Is This How "Co-Equals" Address Each Other?

John 17
Jesus said these things, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son so that your Son can glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all flesh so that he could give life in the age to come to all those you have given him. And this is life in the age to come, that they know you, the ONLY true God, AND the one you have sent—Jesus Christ. I glorified you on the earth by accomplishing the work that you have given me to do. And now, Father, glorify me together with yourself with the glory that I had with you before the world was.

7) Jesus called God “the only true God.”

Jesus called the Father “the only God” (John 5:44 ESV). The New American Standard Bible goes so far as to translate it as “the one and only God.” The straightforward reading of this verse is that Jesus did not think of himself as God.

Similarly, on the night he was arrested, Jesus prayed to God that people would “know you, the only true God” (John 17:3). It seems disingenuous, or at least confusing, that Jesus would refer to his Father as “the only true God” if he knew that both he and “the Holy Spirit” were also “Persons” in a triune God, and that the Father shared His position as “God” with them. It seems much more likely that Jesus spoke the simple truth when he called his Father “the only true God.”

Furthermore, Jesus called God the “Lord of heaven and earth.” Luke 10:21 says, “In that same hour he [Jesus] was full of joy in the holy spirit, and said, ‘I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, because this was well-pleasing in your sight.’” If the Trinity was true and Jesus was co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, he would not have addressed him as “Lord of heaven and earth.” That is not the way equals address each other. Also, if the Holy Spirit was a third member of the Trinity and thus also “Lord of heaven and earth,” it seems that Jesus would not have left him out of his prayer, which was to the Father.

For full commentary see the REV .

Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound

 The Doctrine of the Trinity:

Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound

by Anthony Buzzard and Charles Hunting

This important work is a detailed biblical investigation of the relationship of Jesus to the one God of Israel. The authors challenge the notion that biblical monotheism is legitimately represented by a Trinitarian view of God and demonstrate that within the bounds of the canon of Scripture Jesus is confessed as Messiah, Son of God, but not God Himself. Later Christological developments beginning in the second century, and under the influence of pagan Gnosticism, misrepresented the biblical doctrine of God and Christ by altering the terms of the biblical presentation of the Father and the Son. This fateful development laid the foundation of a revised, unscriptural creed which needs to be challenged. This book provides a definitive presentation of a Christology rooted in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The authors present a sharply-argued appeal for an understanding of God and Jesus in the context of Christianity's original, apostolic, unitary monotheism.

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Did Jesus Claim NOT to Be God?

An Excerpt From: Who Is Jesus?

A Plea for a Return to Belief in Jesus, the Messiah

A study booklet to further the restoration of biblical faith

by

Anthony F. Buzzard, MA (Oxon.), MA Th.

"There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Messiah Jesus” 

(1 Tim. 2:5).

Restoration Fellowship

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"In the Gospel of John the identity of Jesus is a principal theme. John wrote, as he tells us, with one primary purpose: to convince his readers that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of God” (20:31). According to John, Jesus carefully distinguished himself from the Father who is “the only true God” (17:3; cp. 5:44; 6:27). If we are to find in John’s record a proof that Jesus is “coequal” God, in the Trinitarian sense, we would be discovering something which John did not intend and, in view of his Jewish heritage, would not have understood! Alternatively, we would have to admit that John introduces a brand new picture of Messiahship which contradicts the Old Testament and overthrows John’s (and Jesus’) own insistence that only the Father is truly God (John 5:44; 17:3). Such a glaring self-contradiction is hardly probable.

It is high time that we allow Jesus to set the record straight. In Matthew’s, Mark’s, and Luke’s accounts we are told that Jesus explicitly subscribed to the unitary monotheism of the Old Testament (Mark 12:28-34). Did he therefore, according to John, confuse the issue by claiming after all to be God? The answer is given plainly in John 10:34-36 where Jesus defined his status in terms of the human representatives of God in the Old Testament. Jesus gave this account of himself in explanation of what it means to be one with the Father (10:30). It is a oneness of function by which the Son perfectly represents the Father, as His ultimate agent. That is exactly the Old Testament ideal of sonship, which had been imperfectly realized in the rulers of Israel, but would find perfect fulfillment in the Messiah, God’s chosen King. 

The argument in John 10:29-38 is as follows: Jesus began by claiming that he and the Father were “one.” It was a oneness of thought and action which on another occasion he desired also for his disciples’ relationship with him and the Father (John 17:11, 22). The Jews understood him to be claiming equality with God. This gave Jesus an opportunity to explain himself.

