from christ to god
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2
It is most certain that his young childhood playmates must have
been very surprised to learn that they had been playing with the
Universe’s creator. That would have been something to boast
about in the sleepy little town of Nazareth, where almost nothing
ever happened. However, could Jesus have been both a man
and God at the same time, and led a normal human’s life for
thirty years, without attracting much notice? Would his behavior
as a child and then as an adolescent and as a young man have
been normal? It seems hard to believe, yet this is the christian
position on this matter.
To be a man and god poses significant challenges. It is difficult to
feel what it is like to live the life as a human if you:
- Have a human mother but no biological human father;
- Your mother is an Eternal Virgin;
- Know that you are not going to die, at least not permanently;
- Heal people, see the future, levitate, and turn water into wine;
- Talk directly to God;
- Read the minds of people;
- Cannot commit sin. In fact, you are incapable of sinning;
Incarnating under such circumstances would not give God a true
feeling of what it is to be a human, for no human lives under
these conditions. If we say that Jesus, besides being fully god,
was fully human, that poses a big problem, since just the
knowledge that he was god would make the development of his
human personality radically different from any human that ever
lived. He may have been as much human as a god can be, but
certainly “fully human” is stretching it too far.
3
To be “fully god” has its own set of problems, since the Bible
declares that there is only One God. The christians wanted to
consider Christ as god too. However, if Christ is God and prays
to God the father, are there two gods (plus the Holy Spirit)? This
dilemma led to the development of the Trinity doctrine, which
made its triumphal entrance by proposing the concept of a Triune
God, with three persons, but only one substance (nature,
essence, or maybe being). So there you have it: only one God,
but consisting of a tightly knit three “God persons” which are
equally God. This composite God is regarded by Christians as
fulfilling the monotheist requirement, while the “Three Persons”
concept allows considering Christ as God too.
If there are three persons, is then the Triune God, by Himself, a
person too? Not according to mainstream christianity, which
allows at most to call the triune God as a “personal divine being”,
but that just means a divine being constituted by persons, so that
the “Triune God” in fact cannot be said to be “one person” in any
sense. When you pray to the Triune God, you are not praying to
a person, so to whom or what are you praying? Are you praying
to “three persons and one substance”? In practice, when most
people pray to God, they just think about a Divine Person, the
Supreme God. This means that in common use most christians
basically ignore the trinity, even if they are not aware of it. That
the Triune God cannot be defined as a person is a big and
dramatic trinitarian failure.
“God is one immaterial soul (substance) with three distinct centers of consciousness, rationality, will, and agency (persons) who are deeply and necessarily interconnected, and they share the same unique divine nature.”
4
The definition of person, as we understand it today, is different
from the meaning the word had when the dogma was created.
Person would then be understood as meaning character or
perhaps personality, and certainly was not an ontological
category. In our times it refers to a self-conscious unit, and has
an ontological significance. Substance (nature, essence, or
being) is a concept no one really understands in the trinity
context. The original greek terms hypostasis and ousia, have
shifted meaning through time, besides no one knowing precisely
how they were understood at the time, at least not by every
participant at the council of Nicaea. All this could have been
avoided by accepting that the word “god” means, “divine being”
and although there is a Supreme God, allowance could be made
to other divine beings besides Him, without violating the Shema.
Perhaps the Trinity doctrine withstood the test of time because,
on one hand, it was difficult to oppose, as it was not really
understood. On the other hand, many could see in it what they
wished to believe. This could be called victory by non-definition
or vagueness.
In a broader sense, we know we are persons, because we have
individuality, self-awareness, a mind, a soul, a personality, a
history, memories, wishes, affections, joys and regrets. We want
to relate to other persons, and have an emotional feedback from
them. We feel, on a higher level, capable of relating to divine
beings, and especially so with the person of Christ or the person
of God the Father. With the Triune God concept, how do you
establish a personal relation with a being that is made of three
persons? It is not only that you cannot understand the proposed
mystery of the Trinity, due to the limitations of the human mind,
but the same limitations makes you unable to enter in one
personal relationship with a three-personal being. Therefore, the
consequence of trinitarianism is to remove you from a personal
relation to the Supreme Deity as a whole.
