The Word as a person of the trinity

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darinhouston
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The Word as a person of the trinity

Post by darinhouston » Wed Jan 23, 2013 4:48 pm

Has there been a historical view of the "Word" as being a person of the trinity? It seems to me at least as good a biblical case as the "Son" - perhaps better as the Sonship is questionably eternal while the Word is not. (of course, that begs the question of what "in the beginning" relates to) -- at least the Word precedes Creation while the Son may not.

It seems to me reasonable to think that the Father and the Spirit are the same thing while the Word is perhaps something distinct but emanating therefrom while the Son is something created and embodying the Word and indwelt by and in full communion with the Father/Spirit.

Is that consistent with any historic views?

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Re: The Word as a person of the trinity

Post by morbo3000 » Wed Jan 23, 2013 9:43 pm

This is a more modern scholarship than historic view.

The word itself doesn't necessary translate well into one English word. I have a translation that uses "the divine word and wisdom," "This double phrase attempts to express for the moment the complex and difficult Greek term Logos, whose various meanings include concept, pattern, reason, speech, and revelation... in v. 14 it emerges that "the divine word and wisdom" is to be identified with a person, God's only son.
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Re: The Word as a person of the trinity

Post by darinhouston » Thu Jan 24, 2013 8:19 am

Verse 14 implies to me that the word was "embodied" in flesh. In the context, I don't see how the Logos needs to be seen as having been transformed into flesh like the elements of the mass are thought to be. The Logos isn't tangible from my understanding. If it is the mind of God or the Father's revealed will or plan then my understanding makes sense. The son could be said to be the way in which that plan and will became tangible and known to us directly by and throughthe flesh of a man and his observed acts and professed truths.

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Re: The Word as a person of the trinity

Post by mattrose » Thu Jan 24, 2013 9:47 am

This doesn't answer your question, but poses one to you...

If I were talking to my 2 year old daughter about my childhood, I might say something like "When your dad was a little boy, I used to watch Curious George too." Of course, I wasn't her dad back then. But she's knows me best as dad (actually, she calls me 'papa'). So 'dad/papa' communicates most clearly.

When we refer to the '2nd person of the trinity'... there are, indeed, a host of ways we could refer to Him. Word. Son. Jesus. Messiah. Christ. Etc. But the term 'Son' does, to my mind, have a lot going for it, in spite of the debate about how 'eternal' His Sonship was. I don't take any issue with retroactively referring to the 2nd person as the Son for pre-incarnational times. 'Son' certainly communicates His relational nature better than 'Word' (at least it seems so to me). 'Son' certainly highlights his main task (being born, living, dying & rising for us). 'Son' is seemingly easier for us humans to attach ourselves to for worship...

Surely 'Word' has some advantages too. For me, 'Word' better communicates the unity of the godhead. I would recommend its use. Given the predominance of using 'Son,' I could even see the benefit of using 'Word' more often to balance the scales a bit. But ultimately, I think, I prefer the term 'Son'... or simply 'Jesus' (even though the 2nd Person wasn't 'Jesus' until the birth). Sometimes we refer to people by the label they were most famous for, and the 2nd Person of the Trinity is most famous for being Jesus, the Son of God.

So I guess my question for you is... what is your end-game in this discussion? It's not a pointed question, I'm just curious (like George)!

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Re: The Word as a person of the trinity

Post by darinhouston » Thu Jan 24, 2013 2:07 pm

mattrose wrote:This doesn't answer your question, but poses one to you...

If I were talking to my 2 year old daughter about my childhood, I might say something like "When your dad was a little boy, I used to watch Curious George too." Of course, I wasn't her dad back then. But she's knows me best as dad (actually, she calls me 'papa'). So 'dad/papa' communicates most clearly.

When we refer to the '2nd person of the trinity'... there are, indeed, a host of ways we could refer to Him. Word. Son. Jesus. Messiah. Christ. Etc. But the term 'Son' does, to my mind, have a lot going for it, in spite of the debate about how 'eternal' His Sonship was. I don't take any issue with retroactively referring to the 2nd person as the Son for pre-incarnational times. 'Son' certainly communicates His relational nature better than 'Word' (at least it seems so to me). 'Son' certainly highlights his main task (being born, living, dying & rising for us). 'Son' is seemingly easier for us humans to attach ourselves to for worship...

