun is the object complement in a construction of thinking or where the direct object is the direct object of a verb of thinking or reckoning or perceiving, that kind of thing.

What we find is that the word, the noun, something to be grasped is a turn of speech. It's an idiom that means something to be taken advantage of. So I've got this table, for example, in the debate slides that I presented where in the text of Eusebius, in Heliodorus, and in Isidore and other authors, it always means something to be taken advantage of.

So the point of this, putting these pieces together, is that Paul is saying Christ became a man because he chose not to take advantage of the equality with God that he had, his being in the form of God, using language that is only ever described of God.

So when you put those pieces together, there really is no way to read this text meaningfully in a way other than the one that seems to be intended, which is that Christ is in fact a true deity and chose to let go of the prerogatives that come with that deity in order to become a man and serve people from whom he deserved service himself.

Anyway.

Now, what did you say. Unitarians typically say with respect to that passage is an example of argument that you think Dale Tuggy either used or still uses. Can you repeat that again? And then.

I have a question once you repeat it. Right. So remember when Adam and Eve, but when Adam and Eve take from the tree, it's because they've been persuaded, or at least it's because Eve has been persuaded, cajoled by Satan into thinking that by eating from that fruit, her eyes are going to be open and she's going to be like God.

Okay. So what some Unitarians and Dale Tuggy used to do this, I don't know if he still does. Again, he was trading on the work of Jimmy Dunn. He argued that what Paul is doing here is saying that Jesus bore the image of God just the same way Adam did.

And that's what he alleges is meant by form of God. But that word is never used of the image of God. That's a totally different Greek and Hebrew word. But anyway, he was in the image of God, just like Adam was.

But unlike Adam, who did try to achieve equality with God by means of eating from the tree, unlike Adam, who did try to achieve equality with God, Jesus did not.

Okay. So my question is, so you said that they would say that Jesus is the image of God, like Adam was the image of God. And that's what it's really speaking about. That's an explanation. Like what is their explanation in terms of how they get that from.

The text? Well, they don't. I mean, that's the point. There's nothing in the text that actually connects the text here with the language used not only in Genesis one through three, but also the language of everywhere else in scripture and in contemporaneous literature, the language it's actually used to refer to the image of God.

None of it appears here. And the equality with God language is similar. So there's nothing that, but see, you got to keep in mind that I can't speak for Jimmy Dunn. He had a quote unquote, high view of Christ, whatever that means.

But at least other Unitarians like Dale Tuggy, they just don't want to accept what the text says. They can't countenance it because remember, they're convinced that it's logically impossible for Jesus to be God for reasons we can get into.

So they think, well, it can't, Paul can't be saying this or else he's illogical. And therefore the scriptures aren't authoritative. So therefore I've got to find some other way to read this other than the obvious one.

So I'm just going to come up with the one that sounds most plausible. And since form of God sounds ever so slightly like in English, anyway, image of God, they're like, oh, that must be what's going on here.

Oh. And because, and because Eve reached out and took from the tree in order to become like God in a certain sense, that's enough like Paul's language of equality with God to make the connection. Of course, you and I know that that's absurd, that connection isn't there, but that's how they do it.

So yeah, I found that interesting because, and this is just by way of kind of an interpretive principle, there's a difference between exegeting the text and having an explanation as to what you think a text is, is meaning so that when someone says, well, you know, Chris, you know, your understanding of Philippians, you know, chapter two well, I really think this is what it's saying.

It's like, well, you can tell me what you think it's saying, but how are you deriving that from the text? I think that's a very important thing to keep in mind when we're interacting with people who are, when we're disputing these sorts of texts, difference between exegeting of a text and just giving a story as to what you think a text means.

That's important, I think. So that's why I was wondering, what do they say in terms of where, you know, when you say, well, where is that in the text? Well, I guess they don't have a response to it. They don't, they don't.

That's.

Exactly right. They don't. It really is as paper thin as what I said, the language of form of God is similar to image of God and equality with God is similar to the eyes will be open and they'll be like God.

But, but on your point about the importance of exegeting, like what Paul is getting at, just think of how perfectly this idea that Jesus is the pre-incarnate God in this text, how perfectly that fits the point Paul is making, because the whole point Paul is making is he's trying to encourage his readers to exhibit something of the humility that Jesus exhibited.

So on the Unitarian reading, Jesus is so humble. He doesn't think of trying to become equal to God. Okay. That's, there's no humility in that. That's just being sane. Right. But if we're right,.

I'm going to be humble right now, Chris, because I don't think I'm equal to God. Well,.

You're so humble Eli. You're so humble. But if on the other hand, the obvious reading is the right one. And of course it is. Paul is saying, be humble. Like Jesus is humble. Who was so humble that although he was the very God who was owed service, he nevertheless became a human to serve those very people who owed him service.

