There is also the aspect that John is writing in a sort of metaphorical fugue. The interpretation of His words leave room for interpretation, but we get locked into certain perspectives by history and common belief- even among scholars.
For instance, in the orthodox trinitarian model(co-equal-consubstantial-co-eternal) there is really little room to move, but certain assumptions are essential to the model. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity#mediaviewer/File:Shield-Trinity-Scutum-Fidei-English.svg
If you would bear with me I’ll express my view on it, having been involved at various times with Trinitarians, Modalists and Untiarians and coming out with no comfort in any orthodox system on the issue and no particular axe to grind LOL
If you were to view God as a giant sphere, and He looked within Himself and conceived of a seed of Himself, to plant within a creation of His own making, but to be made by/through the agency of the seed(theLogos).
Could the composite of Himself(seed) be held in His affections as dearly as we would hold a child of our own? Even so much so that the entire plan of the ages would revolve around that Son? Especially if the purpose, His kind intention(eudokia) is to create an eventual ocean of beings with whom to share His boundless glory in friendship and love?
So, God subjects the creation to futility/chaos/sin and then speaks into the void, “Let there be light” - Jesus, and the light of the world becomes the “first-born of many brothers” in a cadre of priests with a mission to bring the whole creation back into the oneness that Adam, because of God’s design, corrupted.
When I hear the words “in the beginning was the word”- i see Christ crucified, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, the image of God, the first principle, or foundation of creation.
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. 3 And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.
When God speaks, his expressed thought, the icon of Himself, the kernel of His plan, is Christ crucified- the revelation of perfect love. Everything else comes through that seed.
In the beginning the seed is in God, is with God, and is God in essence in that God shares all that he is with His beloved- even us eventually, when we shall know as we are known, when He is all in all, when we shall be like Him for we will see Him as He is.
But in Colossians i think it explains this when it says, “For so it pleased the Father to make all the fulness dwell in Him”, and “For in Him dwells all the fulness of deity in bodily form”. Also in 1 Corintihians 15:27 For He has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.’
I personally reject that Jesus is equal to the Father other than as the Father has given Him all authority in heaven and earth. His equality is given, it is an executive equality…
A trinitarian says to me, “Then He isnt God”, to which I reply, “Says who?” Whence came these little circular logics anyway? God transcends our intellects for sure but the mind-set that presents the Trinity as a logical absolute bothers me. God can do and be as He wants. He can break off a piece(son) of Himself, create everything through it/him and redeem everything back into a universal family of children to be an eternal chorus/harmony/rainbw/sea of love if He wants to. “Who has known the mind of the Lord and who has been His counselor”?
I do not reject the Son being co-eternal out right, Because as yet I do not see absolute evidence either way, but I lean towards a genesis, a birth, because he is the Son.
I think “in the beginning” speaks of a starting point, not “eternity past flowing backwards”, so when I read “in the beginning was the word”, I see the conception of Jesus as the seed of the whole creation plan from Alpha(without form and void) to Omega(God is ALL IN ALL) within God, a small circle inside an immense sphere, but a circle that is a full composite of the larger one. To me, this in no way violates the language of scripture, and in fact- I think it is what the scripture is saying.
I do not reject consubstantial because the Son was definitely out of the Father- and perhaps moreso than as I am out of my father, in that He is the “radiance of the Father’s glory and the exact representation of His nature”. Jesus explained like this, “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me and I am in you” and prayed that “You may be one even as I and my Father are one that your joy may be full”.
How shall we be one even as Jesus and the Father are one in the orthodox Trinitarian or Modalist models? I don’t see how myself.
But to present the “Shield of the Trinity” as a logical and theological absolute, from which to stray is heresy- I find that to be intellectual tyranny rather than truth- and i am not even saying that it is absolutely wrong, I am just saying it isnt an absolute logically or scripturally.
When jesus said, "I and the Father are one- He wasnt drawing a theological diagram for us, He was speaking of His being the “radiance of the Father’s glory and the exact representation of His nature”(hebrews 1;1-3), imo and that slays the trintiarian and Modalist models for me, so whatever i am, I am neither of those.
I have hung out with Anthony Buzzard, a proponent of a view called Biblical Unitarianism, and while there are things to reccomend in His writings, especially as regards the Shema of Israel- I think he goes to far in some other directions, saying it is not possible Jesus pre-existed His incarnation on a conscious personal form, but that He existed only as the Logos- but I disagree with that because Jesus asked the father to “Glorify me with the glory I had with you before the foundation of the world” which to me clearly states that He was.
So to wrap up( I know we can all go on forever because whatever position we hold is the product of much thought and prayer)…
I think eternity is wrapped around time like a big bubble around a small bubble. God created the small bubble, time, the ages, the kosmos, with through Jesus. He allowed things inside the bubble to go to hell, and then he sent Jesus into the bubble, to blow a bubble of life into anyone who believed in Him and then on the cross, He popped the bubble of time, so we could all get out, each in his own order, into the original bubble, which is God, who becomes all in all in all us lil bubbles through Christs work.
Eli, Eli, Laba samachthani!
This is a big point in the source article. We humans follow convention and are more easily swayed by the ‘pop’ than by truth.
So Christ refers to himself, or has at least been referred to, as both ᾿Εγώ εἰμι and ὁ ὢν.
But I believe Jesus is Lord because he was made Lord, and don’t see him as the “Lord God.” I believe Jesus’ God is the “Lord God.” Jesus’ God does not derive his Lordship from anyone; he has his status by virtue of his self-existent divine nature. And the God of the Lord Jesus is necessarily Jesus’ Lord and “head” (1 Cor 11:13). So while I do believe Jesus is referred to by the title “God” as it is sometimes used in an inferior sense (e.g., in Heb 1:8; cf. Ex 4:14-16; 7:1; 21:5-6; 22:8-9; Ps. 82:1-8; Ez. 31:11; 32:21), I believe the Father alone is “the Lord God, the Almighty” and the “only true God.”
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