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All religions have as starting point the notion of the two worlds.
One is the world of humans, physical, material, a limited world of
bodies, objects, things, shapes, mass, volumes, and dimensions,
all of that subject to decay, destruction and/or death.
The other world is spiritual, magic, massless, invisible most of
the time, not constrained into shapes and volumes, populated by
“divine” beings that are, in general, immortal and have powers
that violate the laws of physics of our material world, which, by
the way, they rule.
We tend to understand the word “god” within a culturally
established Trinitarian bias, due to our upbringing. However, the
word “god” and its equivalent in other languages, is always very
general and just means broadly “divine being”, or simply “divine”.
Religions are mainly concerned with practices and rituals that
perform mediation between the two worlds. The first world is the
world of humans and the second the world of the divine beings,
i.e., the gods. Certainly the Abrahamic faiths have a more
restrictive use of the world ”god”, and its equivalent terms in
other languages, giving to the expression “GOD”, an
unwarranted specificity.
It is most likely that Jesus was referring to himself as “divine
being” and not as “God”. The expression “divine” identifies who
belongs to the realm of gods, or more broadly, someone
possessing a superior soul. In the known gospel utterance “You
are gods, too” it would really mean, “you are divine, too”, pointing
to the fact that we should be a part of the realm of God.
We can escape the Trinitarian confusion by simply recognizing
Christ as a the created son of God, the greatest of all the divine
creatures of God, the Great Mediator between God and
humanity, the Lamb of God, the Redeemer, the Messiah, who
was given command of our world. This would also allow us to
understand the subordination of the Son to God the Father.
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The trinitarians argue that the subordination is real, from the Son
to the Father, but only in a functional way, while the equality is
real on an ontological perspective.
To simplify, the Son acts as a subordinate to the Father in the
incarnation and redemption, a role that requires subordination,
while, at the same time, remaining in essence equal to the
Father. If you found this contradictory, you are not alone. Of
course accepting that the Son is ontologically subordinate to the
Father would greatly simplify the issue.
When Christ says, “The Father and I are one”, we do not see a
Trinitarian admission but rather that Christ is in a total
submission, adoration and union with the Father, so much that
through Christ you see God (“He who sees me, sees my
Father”). Worshipping Christ becomes the same as worshipping
God. He is truly the door and the way to God. Christ in the
Gospel asks the apostles to become one with himself and God
and in that case the trinitarians have no trouble understanding
“become one” as meaning “be in union” even though the greek
words are the same.
In the Bible, several times, God speaks through an agent, mostly
called The Angel of Lord. But this agent or representative of God
speaks as “I”, giving God’s command and acting like him, and
being received in reverence and awe, although clearly not being
God himself. Therefore Christ as the ultimate agent of the
Supreme God, was entitled to speak as “I” on behalf of God, and
to receive reverence. In addition, when Thomas says “My Lord
and my God" what he admitted was more like “I recognize you as
the Son of God, and through you I see God”. As if Christ was, in
a sort of way, “transparent”, and you could see God behind him,
or feel his presence close to him. Not unlike seeing a burning
bush, and kneeling in front of it and feeling God’s presence.
However, the burning bush is not God!
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As God’s agent, Christ was able to explain:
(John 14:9-10, NIV)
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I
have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has
seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us
the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and
that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not
speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in
me, who is doing his work.
The “indwelling” of Christ and God just means how trusted the
and intimate was the relation between God and his Ultimate
Agent, as in in ancient middle east culture a preferred son was
understood to be able to speak and make deals as if he was the
father himself. Or a legate of a king to give orders and receive
reverence as if he was the king himself. This was of course
necessary due to poor and slow communications, but the
theologians simply decided to ignore that.
