The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Is Jesus God or What?

I understand.

I believe the triune God is uncreated and ever-existent. Christ being monogenēs [begotten] has to do with his Incarnation, but I see no suggestion that Christ’s divine nature was ever begotten.

Of course they are.

Jesus was stating a fact NOT an evangelical condition. Everyone who comes to God, and eventually everyone does, DOES SO wholly and solely on the basis of Christ salvific work, i.e., “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself”.

That said however… when it comes to relationship with God — no one has secured that availability better than Jesus himself, which is why the writer of Hebrews also attests…

Heb 7:25 Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

That word “uttermost” is παντελὲς panteles which means… complete, fulfilled, fully accomplished, realised, perfected or consummated — thus my borrowing the word pantelism. :slight_smile:

IOW… no one saves like Jesus.

Take Cornelius… a believer in God as demonstrated in his actions (Acts 10:1-4), though fully ignorant of Christ in the gospel becomes aware of a more excellent way, i.e., Jesus. And yet what does Peter testify in all this…

Acts 10:34-35 Then Peter opened his mouth and said: “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.

Take Melchizedek… the King of Salem, a contemporary of Abram BUT NOT part of God’s chosen people (Heb 7:6) yet he was Yahweh’s Priest.

I don’t see anything you said that is wrong.
You seem to be using “conciliate” in an unusual way. The word means “to placate, appease, or pacify.”
Perhaps you mean “explain” or maybe “reconcile” my belief with the fact that Jesus came to show people the way to God.

First let me say that Jesus addressed His Father as “the only true God” and in the same sentence added “and Jesus Christ whom you sent,” (John 17:3) which to my mind indicates that He was someone other than the only true God.

However, we have to realize that the word “God” is used in the New Testament in two different senses. Whenever it is prefixed by the article (the God) with no other modifiers, then it refers to God the Father alone, and to no other. John 1:1 contains the word in both senses. The Logos was with the God (the Father) and the Logos was God. The second use of “God” is the generic sense. Jesus the Logos was God because the Father who begat Him was God, just as you are man because your human father was a man.

In John 1:18, Jesus is referred to as “the only begotten God.” Before you say that most translations render it “only begotten Son” let me say that none of the original manuscripts exist. In those days the only way to copy them was to do so manually, and to this day there exists very early copies.
There are only two existing manuscripts that contain John 1:18 which were copied prior to A.D. 300.
Papyrus 66 was copied around A.D. 150 and Papyrus 75 around A.D. 175. Both of them have “the only begotten God” in John 1:18. The early Christians said that the Father was unbegotten but that the Son was begotten by God before all ages, the first of God’ acts. The Early copies are more likely to be correct than later copies (which were more likely to be copies of copies of copies of copies, so that errors were more likely to be made).

The word for “God” in Greek is "θεος΅ (theos) in later Greek characters. The Greek characters from these early manuscripts were different. Also to save space on valuable papyrus, the copiers used to write just the first and last letters of "θεος΅ and put a stroke over the two letters to indicate that it is an abbreviation. Also, they wrote all in capital letters with no spaces between the words, and no punctuation except a raised dot and it is not clear what the purpose of that dot was. The sigma looked like a capital “C” in English. So the word for “God” looked like this: ΘC with a stroke over the two letters. Papyrus 66 is located at Geneva, Switzerland. The following is a photocopy of the very page that includes John 1:18. I’m going to show you where to find ΘC in the manuscript preceded by the Greek word for “only begotten.” Don’t be concerned if to you it just looks like chicken scratches. With your mouse, move down to line 14. The 8th and 9th characters from the left are ΘC (with a stroke over it). The word before it is “only begotten” in Greek with part of the word at the end of the preceding line. In modern Greek, the word for “only begotten” looks like this: μονογενης

Thanks Don.

I’ll go with that. :wink:

mu omicron nu omicron gamma epsilon nu eta sigma

These are the ancient Greek characters for the Greek word meaning “only begotten.” I copied each letter from Papyrus 66. You will find the last 7 characters of this Greek word at the beginning of line 14 just before the ΘC. The first two characters at the end of the preceding line are not clear. But what can you expect from a document that is nearly 2000 years old?

https://trinities.org/blog/a-few-thoughts-on-generation-and-time-dale/

Dave, do you really believe this?

That link was just to stimulate thought.

I have often heard people declare this “eternal generation” concept. I think it is merely a mental construct to get around the fact that the scripture teaches that the Father begat the Son as a single act.

I recently came across the idea of “principles of agency” which I thought was a very interesting take on things. Seems to remove a lot of uncertainty of harder passages.

It goes like this -

Excerpt from article: “”" There also exists the model of the “employee” (sachir), who assumes the obligation to perform a certain task for someone else, but whose personality and identity remain separate and distinct from the personality and identity of his “employer.” The shaliach is unique in that he or she retains a great degree of autonomy in carrying out his mission, yet at the same time becomes a virtual extension of the person who commissioned him (the meshaleiach).

Likewise, as God’s unique emissary (shaliach), Yeshua (Jesus) became a virtual extension of God. Again, this is what he meant when he said that he was “one” with God. It is also what he prayed for when he prayed that his followers would likewise be “one” with the Father just as he is:
[John 17:11, 21-22 (KJV)]

11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. … 21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. 22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one…

The shaliach does not abnegate his intellect, will, desires, feelings, talents and personal “style” to that of the one whom he represents; rather, he enlists them in the fulfillment of his mission.

Yeshua (Jesus) did submit his will to Hashem (God), and Hebraic thought clearly teaches we are also to submit our will to God; however, Yeshua (Jesus) maintained his “desires, feelings, talents, and personal ‘style’”."""

If folks here…don’t accept the traditional RC, EO and Protestant view - of Jesus as God…then they can find a view here, from other religions:

In his “Dialogue with Trypo” (a Jewish man) and his companions (which lasted several days), Justin Martyr used an illustration to explain the begetting of the Son as God’s first act. He compared it to starting a small fire from a large one. The small fire is of the sames essence as the large one from which it was started, and yet is a separate entity.

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