When 'arche' is a personal title

This is about Rev 3:14, and how to translate the Greek word 'arche' here, which here refers to Jesus, who is titled

‘the Amen, the Witness, the Faithful and True One, the [arche] of the creation of God’.

As I often say, meaning resides in function and context, and the place of grammar in translation should be treated in that context. Among a number of contextual features, particularly striking is the parallelism with an earlier verse, similarly about Jesus:

Rev 1:5:

‘the Witness, the Faithful One, the Firstborn of the Dead, and the Ruler [archwn] of the kings of the earth’ 

Rev 3:14:

‘the Amen, the Witness, the Faithful and True One, the Ruler [arche] of the creation (or kingdom - see below) of God’ 

The parallelism in the two verses will be our primary guide, because the book obviously intends that when you hear 3:14, your mind goes straight back to 1:5. The parallel words 'archwn' and 'arche' both naturally bear the weight of a similar meaning, which leads to the joint meaning of "ruler" in these lists of titles of Jesus. Arche has other frequently used meanings, which I'll come to, but those other meanings operate where the author hasn't structured this striking parallel! 

In 1:5, it's uncontroversial to produce the translation "Ruler of the kings of the earth." The parallel phrase in 3:14 needs more thought. 

Debate about translating 'arche' is frequently rehearsed and I'll come to that. But first, a clue ought to be recorded. It's the word translated as creation. It has been suggested that κτίσεως as 'creation' is a misunderstanding of the author's intentions. That is, κτίσεως can mean a system of authority, according to BDAG 572–573. In other words, I suggest, what we have is another form of "Ruler of the kingdom of God." 

Given κτίσεως being a system of authority, we can see all the more easily the parallel:

ὁ ἄρχων τῶν βασιλέων τῆς γῆς

ἡ ἀρχὴ    τῆς κτίσεως τοῦ Θεοῦ

Context: The Amen

There is another interpretative assistance close to hand. As we saw in Revelation 3:14, Jesus also bears the title of the 'Amen':

‘the Amen, the Witness, the Faithful and True One, the Ruler of the creation/regime of God’.

In the Old Testament, when 'Amen' is used as a personal title, there is only one being who bears the title. It is of course Yahweh, the uncreated God (Isaiah 65:16). It is a title of God. It is therefore highly significant that it's Jesus' title in Revelation. 

This is part of the pattern in Revelation of ascribing to Jesus things that uniquely belong to Yahweh in the Old Testament. This title stands apart from other titles that can be applied to other beings. In other words, Jesus is identified with Yahweh, and is ruler over the kingdom of God.

Of course, words can be used with overtones of meaning. Words don't have to be binary in the hands of skilful writers, meaning either only one thing or the other. If κτίσεως gives us 'regime/kingdom,' it may still retain the overtone of 'creation.' Roger Forster's reading of the Amen is instructive here. 

"This almost certainly comes from Isaiah 65:15-17... Amen is clearly used as a name for God." The title being: the God of Amen. 

Using the 'creation' meaning for κτίσεως, Forster writes: "the context is 'The God of 'Amen' in Isaiah 65, which continues,' I create a new heaven and a new earth' (v17) - we are not looking backwards but forwards to the New Creation. God is doing something totally new, and Jesus, rising from the grave, is the head of this New Creation... So this is a wonderful, glorious statement: the Kingdom of God has arrived...'

(Roger Forster, Revelation: A Commentary for Our Time Part 1, Push Publishing, 2022. 171-72)

Forster translates the last title of Jesus then as "The Beginning of the creation of God" meaning that the resurrection has begun the New Creation. The meaning is forward-looking. Richard Bauckham disagrees with this line of interpretation. For him, the verse is looking back to the Genesis creation (translating 'the origin (arche) of God's creation') and with ‘arche’ as ‘origin/beginning’ meant to link it to God the Father and Jesus being titled "the Beginning and the End" in Rev 21:6-7 (the Father) and 22:12-13 (Jesus, obvious but made even clearer with v. 20). This link to the title 'The Beginning and The End' should be fairly obvious. Jesus as the source of creation is Bauckham's reading.

(Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, Cambridge University Press, 1993)

In summary, my preference is led by how Revelation 3:14 corresponds to Revelation 1:5: 

Rev 1:5:

‘the Witness, the Faithful One, the Firstborn of the Dead, and the Ruler [archwn] of the kings of the earth’ (ὁ ἄρχων τῶν βασιλέων τῆς γῆς)

Rev 3:14:

‘the Amen, the Witness, the Faithful and True One, the Ruler [arche] of the kingdom of God’ (ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κτίσεως τοῦ Θεοῦ)

Controversy

I am satisfied that this is the sensible choice of credible interpretations. However. when I first wrote about 3:14, it was because I saw anti-Trinitarians try to press the construction of the text to classify Jesus as a 'created' being, and not eternal. I have to say, giving Jesus the title "the Amen" would be a very strange way of trying to signal a 'created' being. 

 

It’s obvious that these words are all personal titles, and the degree of parallel between the verses is obvious too. It would be inconsistent, and would break the purpose of the sequence of titles, to suddenly mean that Jesus was a 'created' being as if that were what the passage is about. 

For anti-Trinitarians, this really turns on use of the word 'arche,' priming it by translating it as 'the beginning,' and then interpreting this to mean that Jesus was the first piece of creation made. The first jigsaw piece of all the stuff made, so to speak. I see little or nothing in the passage to commend this reading. Needless to say, in the New Testament, Jesus isn't the first piece of creation. Jesus "laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning" rather than being the beginning piece himself (Hebrews 1:10). Rather than being the beginning piece, he "was" already (past tense - John 1:1) with God in the beginning, as St Basil the Great pointed out in his On the Holy Spirit.

The word 'beginning' has worked just fine for Trinitarians and anti-Trinitarians alike, but the forced interpretation of 'created being' is anti-Trinitarian. 

However, I'll just say a little more about translating arche as “ruler”, which I believe is a better translation in the context of these parallel verses. 

Context: it's a person

'Arche' can apply to prominent persons as ruler or leader, but that doesn't go for when it refers to things:

• When a prominent person is in view, translating arche as ‘ruler’ or 'rule' is within usage in translation (e.g. Luke 20:20 - τῇ ἀρχῇ καὶ τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ τοῦ ἡγεμόνος)
• When a person is not in view, but some other kind of object is in view, ‘beginning’ is common usage in translation (e.g. Mark 13:8 - ἀρχὴ ὠδίνων)

This is a factor regardless of the genitive construction found, the genitive which some anti-Trinitarians find more fascinating here. 

So, for example, where arche is applied to persons, the context is not unusually one of power and authority. Not related to the start of something. Hence, "ruler" fits. One can see similar with the closely related word ἀρχὴν in 1 Corinthians 15:24 and Jude 1:6 meaning 'domain' (whereas in other places it means 'beginning'). There are other examples where arche doesn't at all mean 'first created thing.' Prior to the New Testament, in philosophy, the Greek "arche" was the eternal archetype on which all created things are based according to BDAG 137-38. Note also Josephus' Antiquities 4:220 - αἱ ἀρχαὶ τῶν πόλεων - meaning leaders of cities. So all these things were around for Hellenised peoples, such as those highly educated ones reading and writing books in fluent Greek. Such as John.

In Revelation 3:14, arche is indeed the title of a person, and hence "ruler" fits. It's a string of titles:

‘the Amen, the Witness, the Faithful and True One, the Ruler of the creation/regime of God’.

In English translations, it's exceedingly rare for arche to mean any person having ‘The Beginning’ as a personal title. 

As said, in Revelation we have the title 'The Beginning and the End' including the Greek word arche, a title applied to both the Father (21:6-7) and the Son. So, although some anti-Trinitarians think that arche makes the Son a part of creation by way of being called (in that translation tradition) "the beginning of creation," that would be unjustifiably inconsistent. Indeed, the 'arche' language no more makes the Father a part of creation than it does the Son. So it's not a wide open gateway to being classified as 'created.'

In summary, the informative parallelism of 3:14 with 1:5, the pattern of personal titles in both verses, and the context of a prominent person, is the combination that supports ‘ruler’ in translation. But that is not to rule out 'beginning' as an overtone.

On having a god: it's a relational thing

Introduction 

There is a mistaken assumption that if Jesus ‘has a God,’ then this tells us that the divine being excludes Jesus. This post will look at why that assumption is mistaken. You understand God, and Scripture, relationally if you want to understand it well. Relational theology, not philosophy, is the better key for understanding God.

You see interestingly sceptical (anti-Trinitarian) questions such as: "Can a God pray or worship to another God?" The obvious answer from ancient literature outside the Bible is a clear "Yes, a god can indeed treat another god like this." (You just have to look at ancient Greek stories of how lesser gods revered their chief god Zeus!)

So if you want to deny that a god can worship a god, you have to have another understanding.

For anti-Trinitarians, underlying their scepticism is an assumption that God, like us, is a uni-personal being. That is, a critic's personal experience of him/herself is of being a single person themselves, and they can hardly imagine anything different. But there is no valid reason why God has to be uni-personal. There is no valid reason why the divine person has to be just like us.

