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WHO IS JESUS? DO THE CREEDS TELL US THE TRUTH ABOUT HIM?
by Anthony Buzzard
Dear Fellow Truth-Seekers,
It is a well-documented fact that many of the church's "major doctrines"
were not instituted until well after New Testament apostolic times. Christians
in search of a vigorous biblical Christianity will find it refreshing to
distinguish between what comes from Scripture and what many have unconsciously
'canonized' from Church tradition and Councils. The words of F.F. Bruce need
to be treated as a prophetic testimony to this generation:
"Evangelical Protestants can be as much servants of tradition as Roman
Catholic or Greek Orthodox Christians; only they do not realize that it is
'tradition.' People who adhere to sola scriptura (as they believe) often
adhere in fact to a traditional school of interpretation of sola scriptura"
(from correspondence, June 13, 1981).
The early church continued persistently in the Apostle's teaching (Acts 2:42) as well as in fellowship. What the modern house-church movement (as well as Christians in any setting) needs is freedom to explore all doctrines in the light of Jesus' and the Apostles teaching. At present it is often assumed that early Church Councils (which represent the very institutionalizing which the house-church movement complains about) faithfully relayed the Bible's teachings. Many scholars know that this is not so.
Paul did not "shrink from communicating the whole counsel of God." It may be an unpopular business to suggest that some of the cherished teachings of traditional Christianity need investigation and testing against the gold-standard of the Bible, but the job must be done. We suggest that house-churches begin with the doctrine of God and of Jesus and follow it quickly with the doctrine of "the Gospel." The Gospel consists of facts in addition to the death and resurrection of Jesus (although these are obviously absolutely central), since Jesus and the Apostles preached "the Gospel of the Kingdom" long before they said a word about Jesus' death and resurrection.
Jewish Roots
To our friends in the various "Jewish Roots" movements we say: What sense is there in clinging to a doctrine of the Trinity which offends Jews and Muslims and which Jesus would not have believed? Mark 12:28ff shows Jesus to be in line with the cardinal tenet of Judaism: God is a single Person, the Father of Jesus. Ps. 110:1 says it clearly. The One God speaks in an oracle about ADONI, positively not ADONAI! God does not speak to God. He speaks to the Lord Messiah (Adoni, "my Lord, the King Messiah."). ADONI refers some 195 times to superiors other than God. It is a word describing human beings and occasionally angels.
The old arguments about echad being a compound unity are fallacious.
The word one means "one and not two or more." "One flesh" is still one
flesh. The idea of plurality is derived not from the word echad but
from the idea of two persons being one flesh. But there is nothing in the
context of the biblical statements about the "One God" which hints at plurality.
In fact ADONAI (or the sacred Name) is referred to by singular pronouns and
accompanied by singular verbs multiple thousands of times. Singular pronouns
tell us that God is One Person. Rabbi Paul was not a Trinitarian. He believed
in "One God, the Father and One Lord Jesus Messiah" (I Cor. 8:4-6).
The Lord Messiah is not the Lord God. In Gal. 3:20 Paul said
(according to the Amplified Bible) "God is [only] One Person." There
is no occurrence of the word "God" in the whole Bible which can be proved
to mean "God in three Persons." That is because the Bible-writers had
never heard of the Trinity and did not believe in it. Those espousing the
Jewish roots of Jesus, an excellent way to get back to the Messiah of Israel,
should avoid attaching themselves to Gentile distortions of the
faith.1
The old argument about Elohim having a plural ending and thus pointing
to a Trinity is held by no recognized Hebrew scholar today. This attempt
to justify the Trinity in the Hebrew Bible was apparently not heard of until
the 12th century. It has been constantly rejected by scholars
in both Roman Catholic and Protestant camps. Yet it continues to be promoted
by Dave Hunt whom many trust as an expert. Dave Hunt tells the public that
non-Trinitarians are "pseudo-Christian cultists." He says that "aberrant
groups" reject the Trinity. He also promotes the myth that the Trinity can
be traced back through the early Church fathers to the New Testament. This
is not possible since, as many patristic experts know, the earliest Fathers
were unitarians, in the sense that they believed that the Son was begotten
in time, not in eternity. The Son for these Fathers was definitely subordinate
to the Father. He was not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father.