Christ as God’s representative has been granted full authority
and to speak in the Name of God, who has sent him. People
could feel God’s presence surrounding the actions and the
utterances of his Ultimate Agent. In addition, that explains why
seeing Christ is compared to seeing God, since they were, at
that moment, perceiving and feeling the power of God.
Of course, a literal meaning would be absurd here because
seeing the figure of the man Christ can in no way be equal to see
the real figure of God himself, something that even Moses was
not allowed to do and, anyway, might not even be possible. In
human terms, seeing God’s agent would be the closest you
could get to “seeing God”. This is what Christ’s audience would
have understood, and recognized Christ as God’s representative.
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To avoid the logical “death lock” created by the Trinity dogma,
we have only to consider Christ as the created Son of God. We
also need to address the difficulty of the “fully god, fully man, at
the same time” proposition.
The best solution is the idea that Christ existed as a Divine Being
prior to the incarnation, suspended that divine status while on
earth as an human (or partially disconnected himself from that
status), and finally reassumed full divine condition when he
returned to heaven. This is also the only way to make sense of
the story. This is, however, unacceptable to most christian
theologians who insist on the “fully man, fully god, at the same
time” concept.
The third point that needs to be reconsidered is the sacrificial
death of Jesus. Did God require the blood sacrifice of his Son to
restore his connection to and save humanity? Although animals
were sacrificed at the temple, no humans were. Why would God
now require a human sacrifice? In religious terms a tortured,
humiliated victim, would be most unfit as an offering to the Lord.
In fact, it does not fit any of the regulations for the ritual of
sacrifice. The atonement sacrifices did not "punish" animals in
the place of humans; rather, they purged sin from the holy
places. The best explanation is that it was taken as a metaphor.
There is also the question of who is requiring the sacrifice, is it
God the Father or the Triune God? If it is the Triune God, then
the sacrifice is from one Person of the Trinity to the entire
Godhead, and in that case, the Son is sacrificing to Himself,
which makes no sense.
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To better illustrate the different possibilities, we shall concentrate
on two christological alternatives, one trinitarian and the other
non-trinitarian:
a) Christ, a.k.a. God the Son, is the begotten second person
of the Trinity (“The God”). The other two co-equal persons
are God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Christ has two
natures, divine and human, but is only one person. He was
incarnated as a man and died (his human nature only) as a
sacrificial offer, to free us from sin, eternal damnation or
the wrath of “The God”, and was resurrected.
b) Christ, a.k.a. the Son of God is a created divine being, who
only has above him “God the Father”. He was incarnated
as a man, has two natures, is a Divine Person, but for a
while became also a human person, who died at the Cross,
to free us from sin, eternal damnation or the wrath of “God
the Father” and then was resurrected and rejoined/fused
with his Divine Person.
These two positions give a very coarse description of the
Trinitarian vs. Non-trinitarian debate, which has so many detailed
variations and subtleties. It is just an oversimplified scheme to
allow us a broad look at what is at stake. It is a good starting
point for the discussion, but along the way, we will have to refine
it to do justice to the enormous complexity of the issue.
Remember that according to traditional christian theology, Christ
has two natures, one divine and one human, but is one person
only. How could the divine nature of the person Christ die at the
cross? If it is only the human nature that suffered, can we say
that Christ (the person) died at the cross?
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Against the conceptual difficulties of being both god and man, we
propose the transformation process “god-then-man-then-god-
again” as solution. For troubles you get into by a “fully human
and fully god Christ, at the same time” idea, see the text below:
http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-can-jesus-be-god-and-man
(…) Have you ever wondered how Jesus could say that He did not know the day or hour of His
return (Matthew 24:36) even though He is omniscient (John 21:17). If Jesus is God, why didn't He
know the day of His return? (…) Since the two natures are united in one Person, the fact that Christ's
human nature did not know when He would return means that the Person of Christ did not know
when He would return. Thus, Jesus the Person could truly say, "But of that day and hour no one
knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone" (Matthew 24:36). At the
same time, by virtue of His divine nature, we can also say that the Person of Christ did know when
He would return. (…) In His human nature, the Person of Christ was ignorant of when He would
return. In His divine nature, the Person of Christ did know when He would return. Thus, Christ
Himself both knew and did not know when He would return. (…)
At this point we must consider why did christianity choose to
enter such a convoluted theological path as proposing a “two
natures, one person, fully human and fully god Christ” and the
“three persons, one substance, in one God” while there were so
much simpler and obvious alternatives.