So here's my starting point. You and I are not like the being of God. You and I, as a human being, might think of oneself as a private individual. And that's because of what you and I are. But the divine being is different from you and me. Unlike us, the divine being is eternal, omniscient, existing before and beyond creation. Obviously, just because we ourselves are none of those things doesn't mean God has to be none of those things. Therefor, just because we are singular individual persons does not mean the divine being has to be a singular person. Unless one wants to imagine God in a very anthropocentric way. 

Start with this understanding: the divine being is not like us. 

We ought not to dictate what the divine being can be. And then we start to observe how different and unusual the divine being of Scripture is. An open mind will see the divine being doesn't have to be like us and can be multi-personal. For the flesh and blood Son - Jesus - for him, having a God, is a relational thing. That is the key. There was a relational life which a human Jesus had to fulfil. Having a God is not an ontological thing. It is a relational thing. When we have a relational theology, we are freer to observe God, and see that the divine nature is quite unlike us. We have a key to dismantling our human, anthropocentric, assumptions. If we are brave to dare to see further.

Having a god

Having a god is a relational thing. People have their gods. To an adoring man, a woman can be a goddess – this is not healthy, and probably unwelcome to the woman! To football fans, the “star” who lifts their team to the “heights” may very well be a “god” to them. I’ve seen it. Anthropologists have written about it. There are even academic papers about the close similarities between football and religion. Gods are all the things we worship, be they earthly figures or heavenly figures. It’s relational.

Our language is full of signposts to it. If people comment on someone else’s romantic relationship like this – “she worships the ground he walks on” – we know this is a relationship at an early immature stage, and the girl/woman needs to stop “putting him on a pedestal.” That is to say, she needs to stop treating him like a god. Gods on pedestals are a thing.

The Bible is critical of ancient peoples who built models of the things they worshipped and fixed their models on top of pedestals to raise them higher up for all to see. And for all to worship. The Greeks did such. The Romans did such. These gods on pedestals were not necessarily heavenly beings. Having a god, remember, is a relational thing, not a matter of where the god is found. But they liked to keep their gods close.

Some say it’s human nature to metaphorically put people on a pedestal. As a football fan myself in the 1980s, I well recall a team manager who “saved” the club from decline and “performed a miracle” un raising the team to the “heights” of success. The fans loved him, really loved him, to his dying day. From the heart, they adored the man who had given the gift of a footballing lifetime to them, dignity and worth as fans of a most successful club. He was, and though dead still is, an idol to them with an undying love. Lesser “servants” of the club are “not worthy” to be compared with him. I am not exaggerating the devotion.

He was “just” a man walking the earth, but he was loved as much as any God in heaven for many of them. In no-one’s eyes was he a heavenly being. He didn’t need that attribute to be a god to them. Having a god is a relational thing, Being a god is a relational thing.

I won’t talk about all the ways in which football is like a religion, with its many cultic (in the academic sense) features. Others have done that amply.

So fans and their idols is a thing. An idol is something you worship. Photographs of “teen idols” adorn the walls of many a young person’s bedroom. That’s just a teen phase you pass through! But the language is apt: teen idols are worshipped a little bit. Sometimes more than a little bit.

The Bible contrasts idols with the “true God” who should be worshipped. But that doesn’t disallow teenagers the right to go through a rite of passage! To some adults – and children – their favourite television programme is said to be “his whole life.” This is more true of science-fiction fans devoted to a television series or a film franchise with lots of content to absorb, where their time and money is consumed by their love of that show. Effectively, their idol has eaten their time and their money. Curiously, this resembles another pattern. I refer to religions where worshippers lay edible food at the pedestals on which their models of gods sit/stand, as if to nourish their gods. (Of course, what it’s doing is nourishing their devotion to their gods, the object of their devotion.)

In summary, someone’s god, the object of their devotion, can actually be here on earth – a “star” of music or sport or TV – or in heaven. What makes anything a god to someone is our relational attitude to it. The Bible says that the object of worship will be a created thing or the Creator, and it approves only worshipping the Creator. It talks of those for whom that relational attitude to the Creator is lacking, and who instead tend towards worshipping created things. Thus, “they turn to other gods.” Or “their god is their own stomach,” and so on.

So by definition, having a god is not a matter of a contrast between the god being a heavenly being and you being an earthly being. It’s not about where you are. It’s a matter of the heart.

It’s a relational thing, not an ontological thing per se. Being ‘a god’ to someone doesn’t of itself tell us if their god is a supernatural being or a human being. That’s something we have to find out from more information.

So, that was a very long-winded way of introducing my subject, that Jesus on earth spoke of having a god.

 

Jesus having a God

So what relational thing is this? It’s in the context first of a Son to his Father, but it’s not this that tells us the Father is a supernatural being – that is just taught anyway. (In fact, the gospels present both Father and Son as supernaturally able, so that doesn’t divide them.)

The second context is created human form to Creator. Something about being the flesh and blood Son in Galilee made it appropriate that his relationship with his Father was one of worship. Why was this needed?

In Christian terms, to have God at the centre is to have your worship oriented in the right direction. Relationally, Christian worship is directed towards the Creator, rather than to created things. It’s because God is Creator (I’ll say more), not because God is supernatural (other things are too), and not because God is in heaven (other things are there too). Of course, God being in heaven signposts us towards God’s ultimate status. And God’s being supernatural signposts us towards God’s ability to create the universe. But these signposts don’t tell the whole story.

It’s because God is Creator and Ruler of all things, and ultimate source of all good, that is why we worship God. That defines the relationship. It’s still a relational thing.

What we worship isn’t to be decided simply by what our hearts like. In Christian worship, we find in God the thing that most truly warrants that place in our hearts.  

So, back to this: something about the flesh and blood Son in Galilee made it appropriate that his relationship to his Father is one or worship. And it can be only that the Son took upon himself the life of created things. This, vitally, gave the Son the power to re-set humanity’s right relationship to the Father. By virtue of the mould he has made, we can be fitted into that mould, conformed to the likeness of the Son. This way, our relationship to the Creator is put back into shape. That’s why Jesus of Galilee says he has a God. It’s to perform the great re-set of humanity, to re-set history and the human race.

So having a god is relational. In itself, it doesn’t tell us that one being must be supernatural and another not. Having a god is not intrinsically ontological. It’s having one’s heart oriented in worship to the right person.

Jesus’ heart was always in the right place, turned towards the Father. That was true before he came to earth. It was still true while on earth, with the added dimension of being in human form, performing the great human re-set, having a God in his heart, so that we can too, facing the right way. It’s love with an extra dimension. That’s what it is for Jesus to have a God. Once this is understood, we begin to appreciate Christian worship more deeply, and why Christian worship to God is through Jesus, the Great Re-set man himself.

And as we observe Jesus, the very image of God, we realise what God has been like all along, the very best of all, adored by hearts that have been re-set. Now we understand truly what it is to have a God. If the eternal Son who is in the bosom of the eternal Father (John 1) had not come down from heaven and “dwelt among us,” none of this would be possible. We are simply caught up in a Trinitarian embrace.

He who truly loved the Father from the beginning cam down so we could truly love the Father. He had to have a God in terms of the Father in order to re-set us towards the Father. It’s a relational thing from start to finish. The joy and life of this can be missed by wrong assumptions. 

If this seems in some ways paradoxical, I’ve written a post about that here.

And finally, to quote R. Andrew DeFord, ""The God of" is not just a general, relational statement. It's also a covenantal designation. 1) Those under the law/covenant established at Sinai have YHWH as "their God". 2) The Son was born under the law/covenant at his incarnation. 3) Therefore, in virtue of being born under the law, the Son has YHWH (the Father) as "his God"." (https://x.com/andrew_deford/status/1791480885897810189)

 

Hypostatic Union and Temple Theology

Here I just want to sketch out a few questions to potentially spark discussion.

I don't intend here to sketch out the meaning of words such as enhypostasis and anhypostasis, or hypostatic union and the rest, because if you are interested in this in any detail, you will already know, and will be keen for me to get to my questions.

Suffice it to say, we are dealing with trains of thought to understand how Jesus being divine, and coming down from heaven, was able to live in human form. That already mentions two natures - human and divine. These two natures are joined together in Jesus. But how does that work? For instance, does having two natures mean having two minds with two wills? Can you be human without having a 'human' mind?

I'm not going to rehearse well known critiques of the different positions held by pre-Reformation theologians, Lutherans, Reformed, etc.

This post, you see, is proposing a dialogue using Temple theology, a theology which is an area of speciality for myself. (I really must write some posts abut it!) 

Can Temple theology be a useful tool for widening conversation about how Jesus' human and divine natures interacted 2,000 years ago?

Where this is going

At the end of this post, I hope to have established a basis for asking this question. Is the hypostatic union basically this: that Jesus' whole humanity is the temple of his whole divinity?

I don't want this overly muddled with questions about personhood. To my mind, a person is simply a person. Be that a divine person or a human person, a person is a person. With or without a body, a person is a person. But I will deal with this further down under the heading 'personhood.' This may irritate some readers, for whom the whole thing should simply be about personhood in relation to anhypostastis. But I want to sketch out something different first.

Some preliminary questions

Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem was where heaven and earth were joined together. It was a wood and stone structure in which God dwelled, dwelling there in the form of his 'Name' and his 'Glory.' Are we aware of how much that carries over into the New Testament understanding of Jesus?