We are convinced that the Bible presents us with a body of Truth to which Christians must be committed. We are alarmed at the contemporary trends which emphasize "experience" to the exclusion of the "sound teaching" promoted by the inspired Word.
We do not, however, think that the Church Councils necessarily grasped biblical truth accurately, when they defined the creeds for posterity. Nevertheless, many evangelicals unwittingly take on board the theology of those councils without examining all things carefully, as Paul admonished.
We are convinced that evangelicals ought to be much more troubled than they are about the doctrines of God and Christ which tradition has handed on to them via the "Church Fathers" and the Roman Catholic Church.
We invite you to consider the following information about "orthodox
Trinitarianism" and compare it with the Bible.
Two orthodox evangelical Trinitarians wrote:
"It is true that in Chalcedonian orthodoxy [the teaching
of the Council which defined the Person of Christ in 451 AD] God the Son
united himself to a personless human
nature."2
This statement is an accurate description of the orthodox view of Jesus. Let us unpack it a little further. A Trinitarian scholar writes:
"The Council of Chalcedon tells us that Jesus is called 'man' in the generic sense, but not 'a man.' He has human nature, but is not a human person. The Person in him is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus does not have a human personal center. This is how the Council gets around the possible problem of split personality."3
Another Trinitarian scholar wrote:
"During my theological formation I was well instructed
in the traditional account of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. I
distinctly remember being told that the Word of God, when he assumed human
nature, assumed impersonal humanity; that Jesus did not possess
a human personality; that God became man in Jesus, but that he did not
become a man.... Two considerations have persuaded me that this
traditional Christology is
incredible."4
An orthodox theologian describes the view of Jesus which evangelical accept
in the Trinity:
"Now the doctrine of the Incarnation is that in Christ
the place of a human personality is replaced by the Divine Personality of
God the Son, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. Christ possesses
a complete human nature without a human personality. Uncreated
and eternal Divine Personality replaces a created personality in
Him."5
An expert on Gnosticism (a philosophy which threatened the early church)
points to the problem:
"Already Harnack was forced to say: 'Who can maintain that
the Church ever overcame the Gnostic doctrine of the two natures or the
Valentinian Docetism [the theory that Jesus only appeared to be a human being
but really wasn't]. Even the later councils of the Church, which discussed
the Christological problems in complicated, nowadays hardly intelligible
definitions did not manage to do this; the unity of the Church
foundered precisely on
this."6
Note that this scholar admits that the Church did not overcome Gnosticism
in its definition of Jesus.
The official Jesus of Trinitarian theology is 'man,' but not a man.
Are you happy with that as a description of the biblical Jesus? Once Jesus
is confessed as truly and fully God, in every way coequal and coeternal with
the Father, it is impossible to say that he is also fully and truly man.
The Trinitarian church fathers realized this and so they maintained that
Jesus had 'impersonal human nature' and was not 'a man.' Is
that a tradition you want to be part of? This is official Trinitarianism.
The scholar above pointed out that this division of the Godhead into two
(and later three) was the cause of the disruption of the unity of the church.
The greatest commandment cited by Jesus (Mark 12:28ff. ) was tampered with.
You obviously cannot be a human person unless you are 'a man.' Orthodox
Trinitarianism officially denies that Jesus is 'a man.' The documentation
above, which represent the Trinitarian point of view, proves this. Trinitarianism
suffers from the "docetic" heresy: Jesus only appears to be a man, but his
center of personality is really God.
A Dying God?
God only has immortality (I Tim. 6:16). How, if Jesus is God, can he have died? An immortal Person cannot die. That is a flat contradiction. Does it honor God to speak in such contradictions? - that Jesus is God and Jesus as God (who is immortal) died. How can Jesus, if He is God, not know the time of His Second Coming (Mark 13:32)? God is omniscient. Jesus did not know everything. Therefore Jesus cannot be God, unless language has ceased to have any meaning. God cannot be tempted (James 1:13). But Jesus was tempted. If he was not fully human, his temptation was a charade. Did Jesus give up being God when he did not know when He would return? Did he give up being God when he died? How can God give up being God? That would mean that Jesus was not God when he was on earth.
