“I and the Father are one”

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Jehovah.”

“Jehovah who?”

“Jehovah’s Witnesses who do not believe that Jesus and Jehovah are one in essence.”

My good friend from Birmingham, Alabama called me a few days ago and indicated he had Jehovah’s Witnesses come to his home. Being passionate for the non-Christian (who wouldn’t be if regularly attending David Platt’s church?), my friend let them into his home and had a long discussion over the nature and identity of Jesus. Jehovah’s Witnesses are theological descendants of Arius’s teaching, which was rejected in 325 CE at the Council of Nicea. Along with Arius, the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) do not believe that Jesus is fully God, but is merely a creature created by God (see here for a good summary).

Some of the discussion between my friend and the JWs centered on John 10:30 where Jesus states “I and the Father are one.” My friend indicated that the JWs understood Jesus to mean that Jesus and the Father are united in their purpose; not that they are essentially the same. Just as a husband and wife are one in purpose, so Jesus is aligned with God’s purposes. “But,” says my friend, “why did the Jewish opponents then seek to stone Jesus because they understood this claim to mean Jesus was saying he was God?” (see Jn 10:31-33). It was at that point in our phone discussion that I said to my friend the JWs may not be so far off in their understanding. So, what exactly did Jesus mean when he states “I and the Father are one?” Was this a claim to his essential identity as God?

First, it’s important to highlight some constructs that came out of the discussions at Nicea and later out of Chalcedon. Athanasius fought relentlessly for the notion of “consubstantiality” between the Father and the Son. That is, there is a numerical unity of substance (the language used was homoousious) between God the Father and God the Son, yet the Father is not numerically identical with the Son. This was later spelled out in the Chalcedonian statement (425 CE), which affirms that Jesus of Nazareth is numerically identical with God the Son, the second person of the Trinity. To claim “Jesus is God” when this is intended to make an identity claim of essence makes sense of the biblical revelation, although the reciprocal statement, “God is Jesus,” results in some confusion. No orthodox Christian would maintain that Jesus is numerically identical with God the Father. This is the error of Sabellianism (a confusing of the persons in the Godhead). Instead God the Son is numerically identical with Jesus of Nazareth and essentially identical with God the Father, because they share in the same divine substance. All this is to say that when Christians maintain that Jesus is one with God, it is not a claim to numerical identity; only a claim to essential identity, which Nicea and Chalcedon help us formulate.

The context around John 10:30 speaks to Jesus and the Father giving life to his followers, his sheep, and the preservation of them. Verses 28-29 make that clear. And so a prima facie reading of Jesus’s claim “I and the Father are one” suggests this is a functional oneness and not a claim to essential oneness. Jewish belief included a divine Messiah who was God’s Son (see Jn 5:18). If “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (Jn 5:19), then the Son and the Father function as one in purpose, just as the JWs claimed Jn 10:30 means. Nevertheless, as Murray Harris’s seminal work Jesus As God insists, if on multiple occassions Jesus performs in ways that only God the Father functions, then it’s not a far distance to travel to see metaphysical overtones between the Father and the Son (see also Mark 2:1-12). The oneness of will is a oneness of divine will and, “although the categories are formally functional some deeper union is presupposed” (Carson, The Gospel According to John, p. 395). In other words, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck….

The reaction of Jesus’s opponents to execute him (Jn 10:31-39) based upon a claim to deity in Jn 10:30 is what my friend pointed to in defending Jesus’s oneness with God (see also Jn 5:18; 8:40, 59 for similar reactions to Jesus). And so “why did the Jewish opponents seek to stone Jesus because they understood this claim to mean Jesus was saying he was God?” The answer is precisely because Jesus’s opponents also understood that a claim to oneness of will and purpose was tantamount to a claim of oneness of essence. Interesting that, given Jesus’s strong Jewish monotheistic belief, he did not deny his opponents’ understanding, just as he did not rebuke Thomas for his worship of him (Jn 20:28). Although “I and the Father are one” is a claim to equality of power, no one but God has the power of God! If Jesus functions as God, then it’s not unreasonable to conclude that he is equal with God. This is how Jesus’s opponents understood his claim in Jn 10:30 and this is why they sought to kill him. As Harris says “the image confirms to its prototype (cf. Col. 1:15), the reflection to its source (cf. Heb. 1:3)” (Harris, Jesus, p. 285n38).

It turns out the JWs were not far off in their understanding of Jesus’s statement but neither was my friend far off who insisted that Jesus meant he is essentially God.

New Blog

Terrance L. Tiessen, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology and Ethics at Providence Theological Seminary, in Manitoba, Canada, has a new blog just launched. I’ve benefited greatly from his Providence & Prayer: How Does God Work in the World? and very much look forward to his theological musings.

Terry has carefully penned his reasons for starting to blog and it’s well worth the time to read. Here’s how he begins:

Like Anselm, I have a faith that seeks understanding. I find that writing is a helpful process toward clarifying my thoughts and moving me forward in my understanding. On one occasion, in the early 1990s, while I was in the process of writing a review article of three books on the salvation of the unevangelized, my own mind changed. It took me by surprise, but I suddenly saw the subject from a different perspective and had what Kuhn might have considered a “paradigm shift.” I have rarely had occasions on which my understanding changed so dramatically in the writing process, but many times I have found my thoughts becoming more clear as I formulated them in writing.