Surely 'Word' has some advantages too. For me, 'Word' better communicates the unity of the godhead. I would recommend its use. Given the predominance of using 'Son,' I could even see the benefit of using 'Word' more often to balance the scales a bit. But ultimately, I think, I prefer the term 'Son'... or simply 'Jesus' (even though the 2nd Person wasn't 'Jesus' until the birth). Sometimes we refer to people by the label they were most famous for, and the 2nd Person of the Trinity is most famous for being Jesus, the Son of God.

So I guess my question for you is... what is your end-game in this discussion? It's not a pointed question, I'm just curious (like George)!
My end point is truth -- I don't see a lot of evidence for the traditional formulation, and it offends me the more I read about Arius' and others’ actual views and the response to them to have such things and such people declared as heretical. I want a scripturally, biblically supported views of God and Jesus that goes no further than God's actual revelation intended. I don't see that coming from Nicea, and I don’t feel a need to have a complex Godhead (so-called). I am comfortable with mystery and unknown -- I can stick to the minimal views as revealed, but Jesus went out of his way to distinguish himself (notwithstanding verses folks see as him equating himself, which are easily understood otherwise) -- why do we feel such a need ? God is Spirit – in John 4 Jesus goes out of his way to tell them that they aren’t going to be worshiping there on the mountain (with him) or in Jerusalem (in the Temple) but God is spirit and we worship him in spirit and truth. He had so many opportunities to formulate a Trinitarian view of the godhead and he seemed to avoid it. That should caution overuse of the “I am” passages. Yes, he is the light of the world – so are we to be.

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Re: The Word as a person of the trinity

Post by mattrose » Thu Jan 24, 2013 3:17 pm

I resonate with your willingness to be open to mystery. I also resonate with your position that people with different formulations (within reason) shouldn't be treated as heretics.

If you have time and interest, feel free to respond to my responses to some of your statements. I wouldn't mind identifying where your interests lie in these regards.
I don’t feel a need to have a complex Godhead (so-called)
I'm taking this to mean that you don't need to have a fully formulated theology (whether it be trinitarian, binatarian, or whatever). You're comfortable just worshiping God in your limited understanding. Is this what you are saying? If so, I don't take much issue with it. The only thing I would say is that there is nothing wrong with attempting to understand (and very much RIGHT with doing so, so long as we don't become too dogmatic about our conclusions).
Jesus went out of his way to distinguish himself... why do we feel such a need
I don't want to misunderstand your point here. Are you saying that Jesus distinguished himself from the Father... so we shouldn't be so adamant about equating them? This seems to be a reaction against over-emphasized monotheism within Christianity. It seems to me that some Christians start with monotheism and subsequently develop the trinity. Others, though, start with the trinity and then develop their monotheism. If I am reading you correctly, you are pretty much against both directions. You'd rather just leave it as there being 1 God (The Father) and then a distinct entity (The Word which took on flesh in the Son). Is this right?
God is Spirit – in John 4 Jesus goes out of his way to tell them that they aren’t going to be worshiping there on the mountain (with him) or in Jerusalem (in the Temple) but God is spirit and we worship him in spirit and truth.
Is your point here that 'God' and 'Spirit' should be equated? Just making sure I don't misunderstand you.
He had so many opportunities to formulate a Trinitarian view of the godhead and he seemed to avoid it.
This is a bit of a false test, in my opinion. Jesus wasn't particularly interested in teaching theology as we imagine it today. He was interested in conveying the character of God (perhaps that is your point?). In any case, I don't think the lack of systematic trinitarian teaching in the New Testament is evidence for or against trinitarianism. It's just not the genre of the literature.

What I'm going to say next may (probably will) sound rude or condescending, but I genuinely don't mean it as such. I think people like you (who question the doctrine of the trinity) are wrong, but for the right reasons. I believe the doctrine of the trinity is correct (though, like you, I think we are too dogmatic about the exact way to describe the relation of the Father, Son, and Spirit). But many Christians are trinitarians for the wrong reasons (they've just accepted what they've been told without ever really thinking about it). You are thinking about it and questioning the value of the formulation. I think the kingdom/church NEEDS people to do this... not so that we will see the truth and abandon the trinitarian view, but so that we'll actually examine our own views and hold them for the right reasons.

The one thing I am VERY adamant about maintaining, no matter what formulation is come up with, is that God IS a loving relationship within God's self. I, myself, think this is essential to Christianity. God is love. Love is only present in relationship. Before anything else was created (in fact, the very reason anything else was created), God was already experiencing love within God's self. How? Because God's self is made up of multiple lovers.

