The "Godhead"?

[Guest]

Ely (and Hi TK),

Are you familiar with the work of Larry Hurtado?

If not, I plan to start a thread about him on the "Teachers, Authors, and Movements" board...pretty soon.

[Guest]

Hi Ely,

Those verses do not say that God is "one personal being".

Deu 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: (and it's parallel in Mark)

Jam 2:19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

These are simply statements that there is only one God, which all Trinitarians believe, as I'm sure you know.

As for "the Godhead", as I understand it, is a theological construct. The Greek word theios is literally "divinity".

As far as being Unitarian, please fill me in. Does this mean that you don't think that Jesus is God, or that you take a modalistic approach (ie. God was "manifested" as Jesus on earth)?

I am especially interested in your understanding of Jesus' divinity.

God bless,

[Guest]

b) That Yahweh is a personal being and He alone is the true God?



He is but IMO at some point the "Word" and the "Spirit" emerged out of Yahweh to exist as separate entities but retaining their divinity which originated from the Father.
So whatever you may call it , you can't declare One God yet claim three divine eternal beings always existed.
It's a flat out contradiction.

[Guest]

Hey Derek,

Of course the Bible says there is only one God. But if this does not mean one personal being, then what does it actually mean? What does "God" mean, and what does it mean that "God is one" and that "there is one God"?

For example, when we read in the ten words:

"I am Yahweh elohaynu (the LORD your God), who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 “You shall have no other gods before Me" Exodus 20:2-3

Who or what is Yahweh Elohaynu? And what does mean to not have any should have no other gods before Yahweh Elohaynu?

For the record, I am neither an Arian or a Modalist. The Father is the only true God, Jesus Christ is His only begotten son, fully man and fully... man, the greatest man who has ever lived, THE son of man!


Rick, I noticed your post on Larry on another thread and that book you referred to. Are any of his writings or lectures on this issue avaliable online?

[Guest]

For the record, I am neither an Arian or a Modalist. The Father is the only true God, Jesus Christ is His only begotten son, fully man and fully... man, the greatest man who has ever lived, THE son of man!


Ely, Why is Jesus the greatest man who has ever lived? Seriously because other great men have made great sacrifices.

[Guest]

Ely wrote:
Rick, I noticed your post on Larry on another thread and that book you referred to. Are any of his writings or lectures on this issue avaliable online?

Yes, Larry has online stuff. I've posted links to his articles and books on at least three threads. Only recently have a found some of his (free) mp3's. I will post all of them on the new thread I'll start, probably this weekend.

I have to get going now for a new job (orientation). But since it is quite related to "the godhead" I'll go ahead and link here to a kind of "introductory" article now:

Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity:
Recent Scholarly Developments
by Larry Hurtado
April 2003

Excerpts:
In these and other publications of the last decade and more, I have emphasized that the most remarkable and eloquent indication of Jesus’ exalted place in their faith was a constellation of devotional actions that comprised what I termed a “binitarian” devotional pattern in which Jesus was reverenced uniquely along with God. In fact, in these actions, which are taken for granted already in our earliest extant texts, Jesus was given the sort of reverence that was otherwise reserved for God alone in all known circles of devout Jews of the time....

...But earliest devotees of the Christian movement were expected to forsake all the other deities and practice an exclusive reverence of the God of the Jewish Scriptures . . . and Jesus. This is why I describe this devotional pattern as a “binitarian” form of monotheism: God and the exalted Jesus are given the sort of reverence that connotes their divine status and that is denied to any other figure.

Larry Hurtado has been "accused" of being a binitarian by some fundamentalist Christians. But For The Record: he is both evangelical and Trinitarian!

I look forward to this new thread and want to go real "in-depth" there:
Gotta get goin now though!

[Guest]

Hi, Steve,

Horning in here...

Ely: b) That Yahweh is a personal being and He alone is the true God?

steve7150: He is but IMO at some point the "Word" and the "Spirit" emerged out of Yahweh to exist as separate entities but retaining their divinity which originated from the Father.

So you would not say that the Word (=Jesus?) and the Spirit are Yahweh?

If not, are they also God(s)?

So whatever you may call it , you can't declare One God yet claim three divine eternal beings always existed.
It's a flat out contradiction.

If I am not too far off, "orthodox" trinitarianism posits one God = one divine eternal being in three persons. The second person (Word=Jesus?) is eternally begotten from the first person (the Father), and the third person eternally proceeds from the first person (the Father; in the Western tradition, the third person also proceeds from the second person, Jesus).

As you might expect, I will parallel Ely: such a God-concept is a novel divergence from the basic tenor of the Hebrew bible.


Shlamaa,
Emmet

[Guest]

Hello, Ely,

Ely wrote:

This suggests that "the Godhead" is the class/type/kind that is God, and that three persons are in this class/type/kind. Is this accurate?
Just to clarify, I meant is this an accurate description of the Trinitarian understanding of things.

Personally, I really don't see that the Bible ever refers to the Almighty Creator, Yahweh, as being an impersonal class/kind/type. It seems that the one true God is everywhere referred to as one personal being and that this is the most basic starting point of true religion (Deuteronomy 6:4/ Mark 12:28-30, James 2:19 etc.).

For what it's worth (if I am not too far off), "orthodox" trinitarianism does not view the Godhead as a "class/kind/type." The diction of "Godhead" emphasizes the plurality of persons, but this does not contravene the tenet that there remains but one divine being.

Rather than a "class/kind/type," it's perhaps more like multiple personality disorder - though the "orthodox" would probably object to such pejorative analogy, and more-evolved trinitarian thought (e.g., perichoresis) might press the conventional boundaries of that analogy.


Shlamaa,
Emmet

[Guest]

Hello, TK,

if i am not mistaken, Ely, you seem to be leaning more toward choice b.

there is no doubt the verses you quoted seem to suggest that, but perhaps scripture taken as a whole indicates otherwise.

"[S]cripture taken as a whole"?

If earlier scripture indicates one thing, consistently, and it is only later scripture that "indicates otherwise" - what does this suggest about the later "scripture"?


Shlamaa,
Emmet

[Guest]

emmett-

my answer may be naive-- but how could earlier scripture reveal that Jesus is part of the "Godhead" before Jesus was revealed?

TK