Jesus is the new Temple.(The incarnation is actually conceived of in Temple language in John 1:14.)  In him, heaven and earth are joined together. Can we relate this to how, in the incarnation, his humanity and divinity are joined together? Could this help us to see how his divine nature is joined to his human nature? (Albeit 'you can't see the join' - a joke for British readers!)

Two perspectives on biblical anthropology should be noted for thinking about Jesus' human nature. Can we apply to Jesus in his incarnation a New Testament anthropology in terms of him being body, soul/mind, and Spirit? (May we speak of either a bipartite humanity with special reference to his flesh (sarx in John 1:14), or a tripartite humanity - human body, human mind, human spirit (pneuma, psyche and soma in in 1 Thess 5:23)? It doesn't necessarily matter which of those two perspectives of biblical anthropology we hold to for the purposes of this discussion, as you will see. It's just well to be aware that there are these two perspectives, to be aware of the assumptions we bring. 

I'm going to explore an analogy which will help to make room for me to ask this question: can we speak in broad terms of Jesus' humanity as being the temple of his divinity? That can be broken down. Should we limit that to his body/flesh being the temple in which he dwells? Or can we go further? Is his human consciousness the temple of his divine mind? 

Analogy: Christians and the Holy Spirit

I want to make an analogy with 'ordinary' Christians. We who are not God, not deities, not divine. In Christians, God's Holy Spirit dwells. Does this mean that in the ordinary Christian, we who are not God, not deities, that we are earthly temples in which the eternal infinite Holy Spirit is able to dwell in some miraculous way - the infinite dwelling in the finite, the immortal dwelling in the mortal, the divine Spirit dwelling in non-divine human bodies? 

Our mind

Can the infinite mind of God dwell within such small creatures as ourselves, with such small brains? The issue here is not really the capacity of the human brain/body to house God so much as the capacity of the infinite Holy Spirit to dwell in such small creatures as ourselves. If God wanted to, he could make a silicon chip into which to download everything he knows. The smallness of Jesus as a human being with a body isn't a problem, so long as we remember that God can dwell as he wishes, and be incarnate as he wishes. 

Is this what Paul posits as the normal experience of the ordinary Christian? That is, Paul who is, in New Testament language, born again, born of the Spirit from above. Is he a finite temple of the indwelling infinite divine Spirit?

Our body

Is it fair then to say that our whole personal humanity is a temple of the divine Holy Spirit? Or should we limit our statement to saying that only our bodies are a temple of the divine Holy Spirit? Does this distinction in use of terms matter or not in this dialogue? All worth thinking about, because our experience matters as an analogy as we come, shortly, to think about the incarnation of Jesus.

Is the Christian experience - which includes the still small voice speaking inwardly to us, the nudges and occasionally words of the indwelling Holy Spirit - can we speak of this as the mind of God speaking to our minds? Can we as temples then speak therefore of the mind of God being revealed to our minds by the Spirit, who is dwelling within us? Can we speak of all this as an inward experience, of this happening within us? As a 'temple experience,' if you like.

Can we humans, we Christians, speak of being the body of Christ? Are we joined to Christ as his body, in some substantial way beyond metaphor? That is surely a view found in the New Testament. 

Our spirit

If our human bodies are joined to Christ's body, are our human spirits also joined to the Spirit of Christ? There is such a think as spirit if we are body, soul and spirit. Note Luke 8:55 which tells of a girl raised from the dead as "her spirit returned." Or 1 Corinthians 6:17: "he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him." Or Romans 8:16 where his Spirit is joined with our spirit. Or 1 Corinthians 14:14: "For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful."

So, to reframe it... is it that only our bodies are joined to his indwelling Spirit? Or is it that, in particular, our human spirits are joined to his Spirit? Is this what it means for us to be alive in the Spirit? If we are temples of the Holy Spirit, is the Spirit attached to us so closely that we partake of the divine nature? We who are not divine, not God, not deities?

As part of the body of Christ, is it that we are able to be temples of divinity by extension from Christ? (Because he is a temple of divinity first. That is, he is both temple, in the biblical language of the temple of his body, and he is the divine presence within the temple - John 1:14.) So, is that what makes it possible for us Christians to be temples of the Holy Spirit - by extension from Christ? This seems to be what Paul thought. 

So those were some questions about being human, about being body and mind and spirit, about being temples.

Back to Jesus

From our understanding of being Christians, of being those who are not deities but are temples of God's Spirit, can we make an analogy to how Jesus is to be understood in his incarnation, in his experience? Let's see if the analogy is useful.

Can we use that analogy of human experience to talk about him? Of course we are moving on to something different from we who are not deities. Is the fact that Jesus is both the temple and also the divine presence within the temple (John 1:14) a basis for understanding how his human nature is joined to his divine nature? Is Temple theology a language we can use to reframe dialogue around hypostatic union?

Is the Christian experience of our merely human minds intimately knowing the mind of God's indwelling Spirit, is this experience an analogy that can help us to understand Jesus, to help us understand the consciousness of his human nature joined to his divine mind, the Logos? Is the temple of the body a helpful key to understanding here? 

If the infinite mind of God can dwell within such small human creatures as ourselves, by the indwelling Holy Spirit, then surely there is no problem with the infinite mind of God being in Jesus - if veiled from his consciousness, none the less there? (No less there in the mind of Jesus than in the mind of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling Holy Spirit.) After all, John says that to Jesus the Spirit was given without limit.

Does bringing the imago dei into the question assist us here? If we are saying that humanity is in the image of divinity, and that this image is perfect in Jesus - which Judaeo-Christian tradition asserts - is it not then simply a good fit for Jesus' humanity to be the temple of his divinity? Is it not a good fit for Jesus' consciousness to be the temple of his divine mind? Is this where the theology of the imago dei should take us? 

Personhood

This shifts the question away slightly from questions of personhood. 

As I said, to my mind, a person is simply a person. Be that a divine person or a human person, a person is a person. With or without a body, a person is a person. That's why I think that personhood in relation to Christ's anhypostastis isn't the big issue that some make it out to be. I will argue that Christ's personhood is as much natural in human nature as in divine nature. 

Some commentators speak as if personhood amounts to different things if it's 'divine' personhood or 'human' personhood. But frankly there is no agreement on what 'personhood' actually is in the first place, so that seems to me an unsure foundation for any conclusion. Similarly, there is a problem when people talk about 'divine' personhood or 'human' personhood, because it's not clear often whether they are really talking about being a 'person' at all, or whether they are actually just speaking about divine and human attributes.

I would venture that to be a human person simply means to be someone with the imago dei (image of God) who is known to God, and that personhood is thus relational. As such, asking whether Jesus is a 'human' person is not necessarily to understand anything. You are human, you are a person, and you are known to God: therefore you are a human person. To be human, you have to have humanity, not to lack divinity. 

This seems to me to have plenty of explanatory power for the personhood of Christ in the incarnation. Christ is the very stamp of the image of God and Christians bear that image because of him. 

If a human is made in the image of God - and Christ is the image of God - then this Jesus, being known to his Father as exactly the imago dei, this is enough to account for a personhood that is as much at home in human nature as in divine nature. 

This is Christ: one imago dei, one who is known to the Father in his humanity and in his divinity, one person. 

I don't hold a binary premise (some do) that in order to be human, you first have to lack divinity, or be independent of deity. I don't see any logic in that binary premise, and it's certainly not a premise for being 'human' that I can see in the Bible. What I do find is that to be human, you have to have the imago dei, and there is nothing better suited for being both human and divine. Christ can be the imago dei in both humanity and deity, even if the rest of us have the imago dei in humanity only. 

A human mind for instance is basically a mind made to be fit the likeness of the imago dei. Romans 11:34 speaks of the mind (νοῦς) of the Lord: "Who has known the mind of the Lord?" It doesn't say the Lord doesn't have a mind or that the Lord's mind is utterly unlike a human mind. But its reach is different. It reaches further without limit. A mind is a mind. Someone with a low IQ is no less a person that Albert Einstein was. Compared to Einstein, Jesus' mind had the greater reach, but it doesn't mean that one of them isn't a person, or that one of them lacks humanity. A mind is a mind. 1 Corinthians 2:16 says "we have the mind (νοῦς) of Christ." Luke 24:45 says Christ "opened their minds." Minds of those with the imago dei are relatable to each other. The human race is capable of rational thought because it was made by the Logos. The incarnation makes sense. (By the way, the Christological debates of the first Christian millennium didn't really debate the concept of the 'mind' in the incarnation, but they did debate the concept of 'will.')

All secular attempts to define personhood run the risk of being potential tools of eugenics, as they usually have a reference to a potential for rational thought, for instance, which could be used to deny personhood to people with dementia. A definition of personhood as being someone with the imago dei who is known to God avoids that risk. It also helps us understand why there is no intrinsic problem in Christ adopting human nature joined to his divine nature. It's also why I believe Temple theology is an aid in rethinking hypostatic union. 

Closing questions

Does it mean we can speak of Jesus having a human consciousness and a divine mind? Is his human consciousness the temple of his divine mind? Is that going too far? 