Trinitarians argue that only God could be the Savior. But if Jesus, as God,
could not die, how can he have saved us? Cannot God appoint a sinless man
to be the Savior (Acts 17:31; 2:22 - "a man approved by God")?
All these complex questions are solved if Bible readers would observe some
simple facts:
Thousands upon thousands of times in the Bible (someone has calculated over
11,000 times), God is described by personal pronouns in the singular
(I, me, you, He, Him). These pronouns in all languages describe single
persons, not three persons. There are thus thousands of verses which
tell us that the "only true God" (John 17:3; John 5:44, "the One who alone
is God") is One Person, not three.
There is no place in the New Testament (or Old) where the word "God" can
be proved to mean "God-in-Three-Persons." The word God, therefore, in the
Bible never means the Trinitarian God. This would immediately suggest that
the Trinitarian God is foreign to the Bible. The Word "God" in the New Testament
means the Father, except (for certain) in two passages where 'God' refers
to Jesus in a secondary sense (Heb. 1:8; John 20:28) If Jesus is as much
entitled to be called God as His Father, why these extraordinary facts? The
word "God" can be used of a man who reflects and represents the true God
(see for example Ps. 82:6; Ex. 7:1).
Most Trinitarians rely heavily on one only of the four Gospels - John. They
neglect not only the 77% of the Bible which is the Old Testament, but also
most of the NT. Why did all translations in English before the King
James render John 1:3: "All things were made by IT (not HIM)."
How do you know that Jesus was the eternal Son of God, when
no verse of Scripture calls him that? What if the Word or Wisdom was
with God (John 1:1) and was fully expressive of God and this Wisdom became
embodied in the real human being, Jesus (John 1:14)? Jesus would then be
a human being who is the perfect embodiment and expression of the wisdom
and creative activity of God ("the Word became flesh," not
"the Son became flesh").
If so, Luke's statement would be exactly right. "Because of the
supernatural begetting of Jesus in the womb of Mary, Jesus is entitled to
be called the Son of God." (see Luke 1:35). Luke describes the supernatural
coming-into-being of the Son of God. (This is exactly what Raymond Brown
in his monumental commentary on The Birth of the Messiah says Luke
describes. Luke cannot have been a Trinitarian.). There is not a hint in
Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts or Peter that Jesus preexisted his birth. There
is no indication in the Old Testament that the Messiah was already alive
before his birth in Bethlehem. God did not speak through a so-called preexisting
Son in Old Testament times (Heb. 1:1-2).
"Eternal Begetting"?
The Trinity relies on the idea of the Son having been "eternally begotten."
Does that make the slightest sense? How can someone who has no beginning
be begotten? Why are there absolutely no verses which speak of Jesus being
begotten by the Father in eternity? Why do all references to
the begetting of Jesus refer either to his conception and birth Luke 1:35;
Matt. 1:20; Acts 13:33, describing the beginning of his life, while v. 34
refers to his resurrection) or to his appointment to kingship (Ps 2)? Without
an eternal begetting of the Son, there can be no doctrine of the Trinity.
The famous Methodist expositor Adam Clark felt it necessary to say:
"The doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Christ, is in my
opinion, antiscriptural and highly dangerous. I have not been able to find
any express declaration of it in the
Scriptures"?7
And yet without the "eternal generation" of the Son there is no doctrine of the Trinity.
J. O Buswell, former Dean of the Graduate School, Covenant College, St. Louis,
MO, examined the issue of the begetting of the Son in the Bible and concluded
with these words. He wrote as a Trinitarian:
"The notion that the Son was begotten by the Father in
eternity past, not as an event, but as an inexplicable relationship, has
been accepted and carried along in the Christian theology since the fourth
century.... We have examined all the instances in which 'begotten' or 'born'
or related words are applied to Christ, and we can say with confidence that
the Bible has nothing whatsoever to say about 'begetting' as an eternal
relationship between the Father and the
Son."8
Why does a leading Roman Catholic scholar admit that Luke 1: 35 (above) is
an embarrassment to orthodox scholars?
