Is Jesus God? Part 2

Debate Format and Question Rotation

Gentlemen, we're now going to enter into part two of the debate. This is going to be a 30-minute section. It's going to be a free-form discussion of the two positions. So I'm going to ask a series of questions, alternating between both sides.

And in this format, we're going to take approximately four minutes for a lively discussion from both sides, and then we'll move on after four minutes to the next question. At three and a half minutes, you'll hear one ding, and then at four, we'll hear the double bell and move on to the next question.

Everybody ready?

Okay.

Whether First-Century Jews Expected a Triune God

Here's the first question. If the Jews of the first century didn't already believe that God existed in a triune form, isn't the Trinitarian view in conflict with Jewish thought? Dr. Brown, our Jewish member of the panel, let's start with you.

You know, look, the fundamental thing that everyone here at this table agrees with is that the Messiah had to die and rise from the dead, and that was the one thing that the disciples missed, that they didn't understand, and that there's almost no evidence or no evidence that Jews at that time were expecting a suffering Messiah, certainly not a crucified Messiah, and yet that's the one thing that happened.

So there's no question that there were blind spots. And if we can agree that there was a blind spot on the most fundamental of all things, then the death of the Messiah, his disciples couldn't get it.

After he rose from the dead, Luke 24, he had to open their minds to understand the scriptures. In Matthew 16, Jesus says that he's going to go to the cross.

Peter rebukes him.

You're never going to go to the cross. So the fact that they may not have fully understood the complexity of God's nature, that doesn't surprise me at all. But what's interesting, though, is that you do have some things developing.

Philo is an older contemporary of Jesus, and he talks about the logos a lot, the very word that John uses for word in John 1. And he even speaks of the logos as a creative agent, even as a second God.

It's very, very interesting. And the targums, which are the Jewish paraphrases, they go back in some form even before the time of Jesus and then develop. They begin to talk about the memoir of the Lord, the word of the Lord.

And this memoir even takes on a distinct identity. So what they're struggling with is how to identify, how to fully understand this God who is imminent and yet transcended, who is visible and yet invisible.

So Yeshua brings it to light, John 1 .18. He makes him known. As James quoted earlier, he exegetes the Father. So number one, there are fundamental things that the Jewish people of that day were getting.

Wrong.

Jesus explicitly addresses it on numerous occasions. And number two, there are streams of thought already developing in Jewish tradition and Jewish philosophy that fit very well in with the concept of God's tri-unit.

How do you respond to that, blind spots, Jewish blind spots?

Well, I agree that there were blind spots. I mean, even today, we have many, many blind spots. We see it through a glass door, but however, I believe that it can be firmly established that Jews of the first century did not believe in anything but the single God, Hashem.

I mean, that was it. They were not looking for it. They did not believe that there was a second God coming. When they saw Yeshua...

We're not talking about a second God, though. We don't believe in a second God. We don't believe in that.

All right.

But quote me a text, Joe, just so I can understand. Quote me a Jewish text from the first century that is accepted by Jews as authoritative.

Today.

A Jewish text from the first century that talks about this issue.

Well, let me give you the Birkat Hamanim.

Which dates from when, roughly?

Ninety Common Era.

Oh, okay.

So this is two generations after Jesus.

That's right.

At the earliest.

That's right. But we're talking about the believers in Yeshua, and what did they believe? I submit that they did not believe that Yeshua was deity. They believed he was the Messiah.

My question, though, you said that Jews at that time were absolutely not believing in expecting anything other than the Unitarian view of God, the way you're presenting it.

Tonight.

Okay.

Please just give me a first century text from a contemporary Jewish source that verifies.

That.

Please quote them to me. Because they don't exist. All the texts come from centuries later. So you are projecting later Jewish belief back into that time, whereas I have the witness of the New Testament, much of which is written by Jews, telling us explicitly what they believe.

And we also have in John 5 that the Jews there getting very upset with Jesus, and in John 8 getting very upset, and in John 10 getting very upset with him because of his explicit identification of himself with God.

So he's making it clear that's a blind spot they may have had. He's making it clear. But you don't even have text to support the position you're presenting.

Well, for one thing, we have Josephus, who goes into Jewish beliefs about God.

He's a generation after Jesus as well. Just give me one from that same time. That's all I'm asking. Only to say the statement you're making doesn't have text behind it. That's the only point I'm making.

Okay.

In 30 Common Era, you didn't have even the New Testament. At the time that Yeshua was slain and Yeshua was resurrected, you didn't even have the New Testament.