Is his whole humanity the temple of his whole divinity? Or is merely his body the temple of his divinity (John 1:14)? 

If he is redeeming our whole humanity, is it sufficient to limit his body/flesh to be the temple of his divinity? Or does it make more sense to think of his whole humanity being the temple of his divinity? To reframe that, can we think of Jesus' human nature being the temple of his divinity?

But in short, how can the language of temple theology best be adjusted for dialogue about hypostatic union, within orthodoxy? Can the language of temple theology refresh dialogue around hypostatic Christology? Is the hypostatic union basically this: that Jesus' whole humanity is the temple of his whole divinity?

Will this help us to work through some of the knottier questions around hypostatic union? That is my hope in presenting these outline questions.

I will leave these questions hanging for the moment, in the hope of further discussion.

Some articles on the subject of hypostatic union for background

The advantage of these is that they are short! 

https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/tsysk1/

https://www.gotquestions.org/enhypostasis-anhypostasis.html 

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2008/11/en-and-an/

Jesus and omniscience (in honour of Roger Forster)

Here are some of the answers I've given when I've been asked about how Jesus in his humanity relates to aspects of his divinity.

Omniscience and God

A question that will arise in this post is this: does God have any power to veil any of the future of our world from his own view? Or does omniscience always dictate this? 

Short version: did Jesus know all things?

I am rather drawn by the view of the late great Roger Forster. Firstly, that "being able to put things out of one's mind" is something that God can do, and that God does do, in Scripture, so it's not alien to God to decide not to call something to mind. Secondly, that if Jesus wanted to draw on that information, he could at any time because "he had the Spirit without limit" and it is the Spirit that "knows all things." So not accessing such information was for Jesus a choice, not a disability. It's a bit like kenosis except it's saying that putting things out of one's mind is a choice God has just as much as any human has. So this is not a conflict of natures. 

People may ask, "Why did Jesus not know the day and the time?" (You probably know the verse.) Where to start? Start with Jesus.

Omniscience and Jesus of Nazareth

In his time on earth, were the faculties of Jesus’ divine nature fully conscious of his human nature?

Yes, we can believe that the faculties of Jesus’ divine nature were fully conscious of his human nature. More on that further below.

Does it automatically follow that Jesus' human nature was fully conscious of everything he knew in his divine nature?

No, it does not necessarily follow that his human nature was fully conscious of all that he could know in his divine nature. 

Did Jesus' divine mind forget everything it had ever known? No. Can Jesus' human consciousness draw on it? That's asking the right question.

Let's explore this. We rightly expect that Jesus' human nature while on earth was as limited as our human nature, for example in the scope of human awareness. (Although within this, he went further. He knew his heavenly Father in a way we do not. But I don't want to get too much off the topic.)

So, can Jesus' human consciousness draw upon his divine mind? And can he choose to leave knowledge veiled, like in his human unconscious faculties, so to speak? 

Think about Jesus. As a human Jesus, like you, multi-tasked with staying alive while not being consciously physically aware of everything his body was doing (you are pumping blood round your body, breaking your food down to send nutrition round your body, without you having a never-ending conscious thought about it every second). And on a more psychological level, like you, Jesus would have had levels of consciousness of which he would naturally be unaware much of the time. This isn’t just a view of modern psychology but of the Bible: "The purposes of a man's heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out" (Proverbs 20:5). Jesus was like this.

So we suggest that Jesus, in his human experience, could have related to His divine nature as he would have related to those "deep waters" of his own unconscious mind so to speak: "The purposes of a man's heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out".

(By the way, Jesus reading God’s word (in the Old Testament) would have an obvious means to draw on this side of his identity, and I see passages where Jesus takes the words of YHWH and uses them of himself, and I can read them in that light.)

Human consciousness does not comprehend the infinity of the divine mind. As he was made just like us, it was surely impossible for Jesus's limited human consciousness to apprehend the limitless scope of his divine mind. This is very much at the heart of the incarnation. This meant Jesus from childhood could grow intellectually, as we must do.

In any case it was surely unnecessary for Jesus to know at the level of his human consciousness all that his divine nature was doing just as it was unnecessary for him to know the rate at which blood was pumping round his body, etc. Jesus was one person growing, learning as one of us, without being aware in his human consciousness of exactly what his body was doing in terms of his human heart rate or the work of his gut bacteria every second of the day, or fully conscious in terms of his divine capacity.

In the flesh

Jesus' humanity was the temple of his divinity. They are joined, just as heaven and earth are joined.

When you stand on the seashore with water lapping your toes, are you on land or in the sea? Answer: both, because that is where these places overlap. So it is with heaven and earth, which meet in the temple, according to the Bible. So it is with Jesus, being both human and divine. His humanity was the temple of his divinity. If it sounded like I was saying that Jesus was in heaven and earth at the same time, that wouldn't be too far off.

In ancient Jerusalem, in the Holy of Holies, the temple was in heaven and earth at the same time, and God is in both at the same time. The temple was the meeting place of heaven and earth. Like the man standing on the seashore, so on land and in the sea at the same time, thus it is with heaven and earth. In ancient Israel, the idea of God being in more than one place at once, would not have been controversial. It was the worldview of the Jews who worshipped at the temple.

Jesus, says the New Testament, is the new temple. Heaven and earth meet in his body. At the same time, his humanity was the temple of his divinity. 

In ancient Israel, prayers went to heaven through God’s presence in the temple – the Jews prayed facing towards the temple. Heaven and earth were joined together in the Holy of Holies. That is why they did this. Of course, Jesus' followers transferred these beliefs to him: he is the true temple, and we pray to God through him; in him is God’s presence.

John 1:14 says "ho logos sarx egeneto" traditionally rendered in English as "the Word became flesh".  John's epistles add clarification. They function almost like commentaries on the main themes of his gospel. 1 John 4:2 says "Jesus Christ came in the flesh". The Greek is "en sarki" ("in flesh"). This is no accident. Indeed it is repeated in 2 John 7 which speaks of "Jesus Christ coming in the flesh". The Greek again is "en sarki" ("in flesh").  The meaning of “become flesh” is that the Word added human nature to his divine nature.

But at a more basic level, we can also recognise a familiar way for early Christians to speak. For 2 Corinthians 5:1-8 speaks of our own bodies as something we inhabit. It mentions "the earthly tent we live in" in which "we groan" while we long "to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling". It sums up this human condition by saying in verse 6, "while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord". (A similar idea is in Philippians 1:21-24.) We are not just flesh in these verses. Our body is something we are "clothed" in, and we inhabit it. 

So it should not be too difficult to think of the Word being in flesh.

 

Omniscience and forgetting and remembering 

"Who has known the mind of the Lord?" (1 Corinthians 2:16).

If one were to suppose that God is always conscious of all of the facts of the universe, the latest count of every tin can in the world etc - this is how some people seem to contemplate God's omniscience - that would mean God is really also still thinking about all our forgiven sins all the time, even though he has actually told us that, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more" (Hebrews 10:17 - RSV). What a horrible thing it would be to suppose that God cannot stop thinking about all our moments of sin just when we are before him enjoying the embrace of his love, his presence. 

God deals with this. God said he would remember them no more. What God reveals to us in verses like this (see also Hebrews 8:12 and Jeremiah 31:34 for example) is that God can choose to put things out of his own mind, so he is NOT thinking about all our forgiven sins every time we pray to him for example. God does as he says: "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more".

This should not be strange. God should be able to do what we can do and more. We humans have the ability to put things out of our minds. If we were to deny God the same ability, we make him out to be less than us! And then we make him into a grotesque God who can't stop thinking about our acts of sin! So we should let go of any such unscriptural distortions of omniscience. According to scripture God can put things out of his mind, and can remember things at will.

Omniscience doesn't control God. It's the other way round.

So God chooses to remember what he chooses to remember. So he faithfully chooses to remember his covenant with Israel (Luke 1:52) for example.

"Who has known the mind of the Lord?" (1 Corinthians 2:16). But we humans who barely know the depths of the mind of the Lord hold such firm opinions about it that are inconsistent with scripture, especially about his omniscience! Sometimes the way God's omniscience is spoken of, you'd be left wondering if an omniscient God can never stop thinking about all of Delia Smith's recipes and every McDonald's hamburger for all of eternity. Why should he do that if he had any power over his omniscience? 

Now that we know a little more of what God has revealed about his mind in scripture, we can apply this lesson to what we know of his eternal Word. In the incarnation, the eternal Word puts things out of his mind. Indeed he puts everything out of his mind when he first appears in the flesh as a baby. And so, as he grew up, "He increased in wisdom and in years" Luke 2:52.

He experienced revelation, no doubt as he read scripture that prophesied his coming, or as he heard Mary tell him about the angel's words before she conceived Jesus. In such moments imagine the resonance in his unconscious with the things put out of his consciousness. Imagine revelation erupting within his thoughts, for example reading Isaiah and recognising that he himself would be the Suffering Servant whom Isaiah foretold. So Jesus' developed in wisdom, as these things resonated deep within him. "The purposes of a man's heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out" (Proverbs 20:5). 