"Luke 1:35 has embarrassed many orthodox theologians, since
in preexistence [Trinitarian] theology a conception by the Holy Spirit in
Mary's womb does not bring about the existence of God's Son.
Luke is seemingly unaware of such a Christology; conception is causally related
to divine sonship for
him."9
Church History
Why do writers of standard encyclopedias tell us this fact about church
history?
"Unitarianism [belief in the Father as the "only true God'
(John 17:3) and in Jesus as the Son and Messiah] as a theological movement
began much earlier in history; indeed it antedated Trinitarianism by many
decades. Christianity derived from Judaism, and Judaism was
strictly Unitarian. The road which led from Jerusalem to the Council of Nicea
was scarcely a straight one. Fourth-century Trinitarianism did not reflect
accurately early Christian teaching regarding the nature of God; it was
on the contrary a deviation from this
teaching"?10
How can the Trinity be traced back through the Church Fathers when the Father
of Latin Christianity was clearly not a Trinitarian? Tertullian wrote:
"God has not always been the Father. For He could not have
been the Father previous to the Son. There was a time when
the Son did not
exist."11
This famous church father doesn't sound like a Trinitarian. What about earlier
church fathers of the second century? They are said by Trinitarians to provide
a continuous Trinitarian tradition back to the Bible. But what did they really
believe? A professor of church history explains:
The Christian writers of the second and third centuries
considered the Logos as the eternal reason of the Father [note:
not the eternal Son], but as having at first no distinct existence
from eternity; he [the Son of God] received this only when the Father generated
him from within his own being and sent him to create the world and rule over
the world. The act of generation then was not considered as an eternal and
necessary life-act but as one which had a beginning in time, which
meant that the Son was not equal to the Father, but subordinate to
Him. Irenaeus, Justin, Hippolytus and Methodius share this view called
Subordinationism.12
This view is not that of official Trinitarianism as later established. Without
the doctrine of the eternal, coequal Son, there is no orthodox Trinity.
Even Origen who in the third century initiated the concept of the
"eternal generation" of the Son was not an orthodox Trinitarian:
Origen's philosophical presuppositions ensure that for
him the Son can be divine only in a lesser sense than the Father;
the Son is theos (god), but only the Father is autotheos
(absolute God, God in Himself). In his treatise on prayer he taught that
prayer ought to be addressed only to the Father through the
Son.13
The Creed of Israel, of Jesus and of True Christianity
It seems to us incredible that Jesus, who recited the great creed of Israel
(Mark 12:28ff.) and was a Jew, could possibly have believed in the Trinity.
There is no Trinity in the Old Testament (as scores of modern scholars
admit14). Jesus confirms and perpetuates
the creed of Israel which described God as One Person, the Father. He then
defined Himself as the Lord Messiah of Psalm 110:1 to whom the One Lord God
spoke in an oracle about the future. This verse is quoted more than any
other Old Testament verse by the Apostles and other writers of the New
Testament. In that verse, the one God Yahweh, addresses the One Lord Messiah.
This "my Lord" of David is translated from a Hebrew form of the word "Lord"
(ADONI) which is used 195 times to describe a man as distinct
from God. God is ADONAI and the Messiah is the human ADONI
("My Lord, the Messiah, the King"). The Massorites deliberately used a human
title for the Messiah to distinguish him from ADONAI, the title of
the One God of Israel.
No Jew could possibly have expected His Messiah to be God in the Trinitarian
sense. No verse in the Old Testament had said any such thing. In fact Moses
had predicted the arrival of the Messiah by saying that God would not speak
to the people directly, but through a person "like Moses" who would
be raised up from among the people of Israel (Deut. 18:15-18; see Acts 13:33)
To say that the Messiah is God Himself contradicts this prophecy, which announces
that this person is not God but a human prophet! Both Peter and Stephen
teach that it was fulfilled in the human Messiah (Acts 3:22; 7:37), who perfectly
reflects the will and the words of His Father and who is the "visible image"
of God, but not God Himself. Here is the biblical picture of the Messiah
as described by the Hebrew Bible, the Bible of Jesus' Himself:
"The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me [Moses]
from among yourselves and to that prophet you must listen. I will put my
words into his
lips...."15
This is no Trinitarian Jesus, but a fully human Jesus perfectly carrying
out the will of the One God, His Father. No wonder, then, that Paul expressed
the same creed as Jesus, when he wrote:
"To us [Christians] there is One God, the
Father and one Lord Jesus
Messiah."16
Clearly, the One God is the Father and in close association is the One Lord
Messiah. The Christian confession that Jesus approved is the belief
that that "Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God." On that truth he promised
to found his church.17 John labels
as "the liar" anyone who deviates from the confession that Jesus is the Messiah,
or that he is "the Messiah, Son of
God."18 He worked against the error
that Jesus was something less than human. He advocated belief in the human
Jesus.19 When churches teach that Jesus
is man but not a man, would they have the approval of the Apostle John?
