Hi Paidion… I think there’s a strong probability you are reading more into this than the text allows.
There is not two distinct i.e., different Yahweh’s (the LORD is one) in this text… “out of the heavens” (Heb pl.) references from whence came the fiery blast, not from whom –– “the Lord” being twice mentioned makes the from whom singularly self-evident and thus obvious.
Maybe backwards a little? The teaching is that, looking at Jesus, we can be certain the Father is like that.
Is that begging the question? Depends on your epistemology which, in this case and many others, is a choice. All a man can do is choose what to believe.
This is the importance of the scriptures. I believe it because it is written. I also believe it because it has been revealed to be in the Holy Spirit, the Teacher who leads us into all truth. Beyond that, the revelation of Jesus Christ crucified itself testifies to the divine nature - and as DaveB said, at a certain point we either believe it or we dont, but the testimony is what it is- whether we choose to believe or are chosen to believe.
Okay, LLC, I concede that the Father and the Son are not exactly the same. And as you have pointed out, only the Father is omniscient. Jesus Himself indicated that He did not know when the events He predicted (as recorded in Matthew 24) would take place:
But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. (Matthew 24:36 ESV)
Even after his resurrection, Jesus did not know about the events that would soon take place, but the Father gave the revelation of those things to Him, and then He sent His angel to make it known to John.
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John…
Now how can this be the case, LLC, if the Father and the Son are one and the same divine Individual?
Well, it is not I who am reading the text this way. Justin Martyr read it this way in his “Dialogue With Trypho.” The thought never occurred to me until I read it in Justin Martyr. But after having read it there, I agreed with him.
First, Justin indicates that it was “the Lord” who remained behind to talk to Abraham. He had also indicated that the Father could not appear on a small part of the earth since He fills all things. So He indicated that “the Lord” (or Yahweh) was the Son of God, who received the commission from “the Lord” who remained in heaven to bring destruction to Sodom.
—Dialogue With Trypho, end of chapter 61
Yes, the LORD (Yahweh) is one. However, that doesn’t necessarily imply one Person.
Jesus also said, “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30 ESV) Did He mean that He and the Father were one Person? I don’t think so. In the immediately preceding verse, He said, “My Father, who has given them [my sheep] to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” He spoke of his Father as if He were a different Individual.
Jesus often prayed to his Father. He addressed Him as, “My God.” (Matthew 27:46) Was He praying to Himself? Was He his own God? If not, then when He said, “I and the Father are one,” He must not have meant that they were the same Person. He must have been referring to their total unity. I suggest that is where God said, “Yahweh is one,” He also meant that total unity, and not that there was no other divine Individual who shared the name “Yahweh” with Him.
IMO…
Since Yahweh definess Himself as “I AM”, IMO He is defining Himself by the purity of His being, and shares His name with no one, (He is the One True God)but has bestowed the rights of His name upon His Son, who is the image of YHWH(For so it pleased the Father to make all the fulness dwell in Him). The Son is the fulness od deity in bodily form…“If you have seen me you have seen the Father” does not mean He is the Father, it means He is the express image of the Father and the exact representation of the Father’s nature(Heb 1:3). “I and My Father are one” does not mean Jesus and His Father are the same person, it means they are in perfect unity, harmony, oneness of purpose, etc.
When Jesus prays that, “You may be one, even as I and the Father are one”(Jn 17) He is speaking of the same kind of unity- not making us out to be gods or a part of the godhead.
We are to be one in unity of purpose, in the sharing of the divine nature, in love for one another, that out “joy may be full” and that “the world will know you are my disciples” and that “the Father has loved you”…or in other words, just as He and the Father are one, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me and I am in you”.
Very good.
But that’s exactly it… you do agree with him and you’re the one presenting that (his) position as being legit. With all due respect to Justin… like you and me Paidion he has NO justifiable claim to inspiration. His/yours is a proposition that is IMO unsustainable.
So… just because Justin cannot conceive nor countenance such a thing this makes his rendition therefore so? Really?
This I suggest is his proposition being driven 100% by his own presuppositions he brought to the text. Consider the logical flow of this (IMO absurd) machination… “the second man is the man from heaven” your “Yahweh Jesus” – but Yahweh from heaven was meant to be “the Father” NOT “the Son”. Further we now have by way of consistent application of said proposition “the second man from heaven” (Jesus) walking and conversing in the Garden with the “the first man of the earth” i.e., Adam; and yet conventional common sense has ALWAYS understood the Yahweh of Paradise to have been “the Farther” – held to any logical consistency what you are advocating turns this on its head.
I put it to you that Justin’s ‘2 Yahweh’ model is an invention borne from a mind not able to be lifted above its own wooden literalism… and as a result a cacophony of contradicting confusion results.