When Jesus (before the resurrection) said about end time events, "only the Father knows the day and time... not the son", we are in another of these moments. The incarnate Son is only going to know in his consciousness what the Father wants him to be conscious of. So the wonderful thing is that although much greater knowledge is there deep in Jesus' unconscious, he is obedient to the Father and he will not pull it out, having already put it out of his conscious mind. The eternal Word in the bosom of the Father has put such things out of his mind. In this way, Jesus is like his Father who, according to scripture, can put things out of his own mind: "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more".

Jesus' consciousness at death

God vividly experienced what was happening in the death of a man on the cross. Two natures interacted. Jesus is of two natures, but not two parts, so it wouldn't be right to say the 'human part' dies and the 'divine part' lives because he is a unity, not two parts. The two natures are married as one. The divine nature is immortal, the human nature is mortal (especially because the wages of sin is death, and Jesus bore the wages of our sin - death). How did the two natures interact? God vividly experienced it.

It won't do so suggest, as some do, that the divine Word did not undergo this experience and that a totally separate being died (such a saying would be akin to the heresy of Cerinthus). 

The truth is easily shown from scripture. In John 15:13 Jesus says, "No one has greater love than this, that one should lay down his life for his friends." (Darby translation). 

No one has greater love than the love of Jesus laying down his life for us. 

If one were to hold that Jesus is not God, then that forces on scripture an interpretation in which the self-sacrificing Jesus showed greater love than God is capable of. That would be a theological problem. What a perverse view of God that would be. Only the death of God's incarnation answers this problem: God truly experienced in himself the death of a man on the cross. This is not patripassianism, because what I am talking about is a person of the Trinity, the Son, and the empathy that the Father has for his son.

This dovetails with the Christian of whether a Christian, alive in the Spirit, is conscious after death in an intermediate state. I'll deal with that in a separate post, as it is worth a separate post. 

Red herrings

In the context of this subject, people have brought up about Jesus learning obedience, and ask why. (Hebrews 5:8) Why would he need to learn anything? And some go even further and assume that learning obedience means Jesus learning his way out of disobedience. We can dismiss that as a misunderstanding. Rather, Jesus is all the time learning instructions and obeying them, like a student to a master, like an acolyte rising in steps. This is what it means to learn obedience. It is like training. It is training. Not like learning his way out of disobedience.

Some ask, if he is omniscient, how come the Son of God has to receive a revelation in Revelation 1:1? This is even more of a red herring, as I explain here.

Knowing the time of the end: Mark 13:32 / Matthew 24:26

What about Mark 13:32 / Matthew 24:36? "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[f] but only the Father." Let's answer first regarding Jesus, then the Holy Spirit.

Jesus

As already said, Jesus of Nazareth was closed off from some knowledge while on earth.

This verse reveals what can be veiled from his consciousness for the purposes of his mission on earth. Jesus has the Spirit without limit, and this is the Spirit of the Father, and there is nothing that the Spirit of the Father lacks. (John 3:34; 1 Cor 2:11; Matt 10:20) Having the Spirit without limit, he could choose to know. Or he choose to leave it veiled. But he sticks to his mission, that of being made like us. 

In principle, Jesus can potentially know all things because he has the Spirit without limit. As 1 Cor 2:11 for example says, "no-one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." The Spirit knows the Father's thoughts. And Jesus has the Spirit without limit, so he could know all things unless his consciousness be veiled. As Colossians 2:3 speaks of him: "Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." That's all knowledge, all in Christ.

Having the Spirit without limit, he has both the power and the ability to choose to know. The Holy Spirit is God's unlimited power, and as for Jesus - he is called the Power of God and, as it says, he has the Spirit without limit.  (Interesting to note: 'Spirit without limit' is ontological. Knowledge is functional, something that God has control over, not the other way round.)  So not knowing the time of the end is about what is veiled from his consciousness for the purposes of his mission on earth. So, Jesus sticks to his mission with no compromise. It remains veiled from his consciousness in his mode of mission.

This can go further still. Jesus and the Father (and the Spirit) are mutually indwelling. The Father's level of omniscience is the standard touchstone (although that omniscience doesn't subsist, I would argue, without the Spirit's role - see below). And as Jesus is in his Father in a unique way, and vice versa, that makes a difference to Jesus' access to omniscience too. And as Jesus says more specifically, all that belongs to the Father belongs to Jesus. What the Father knows is therefore always potentially accessible to Jesus, without limit again. All in all, it is difficult to deny Jesus rightful access to omniscience. Where we see something different, it comes down to what is veiled in the incarnation. There's access, and there is veiling. It's about the incarnation.

The Holy Spirit

But does the Holy Spirit know all things? The very being of the Father cannot exclude the Spirit of the Father. It is his own Spirit. Pushing "only the Father knows" to extremes would be a bit irrational. If the Father knows, the Spirit of the Father knows. They are indivisible, and it goes without saying. 

As I said, we should not push "alone" to extremes. For example, does the Lord 'alone' being holy in Rev 15:4 mean the Son is unholy? Of course not. "Only" does not exclude Jesus here. We shouldn't press "only" to the point of treating it like binary computer code. In a less striking example, does Jesus being described as 'alone' in John 8:9 mean the woman wasn't there? Of course not. The text doesn't actually say he was "alone with" her but it obviously means that. And only the accusers are said to have left; the witnessing crowd aren't said to have left. "Only" doesn't exclude the woman and the crowd. As I say, we shouldn't think the Bible speaks like binary computer code. It speaks with the fluency of human language. 

In summary, the Father knows the time of the end to the extent it is knowable (see below), and consequently the Spirit of the Father knows, but it's veiled from Jesus' own consciousness to honour his mode of mission, which had not fully run its course yet.

Addendum on this passage in Mark and Matthew

There is something else misunderstood about this verse which is worth mentioning. 

People assume from this verse that the Father already knew the time of the end, of the eschaton, and they contrast this with Jesus not knowing. But look closely.  

To suppose simplistically that the Father already knew the time of the end ignores that the Father is holding back from deciding when the end will come, and he urges us to help make the time of the end sooner rather than later. That's what 2 Peter 3:9-12 says. God has determined that there will be such an occasion, but Peter prevents us from thinking foolishly that the date of the occasion has been set. (You get something similar from Paul in Acts.) Peter only confirms that there will be such an occasion, and that the date is unfixed, and that we can help make that date sooner rather than later.

If one were to suppose that Jesus was saying that the Father actually did know a set time, would that be Jesus having an off day? 

What then did Jesus mean? It's not difficult to read the text as Jesus' own way of saying that the decision about the timing (the yet-to-be-decided timing) was under the Father's authority, and no-one else's authority. But that doesn't commit the Father to knowing when that will be yet. And it means that Jesus was not saying that he lacked knowledge of a fixed date that was known to the Father. So that assertion falls. It was deferring the question to where the authority lay. Jesus was only expressing his 'functional subordination' to the Father which is common ground for Trinitarians and non-Trinitarians.

So this is nor really about omniscience. But, as already said, Jesus was closed off from some knowledge. (Also see footnote 1 below.) Jesus had to wait to have full knowledge because he was made flesh, he had to be made just like his brothers as the scripture says, so while he was with us on earth it was appropriate for him to relate to the Father as one made flesh. It's only prior to the resurrection that Jesus operated within human limitations.  After the resurrection we see him in his glorified state. The omniscience of the resurrected Son is asserted by John 21:17 "Lord, thou knowest all things".

Some might say "surely God would know anyway?" But that owes more to Greek conceptions of perfection than to the Biblical God. God in the Bible is not portrayed quite like that. 

Some people think of omniscience as if it were something that just happens to God, something that God has no control over. Omniscience afflicts him. As if God has no choice, no way to stop thinking about the latest count of tin cans, Hamburgers and sins. This is hardly an adequate view of God. God chooses. God will be what God will be. God chooses to know as God chooses to know. If God chooses to search hearts – or not to search hearts – it is his prerogative. If God chooses to look upon evil, it is his prerogative. If God chooses to remember your sins no more – or to remember them – it is his prerogative. God can choose to veil things from his thoughts. God calls to his mind whatever he wills, he searches what he wills, he looks upon what he wills. God is self-controlled. He will be what he will be. The idea of a God who would know without any choice in the matter, is the God of Greek philosophy. The Father and the Son both choose to know and remember whatever they wish. Of course people may want a God who isn't like that, but they may not get it.

Greek philosophy influenced the classical idea of God, in which God is effectively subordinate to omniscience in some of the clumsiest versions of the doctrine. It is based on ancient Greek ideas of perfection. The classical God has to have knowledge of the number of tin cans at the bottom of the ocean at every moment in history for all eternity. He has no choice in the matter. He may not need to know, but he is subordinate to omniscience.

Again God may want to forget your sins, to see the spotless white robes provided by the Lamb of God. But the classical philosophical God, even as he listens to the prayers of the most holy saint, is unable to shake off the impression of the saint's former sins. These scarlet sins are ever before the eyes of this kind of omniscient God, because he is subordinate to omniscience. The saint lovingly uttering, 'Abba Father,' faces a God who is still visualising him in sin. This is the omniscient God of Greek philosophy. It is not, thankfully, the Biblical God. 