It is time for the Church to insist, with the Bible, on the creed which describes
Jesus as the "the man Messiah"20 and
stop condemning as heretics those who confirm belief in Jesus as the sinless
Messiah and Son of God, God's unique and virgin-born agent, but not actually
God Himself.
A return to the creed of Israel and of Jesus, the Jew, will enable Jews today
and Muslims to consider more sympathetically salvation through Jesus, the
Christ, the "only name given under heaven by which we may be saved."
Finally, on the issue of the so-called preexistence (what preexists what?)
of Christ, Paul Tillich remarks on John 8:58 ("Before Abraham I am [he]"):
"This means that the universal Logos, the principle of the divine manifestation,
is present in Jesus."21 This does not
mean that the Son of God preexisted but that God's creative Plan did. As
Harnack remarked "the miraculous genesis of Christ (Matt. 1:18, 20; Luke
1:35) in the Virgin by the Holy Spirit and the real preexistence are of course
mutually exclusive."22 Luke and Matthew
denied the Trinity when they described the coming-into-existence of the
Son of God by miracle.
It is time for Christians to return to the non-trinitarian creed of Jesus and Israel (Deut. 6:4; Mark 12:28ff). If the creed of Israel is not trinitarian, then neither is the creed of Jesus. Christians are pledged to following Jesus, not post-biblical Church Councils. Why do evangelicals seem to want to canonize those Councils? Isn't the Bible sufficient?
Endnotes:
1 For some serious reading, see Martin Werner, The Formation of Dogma, Harper, 1957 (though he wrongly attributes "angel Christology" to Paul). J.A.T. Robinson The Priority of John, SCM Press, 1985. J. Kuschel, Born before All Time? The Dispute over Christ's Origin (Crossroad, 1992). James Dunn, Christology in the Making (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1996, 2nd ed.). The latter sees that Paul did not believe in the orthodox Trinity. Back to text.
2 Norman Geisler and William Watkins, "The Incarnation and Logic: Their Compatibility Defended," Trinity Journal, 1985, Vol. 6, p. 189. Back to text.
3 Thomas Hart, To Know and Follow Jesus, Paulist Press, 1984, p.44. Back to text.
4 A. T. Hanson, Grace and Truth: A Study in the Doctrine of the Incarnation, SPCK, 1975, p. 1. Back to text.
5 Leslie Simmonds, What Think Ye of Christ? p. 45. Back to text.
6 Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and history of Gnosticism, Harper and Row, 1983, p. 372. Back to text.
7 Commentary on Luke 1:35. Back to text.
8 A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion, Zondervan, 1962, p. 110. Back to text.
9 Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, p. 291. Back to text.
10 Encyclopedia Americana. 11th Ed., Vol. 23, 9. 963. Back to text.
11 Against Hermogenes, ch. 3. Back to text.
12 Michael Schmaus, Dogma, Vol. 3, God and His Christ, Sheed and Ward, 1971, p. 216. Back to text.
13 The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, OUP, 1990, s.v., Origen, p. 1009. Back to text.
14 See our article, "Does Everyone Believe in the Trinity? Back to text.
15 See Deut. 18:15-18. Back to text.
16 See I Cor. 8:4-6. Back to text.
18 I John 2:22; John 20:31. Back to text.
19 I John 4:2; II John 9. Back to text.
21 Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, p. 409. Scores of scholars have said the same thing. Back to text.
22 History of Dogma, Vol. 1, p. 105. Back to text.