I agree… NO argument with any of that.
This here however is arguing from silence, i.e., there are NO texts of Scripture applying “Yahweh” to any other individual OTHER THAN the One in the Bible also declared to be “the Father”, period! That’s just a fact! It is a spurious interpretation by Justin that has invented his conclusion.
A text out of context has become a pretext.
Still pondering some of the other questions that everyone has brought up. 
Jesus does say in John 8:58 “I AM”. To me this means that He is the Father. Can anyone truly and accurately speak for another? For example, no one else can speak for Paidion, Davo or Eaglesway except for you yourself. I would say that the same thing goes for God. God is the only one that is able to speak Himself. Can someone else share a name? I think this would be considered identity theft.
So, when Yahweh says " vengeance is Mine" or when Jesus says “love your enemies” which nature of God are we to follow? I would say that this may be one reason God gave Himself a new name-Jesus.
Of course they can… God’s prophets did it all the time. Jesus, prophet par excellence did this all the time… “I only speak what I hear the Father say” etc. In the British Commonwealth the respective ‘Governors’ General’ in their official role speak and act ON BEHALF OF the Crown… when they speak/act the Queen speaks/acts, i.e., they carry Her authority and power.
I have always felt it spurious to say Jesus didnt mean what He said when He says, “My Father is greater than I”, or “All authority on heaven and earth is given me by My Father”.
Why didnt He in any place follow any of His statements with an asterix and a long theological presentation on what He really didnt mean and what He only means for now and what it will really mean later?
Especially since only believing what He said as He said it is grounds for eternity in hell or at least excommunication and classification as a heretic and anathema from the body of Christ.
Why make something upon which the salvation of a soul depends so complex that it cannot be read in the Bible but must be read in the hundreds of years and hundreds of pages of convoluted reasonings and invented words that clergymen fought over for centuries.
I personally believe Jesus is God very God like a piece of dough torn from a lump of dough is “bread very bread”. Jesus is “the bite sized piece” of the Father. He is the Son, the unique, only begotten God. As such, He is the second Adam- declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead…
He is a new class of man, a new creation, the chief cornerstone of a habitation of God in the Spirit, being built of living stones; He is the Head of the body; He is the Root of the Olive tree, the True Vine.
But all that one needs to know is that the Almighty Invisible Creator Fathered a Son. Planted His seed in the womb of the earth, thereby making Him one with the earth and one with the Creator.
“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself”. God was “in Christ”. That’s what made Him “Christ”- the anointed one, Messiah. Christ came “out of God” and “down from heaven” - a Son,
“This is My beloved Son, Listen to Him”
Jesus is not(imo) the modalist Son. He is beloved. A child of a Father, a young man beloved of His mother. Even as my son came up as another and I love him, so also the Father loves His son who is begotten of Him, beloved of Him, beheld by Him as precious. A gift of love to the earth and a sacrifice of pain.
“My God My God why have you forsaken me”.
How did God forsake Himself. Was Jesus for a moment no longer God? When did He become God?
For a little while lower than the angels, but crowned with glory and honor!
I personally think the whole dilemma is a matter of perspective, and the deficiency in our understanding of heaven, and what exists in the highest heaven.
What if the highest heaven exists in a state of perfection completely outside of time? What if the “half hour of silence in heaven” is the 33 years that the “word” of God, the “Logos” was walking through “the valley of the shadow of death”. It was silent because He was not there for that time.
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 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.
Made for a little while lower than the angels…
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Ph 2
…crowned with glory and honor
And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. rv 21:23
God is the light eminating from the Lamp, “No man has seen God at any time but the son of man He has revealed Him”(made Him visible, manifest)
The lines we draw are insufficient because our elevation is not sufficient to see beyond the horizon that God has made- the veil of the heavens…
“Brethren we know not yet what we shall be but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.”
Transformed into His image, new creatures, begotten again not by the will of man or the will of the flesh but of God. Begotten from above by an incorruptible seed unto a fervent love of the brethren.
"That you may be one even as I and the Father are one…
If Jesus was on the earth for that half hour, and the sanctuary of heaven existed before and after(the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world…Father glorify me with the glory I had with thee before the world was), but…
“He who descended is also He who ascended that He might fill all things”(Eph 4) and now it is filling up because He ascended with a stream of captves in His train and that stream is still continually pouring through the Portal He opened…
“If I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all men unto me”
The serpent on the stick healing the snake bite of sin and death, and all that is needed is a revelation of Christ crucified. That heals the wound. Period.
Not understanding the Godhead and naming it Trinity or Bi-nity of Modal or Whateverrrr LOL.