Conclusions

I am rather drawn by the view of the late great Roger Forster. Firstly, that "being able to put things out of one's mind" is something that God can do, and that God does do in Scripture, so it's not alien to God to decide not to call something to mind. Secondly, that if Jesus wanted to draw on that information, he could at any time because "he had the Spirit without limit" and it is the Spirit that "knows all things." So, not accessing such information was, for Jesus, a choice, not a disability. It's a bit like kenosis theory except it's saying that putting things out of one's mind is a choice God has just as much as any human has. So this is not a conflict of natures. 

By the way, I've tried to avoid technical terms such as partitive exegesis, which means an interpretative approach designed to discern the different 'registers' as to Christ's human and divine natures as observed in Scripture. So, in my plainer language, these are my main points:

The Biblical God is in command of his own faculties. He can choose to 'remember your sins no more,' because he is not subordinate to omniscience. Omniscience is subject to the love of God.

So, the Biblical God can put things out of his mind, veil things from his thoughts. The Biblical God has choice. He is not forced by omniscience to keep count. If God wants to count something or remember something, it is so out of love, not out of slavery to omniscience.

The Biblical God is embodied in Jesus of Nazareth who could veil things from his mind. In this state, Jesus could have things revealed to him by his Father. Just like the Father can veil his mind from our sins or remember them.

The 'classical' God of philosophy cannot do these things. This is the Biblical God. He's better than the classical God.

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This post is dedicated to the memory of the late Roger Forster, by whom I was so graciously and charitably tutored, and to whom I owe the best of these insights. As for the rest of it, all the stuff of a lower standard, is down to me.

On issues of divine omniscience and foreknowledge, Roger was happy to dialogue with theologians who hold to the Open View of God, such as Greg Boyd, without nailing his colours to that mast. For Roger's views, please see his work in God's Strategy in Human History. Roger opens the question of whether an omnipotent God can choose to veil the future from his own eyes so as to enable true relationship with free-will beings he has created.

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Footnote 1: Jehovah's Witnesses and the foreknowledhge of God 

We have seen that Trinitarians can say that Jesus is closed off from some knowledge. By a curious coincidence, there is a Watchtower teaching that Jehovah is closed off from some knowledge. Their Watchtower teaches that:

1) Jehovah chooses not to know some things, thus limiting his foreknowledge of the future (“Foreknowledge, Foreordination,” Insight on the Scriptures Vol. 1, pg 851-860; 1988);

2) Jehovah gains knowledge from his information-gathering angels (Watchtower, 1^st August 1970, pg 471);

3) Jehovah did not foreknow the fall of Adam and Eve (Watchtower, 1^st June 1953, pg 341).

This view of foreknowledge is precisely the sort of thing people say about Jesus. Any suggestion from Jehovah's Witnesses that that makes ‘Jesus’ less than ‘Jehovah’, therefore falls away.

Further reading:

A fascinating article on Ambrose's views on the Son knowing the day and the hour: https://www.readreflectwrite.com/2021/06/ambrose-nicene-defense-of-jesus-not.html

What goes for Jesus: does it go for the Archangel Michael or not?

 

I have said in an earlier post why in some ways I have admiration for those who call themselves one of  Jehovah’s witnesses. So this time, rather than repeat myself, I'll get straight to the problem.

When I have listened to witnesses talk about their belief that Jesus is actually the Archangel Michael - that is what Jehovah's witnesses believe - I find it leaves problems unsolved.

The following problem is particularly key. Jesus is in a very exalted position in Christian scripture. If the Kingdom Halls' beliefs are correct, it should be possible to replace the word ‘Jesus’ with the word ‘Angel’ in scripture verses, without doing damage to the sense of it. You may never have thought of trying it. But it's a good way to test this. 

Let’s test it then as an exercise just for this one post only. I’ll try substituting the word ‘Angel’ for ‘Jesus’ or for ‘Christ’ in a series of New Testament verses about Jesus below. See how it sounds to you. Especially if you are a believer, how does this strike your spiritual sensibilities?

 

To start with, ‘the body of Christ’ in Ephesians 4:12 would be ‘the body of the Angel.’ You get the idea now. This would be what you get: "to knit God's holy people together for the work of service to build up the body of THE ANGEL". My question: how does this unusual statement strike you? And why believe you are the body of an angel?

 

And Ephesians 5:30-32? - "we are parts of the ANGEL's body... the two become one flesh. This mystery has great significance, but I am applying it to the ANGEL and the church". My question: why would you want to be one flesh with an angel?

 

Or Philippians 2? - “at the name of THE ANGEL every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that THE ANGEL is Lord”. My question to believers: do you bow to angels? (Have you read Revelation?)

 

Or Ephesians 5:19-20? - “sing and make melody in your heart to THE ANGEL”.  My question: why ever practice such devotions to an angel?

 

Or 1 Peter 3:15? - "sanctify THE ANGEL as Lord in your hearts". My question: why practice such devotions to an angel? Surely that is ill-judged religion.

 

How about Revelation 5:13? - "to the ANGEL be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever!" My question: why ever practice such vocal devotion and adoration to an angel?

 

Or 2 Thessalonians 1:12 - ‘That the name of THE ANGEL may be glorified in you’. My question: Who should such honour really be given to?

 

Or how about God's purposes, revealed in John 5:23? - "that all may honour the ANGEL just as they honour the Father." My question: why give to an angel honour on a par to the God the Father? How is that ever true religion?

 

Or Galatians 3:29? - "simply by being the ANGEL's, you are the progeny of Abraham". My question: do you agree that this is out of place, bizarre, and inappropriate?

 

Or Matthew 28:19? - "baptise them in the name of the Father and of the ANGEL and of the Holy Spirit". My question: would you ever baptise people in the name of an angel?

 

Or Colossians 3:16? - "whatever you say or do, let it be in the name of THE ANGEL". My question: why ever put an angel at the centre of your religious practices?

 

Or 1 Peter 2:3 - 'ye have tasted, that the ANGEL is sweet'. My question: why would you ever taste an angel?

 

Or Philippians 3:8? - "For THE ANGEL's sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain THE ANGEL". My question: why would anyone ever do that for an angel?

Or Romans 16:7? - "my kinsmen and fellow-prisoners, who were in THE ANGEL before me". That would be bizarre.

Or Colossians 1:15? - "THE ANGEL is the image of the unseen God". That would be incorrect theology by any stretch of the imagination.

Or Romans 14:18? - "It is the person who serves THE ANGEL in these things that will be approved by God". That would be deeply questionable.

How about, ‘there is one mediator between God and man, the ANGEL Jesus Christ’. These are precisely the sorts of things the New Testament does not say.

How about Acts 7:59? – “And they went on casting stones at Stephen as he made appeal and said: “Oh ANGEL, receive my spirit.”” Pretty bad, isn’t it?

 

My question then: why would anyone ever want to practice a religion revolving like this around an angel? It is surely misplaced to even think it.

Endnote

As shocked as I may feel about all this, one has to understand that Jehovah's Witnesses actually believe that they represent one greater than Jesus. 

They therefore believe that in their hierarchy, they represent a higher position by proxy, whereas Jesus represents a lower position, They literally describe Jesus as "inferior." 

That is, they think they represent someone superior (Jehovah). (Jehovah "superior," Jesus "inferior." That's their mantra.) 

This helps to explain why some Jehovah's Witnesses are keen to say that Jehovah is Almighty and Jesus is not. They don't consider themselves to be representatives of the "inferior" Jesus. They consider themselves to be representatives of Jesus' superior. This makes me feel quite queasy. 

As though they think that their Michael-Jesus is on one side of the equation whilst they are on the better side of the equation. 

It may well make them insensitive to how shocking it sounds to orthodox Christians. But when the Jehovah's Witnesses relegate Jesus to being an angel (archangel) and "inferior," all of this is going on in the minds of their organisation. However, ordinary JW members have probably never felt free to do the kind of analysis I have done above. 

(If you were to wonder how that reconciles with representing the "body of Christ", it doesn't have to, for Jehovah's Witnesses generally, as they reserve "body of Christ" for their "144,000." Which means they don't have to think through being the body of Christ.) 

 

The Jehovah's Witnesses 'two gods' conundrum

 

I’ve long been fascinated by a conundrum in the beliefs of those who say they are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ve never seen a satisfactory solution to my question.

It will reveal the problem of believing in two gods, following two gods, adoring two gods, singing to two gods, and being saved by two gods. This is not normal Christianity.

Now I just want to say that I admire them in some tangible respects. If they were my next-door neighbours, I would feel confident that I had honest well-behaved neighbours whom I could trust. And I actually admire how they try not to be swept to and fro by the ever-changing culture of the fast-changing modern world, even if I don’t necessarily agree on their stances sometimes. And insofar as there is a genuine appetite for reading the Bible, I admire that too. Indeed, there is inevitably common ground with the mainstream of Bible-reading Christians, even if the narrative they tell themselves as a group is that this is not so. Even if they tell themselves that they stand in opposition to mainstream Christianity. I always like to acknowledge common ground.

 

Recognising there's a problem

This conundrum, though. It’s a belief and practice thing. 

In their NWT translation, their John 1:1 says "with God... was a god." In total, how many gods does one count there? 

I know my readers are very capable to answer this. If a version says "with God... was a god," how many gods do you count in total? 

A total of two gods, clearly. It should be easy for anyone to give the total in a single word.