I mean...

But we have the words of those witnesses, though, who were there. Whereas any text accepted by Jews today as having authority comes from well after the.

Time of Jesus.

We'll stay on this for one more minute.

This is a very interesting topic.

Let me go back to the Birkat Hamanim. Now, the Birkat Hamanim is where in the daily prayers, in the Shemoniah Israel, the 18 petitions, there was a benediction that was applied to the believers.

In all probability. There's debate about that.

There is debate about that.

Did it say specifically the Jewish believers who are the Menim, the heretics? There's debate about that.

We know that they're not expelled from the Jewish community until after the Bar Kokhba Revolt, after 132 Common Era.

I want to hear your point about this.

Okay.

In that, all that time, the Jewish believers are active in the Jewish community. They're not expelled. When the Birkat Hamanim comes forth, if it is applied to the believers, it is applied not because they believe in an idolatrous way that they believe that Yeshua is a deity.

They would be expelled immediately if that was believed.

The first thing is they're already getting killed in the New Testament times. How much do we have to go beyond that? They're already being killed. John 16, Jesus tells them they're going to be put out of the synagogue.

Okay?

Just confessing as Messiah was enough to get them put out of the synagogue. So you're saying they weren't getting put out of the synagogue, even though the New Testament tells us they already were.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

And you're also making an assumption.

The whole reason that the Birkat Hamanim comes about in 19 Common Era is because there are so many Jews that believe that Yeshua is the Messiah in the synagogue. My point is, if they believed that He was deity, they would have been put out immediately.

No, no.

Yes, they would have.

That's by your interpretation of it, sir. In other words, if you were the rabbi and you were interpreting it your way, you'd put.

Them out.

No.

Maybe their views were more in harmony with the general understanding that you're going.

Michael, if you believe they would not be put out of the Jewish community for believing that Yeshua was deity, I don't understand you at all.

First thing, they were already being killed. Second thing, the New Testament explicitly says that there was reaction to Jesus. When He identified Himself as deity, they were ready to kill Him. And on top of that, you are projecting...

Where do you have that they were being killed by Jews?

Oh, you know, I think of Saul. I think his name was Saul of Tarsus.

Yes.

And I think the guy's name was Stephen. Stephen comes to mind.

I mean, forgive me for being facetious.

But...

It was already happening. There was already... And then Saul has this encounter. And what does he say? What do you want me to do?

Lord.

Okay.

That wasn't a man.

Whether Jesus Claimed to Be God or Only God's Agent

I want to follow up on this with a question. When the Pharisees accused Yeshua of blasphemy, was it because they understood Him to be declaring Himself to be divine or deity? Is that your understanding?

Deity. Deity. Yeah.

No, I don't think so at all. He's claiming to be on a par with God, as an agent is with His sponsor. That's an enormous claim. But the worst they could say of Jesus at the trial was, you're claiming to be the Son of God.

To be Son of God in the Bible, I'm quoting now Colin Brown at Fuller Seminary, to be Son of God in the Bible, I want this quite clear, means you're not God. Are we clear about that? The Son of God is an angel.

It's a Messiah. It's not God. That should clarify the whole thing. And the worst they could say at the trial was, He's claiming to be the Son of God. He never goes around saying, I am God. He never says, know what the trial did.

They say, you're making yourself to be God.

Except at that same trial in John 19, when he calls himself the Son of God, what did they say? We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he made himself to be the Son of God. If that just means a representative of God, there was no law against that.

The only law would be the law against blasphemy. When Jesus does not say, I'm merely a representative, and after that last long exchange, I was going to compliment you on your tie, but that's about all you and I could get in during that last one.

But there were two texts I wanted to try to introduce there, and I would like to hear the response. Jesus said to the Jews in John 8, I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that ego I am me, you will die in your sins.

And then in verse 28, so Jesus said to them, when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that ego I am me, and that I do nothing in my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.

So, at the end of this chapter, they pick up stones to stone him, when he says, before Abraham was, ego I am me.

For those who aren't theologians, I am.

I am, going back to Anahu in Isaiah and the Minor Prophets. Jesus even used the very same phraseology of John 13, 19, where Yahweh is speaking of himself, of himself in John 13, 19, in the same context.

Why did the Jews pick up stones to stone him, if all he was saying is, I'm just a representative?

You're amazingly convinced by hostile Jews. Do you not know the Jews didn't understand what Jesus said most of the time? Why are you siding with them? He quickly says, in response to the accusation, you're making yourself to be God.