That is the most powerful example of humility. And, and, and, and precisely because the two equals, one of them is treating himself as less than his equal. Well, Paul is telling equals to be, to treat each other as, or to be humble toward one another.

Whether you're a King versus a pauper, whether you're a slave versus a freedman, a male versus a female, whatever sort of hierarchical relationships and socioeconomic statuses are different between people, they're equal bearing, equally bearing the divine image.

And so in order to instruct an equal, to treat an equal, like they're better, right? With humility, he points to the perfect example of the equal of the equal with God, the father, who is God, the son, and how he treated God, the father as superior to himself as the extreme act of humility.

It is a beautiful, consistent and compelling reading. And Unitarians just don't.

Have anything like it here. And just getting back to that other point though. So Jesus is not seeing deity as something to be grasped. That's only humble if he is divine.

Well, but again, I, I would prefer to use a language that reflects what that idiom means. Okay. And that's why taking advantage of, I think is the best way. So like the NIV will say, he didn't count equality with God, something to be taken advantage of.

Now this is important. You can only take advantage of something if you have it. That's right. Right. So what it's saying, the fact that he didn't count it, something to be taken advantage of is proof that he exhibited that equality with God, but chose not to take advantage.

And it makes no sense.

That if he doesn't have access to that, that he's saying, you know, that it's saying he didn't take advantage of it. So of course he can't take advantage of it because he doesn't have access.

To divinity. That's right. I'm so humble that I chose not to find out where my, where the quarterback star on my local national NFL team lives and go and break into his house and steal his, the money in his safe.

And that's how humble I am. I didn't, I chose not to take advantage of, of, of that quarterback's stash of money. It's ridiculous.

Well, okay. So, so Philippians chapter two, verse five through eight, right? Five through eight. That's the, the car. I think that's the best text to go to. Okay. And that, and that's a great text because it's, it's pre it's pre Pauline, right?

It goes even before the writing of Philippians.

That's right. Not only is it pre yeah. And not only is it pre Pauline, but, but, but it's what Paul has captured, which pre exists himself is one of his earliest letters too. Right? So you've, from, from, you look at all the body of his literature, this is one of the earliest and, and this teaching of Christ's deity pre pre exists, even that it's incredibly powerful.

Right now, what about Titus chapter two verse. I think it's 13. Is it 13? Yeah. So Paul test Titus. Yeah. So, so it talks about our blessed God and Savior Jesus Christ. Now for a person who is not going into the Greek and I know that there's the grand Phil sharp construction there and there's stuff behind there that from kind of just the generic Christian.

It's like, well, of course the Bible teaches Jesus God. I literally call him like our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Is that not a good place to go when, when we're talking to Unitarians?

Here's the challenge with those who, at least those who call themselves so-called biblical Unitarians, which is of course a contradiction in terms, but when they, but those who call themselves that what they will argue is that there's, there's nothing, the authors of scripture, when they use the word God of Christ are not doing anything particularly astounding.

And they're not, they don't mean by that, that he is true deity. They'll point out examples where the, you know, I said, you were gods. I think Isaiah quotes, uh, Yahweh is saying to the rulers of Israel, right?

Humans are in places called gods and the Unitarian, um, the so-called biblical Unitarian says, yeah, so, so what Paul and other biblical authors think of Jesus as a God, but so what? And that's why the texts that I go to in debates with such people are ones that don't trade on that.

I do think it can be argued, but you know, you, you, you, you talked, um, before we started recording or streaming, you talked about this preference I have for being more of a sniper rather than a shotgunner, you know?

And so, and, and by the way, that's a metaphor that I got from, uh, Dan Chapa, who was describing me. He said that, uh, you know, a lot of people are like, they, they, they are like, uh, grunts on the ground and they're using blast weapons, like shotguns.

Um, whereas I use sniper, uh, I'm more like a sniper. I try to go for the targeted kill, you know? And it seems to me that I could spend all the time I have in a debate arguing why the fact that Paul calls Jesus God and savior is significant.

I could do that, or I could go to Philippians two, where they don't even have that option. They don't even have that. They can't circle around it that way. And so I'm just trying to think about how best to leverage.

My time. Hmm. What about Mark chapter one, where it's, uh, where there's a quotation from Isaiah and it talks about John the Baptist preparing, uh, the way for the Lord. And you look at the context of Isaiah, it's clearly talking about God there.

I've heard some people use that. I've used that myself. But what do you think about a utilization of that passage there in Mark.

Chapter one? And I say, you run in, you run into a variation of the exact same challenge, which is, um, the Unitarian is going to already have in mind examples where they can, they can point you to where old Testament texts about Yahweh are attributed in some way, shape or form to a lesser being.