One reason may have been to remove the debate from the
commoners. Another is that “Mystery” and “Faith” runs together,
and by stressing the mystery, you reinforce the faith.
No religion becomes great by being obvious and self-
explanatory. The “illogical” makes the brain function in a religious
mode, while rationality moves away from it. The human, real
world is constrained by physical laws and biological causes and
consequences. The human mind senses the divine world when
these rules no longer seem applicable, where divine orders and
wishes appear to make things happen and not nature.
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In that sense, paradoxes and apparently non-sensical facts may
transmit a feeling of divinity. This was certainly not lost on early
christian theologians. Another reason may have been political.
Constantine wanted a united church, and the trinitarian approach
may have thus evolved to allow a middle ground between the
parties involved. There is also the ill advised infiltration of Neo-
platonic thinking into the Early Church which, in the long run,
proved intellectually devastating, since neo-platonism has been
very much discredited by its arbitrary creation of categories.
The list provided at the end of this chapter is not complete, but it
is useful to show some significant points. We can see that the
non-trinitarian option uses mostly clear phrases attributed to
Christ himself. The trinitarian option, however, tends to use more
ambiguous and cryptic phrases, which may or not originally refer
to Christ, or whose meaning is very dependent on difficult
translation problems, complex interpretation and speculative
context analysis.
We understand that a gradual theological divinization process
was going on since Christ resurrection and culminated in the
Trinity dogma in the fourth century. Paul’s position is much
stronger than Peter in that direction and exaltation increased
systematically from the early church to the Athanasian Creed.
We must bear in mind that the disciples of Jesus were, at first,
left with a dead prophet in their hands. Resurrection barely made
things even. To turn the sacrificial death of Jesus into a crucial
event of human history, the crucifixion had to become a
triumphant act of redemption of humanity.
We must assume that along this process a logical line was
crossed, and led to Mystery overcoming Revelation. Why such
an extreme divinization process took place, tearing apart the
logical simplicity of the Bible? Probably the reasoning that only
the sacrifice of God himself would be worthy enough to redeem
humanity. That made appear what has been called a “defensive
theology”, aimed at protecting the status of its central character.
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Extreme exaltation of the central figure required that all efforts be
put into promoting and defending the divinity of Christ, even at
the risk of creating, as a secondary theological effect, a triple
god. It is maybe time now to reconsider these extreme efforts,
and put back christian theology on the common sense tracks.
We consider that from a sociological, but not a religious, point of
view, christianity’s formation process was akin to the
establishment of a new sect. Everything turns around a particular
event and a particular person, and all that happens in a short
period of time. After some time, if successful, the original sect
then turns into a full-fledged church.
We can watch the rise of the divinization of Christ in Hebrews 1
but, at that point, without a trinitarian accent. Christ is here
portrayed as a divine being, but not God himself. The unknown
writer uses a superb greek, and apparently is not too well
acquainted with judaism practices, except in a literary mode.
Hebrews 1 New King James Version (NKJV)
“God, who at various times and in various ways,
spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,
has in these last days spoken to us by His Son,
whom He has appointed heir of all things,
through whom also He made the worlds;
who being the brightness of His glory
and the express image of His person,
and upholding all things by the word of His power,
when He had by Himself purged our sins,
sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
having become so much better than the angels,
as He has by inheritance obtained
a more excellent name than they."