He said, I am not. As the Son of God, I do what I'm told.

That's John 5. I was talking about John 8, and in John 5, he doesn't say, I am not. He clarifies the relationship between himself and the Father, but he never says, he says he has, he can give life, the Father has given him the right to give life, and all the rest of these things, honor him, he was one of the Father.

But, John 8, you say you're siding with the hostile Jews. When Jesus does not correct what they're stating, but instead amplifies what they're stating, and keeps pressing the point so that they pick up stones to stone him, it does seem that their conclusions are just.

A quick response, and we're going to move on, because I threw that in.

Chapter 10, he says, haven't you heard that the judges are gods? If I call myself, what, the Son of God, to me, the Son of God means. You're not God in the Bible, Colin Fuller, Colin and Brian Fuller, that's quite clear.

He's claiming to be the Son of God. That's wonderful.

But we just jumped from John 8 to John 10, and missed the actual meaning of John 10, of Jesus identifying them as false gods. And may I just say something? As a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, what the gentleman is talking about, the Son of God, not God, we are not saying that Jesus is the Father.

There is a distinction. We recognize the distinction. It is the Son who became flesh. It was not the Father who became flesh. That was something he voluntarily did. That means he had to have preexisted to voluntarily do so.

Very quick, and I'm going to move on.

The Meaning of John 1 and the Logos

Yes, you made a point about Stephen. You made a point about Paul. Paul, first off, when they attacked him in the temple and they sought to kill him, the issue was not what he believed about Yeshua. When he addressed the crowd, everyone was quiet when he told them his beliefs in Yeshua until he got to the part about that the gospel had been offered to the Gentiles.

So you're saying the Jews had no problem with the fact that...

No, no, no.

I'm saying that was the issue with Paul. That was the issue with Paul.

There was an accusation that he had broken temple laws. It was a legal argument. But here's the whole question, Joe. When Saul of Tarsus was so upset with his fellow Jews for belief, he was upset because they believed that Jesus was the Messiah.

And you are telling me that Jews would have no problem with that and that they wouldn't put people out of the synagogue.

Wait, wait, wait.

So you're missing a fundamental truth here, Joe.

I'm not saying that many, many Jews of that period would have problems with Yeshua being the Messiah. What I'm saying is that when Paul was attacked, that wasn't the issue whether he was the Messiah or not.

That dealt with the believing community.

But those are communities. It's irrelevant, though.

I'm going to move it along to the next point. We have limited time. We could go on with this for the rest of the time allotted. But I want to turn our focus to John chapter 1. How do you understand John chapter 1?

The Word became God, the Word was God.

If I could just very briefly, three clauses. In the beginning was the Word. The term that he uses for was is a timeless verb. It is in the imperfect. So as far back as you wish to push the beginning, the logos exists.

The logos is proston theon, face to face with theon, God. And the Word was God. The position of the word theos in the sentence indicates that it is describing the nature of the logos. The logos is as to his nature deity.

Now, John is very careful in the prologue to never use the word agenita, the heiress form of genomi, of the logos, which would point to a point of origin, a time of creation, until John 1 .14, when the Word becomes flesh.

So everything else, there's a man who came from God named John. That uses a different verb. When you're talking about the logos, the logos does not have a point of origin in time. Then the logos becomes flesh in John 1 .14 and dwells among us.

We beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten Father. And then you have that beautiful text, which is the bookends. It's the end of John 1 .1, John 1 .18, bookends of the prologue of the Gospel of John.

No one has ever seen God, the monogenes theos, a fascinating phrase, the unique God, who is at the Father's side, literally at the Father's bosom, the position of intimate fellowship. He has exegeted him.

He has made him known. He has explained him. So 1 .18 and 1 .1 together explain to us what's being said. The Word is eternal. The Word has had eternal relationship with the Father. And the Word is as to his nature, deity.

He is the one who has become flesh and has revealed to us the Father in a perfect way.

You have a very different view of that.

Okay.

First of all, huge assumptions being made here. In the beginning was the logos, 1 ,200 occurrences of logos in the Old Testament. Never a person. Not a spokesperson. God's Word. Your Word is not another son.

It's not your son. Until it becomes the son. This is very easy. Wisdom is with God. We know that. This is very Hebrew. The Word was with God and it, all things are made through it, if you had an English translation, all of the eight before the King James.

It.

So don't assume that that capital W is right. It's not a person. In the beginning was that utterance, that intention, that plan, that promise of God. It walked around as that marvelous Messiah, who is uniquely, by the way, a unique God.