Their version of the whole verse reads: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a god." So to reframe the question: according to that, how many gods in total in the beginning? It has to be two. There would surely be no satisfactory way to argue for translating the verse that way and then deny that the count is, obviously two.

Some of form of avoiding saying 'two' will typically arise though. A Jehovah's Witness will respond that these are gods in different senses. But as a matter of simple addition, it's a statement of some kind of two gods, and that's what their John's Gospel begins with. It's an emphatic beginning to his Gospel, so the way it's translated matters. Two gods in complete harmony, perhaps, but two gods to be counted in that translation. 

That is, they believe Jesus is rightfully called a god, in some sense, and in a different sense from God the Father. Sometimes they will qualify them as a 'mighty god' and 'almighty God' but that reinforces that their John 1:1 has a total of two gods.

I rather hoped for some frankness in conversation over this, when I have discussed it, and one time, an answer was given back to me rather cleverly, thus:

 "One God.

  One god."

Spot the different case 'G' and 'g'? Clearly willing to delineate a difference, but not willing to use the word 'two.' We need to understand why. I could have waited all day and the plain answer "two gods" wasn't going to be given back to me. That there's a problem with the answer should already be becoming apparent. Further enquiry saw something of a smokescreen appear.

Smokescreen of gods

I was given a standard Jehovah's Witness reply: that the word 'god' or 'gods' is applied to various beings in the Bible, be it angels, kings and rulers, even Satan, and, indeed, God. Words all clumped together as if that were enough to throw me off my line of questioning. It's not enough. There are various categories of biblical so-called '#gods,' but Jehovah's Witnesses, fairly conventionally, don't believe that any of them is like YHWH God in his divinity. In principle anyway,  

Clumping all that together under the category 'gods' is therefore just obscuring their cosmology behind a cloud of words. And here's the thing: depending who is the subject - Jesus or some - called gods - these identities mean incomparably different things for different 'gods' to Jehovah's Witnesses. Through one of them, and only one of them, they believe creation was made: Jesus. And basically, they believe he was pre-existent before the creation of the cosmos. They believe he is a pre-existent divine heavenly being, unlike ordinary men or anything else. An incomparably different meaning from the other categories of 'gods' so trying to explain away that you can count two gods in their version of John 1:1 doesn't work. 

They believe both of them are unique, pre-existent, divine, heavenly beings with supernatural power on the cosmic universe-creating level. And they don't believe anyone or anything else is in that complex category. It is ticking so many boxes on the 'god-like characteristics indicator' that it is really unpersuasive to try to disqualify this from being a two-god system, e.g. by invoking some broader banner of 'gods' (such as men and angels). The significance of Jesus being called theos in John 1:1 is of a totally different kind of order.

There are only two gods they exercise faith in, only two gods they are following, only two gods they give adoration to, only two gods in heaven they sing to, only two gods they are being saved by. Mentioning other 'gods' may throw up clouds of smoke but we can still see what lies behind.

They are still left with two unique gods, despite the smokescreen. And that comes of splitting Jesus and the Father apart into two completely separate beings like two private individuals, which is the effect of saying "with God... was a god." 

Regardless how many contrasting categories of gods there may be, their John 1:1 is evidently a two god beginning, a two god creation, etc. Two unique, pre-existent, divine, heavenly beings prior to anything else. Two at the beginning, two at creation. Two contrasting gods of different kinds who are the two unique pre-existent divine heavenly beings, both supernaturally able on a cosmic universe-creating level. Unlike anything else that might bear the title 'gods.'

Sometimes, they will go just about as far as saying that Jesus is 'mighty god' and God the Father is 'almighty God.' That is still a total of two gods. If you call them different things, it is still two gods. That is, it's effectively exercising faith in both an almighty god and a mighty god. So, with their two gods of John 1:1 ("with God... was a god") whom they call Almighty God and mighty god respectively, it's two GODS to exercise faith in, two GODS to follow, two GODS to honour, two GODS to be saved by. It's very unlikely that John meant to start his gospel with two gods.

I have tried walking through this with Jehovah's Witnesses, and despite everything above, was given the stubborn answer on one occasion: "God’s anointed messiah was/is called god, as were other human beings, because they were sent by God and represented God on earth." So, feeling like this was just going round in circles, I simply answered that that's not a persuasive description of their faith, because I know they don't believe Jesus was 'a man' in the beginning and at creation, because they actually believe he was a divine heavenly being at that time. Given that they believe that in the beginning he was the pre-existent divine heavenly being through whom creation was made, referring to other 'gods' is a moot point. It's a two god creation with a higher heavenly being and a lower one. There are precedents for this kind of religion, as I will mention.

Let's move on to practical effects.

Following two gods

If you disconnect Jesus from the Father and split then apart into two separate beings, what practical implications does this have for worship? Let's turn to that now.

Well it means being believers in a second god (to deal with John 1:12). So that means believing in two gods.

Jehovah's Witnesses sing a song of praise to a heavenly Jesus \('Hail, Creation's Firstborn!') who they believe was their unique pre-existent  second divine heavenly being, with supernatural power on a cosmic universe-creating level. I'd love to see how a secular anthropologist could be persuaded that this is not a two god religion. That is, if these are split into two separate heavenly beings, that's the problem. Some Witnesses have said to me that "with God... was a god" is not two gods, but that's totally implausible. They have also referred to the same as 'Almighty God' and 'mighty god' and still said that's not two gods, but that's totally implausible.

As well as all this, do Jehovah’s witnesses today follow and bow the knee to two gods in some sense? I’m not even particularly asking if they worship them both. Just whether they today follow and bow the knee to two gods. 

Another of Jehovah’s Witnesses once wrote to me that he follows ‘one true God Jehovah the creator’, and that he follows ‘a created god, in essence, a lesser god, Jesus.’

Sadly, we lost contact many years ago. But clearly, he meant, in a carefully worded statement that he follows two gods, a greater and a lesser god, as he sees it. I admire him for his honesty. He said he worships only the former, not the latter, but he follows both gods. Now, this will sound odd to a mainstream Christian to whom the idea of this being two separate gods is very unorthodox. As I say, I asked how many gods he follows, and he gave me a frank answer - two. That’s a Jehovah’s witnesses position.

Let’s consider this.

 

Bowing the knee in adoration

Jehovah’s witnesses clarify what they mean about Jesus being ‘a lesser god’ typically by saying Jesus is an ‘angel,’ specifically the Archangel Michael, extending the idea of an ‘angel’ being in some sense ‘divine,’ a god. The words divine and god to have a rather wide semantic range. We can all acknowledge that as common ground. 

Sometimes they spread the net by referring to human 'gods,' using a pretty rare biblical phrase. But they especially have in mind that Jesus is the Archangel Michael. (In another post, I ask what happens if you consider that Jesus is the Archangel Michael.)

So it helps to look at scripture.

"To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb

be praise and honour and glory and power,

for ever and ever!"

(Revelation 5:13)

This passage of Scripture pictures bowing the knee to Jesus the lamb in adoration. (Effectively bowing the knee to two 'gods' in their view.)

Whether one chooses to call it worship or not (there are different Greek words for different kinds of religious reverence if you want to be picky), here’s the thing. Whether one chooses to call it worship or not, this scripture pictures a true Christian practice of bowing the knee in adoration to Jesus. We could illustrate the same from other scriptures.

It is clear, and the man who was writing to me didn’t dispute this, it is acceptable to Jehovah’s Witnesses to give the following adoration to an angel.

""To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb

be praise and honour and glory and power,

for ever and ever!"

(Revelation 5:13)

It ought to strike any Christian as problematic to bow the knee in vocal adoration to an angel. That is, this problematic meaning: “to the angel be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever." It’s just not Christian.

Jehovah’s witnesses deny ‘worshipping’ Jesus in the deepest religious sense. They tend to refer to this bowing the knee by the English word ‘obeisance’. (Translating the Greek word proskuneo.) That is, all the same, still surely problematic. Consider. What would the angel who objected to receiving obeisance in Rev 19:9 and 22:9 have said, if he saw a believer offering this adoration to an angel, saying effectively "to the angel be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever" ? The angel in Rev 19:9 and 22:9 was forbidding of giving him adoration or bowing the knee to him. This really is a problem. I find it difficult to understand how any Christian would think it acceptable to offer such vocal adoration as seen for Jesus in Rev 5:13 to an angel. But that’s a Jehovah’s witnesses position.

 

Two saviours

This compounds difficulties elsewhere. I could demonstrate this with many texts but here is just one.

 

OT - ‘I, even I, am the Lord [Yahweh]; and beside me there is no saviour.’ (KJV Isaiah 43:11)

NT – ‘the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (KJV 2 Peter 3:18)

 

According to Isaiah there is no saviour but Yahweh. By calling the saviour Jesus, and making Yahweh and Jesus into two separate gods, then Jehovah’s witnesses do believe in two saviours. To be clear: you can't make out they are two gods and not two saviours - that would be sophistry. No matter how much these would be 'two gods' in harmony. Their belief in two separate gods gets them into problems like this: two separate saviours. I could illustrate the same mess with many other texts.

So this all means believing in two gods, following two gods, adoring two gods, honouring two gods, singing to two gods, and being saved by two gods. This is not normal Christianity.