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Re: The Word as a person of the trinity

Post by Paidion » Thu Jan 24, 2013 6:23 pm

Currently I am reading A History of Heresy by David Christie-Murray. In searching for an understanding of the person of Jesus, a wide range of views emerged during the first centuries of Christianity. Unfortunately many bishops and other leaders, including governmental leaders, unlike Matt and Darin, were aggressively intolerant of any views which differed from their own. There were the Judaizers, the gnostics, the Nicenes, the Arians, the Semi-Arians, the Subordinationists, the Anomoians, the Homoiusians, the Origenists, the Sabellians, the Apollinarians, the Nestorians, the Pelagians, the Eutychians, the Monophysites, the Severians, the Monoenergists, the Monotheletists, and many others — all part of the univesal Church at some point — until they were excommunicated by the promotors of some other Christological point of view. Some were also banned to deserts, or attacked, or put into prison, or put to death.

I find that most of their thinking lay in their views that the "soul" or "spirit" or man is a spiritual entity which inhabits the body, but can be separated from it—a Greek philosophical understanding. So their positions concern the sense in which the Logos inhabited Christ, or which was the real "person" of Christ? The Logos? Or was it the human mind of Christ? In what sense was Jesus "God"? Is it proper to say that Mary was "The God bearer"? Or did she bear merely a human being?

In my simple understanding of human nature, and of the begetting of the Son, most of these problems don't arise. I see human nature as a singualarity, with "body" and "mind" being two aspects of that singular nature. I understand "the Logos" as the divine Person—the Son of God—whom the Father begat at the beginning of time. Thus Jesus was Divine, having been generated from the true God.

For me, the mystery is how the Logos was able to become born as a human being. But I believe the Logos to have been a true human being. Somehow in being born as such, He divested Himself of all of His divine attributes (Philippians 2:6,7). The only aspect of His Deity which He retained was His identity as the divine Logos. In all other respects, except for His total relationship with His Father, ("I do nothing except what the Father tells me"), Jesus was an ordinary human being. He became hungry and thirsty just like anyone else. He was tempted to wrongdoing just like anyone else—yet without sin. Not because He could not sin, but because He was always did His Father's will, He chose not to sin on every occasion of temptation. Thus as "the second Adam," He demonstrated by example that any human being can be an overcomer with regard to sin, if he has a close relationship with God.

I see the Holy Spirit, not as a third divine Person, but at the very Persons of the Father and the Son. Jesus promised His disciples that He and the Father would come and abide in them. Is this not the Holy Spirit? Indeed, Paul wrote that the Lord Jesus IS the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:8).

From this understanding, the Scriptures concerning Christ make sense—no need to postulate a Trinity or a Binity. One needs only to recognize "the only True God" of which Jesus spoke, His only begotten, divine Son Jesus, and the spirit of God/the spirit of Jesus who proceeds from the Father and the Son—which indeed is their very Persons.
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Re: The Word as a person of the trinity

Post by Homer » Thu Jan 24, 2013 11:37 pm

We seem to have a serious problem. If Jesus (the Son) and God the Father are separate persons (individuals), then we have polytheism, do we not? So how is it we worship both? And how is it Jesus accepted worship?

Exodus 34:10-14, New American Standard Bible (NASB)

13. But rather, you are to tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherim 14. —for you shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God—

Deuteronomy 6:13

13. You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name.

Luke 4:8

8. Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’”

It certainly looks like Jesus affirms the command to worship God alone, yet Jesus repeatedly allowed people to worship Him:

A leper worshiped Jesus in Matthew 8:2.

Jairus bowed before Jesus in worship in Matthew 9:18.

A woman worshiped Jesus in Matthew 15:25.

Mary Magdalene worshiped Jesus in Matthew 28:9.

The disciples worshiped Jesus in Matthew 28:17.

A blind man worshiped Jesus in John 9:38.

Jesus readily accepted Thomas’ worship and recognition as Lord and God in John 20:28.

And God even says angels are to worship Him, Hebrews 1:6

If Jesus is not God (triune God or binity), and not a second or lesser God, how is it He has been worshiped from "day one" until this day? If He is anything less than God, or a second God (or deity), it seems to me worshiping Him is a sin. What am I missing?