13
It is hard to give a trinitarian reading to this text. The sentence
“...having become so much better than the angels…” implies a
gradual exaltation, so that the Son is glorified, but is
acknowledged as having begun at a lower (or equal) status than
the angels.
Christianity is absolutely centered around the worship of one
divine being, the Son of God, incarnated as Jesus. All else, the
people of God, The Law, the rituals of sacrifice, the history of the
israelites, the temple of Jerusalem, all becoming secondary or
obsolete, a fading mythological background.
As much so, that if the Son had incarnated somewhere else in
another nation, the results would have been very similar, since
the New Testament pretty much dismisses the original people of
God, who had lived and struggled for hundreds of years and that
for a single event, that could have happened elsewhere.
From an eschatological perspective, if the world was coming to
an end, that could have made sense, since nothing would be the
same again. However, two thousand years have passed and
nothing significant happened, the world is not better, nor did it
end and neither has the Kingdom of God arrived. While the jews
still wait for the Messiah, the christians still wait for the Kingdom
of God. Brothers in waiting, we could say, then.
The Trinity dogma is an intellectual elaboration. If it was true, it
should have been revealed in direct terms by the prophets, for
God talked to the faithful through his anointed messengers.
However, the hubris of the first centuries theologians allowed
them to speculate and elaborate deeply about God. Using the
tools of philosophical logic, deduction and inference, but
unaware of its pitfalls and shortcomings, these self-appointed
interpreters did their work unhindered, because of the lack of a
consolidated theology in early Christianity. Through their
obsessive zeal and intellectual creativity, the galilean prophet
was slowly and deliberately shaped as the Creator Himself.
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The problems of the triune god concept start with the question of
why God has to be three “persons”, all of them fully God. If God
has to be three “persons”, and it could not be any other way, as
trinitarians argue, that must be considered a limitation of God’s
power, which supposedly has no restrictions. The determination
that God must exist in a three persons mode, seems to put a
constraint on the omnipotence of God. What would happen if the
Father was the only “person”, and the Son and the Holy Ghost
did not exist? Would the universe not exist then? How would the
Creation be affected?
Since the Father “person” is fully God, the world could be exactly
as it is now. In that sense, the two other “persons” seem
superfluous. The incarnation and redemption could have been be
performed by a lesser divine being, created for the occasion. At
this point theologians would be screaming that only the sacrifice
of a fully god could atone for humankind sins, but how do they
know the mind of God so completely to say that no other
redemption scheme would work?
Moreover, how can mere men pretend to define how and what
the Supreme God can do or not do? If God had proclaimed that
the sacrifice of a hundred virgins was required to amend for
Adam’s mistake, who would have the authority to say, “No, you
cannot do that, you have to sacrifice a co-equal God to
yourself”? Trinitarians should understand that they are forcing
their highly speculative reasoning on the Supreme Being himself.
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BIBLE VERSES USED TO SUPPORT TRINITARIAN AND NON-TRINITARIAN POSITIONS
TRINITARIAN
option “a”
NON TRINITARIAN
option “b”
Isaiah 9:6
“Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
Acts 2:22
“Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.”
John 14:9
“He who has seen Me has seen the Father”
Mark 10:18
"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone.”
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Timothy 2:5
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
John 10:30 “The Father and I are one.”
John 14:28 “the Father is greater than I”
John 8:58
“Before Abraham was born, I am”
John 7:16
Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me.”
Philippians 2:9-11
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father
1 Corinthians 15:27-28
For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.
Corinthians 13:14
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”
Luke 22:42
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
Hebrews 1:8
. But about the Son he says,“Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.”
John 20:17
“Jesus said unto her, Touch me not;
for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”
16
The puzzle of the Trinity challenged
artists to create pictures that resulted
in very strange, if not heretic, results.
THE TRIUNE GOD (1)
24
THE TRIUNE GOD (9)
The trinity is here represented as the three visitors
(angels?) that appeared to Abraham
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