What he was actually claiming, so he says, was to be “Son of God” (v. 36), a recognized synonym for Messiah.

The claim to sonship was not unreasonable, Jesus argued, in view of the well-known fact that even imperfect representatives of God had been addressed by Him in the Old Testament as “gods” (Ps.82:6). Far from establishing any claim to eternal Sonship, he compared his office and function to that of the judges. 

He considered himself God’s representative par excellence since he was uniquely God’s Son, the one and only Messiah, supernaturally conceived, and the object of all Old Testament prophecy. 

There is absolutely nothing, however, in Jesus’ account of himself which interferes with Old Testament monotheism or requires a rewriting of the sacred text in Deuteronomy 6:4. Jesus’ self-understanding is strictly within the limits laid down by God’s authoritative revelation in Scripture. Otherwise his claim to be the Messiah would have been invalid. The Scriptures would have been broken."

Trinitarian Logic

 

"ONE" does not mean one in essence or that the persons are ontologically connected. It simply means they are one in purpose and mission.

So, Is This Your Christianity?

 

Trinitarianism is idolatry. There is one God- the Father.  There are not three Gods. Trinitarianism evolved over 600 plus years. It mirrors other false theocracies.

The Greek goddess Hecate portrayed in triplicate

Hinduism- The Trimurti with their consorts

Roman- A first-century BC denarius (RRC 486/1) depicting the head of Diana and her triple cult statue

Celtic- Terracotta relief of the Matres, from Bibracte, city of the Aedui in Gaul.

Neopaganism- Symbol of Triple Goddess, composed of waxing crescent, full moon, and waning crescent

Bye

"It is appointed unto man once to die and after this, the judgment." 

God's Man Not A God-Man

 

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Were the Disciples Also God? Of Course Not!

 

Cody Watters

Scripture teaches that Jesus and His Father are “one” not in numerical identity or essence, but in unity of purpose, will, authority, message, and mission. Jesus does only what the Father wills (John 5:19), speaks only the Father’s words (John 7:16; 12:49), acts with authority given to Him (Matt. 28:18), perfectly represents the Father (John 14:9), shares unity the same way believers are to be “one” (John 17:21-23), and is glorified by the Father who is greater than Him (John 14:28; John 17:22; Phil. 2:9). Jesus and the Father are truly “one” in harmony and purpose (John 10:30), while the Father alone remains “the only true God” and Jesus is the one He sent (John 17:3)

FROM THE REV: “I and the Father are one.” Here in John 10:30, Jesus says that he and the Father are “one” in purpose, and unified in their goals and actions. Jesus and the Father operate in perfect unity, and it should be the goal of every Christian to be “one” with them. This is clearly what Jesus wanted when he prayed, “…that they [Jesus’ followers] may be one as we are one; I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be perfected into one” (John 17:22-23 YLT). When Jesus prayed that his disciples “may be one as we are one,” he did not mean “one in substance,” he meant “one in heart” having unity of purpose.

There is no reason to take John 10:30 to mean what Trinitarian doctrine says it means, that is, that Christ and the Father are of the same “substance” and make up “one God.” To be “one” was a common idiom in the biblical world and it is even still used the same way today when two people say they are “one.” For example, when Paul wrote to the Corinthians about his ministry in Corinth, he said that he had planted the seed and Apollos had watered it. Then he said, “he who plants and he who waters are one” (1 Cor. 3:8 KJV). In the Greek texts, the wording of Paul is the same as that in John 10:30, yet no one claims that Paul and Apollos make up “one being,” or are somehow “of one substance.” Furthermore, the NIV translates 1 Corinthians 3:8 as “he who plants and he who waters have one purpose.” Why translate the same Greek phrase as “are one” in one place, but as “have one purpose” in another place? The reason is the translator’s bias toward the Trinity. But translating the same Greek phrase in two different ways obscures the clear meaning of Christ’s statement in John 10:30: Christ always did the Father’s will; he and God have “one purpose.” The NIV translators would have been exactly correct if they had translated both John 10:30 and 1 Corinthians 3:8 as “have one purpose” instead of only 1 Corinthians 3:8.

Jesus used the concept of “being one” in other places, and from them, one can see that “one purpose” is what he meant. John 11:52 says Jesus was to die to make all God’s children “one.” In John 17:11, 21-23, Jesus prayed to God that his followers would be “one” as he and God were “one.” The meaning is clear: Jesus was praying that all his followers be one in purpose just as he and God were one in purpose, a prayer that has not yet been answered.

