The Church of Jesus Christ

Timothy Davis, of Ad Gloriam Dei, has finally reached some measure of providing scripture, however, his interpretation is a little off.

He starts by saying:

Modalists believe that God the Father became incarnate in the humanity of Jesus Christ and that the Son became begotten in time at the point of the Incarnation. The Son is the “incarnate mode” of the Father. God is eternally one person.

And goes on to comment about the Trinitarian doctrine, quoting from the Westminster Shorter Catechism Questions 21, 22 which states:

“the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continues to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.” “Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body, and a reasonable soul,being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin.”

Of course, the interesting thing is that previously Mr. Davis has said that he didn’t rely upon early Church writers, but just where doe he think this ‘creed’ descended from? Were not the English and Scottish writers of this grand document, perhaps the grandest document (save the Authorized Version translation) that came out of the English Reformation, still using Roman doctrine? Isn’t that what a Reformation really is - reforming something?

His first scripture is John 1-3, 14 where he focuses on the word Word, or logos in the Greek. Some time ago, a blogger mentioned that theology should be constructed or deconstructed based on the Bible. So, should we place such heave emphasis on logos? Instead of placing our theology on the word, let the word tell us what it means.

Let’s read it this way:

In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God.

Thayer says:

1) of speech
1a) a word, uttered by a living voice, embodies a conception or idea
1b) what someone has said
1b1) a word
1b2) the sayings of God
1b3) decree, mandate or order
1b4) of the moral precepts given by God
1b5) Old Testament prophecy given by the prophets
1b6) what is declared, a thought, declaration, aphorism, a weighty saying, a dictum, a maxim
1c) discourse
1c1) the act of speaking, speech
1c2) the faculty of speech, skill and practice in speaking
1c3) a kind or style of speaking
1c4) a continuous speaking discourse - instruction
1d) doctrine, teaching
1e) anything reported in speech; a narration, narrative
1f) matter under discussion, thing spoken of, affair, a matter in dispute, case, suit at law
1g) the thing spoken of or talked about; event, deed
2) its use as respect to the MIND alone
2a) reason, the mental faculty of thinking, meditating, reasoning, calculating
2b) account, i.e. regard, consideration
2c) account, i.e. reckoning, score
2d) account, i.e. answer or explanation in reference to judgment
2e) relation, i.e. with whom as judge we stand in relation
2e1) reason would
2f) reason, cause, ground

Logos has enough theology behind it without us incorrectly placing more. What did John mean? John, who seemed to be steeped in study of the Old Testament, as well as the Book of Wisdom (vs Philo), understood logos to mean the embodiment of the divine nature.

Vincent, in his Word Studies points to the OT usage of the Hebrew as

The Word, as embodying the divine will, is personified in Hebrew poetry.

Can a man’s will be separated from him and act as a separate person? Hardly. The Logos here is the embodiment of the Divine, His very image. Not a separate person. Logos is the thought of God, the reason of God, the plan of God.

Translate it this way:

In the beginning was the message, and the message was with God, and the message was God.

What message? In Genesis, after the Fall, God told the serpent that his days were numbered, that a ’seed of a woman’ would ‘bruise’ his head. The message is the good news that man can be right with God once again.

In vs 14, John writes that the Logos tabernacled with man. We read of the same thing by Paul, when he wrote that Christ emptied himself of divinity to robe himself with flesh.

Nothing in the John’s prologue creates separation between God and the Logos, because the the Logos is God.

Next, Mr. Davis tells us of Colossians 1:15-17:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.

What is an image? In this day and age, when we look at the nightly news and we see the image of Katie Couric on the screen, who are we looking at? We are looking at Katie Couric, not a separate person. Christ is the εικων του θεου. Here, Paul is stressing the equality of the image with the original.

Christ is in the form of God and equal to God (cf. Phil. 2:6). To see him is to see the Father (Jn. 14:9). “Beloved Son” in Col. 1:13 drives home the point. The phrase comes, of course, from Gen. 1:27. But Christ is the second Adam (1 Cor. 15:45ff.). If he thus plays for Paul the role that lógos plays for Philo, Paul’s interest is not in the least speculative. The point for him is that Christ is given to us as God’s image so that we may know what God wills and does. The concept of the image of God also makes it perfectly plain who Jesus himself is. - TDNT

The image is how we see God, not a separate person.

Christ is not to be considered created, as this verse roundly says. He is before all creation. I think that Modalists and Trinitarians can agree on that; after all, Paul points to Christ as actually being with the Children of Israel. (1st Cor. 10.4)

For John 17.5, Timothy Davis remarks:

Christ was with the Father before the World existed. He is shown as present in eternity and yet distinct from the Father.

What Christ is actually saying is that He possessed the glory of the Father, not that he shared it. To possess something is to say that it was His. If the Father is not willing to give His glory to another (Is. 42.8) who could Christ share in it? Christ, pre-existant as the Logos, as the Eikon, the Wisdom, the Glory of God, was God and had the glory of God because he is God. No separate exists.

In Philippians 2:5-11, Mr. Davis fails to see the modalistic nature of the passage.

Vincent says:

ἁρπαγμὸν mean a highly prized possession, (so) we understand Paul to say that Christ, being, before His incarnation, in the form of God, did not regard His divine equality as a prize which was to be grasped at and retained at all hazards, but, on the contrary, laid aside the form of God, and took upon Himself the nature of man.

The idea is simple: Christ, being God, willing laid down His image and robed himself in the image of humanity (hence the second Adam). Again, no separation exists.

Mr. David this says:

Paul clearly quote from Isaiah 45:23,24, where Yahweh says, “[T]o Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall take an oath.” All will declare Christ to be the Lord, or ‘Kurios’ in the Greek, which was the translation of the Hebrew ‘Yahweh’ in the Greek version of the Old Testament, due to the sensitivity about the divine name Yahweh among the Jews.

Okay, who is the Me is Isaiah? In the Old Testament, the Father is speaking and yet in Paul, the knees bow to Christ. Would God allow anyone to worship another? Mr. Davis rightly says that the Kurios in the Greek is directly related to the Hebrew. So, where is the confusion?

Is there a separation? Mr. Davis, and other Trinitarians can proclaim separation all they want, but in reality, even by using their own words, they cannot prove it.

I would like Mr. Davis to interpret, in the light of Trinitarianism, these verses:

Titus 2:13

2 Peter 1:1

1 John 5:20

1 Timothy 3:16

I will, at some point, when Mr. Davis is finished, post something other than a response.