Much debate about whether that's even a genuine text. It's not the. It's more likely a. Hort says that's the highest form of derived being, monoyenis, theos possibly. Very doubtful text in 118. Don't rely on the doubtful text.

Certainly not the unique God. That's wrong. Certainly not what the NIV has there. But start with wisdom and Word, and please go back to Matthew. Please note the conversation all around the gospel of John.

Very suspicious.

You know, the fact is, depending on what subject we're discussing, we look at certain texts. If we're talking about pastoral ministry, we look at Paul's pastoral letters. John emphasizes the deity of Yeshua.

So, of course, we're talking a lot about that. It's almost deceptive to say, look at the others, because the others don't contradict this in a single syllable. They reinforce it in many different ways.

But let's look at this a little further. John 1 3 says that everything was made through the Word. Well, 1 Corinthians 8 6 tells us that everything was made through Jesus. Colossians 1 16. Everything was made through Jesus.

Hebrews, the first chapter as well. Everything was made through the Son. So it's telling us quite explicitly that this Word is not an impersonal it. I don't worship an impersonal it. An impersonal it didn't die for me.

An impersonal it does not make God known. This is a person, the Father creating all things through the Son. So the New Testament witness is explicit. All you have to do, and sometimes it's the exact same words used in John 1 3 and these other texts that I just mentioned.

The exact same Greek that's used. So the New Testament is explicit. The Word is the Son. The Son is Jesus who was eternally preexistent.

Again, it's simple. I want to ask a follow-up question, because I'm not sure I'm understanding. Are you agreeing with what I know. The Mormon translation says, for example, that the Word was with God and the Word was a God?

That's a Jehovah's Witness.

You're not saying that.

I'm simply saying that you are being misled by the capital W in your translations in the beginning with the Word. Take it down. Nothing in the Greek about a capital letter. Logos is not a person until it becomes a person at the beginning of the Son.

Go back to Matthew and Luke, find out when he began. We've left all of that aside.

So this Word is facing God, is with God.

Why do you keep translating Altu as it? Just because those other English translations before the King James, which were primarily Latin influenced. But as you know, Altu is not... You can't prove that's a neuter.

It can be a masculine, right?

It can be both.

Okay, so why... But the point of the fact of the matter is when you say, well, it's it, you are taking an assumption there. And I do need to correct something. Your statement's about John 1 .18. The vast majority of modern scholarship is on our side at this point in regards to meaning of mnogenes theos and the occurrence of mnogenes theos.

P75, P66, Alexander, and the Sinaitic, they all read that.

And so...

Not all of them. Not with the article. Not with the article.

A, A.

You said D.

But, well, even...

Whether reading is with A.

However, whether the article is there or not doesn't change the fact that theos appears in all the most ancient copies of the Gospel of John that we possess.

Is that true?

And what's a uniquely begotten God? Yes, it's true. But what is a uniquely begotten God?

See, mnogenes means unique, one of a kind. You keep emphasizing ginao. Mnogenes is not made of ginao. Ginao has two news. Mnogenes has one. It is genos from kind or type. It means unique, not begotten.

You're reading something in it that's not there.

It's a sun word. It's just a sun word.

I'm going to bring it down off the high theological level to just straightforward. How can God have flesh and bones? Isn't that what Trinitarians teach?

No, we're saying that God appears in human form. Colossians 2 .9, the fullness of God dwells in bodily form. Genesis 18, Yahweh appears in bodily form. And that's not a unique concept in the ancient Near East, by the way, for a God or the God to appear in bodily form.

The Bible says that happened with Yahweh. Genesis 3 would point in the same direction that Yahweh is actually walking with Adam and Eve in the Kul of the Garden. So God can manifest himself in a thousand different ways.

And he manifested himself in flesh and blood form while remaining God enthroned in heaven while filling the universe by his spirit. So we are not saying that God ceased to be God and came down off the throne and became a human being like Zeus or one of these other so-called gods.

We are saying that he comes and dwells. It says in John 1 .14, he pitched his tent among us. It's the exact equivalent of the tabernacle. Scholars have pointed out that he is like an earthly walking tabernacle.

And notice Paul's words when he says in Philippians 2, describing the incarnation. When the son did not consider equality which he had with God something to be held on to, but he, and the term is literally emptied, but Paul never uses it literally.

He always uses it metaphorically. How did he do so? By doing two positive things. By taking the form of a servant being made in likeness of men. So the making himself of no reputation was done by taking on that human form.