Sadly, the Trinitarian bias in reading John 10:30 has kept many people from paying attention to what the Bible is really saying. Jesus was speaking about his ability to keep the “sheep,” the believers, who came to him. He said that no one could take them out of his hand and that no one could take them out of his Father’s hand. Then he said that he and the Father were “one,” i.e., had one purpose, which was to keep and protect the sheep. No wonder Jesus prayed that we believers be “one” like he and his Father. Far too many believers are self-focused and do not pay enough attention to the other believers around them. Cain thought he did not have to be his brother’s keeper, but we should know differently. If we are going to be “one” like God and Jesus are “one,” then we need to work hard to help and bless God’s flock.

There are Trinitarians who agree that John 10:30 is not about Jesus and the Father being one in substance, but one in purpose. For example, the famous theologian John Calvin wrote: “The ancients made a wrong use of this passage to prove that Christ is (homoousios), of the same essence, with the Father. For Christ does not argue about the unity of substance, but about the agreement which he has with the Father, so that whatever is done by Christ will be confirmed by the power of his Father.”

Bishop Nicholas Fiddles While His People Burn

CLICK HERE: 1 Year Anniversary of Matthew Williams Suspension - 1 Year of Silence & Cowardly Coverup From ROCOR Leadership

Born, Not Preexistent

 

Amazon.com: A Systematic Theology of the Early Church eBook : Smith, Dustin, Fletcher, J., Deane, Scott: Kindle Store

From the REV Commentary:

"The word logos in John 1:1 refers to God’s creative self-expression—His reason, purposes, and plans, especially as they are brought into action. Thus, the logos has been expressed through His creation (Rom. 1:19-20), and Psalm 19 tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God. The logos has also been made known through the spoken word of the prophets and through Scripture, which is the written “Word of God.” Lastly, it has most fully been communicated through His Son (John 1:18; Heb. 1:1-2).

However, when studying John 1:1 and the use of logos in the Bible, and reading what the commentaries, systematic theologies, Bible dictionaries, etc., say about it, we must be very careful to discern theological bias in the information. John describes Jesus as the Son of God, not God himself. However, many commentators are Trinitarian and simply assume that the word logos in John 1:1 refers to Jesus, and then from that assumption ignore the way the Jews and Greeks of John’s time thought about the logos, and give it a meaning it had in later Christian history as the Trinity doctrine developed, and that new meaning is “Jesus Christ.”

For example, Edward Klink III writes: “Certainly the term [logos] might be recognizable [to John’s audience], but its direct connection to Jesus assumes that Jesus, not merely his [John’s] religious-philosophical context, determines its meaning. …John is not relying on a background but on a foreground. For it is Jesus who embodies the “Word” (logos) in the flesh.”b Klink is asserting that logos means Jesus in John 1:1 because later in John the logos became flesh (cf. John 1:14). But that is an unwarranted assumption. There is no historical evidence that the people in Christ’s time ever thought the logos was Jesus. But they did believe that God’s logos was His plans and purposes, and that logos then became flesh in Jesus Christ in much the same way that any plan or purpose that someone has comes into concretion as the person carries it out. In this case, God’s plan and purpose for the Messiah came into concretion with the birth of Jesus.

The renowned Trinitarian scholar J. B. Lightfoot correctly writes that it was Christian teachers who took the word logos and changed it, giving it new definitions, such as a divine Person, and that change occurred in the centuries after John lived.

The word logos then, denoting both “reason” and “speech,” was a philosophical term adopted by Alexandrian Judaism before St. Paul wrote, to express the manifestation of the Unseen God in the creation and government of the World. It included all modes by which God makes Himself known to man. As His reason, it denoted His purpose or design; as His speech, it implied His revelation. Christian teachers, when they adopted this term, exalted and fixed its meaning by attaching to it two precise and definite ideas: (1) “The Word is a Divine Person,” (2) “The Word became incarnate in Jesus Christ.” It is obvious that these two propositions must have altered materially the significance of all the subordinate terms connected with the idea of the logos.c

It is important to note that Lightfoot argues it was “Christian teachers” who attached the idea of a “divine person” to the word logos. It is certainly true that when the Christian church began to say that the word logos was Jesus Christ, the original meaning of John 1:1 was altered substantially. Lightfoot correctly understood that the original meaning of logos was “reason” and “speech,” not “Jesus Christ.” "