I appreciate the opportunity to get response to my ideas from other people. I expect a blog to provide some of that, although I am aware that many “professional” theologians will scarcely have time to read my thoughts, let alone to respond. Yet all Christians should do theology, and I expect to be helped in my own understanding, even by people with limited theological training. At the very least I can learn what others have heard me to be saying. Sometimes, regrettably, this turns out to be something quite different than I intended, but discovering this is very helpful.

I like the immediacy of the blogging medium. When I have written articles or book reviews, it has frequently been a year before they have appeared in print. Books have taken years. With a blog, I can get my thoughts out in public instantly.

I appreciate the accessibility of material posted on the web. Research has indicated that the average journal article is read by very few people. Similarly, I know of people who have purchased one of my books but have not yet gotten to read it. The fact that my last two books have each been over 400 pages long, may account for some of that delay. But with the blog and my new ability to post documents for access through the web, some of my thoughts will be accessible to people in remote parts of the world, where the internet is available but books are very hard to get.

Who among us blogophiles could not agree with that?

Be sure to visit Thoughts Theological!

How are Hobby Lobby, CNN, and the Book of Romans Connected?

Go here to find out.

HT: Baker Book House Church Connection

Deborah: Agent of the Divine Agenda

Nijay Gupta has a good read on Deborah from Judges over at CBE. Here’s his conclusion.

I don’t think Judges promotes gender equality as a primary point. However, Deborah makes all the difference by implication. She is a reliable prophet (who speaks from the wisdom of God), and a trustworthy teacher—as the Song of Deborah proves. In a sense, she becomes one of the “authors” of Scripture (with her teaching inscribed into Judg. 5), and by implication an authoritative evangelist through her testimony.

I have met women who have said that when they got up to preach, men (and sometimes other women) got up and walked out, offended by a “woman leader” in the church. I wonder how the Israelites felt about Deborah. Did anyone walk out on her? Did anyone condemn her for speaking on behalf of God? Did anyone encourage her to take more interest in her domestic duties? We don’t know. What we do know is that it was the Lord’s will to use her as a leader of God’s people to deliver them (with Barak’s help as general). Judges does not offer a command to promote women, but it only takes one example like Deborah to show that women are just as capable in leadership as men. Leadership did not suppress Deborah’s femininity, but gave her an important setting to be “motherly protector” (5:7).

Social Activism vis-à-vis Spiritual Activism

Growing up in Texas, I remember public laundry mats, restrooms, and drinking fountains with signs over them stating “Whites Only.” Shocking, I know. But very true and very sad. So much of our nation has been renewed and reformed by the costly efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr. Doubtless we’ve a long way to go for human rights and dignity to manifest more fully, yet so much of the distance we have traveled toward equality and justice for all is the result of the courageous activism of this one man, set off initially in 1955 by the heroic efforts of Ms. Rosa Parks, the same year I was born.

Today our nation celebrates this distance, and rightfully so. Social activism is important and I see no reason to be against it in toto (non-violent forms, that is), in so far as it is grounded in the moral authority that God has set down before us in Scripture. Though this day is a good reminder of what social activism can do for the good, it also reminds me what activism cannot do. It cannot yield eternal change wrought only by God. And so, I publish my statement on what God has actively done for us through the finished and all-sufficient spiritual activism of Christ our Savior. It is this that I celebrate.

Regeneration is that activity of God wherein he radically transforms the moral, mental, emotional, volitional, and relational fiber of a person through the unique work of the Holy Spirit. As in the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, this transformation is analogous to a new birth (see Jn. 3:3-7; 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15; Jm. 1:18; 1:Pt. 1:3; 1 Jn. 2:29). Its start and finish is in God the Holy Spirit who alone brings it about without the agency of human activity (Jn. 1:13; 3:8). Value systems are wholly renovated not just altered. Old impulses and habits are replaced with new ones (Gal. 5:19-24; Col. 2:11-12) as a spiritual death takes place of the old self or nature (Gal. 2:20), which was dominated by sinful desires and activities (Rom. 6:1-11), and is replaced with a new spiritual life that is gradually but certainly renewed daily never to be corrupted (1 Pt. 1:4).

Furthermore, regeneration is God’s gracious means of cleansing from sin whereby the Spirit of God purifies the penitent person from moral corruption. The Apostle Paul states that regeneration is a work of God and not of humans (Rom. 4:4-5; Gal. 2:16-17; Eph. 2:4-5, 8-9). This purification or washing is actualized at the time of belief in the Lord Jesus as Savior and King when the Holy Spirit enters a believer’s life and is subsequently symbolized at the time of a believer’s baptism (Acts 10:47; Eph. 1:13; 1 Cor. 6:11; possibly Heb. 9:14; 10:22; 1 Pt. 3:21). Water baptism, therefore, is an expression of regeneration and was never seen as the means of it. We come to God with empty hands offering only our need (Lk. 18:13-14). Scripture affirms that any righteous activity not enabled by God is completely insufficient for acquiring a right standing before him (Is. 64:6; Phil. 3:8b-9).