And they'll say, look, if that can happen even once in scripture, that could happen here. It could happen in Hebrews one. That's another similar text. Um, there are all sorts of them. And so what they're saying, what they will say is that by, because Jesus is sort of acting as an agent for a messenger and authoritative representative of the Lord, therefore texts about Yahweh can be, uh, attribute, you know, uh, used to refer to such agents without identifying them as Yahweh.

And that's once again, why I, um, if I have a limited amount of time and I want to have the most bang for my buck, I'm going to go for the texts that they don't have ready canned responses for, or at least ones that won't take as much to.

Tear down, you know, when they offer them. Okay. So you say, we know we need to go to Philippians chapter two, verse five through eight. But when I bring up these others, these other scriptures, like, well, they have responses to that.

Does that empty our arsenal of using those passages? I mean, in what sense do those passages in what sense are those passages still part of our arsenal? I mean, it, it, in terms of like, yes, the Bible teaches all throughout that Jesus is God and we have verse here, verse here, verse here.

Can we not use those with Unitarians because of the responses they have? I mean, in what sense do, are those other passages that typically come to mind when we think of the deity of Christ are useful to us?

I think of them as, um, you're right. Yes, we can absolutely can use them. Um, I think they're important, but again, I'm, when I'm debating, I'm, uh, and when I say that, I mean, even one-on-one like, uh, not nothing formal when I'm having a discussion with somebody, I know I have a limited amount of time.

And so the question any of us has to ask when we're in a conversation, formal or otherwise with a Unitarian is what do I want to use my time? What do I want to use my time discussing? Because here's the challenge.

Not only is your time, what's at stake, but it's also the time of the viewers. And what will happen is if, you know, if I make an argument, if I lead with arguments from Mark 1, from Titus 2, and in the rebuttal time, my opponent offers the kinds of responses that I characterized a little bit ago, and they offer a couple of representative examples to show that this is a plausible explanation.

Well, think about the impact that's going to have on your listeners and how little time you have now to overcome the impact that's had on your listeners. Because now I'm going to have to go back to my rebuttal or in cross-examination or whatever to, um, to, to explain to the listener why that crap response that my opponent gave just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

And I don't want to leave my audience with any doubt, right? I want my viewers to come away thinking, yeah, it's pretty ironclad. And so what I don't want to, it's sort of like not wanting to give the devil a foothold.

I don't want to give my debate opponent even a little bit of clout in the eyes of my opponent. Uh, but where I think those texts have more value is when you're trying to go from the first step of making your, your, um, your Unitarian opponent unable to offer a meaningful response when it comes to Flippians 2 and the other texts that I use in my debate.

Um, once you've done that, and once your viewers see, oh, they don't have a good answer to those. Well, then this is where the, those other texts I think become really valuable. You could say, okay, now that I've shown you how clear a handful of these texts are, how, how terrible the Unitarian responses to them are now consider this breadth, this wealth of texts, John 1, 1, right?

Um, Hebrews 1, Mark 1, and so forth. It's like, what I just showed you is an iron clad case is just all over the scriptures. Boom. Here's this boom. Here's that boom. Here's that. But if you do that first, if you flip that order and you go for the shotgun first, and then try to focus on specific texts, you've now, you've now given some ground to your opponent in the eyes of viewers.

And I.

Want to avoid that at all costs. So that's why I go the way I do. So it's not that the other texts that we sufficient to demonstrate the deity of Christ, you're, you're saying by way of strategy, if we were in a time discussion, there, it's probably better to go with Philippians chapter two, then some of these other approaches, not that they're insufficient texts.

They're just not strategically beneficial if you're limited on time. That's exactly right. Exactly. Yeah. So kind of the generic Christian who is not a biblical scholar and doesn't think too deep into these issues.

The first text that comes to mind is John one, one. I mean, you know, you ask the average Christian where in the Bible does it teach Jesus as God? Oh, clearly in the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God.

What's up with that passage? Is that a good, is that ever a good passage to use? I know there's some controversy there. And when, and when I listened to people teach or discuss the topic of Jehovah's witness, they'll often say, whatever you do, don't go to John one, one, because they've cut planned responses to that.

I'm like, I always thought though, like, yeah, but if John one, one does teach the deity of Christ, who cares what their plan responses are? Let's learn what their plan responses are and respond to them.

So, uh, is John one, one, something that should be left out of the discussion when talking about the deity of Christ? Uh, how would you, how would you drill down that point? John one, one, yes. Unitarians have responses, but I think we can still make a case with that first couple of verses in John.

How would you approach there?

Well, so again, the first thing I would do is withhold it until after I've done that first step of show of, of get of making it clear to any onlookers that the Unitarian has no response to no meaningful response to the, to the texts that I cited already.

Once I've done that, and now I feel a little bit more comfortable doing a shotgun, then I'll bring John one, one in and I'll, and what I will do is, so you're aware that like in the new world translation that the Jehovah's witnesses produced, at least for some time, I don't know if they still do this or not.