Isaac on the altar. Abraham the friend of God…he understood it. The pain. The sacrifice. He would gladly have offered himself in Isaac’s place. And Isaac was not Abraham, he was Abraham’s son. That’s what made Abraham the friend of God.It was something they shared.
If I understand you correctly, this is precisely my belief. I understand your use of the word “God” as referring to the divine essence and is not identifying the Person of the Son with that of the Father.
“The only begotten God” (John 1:18, Papyrus 66 and Papyrus 75, the oldest manuscripts of John 1:18 in existence)
Your belief that, "Jesus is God very God like a piece of dough torn from a lump of dough is “bread very bread,” reminds me of Justin Martyr’s illustration of the begetting of the Son (except Justin would probably insist that the original lump of dough is not diminished in volume by tearing the piece from it).
—Dialogue With Trypho, chapter 61
I would agree that the divine essence is not diminished by taking a piece from it, since God creates, and I do not believe anything He creates diminishes Him. I think some of the logic(including mine:)) applied to such questions is somewhat faulty in that we cannot see from His perspective, so our laws and rules are like children playing, making up rules as they go along. “You can’t tag me, am on base” “I call invisible, no one can see me”, etc. It works well within a construct everyone agrees to support, but as soon as some little one says, “Why not, God is God, He can do what He wants”, the paradigms fail, the constructs crash to the ground, the King’s New Clothes disappear. 
“WHo has known the mind of the Lord? And who has been His counselor?”
The glory of God is the divine exponential multiplication of grace. “By faith we know that the worlds were created by the word of God”. Something from nothing, Light shining out of darkness, Union and harmony arising out of chaos.
“Great grace was upon them all, and the word of the Lord grew and multiplied, and the Lord added daily to their number those apponited to salvation, and no one among them had any need, and they were all as one soul.”
God is good.
So what makes Jesus any different from the prophets or the people who have spoken for God in the past? I believe this is where all the confusion comes into play because they were all men speaking for God. It is like a bunch of children quibbling over what their mom or dad has said, until the parent actually walks in and straightens it all out. To me, Jesus was God speaking for Himself.
Paidion, Eaglesway, maybe it’s just me and I am not understanding your views correctly. To me, the Bible is about the relationship between God and man only. However, what I get from your viewpoints as well as the Trinity is that an only begotten Son has been introduced. It seems the relationship is now between God and Jesus. What happened to the relationship between God and man?
Eaglesway, You mentioned Matthew 27:46 in which Jesus says “My God ,My God , why have you forsaken Me?”
I do not interpret this verse as Jesus feeling forsaken by God and calling out to Him. Jesus knew what His mission was and knew what was going to happen in the end. He even tells the thief that he would be with Him in paradise. Why would he think God had forsaken Him? If you read the verse that follows, the people say Jesus was calling Elijah. From what I understand, Elijah was an Israelite. I believe that Jesus(God) was actually calling out to the people of Israel here, for they were the ones that had forsaken Him. Earlier, Jesus says that He longed to gather His children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but they were unwilling. Had the people of Israel chosen Jesus instead of Barabbas, He would not have been upon the cross.
Huge difference LLC… Jesus was God’s FINAL REDEMPTIVE WORD… the all encapsulating Alpha & Omega, the First & Last, the Beginning & End, His Yes & Amen (Rev 1:8; 22:13 2Cor 1:20) the one through whom ALL prophetic WORD found fullness and fulfilment, as per…
I’m inclined to think Jesus was feeling the full anguish of abandonment… that would be quite realistic IMO. However, the Peshitta (Aramaic) of this passage does give a different reading somewhat more in line with your thoughts:
Not to scratch the scab off an old wound but if we do consider fulfilled eschatology, we can realize that Christ did what He was meant to do and sin is atoned for and death is defeated!
Is Christ’s death and resurrection actual or potential?
Seems to me so many on this forum still are questioning Christ’s redemptive sacrifice, as if for some reason it is incomplete or not sufficient. Why are we questioning this?
Beck says of ‘Wright’…
Theologically, the translational differences go to the issue of the actual versus potential nature of forgiveness. In Martin Luther’s rendering–faith in Jesus–forgiveness is potential. Forgiveness is contingent upon the act of faith. You need to believe and then, once you’ve done that, you are forgiven. By contrast, the New Perspective rendering–faith of Jesus–focuses upon the faithfulness of Jesus in creating a new reality. Because of the work of Christ on the cross the wall of hostility and accusation between God and humanity was finally and decisively broken down. Forgiveness becomes our new reality. A new world has been created. Everyone has already been forgiven in Christ. The call is to recognize this reality and live into it. To trust (have “faith in”) what the faithfulness of Jesus has accomplished for us “while we were yet sinners.”
This is truly good news… Yet so many will still doubt and try to slander the Christ.
Especially… “The call is to recognize this reality and live into it.”