Polytheism

Now bravely, the man writing to me denied that his belief in a higher god and a lesser god, following and adoring both as two saviours, adds up to polytheism. But denying that doesn't wash. Not only is it polytheism but curiously it fits Plato's ancient Greek pagan model of two gods especially well. Plato believed in a higher god of all goodness and a lesser god involved with physical creation. The philosopher Plato would approve. But would Jesus?

 

Isaiah’s Yahweh: ‘there is no God beside me’

The right thing to do next is to look at a longer Bible passage.

The Kingdom Hall view is effectively that the is one higher creator saviour God, and one lesser sub-creator sub-saviour sub-god.

Isaiah chapters 43-44 have a one-God polemic. He has a worldview in which there is only one God and all other gods are false gods. Isaiah never uses the word 'god' of angels. Given the 'one God' message which Isaiah is shouting from the roof-tops, that is unsurprising; it would have undermined Isaiah’s impact if he had started adding footnotes about other scriptural uses of the word 'god'.

Isaiah conveys his clear distinction between the one true God and man-made false gods. It is in this context that Isaiah's fiercely monotheistic statements are found: there is only one God, one creator, one saviour. That is what Isaiah is trumpeting.

Those from Kingdom Halls read Isaiah through the lens of other books in such a way that it really undercuts Isaiah’s polemic. They want to prise open Isaiah's 'one-God' polemic to squeeze in other biblical books' inferior angelic 'gods.’ But that's not the way to read Isiah. 

Reading other books, we can accommodate that Yahweh is uniquely pre-eminent over angelic 'gods'. This is something Isaiah could have said, but it would have struck an awkward note with his 'one God' polemic. And we should not overwrite other books onto Isaiah so as to say that God did sub-contract creation and salvation. Isaiah doesn't say that. If we try to make Isaiah say that there is an angelic 'god' beside him, that’s a problem because Isaiah says there isn’t any god beside him.

Isaiah does not have 'angelic gods'; and his one-God polemic has to be heard in its own terms: Isaiah's stark one God, one creator, one saviour picture. Isaiah does not provide any system for including an angel at the centre of his picture of one God, one creator, one saviour. It is quite incongruous with Isaiah's picture to try to say there is one creator plus one sub-creator, and one saviour plus one sub-saviour. To try to posit that sort of picture is just not taking Isaiah seriously. 

That leaves the Christian question of how Jesus fits into Isaiah's one God, one creator, one saviour picture. We can't fit Jesus into Isaiah as a sub-contractor. That is ripping the heart out of Isaiah's message. And that is where I have to nail my colours to the mast as a mainstream Christian. Isaiah does not leave room to posit an angelic 'god' beside him in creation and salvation. Jesus must be something else if he is to fit into Isaiah's one-God picture of one creator and one saviour. And to the Trinitarian the mainstream fit works: Jesus in some sense embodies Yahweh.

Hebrews 1 and Psalm 102

The biblical emphasis on Jesus as co-creator is profound. In Hebrews 1:10, God the Father essentially calls Jesus 'Jehovah' and spells out that Jesus was his hands-on creator of the universe. I'll show how this is so when you cross-check the Old and New Testaments.

We know it's God speaking, because Hebrews 1:6 tells us so. In Hebrews 1:10, God the Father says this to Jesus: “In the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands." If God says it, Jesus did it. God said to Jesus, the heavens are the work of your hands. 

And here's the second thing. Hebrews 1:10-12 here contains a quotation from Psalm 102:21-27. When you cross-check, you see this: that the 'Jehovah' of Psalm 102 is the Lord Jesus of Hebrews 1:10. That is, if you cross-check this with the Old Testament, you will see that it means: God said to Jehovah, the heavens are the work of your hands. Jesus is Jehovah-Jesus. Let's see the quote.

In Hebrews 1:10, it's God the Father quoted as speaking to Jesus like this: 

'He also says, “In the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands."

 That is, "He" (God the Father) called Jesus "Lord." 

So what, you may say? Well, now compare Hebrews 1:10-12 with Psalm 102:21-27. It is clear that the latter passage is about the psalmist's God, and it's explicit that the psalmist's God is Jehovah. 

In the psalm, "you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands" is addressed to Jehovah.

In Hebrew 1:10, "you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands" is addressed to Jesus - by the voice of God the Father!

Read around it in Hebrews 1:10-12 and Psalm 102:21-27. You'll see a whole load of things are addressed to Jehovah-Jesus.

And so...

I could say more but will leave it there for a moment. I just don’t see a solution to the conundrum facing Jehovah’s Witnesses with their two-gods belief and practice.

As a final note, one has to understand that Jehovah's Witnesses actually believe that they represent one greater than Jesus. They think Jesus is on one side whilst they are on the better side. That is, they think they represent someone superior (Jehovah) which places them over above the side of someone they call "inferior," that is, Jesus. This may well make them insensitive to how shocking it sounds to orthodox Christians when the Jehovah's Witnesses relegate Jesus to being "a god." However, most of their members have probably never felt free to do the kind of analysis I have done above.

When an Old Testament verse about Yahweh becomes a New Testament verse about Jesus

There are many astonishing instances where Hebrew Scripture verses about YHWH are turned into verses about Jesus in the Christian Scriptures. 

A small sample of examples follows. (And I’ve gone for a bunch of out of copyright translations for these six examples.) To give this a purpose, here I answer whether all application of texts about YHWH to the person of Jesus can be explained away as examples of an agent carrying out a task for a principal. Of course, there are situations where Jesus does act as his Father's agent to do something, as the 'agent' for the 'principal.' But that doesn't explain the extraordinary scriptures here.

So below, you'll see a Hebrew Scripture that is about the biblical God Yahweh (YHWH), where Christian Scripture then does that extraordinary thing, and says it's about Jesus.

Where I use the word 'ontology' below, I mean that Jesus is somehow identified with the very being of YHWH. 

 Here's the sample:

“for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me [YHWH].” (KJV Isaiah 49:23)

“For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him [Jesus] shall not be ashamed.” (KJV Rom. 10:11)

Interesting to note that Paul is not saying that Jesus is fulfilling an agency task. Paul is specifically stating that the scripture about YHWH is about Jesus. This is very clear indeed.

 

NEXT

“But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord [YHWH]…” (KJV Jeremiah 9:24)

“That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord [Jesus].” (KJV 1Cor 1:31)

“But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord [Jesus].” (KJV 2 Cor 10:17)

Again, if of interest, Paul is not saying that Jesus is fulfilling an agency task. Paul is specifically saying that the scripture (“as it is written”) is actually about Jesus, where in the Hebrew text it says it is about YHWH.

 

NEXT

‘neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord [YHWH] of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.’ (KJV Isaiah 8:12-13)

‘and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord... yet with meekness and fear’ (ASV 1 Peter 3:14-15)

This too is not about an agency task, but rather tends towards ritual meaning and ontological sameness, being about one towards whom the believer's heart is sanctified.

 

NEXT:

‘The table of the Lord [YHWH] is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible.’ (KJV Malachi 1:7,12)

‘ye are not able of the table of the Lord [Jesus] to partake, and of the table of demons.’ (YLT 1 Corinthians 10:17,21)

This matching ritual presence of YHWH and Jesus would of course need a better explanation than agency, and tends towards ontology.

 

NEXT

‘O taste and see that the Lord [YHWH] is good’ (KJV Psalm 34:8)

‘ye have tasted, that the Lord [Jesus] is sweet’ (Wycliffe 1 Peter 2:3)

Again, if I may make the same point, this is not about an agency task. It needs another explanation. It is devotional material. The weight of applying to Jesus this and similar material about YHWH tends towards ontology.

 

NEXT

‘those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord [YHWH], which run to and fro through the whole earth.’ (KJV Zechariah 4:10)

‘a Lamb [Jesus] as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.’ (KJV Revelation 5:6)

There is something profoundly ontological in a shared way about YHWH and Jesus both being described as having seven eyes.

I could go on, but the point is made in these six examples. Not all of the application of texts about YHWH to the person of Jesus can be explained away as examples of an agent carrying out a task for a principal.

Here's a different kind of example. In Hebrews 1:10, God the Father essentially calls Jesus 'YHWH' (if you cross-check the Old and New Testaments). God the Father says this to Jesus: “In the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands." If God says it, Jesus did it. God said to Jesus, the heavens are the work of your hands. Jesus wasn't just an agent. God the Father gives Jesus the credit for creation. They are co-creators.

And here's the second thing. Hebrews 1:10-12 contains a citation from Psalm 102:25-27. When you cross-check, you see it's deliberate that the 'YHWH' of Psalm 102 is the 'Lord' of Hebrews 1:10. So, if you cross-check this with the Old Testament, you will see that it plainly means this: God the Father said to YHWH, the heavens are the work of your hands. Jesus is Jehovah-Jesus, or Yahweh-Jesus. 

Since it's God the Father who calls Jesus 'Yahweh,' this naming can't be explained away as Jesus being an agent. 

The obvious conclusion is that the New Testament authors are perfectly happy for us to conclude that in some way, Jesus is the embodiment of YHWH, Jesus is Yahweh in some real sense.