I've been out of Jehovah's witness evangelism for a while, but they, they inserted the, um, uh, the indefinite article, uh, before God, right? So it's, uh, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was a God.

And most Christians, I think that are at all, you know, knowledgeable, we'll be able to respond to that a little bit. But I think there's a better point to be made, which is that the way, and I don't, I don't remember the exact terminology for the names of the construction that's involved and so forth.

But when, uh, but, but look at the work of, uh, uh, Dan Wallace, his Greek grammar beyond the basics is a good place where you can find this on this very verse. What the point that he makes is when, um, uh, I think it's, uh, when you have a predicate nominative, uh, which is the, if you have X is Y, um, the Y is the predicate nominative, the X is the subject.

And basically when you have the, the way that the predicate nominative is used here, the word was God is, um, consistent, consistently, it refers to the nature of the subject, the, uh, the, the quality of the subject.

So the word was deity, um, not God in the sense of he was, he is the being that is God, but he is deity. Um, he has that quality. And I think that's a powerful argument, but again, I think it should come in that second layer of when you're starting to reveal to your interlocutor and to any onlookers that this powerful case I've made from these very laser focused texts appear all throughout the biblical data, you know, at that point.

So that's the route I'd go with John one, one. Okay. So,.

So if the Bible is so clear on the deity of Christ, so clear that Unitarian has just got to deal with it. Jesus is God, right? What if we hypothetically removed Philippians chapter two, verses five through eight, uh, where else could we go?

What would be the next pass? You'd be like, all right, Philippians two, five through eight doesn't exist. Like it's so clear though. And it's so expansive throughout scripture that Jesus is God where, where, where else could we go?

So I'll, I'll mention the other two texts that I went to in my debate with this sort of laser focused sniper, uh, approach in mind. One of them is, is, is in Hebrews one, but not the text in Hebrews one.

Most people think of the text. Most people think of in Hebrews one is, is, um, uh, is where an old Testament text is, is like you said earlier, being attributed or being used to describe Jesus. But I'm actually talking about verses two and three, where the author says that God speaks by Jesus through whom also he created the world.

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. And the reason why I like this Texas is for a number of reasons. First of all, it uses the same stock terminology used throughout all the new Testaments to describe God's creation of the universe.

Number two, the author of Hebrews as much as, or more than any other New Testament author would have been intimately familiar with Isaiah 44, 24, in which Yahweh says, I am Yahweh who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.

And so if the author of Hebrews is saying, Jesus created all things, but Yahweh in Isaiah 44, 24 says he did it alone. Then it follows that in the eyes of, um, uh, the author, Jesus is Yahweh. Um, and now, uh, Unitarians like Dale Tuggy do have some responses.

Um, but they're not particularly good. So for example, um, and I'll just offer this one counter-argument and respond to it. Dale Tuggy says that the word, the words for the world in that text that I just read are tusaionos.

It's Greek meaning the ages. And so what Dale Tuggy says is you could take that to be the new age initiated by Christ and what's going to come. But the problem is again, that stock language of creation, the Greek word, the Greek word poieo to make that's language.

It is all throughout the scriptures used consistently in that creation context. And so it doesn't seem, um, as if that's what the author is doing. And in fact, the, uh, this very author, the author of Hebrews later in Hebrews 11, 3 says the exact same thing the universe, the world ages was created by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

So the author, even if tusaionos the ages, um, can refer to a succession of ages, the author of Hebrews is using it, um, to refer to the world, um, or, or all ages, the entirety of all ages, not just a subset of them.

So that's a good text to use as well. And you want to push back on that or come back on that before we go to the third text.

Can you kind of, uh, go back on how someone like Dale Tuggy would respond to that? Uh, you had, you mentioned something, it was very quickly that you went through it, but what is the reasoning behind their answer, uh, to what you just gave there.

In terms of explaining the passage? It's exactly what you said earlier and put so well, um, they are not exegeting the text and trying to come out with the meaning the author has in mind. They are trying to, they're trying to offer a plausible explanation that doesn't require you to affirm the deity of Christ.

And the way that Dale Tuggy did that here was by pointing out that the words, the world translate Greek mean literally meaning the ages. And so he says, well, so maybe what's going on is Jesus inaugurated a new set of ages, right?

Which, which could begin in the time of Christ and therefore doesn't require that he pre-existed his incarnation. And what I'm pointing out is that, no, that's not going to work because the language of creation and the way that the author uses the language of creation and the ages later, both combined to indicate that, no, that,.

That response is, and that seems to correspond to what John is saying that through him, all things were made. So John is saying in a different context, and it's clearly talking about creation because he's saying in the beginning, which would have hearkened back to Genesis one, which obviously is creation.