Eek…this thread took off without me!
tracer said:
Correct. The Divine Name (yod-he-vau-he) is, if I have my facts completely right (and I welcome correction), the archaic causative infinitive; what He said to Moses on the mountain was the 1st person singular of this form, quirkily if accurately translated as “I am-eth” (using KJV English to represent the archaism inherent in the verb form).
Because of this equivalence in Hebrew, when Greek became the lingua franca of the ancient world, including Galilee and Judea, the practicing Jews of the time made it a point to avoid using the Greek translation of this. The equivalent would be if Chaim or Keeves, speaking Spanish, made it a point to use “soy” or “estoy” without the pronoun “yo” even when emphasis would call for it, because “yo soy” would be the Spanish translation of what God called Himself. Sorry I wasn’t clearer on that.
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Reviewing The Ryan’s post, it becomes obvious that any further analysis of this thread’s main point requires getting into the doctrine of the Trinity. I am not thrilled about going in that direction; the whole thing is a metaphysical construct that attempts to explain to mortal minds the inscrutable interior composition of God. As such, it sets itself up for target practice by any card-carrying skeptic. But here goes:
*The following assertions are statements of Christian dogma, not allegations of provable fact. Please criticize on that basis, not the other.*God is one. God manifests himself to the world in a multiplicity of ways, in particular as Creator, through the person of Jesus as Redeemer, and within individual spirits as Strengthener. We understand these two apparently contradictory statements by suggesting that his “substrate,” his underlying substance, is one, but within that unity are three personae (using the English “person” as transliteration opens the door to some misinterpretation). Jesus explained these three personae in the Farewell Discourse recorded in John as having taken place after the Last Supper, just before he went to Gethsemane and was arrested.
[ul][li]The Father is God in the classic connotative sense, Chief Honcho of the Universe, the omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent Big Guy Up There. (Note that Gaudere has taken the lead on explorations of how this set of capacities interfaces with free will and the apparent contradictions contained in that set of assumptions.)[/li][li]The Son is/was/will be co-eternal with the Father but took on human form and nature as Jesus of Nazareth, without giving up his godhood but becoming totally human as well. This is not a 50:50 proposition, as in “this ball is half red and half blue” but a 100:100 proposition as in “this ball is totally red and totally round.” (This has some interesting implications about human destiny, which Pierre Teilhard de Chardin explored.)[/li][li] The Holy Spirit is, to quote a Methodist creed, “the divine presence in our lives, giving strength and help in time of need.” He is the voice of God guiding the Christian to do right (when the Christian bothers listening to Him).[/ul][/li]
Okay, that’s orthodox dogma (with my spin on a bit of it). Jesus nowhere claims to be identical to God, but he does advance claims, particularly in John, that are tantamount to assertions of his divinity.
In Mark, he refers to himself predominantly as “son of man.” This term, however, had picked up some fascinating connotations by this time. The Jewish equivalent of the cartoon guy with the sandwich board saying “The world will end tomorrow; have you made your peace with God?” had taken Daniel’s use of the term to set it off as meaning an apocalyptic figure who would work God’s will in the end times. It did not mean what it meant for Ezekiel, i.e., a descendent of Adam and therefore in a subordinate position vis-a-vis God.
Did the terms used in the Gospels for Jesus get some interpretation? Absolutely. Are they compatible with the “we’re all God” interpretation? Absolutely not, unless you take Jesus as schizoid (a plausible assumption but not one I personally make). He claimed unity with God but on the same token depicted God as other than, over and above, humanity. No pantheistic or panentheistic interpretation stands up to the Gospel teachings. (I.e., David or Phil would say they are as likely – in their eyes not very – but they are incompossible with the Jesus and the God depicted in the Gospel.)
That said, by orthodox Christian doctrine, ARG220 is the Son of God. So am I. So is Jeffery and so is Tom and Pickman’s Model and Jodi. We are sons of God by adoption through the gift of his grace received through baptism and faith (some difference of opinion as to the relative importance of these two, which we won’t get into). Jesus was the one son of God from the get-go, the one who had no father but God (this is the theological implication of the virgin birth doctrine; it was not, except in the eyes of some ascetics, to suggest anything unholy about sex). He’s the registered member of the God Club; the rest of us get in as his guests.
Jesus makes it pretty clear that he is (1) in some way equivalent to God, on a par with him, in some mystic union with him, and (2) subordinate to God, doing his will, lacking divine knowledge, all through all four gospels.
Needless to say, there can be (and if I know this board will be) some heated argument as to the validity of his claims. But it’s important not to misinterpret what it appears he understood himself to be, insofar as that can be understood from the gospels. (The evolution of the theological understanding of the disciples as to who Jesus was is a separate question from who Jesus thought he was.)