So as I say to my Muslim friends when we do our debates, they are just scandalized by this concept. And I say, you need to understand something. You're starting with the assumption that the creator of mankind could never enter into his own creation for his own purposes.

How could Allah, for them, create mankind, but then be in essence locked out of his own creation? If he has the power to create man, he can enter into man, as the word of God clearly says he did.

I agree with that.

The Son, the Resurrection, and Eternal Subordination

I have a question that kind of stems from this. In Yeshua's resurrection, my question is, he's resurrected back to the fullness of God?

What do you mean back to the fullness of God?

Well, I mean...

He remains the God-man.

Okay.

He doesn't cease being the God-man.

And he is, for the purposes of redemption, subservient to the Father's purposes. His purpose is to honor the Father. The Holy Spirit's purpose is to draw attention to Jesus.

So he's not equal to the Father?

Equal in what way? You mean in participation in the divine being, or in the position that each of the divine persons has taken in the redemption of mankind?

Well, what I'm talking about in 1 Corinthians 15, it has that he is under the Father when all things are put under his feet. He's still under the Father.

That God may be all in all.

That God may be all in all.

We have a greater God than we have a lesser God. Where does that put the Holy Spirit?

No, we have one God. See, that's where you guys keep coming up with multiple gods. We're worshiping one God, and you guys...

That's what it sounds like.

Because you're hearing it through either one ear, as James said, through one eye closed. We keep talking about one God, Father, Son, Spirit, but one God, I am one human being, body, soul, spirit.

Do you believe that Yahweh's essence is limited in time and space?

Absolutely not.

So why can't that unlimited essence be shared by three divine persons? Because you're assuming, because your assumption and all of your interpretation is, that's not possible.

No, my assumption is that since you describe God as a one what, let me give your description of God. He's three whos. I want you to be clear about this, in his very interesting book on the Trinity. Three whos in one what.

I do not find the singular masculine pronoun he to describe a what. Let's talk about an it. Let's be fair. Let's talk English. Let's speak the language. If he's going to be one what, then he's not a he.

You're giving me he, and you're asking me to believe he's three.

You're not allowing even me to define my own language. I am talking about the being of God, and I am talking about the persons that share that one being. That being is personal, but not a person. You're turning that into some type of impersonal thing, like an object, a rock, or something like that.

You're calling it a what.

To make the distinction between the persons and the one being, that one name Yahweh describing each of the three persons, that one being then is unlimited that they share fully.

One what, you said. One what. The being of God is one what.

Can I just ask a clarification question? You want to bring things back into English. I'd rather keep them in Hebrew and Greek, which you're very happy with, ultimately. So in Hebrew, what would be the word for he versus what would be the word for it?

No difference, probably.

It. Who?

In masculine. That's right. But it's a singular personal pronoun, and one God is one father in Malachi. Very clear. Have we not all one God? Have we not one father?

You just made a big point about the difference between he and it in English. But whether it's in Greek or in Hebrew, it could be the same term used for both.

But a father is not an it.

We agree it's not an it. But you said the word was an it. You said the word was an it, and an it is the thing that came into the circle. We said no, the word is a person, a son.

But Logos is an it until otherwise.

Okay, we're going to move on. I think we'll all agree this is a highly complex topic. We have a question on Matthew 3, 16 and 17. One of the more well-known examples of the existence of three persons is the baptism of Yeshua recorded in Matthew 3, 16 and 17.

Here the father speaks from heaven, the son is being baptized, and is again described as being the object of the father's love, and the spirit is descending as a dove. How is this not a clear identification of the triunity of God?

We all believe in the Holy Spirit, the Son, and the Father. The issue between us is are they all the one God? Of course I believe in the Son of God. I don't think it's God, because he began in the womb of Mary.

That's quite clear. You can't be God. You cannot die, by the way, if you're God. That's quite clear. The immortal God cannot die. By definition, Jesus could not be God. He died. God doesn't die. So that's entirely clear to me.

The idea that he is God is simply contradictory to every possible idea about immortality. That's clear.

Did his spirit die? In your view.

The Son of God died, Paul said.

Did the spirit die?

The spirit... Depends how you define the spirit.

Did the spirit immediately go into... You believe that Jesus had a spirit?

Everybody has a spirit.

Okay, did the spirit die?

The Son of God died.

Oh, so your whole argument then really goes nowhere with that.

The Son of God died. It's supposed to be God the Son in your language.

The Son of God as a human being died?

As a human being, you said.