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Re: The Word as a person of the trinity

Post by Paidion » Fri Jan 25, 2013 3:48 pm

Homer wrote:We seem to have a serious problem. If Jesus (the Son) and God the Father are separate persons (individuals), then we have polytheism, do we not? So how is it we worship both? And how is it Jesus accepted worship?
Unless Jesus and the Father (as well as the Holy Spirit) are different persons (individuals), then the Trinity doesn't exist! ("God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!") If you believe God to be a single divine Individual and that He expresses Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then you are a Modalist, not a Trinitarian. However, that would not be surprising, for there are are many who consider themselves to be Trinitarians who are actually Modalists.

It seems to me that believing that the Father and the Son are the same Individual would cause one to have insurmountable problems with the scriptures of "the gospels." For example, what would it mean for Jesus to pray to the Father as He did? Did He pray to Himself? He certainly seemed to address the Father as a different Person. At times, they even had different wills. Jesus wanted to avoid drinking the cup of suffering. But He yielded to the Father's will:

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42)

Also, Jesus prayed to the Father that His disciples might be one as He and the Father are one (John 17:11). If Jesus and the Father are one in the sense of being the same Individual, then was He praying that each of His disciples would lose his individuality and become with the other disciples, a single individual?

As I see it, Jesus is just as divine and the Father, although a different Individual, for the Father begat Him before all ages— the "only-begotten God" (John 1:18). But Jesus and the Father are in perfect unity, for Jesus is Another exactly like the Father. As the writer of Hebrews says, the Son is the exact imprint of the Father's essence. (Hebrews 1:3). If you want to call this polytheism, so be it. In my view it's not polytheism because of the unity of the Father and Son, the unity of purpose, attitudes, will, etc. If a difference ever arose, as in the example I quoted above, the Son yielded to the Father.

I understand polytheism as a belief in a number of "gods" who are not in harmony and sometimes attack each other as was the case with the Greek gods. So I don't think that two divine Individuals are tantamount to two Gods. Yet the early Christians called Jesus their "God" not in the sense of His being the Father, but in the sense that He was fully divine. Even Arius, who believed (according to his opponents) that the Son was a lesser god, wrote in his letter to Eusebius in 321 A.D. that the Son was FULLY GOD.
Arius wrote:But what we say and think we both have taught and continue to teach, that the Son is not unbegotten, nor part of the unbegotten in any way, nor is he derived from any substance; but that by his own will and counsel he existed before times and ages, fully God, only-begotten, unchangeable.
It's a matter of how "God" is defined. The word is used in more than one sense in the New Testament. Most often, the word denotes the Father ("God so loved the world..." John 3:16 or "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."John 17:3 ) But at other times the word is used with reference to the essence of God or Deity. In John 1:1 both senses are used in that one verse: "In the beginning was the Logos (The Son) and the Logos was with God (the Father) and the Logos was God (Divine Essence). However, not once in the Bible, does the word "God" ever refer to a Trinity or a Binity.
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Re: The Word as a person of the trinity

Post by morbo3000 » Fri Jan 25, 2013 4:49 pm

I'm sure this is an offensive post.. I'm sorry for that. I don't mean it to be. It is certain that my impatience with a local church is coming through here, so my apologies.. I've been with them off and on for 20+ years. They are still just talking about stuff. And it is getting them no where. I fear that they could talk for another 20 years and still have gone nowhere.

Out of curiosity and no disdain for the interest of people in regard to this... what ultimate difference do the trinitarian formulas or [non]formulas make for the gospel? I get that it is interesting. But accusing each other of heresy on the subject misses the point of the gospel.

The gospels and epistles are clear about Jesus as the way to God/eternity. That we are/should be filled with [his] [holy] spirit. And also that our lives should imitate Him.

Jesus can be pre-existent, created son, "Word," or whatever. Whatever his origin or position, the bottom line is that we come to the Father through Him, and that our lives should imitate him.

The spirit can be pre-existent, or the spirit of God, or the spirit of Jesus, or whatever. The bottom line is that this spirit of the deity [yhwh], or created deity (if Jesus was created and not pre-existent) lives in me, should be welcomed, and transforms my mind.

It seems the corruption of the gospel would come through mucking around with that central tenet. The formulations of the three persons or whatnot doesn't impact that central tenet. I've seen two different groups that were passionate about "one-ness." But it wasn't oneness that defined them as heretics to me. It was their elevation of a teacher as an intermediary, or degenerating the role that Jesus has in our salvation, or other corruptions.

The different sides have been wrestled with since the beginning. We could put bots in a room with each different position, and they could rehearse everything there is to say on the subject, and still not come out with a satisfying answer.

Jeff.

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