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Satanic Quote: Christianity Trasher: believes in Angel Christology
It is the height of satanic deception for the Jehovah's Witnesses to remove the phrase between two abutting quotes: "Jesus himself may not have claimed any of the Christological titles which the Gospels ascribe to him, not even the functional designation 'Christ'"
Rylands, John: Bulletin of The John Rylands Library
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Bulletin of The John Rylands Library quoted in, Should you believe the Trinity?, Watchtower publication
Watchtower Deception exposed:
How the Watchtower quoted the source
What they left out to deliberately misrepresent the source and deceive you:
"New Testament research has been leading an increasing number of scholars to the conclusion that Jesus certainly never believed himself to be God." -Bulletin of the John Rylands Library." (Bulletin of The John Rylands Library, Vol 50, (1967-68) p 247-261, as quoted in, Should you believe the Trinity?, Watchtower publication)
"the fact has to be faced that New Testament research over, say, the last thirty or forty years has been leading an increasing number of reputable New Testament scholars to the conclusion that Jesus himself may not have claimed any of the Christological titles which the Gospels ascribe to him, not even the functional designation 'Christ', and certainly never believed himself to be God." (Bulletin of The John Rylands Library, Vol 50, (1967-68) p 247-261, "Jesus As 'Theos' In The New Testament", by G. H. Boobyer)
Our comment:
The Watchtower quotes this same section twice, first in large text as an inset, WITHOUT ANY ELIPSES ("...") to show they deleted some text. The second time, in small text, the Watchtower uses "..." to show they deleted text, but the text they deleted proves the author not only rejected Jesus was God, but also the Christ! How satanic for Jehovah's Witnesses to need to even misquote and misrepresent modernists!
"The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library in England notes that according to Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, while the·os' is used in scriptures such as John 1:1 in reference to Christ, "in none of these instances is 'theos' used in such a manner as to identify Jesus with him who elsewhere in the New Testament figures as 'ho Theos,' that is, the Supreme God." And the Bulletin adds: "If the New Testament writers believed it vital that the faithful should confess Jesus as 'God', is the almost complete absence of just this form of confession in the New Testament explicable?" (Bulletin of The John Rylands Library, Vol 50, (1967-68) p 247-261, as quoted in, Should you believe the Trinity?, Watchtower publication)
But let me give another view. Karl Rahner, the eminent Roman Catholic theologian, considers that there are reliable applications of " theos " to Christ in six texts (Romans ix. 5 f. ; John i. 1, 18, xx. 28 ; I John v. 20 ; and Titus ii. 13). Rahner, however, immediately goes on to say that in none of these instances is "theos" used in such a manner as to identify Jesus with him who elsewhere in the New Testament figures as "ho Theos", that is, the Supreme God. (In the article " Does the New Testament Call Jesus God? ", Expository Times, lxxiii, No. 4 (January 1962). p. 118.)
Notice that the Watchtower omits the other 5 texts where Rahner says "Theos" refers to Christ. The second Watchtower quote after "And the Bulletin adds" was not the words of Rahner at all, but the Boobyer the Christianity trasher.
But the biggest deception with the Watchtower quote, is that Rahner is arguing against Modalism and the idea that Jesus is the same person as the Father. Rahner is actually making a point where Trinitarian's and Jehovah's Witnesses agree!
What they left out to deliberately misrepresent the source and deceive you:
What they fail to tell the same article also says:
That Boobyer is a raving modernist liberal who trashes both Jesus' claims of being God AND Christ!
What Anti-Trinitarians quote:
"In his post-resurrection heavenly life, Jesus is portrayed as retaining a personal individuality every bit as distinct and separate from the person of God as was his in his life on earth as the terrestrial Jesus. Alongside God and compared with God, he appears, indeed, as yet another heavenly being in God's heavenly court, just as the angels were-though as God's Son, he stands in a different category, and ranks far above them." (Bulletin of The John Rylands Library, Vol 50, (1967-68) p 247-261, "Jesus As 'Theos' In The New Testament", by G. H. Boobyer, as quoted in, Should you believe the Trinity?, Watchtower publication)
Boobyer's whole lecture is about rejecting the "traditional" Christology.
Here is what he said in the intro:
"The first will speak of the need for a reappraisal of the traditional interpretation of New Testament Christology; the second will deal with evidence requiring special attention in any reappraisal of New Testament Christology."
What he means by this is far more than Jehovah's Witnesses could accept. Boobyer said: "Jesus himself may not have claimed any of the Christological titles which the Gospels ascribe to him, not even the functional designation 'Christ'" It should be obvious that Boobyer is a liberal-modernist, Bible-trashing infidel that no Jehovah's Witness could quote as if a "conservative Bible believing scholar".
Our comment
The actual author for the one article in this periodical magazine, that is bound at the end of the year, is G. H. Boobyer, B.D., D. Theol., a Visiting Professor Of Theology in The University College Of Rhodesia. Boobyer is a modernist who hardly believes the Bible and is typical of faithless theologians who teach religion in major universities.
We openly admit that Boobyer denies the Deity of Christ, basically calls him a creature by lending support to Angel Christology.
But JW's must admit that Boobyer also denies that Jesus is the Christ! He comes right out and says that Jesus likely never even claimed to be the Christ. Sure, Boobyer refers to Jesus as the Christ, in academic correctness, but he believes the term Christ was applied to Jesus long after His death by the apostles who corrupted the true historicity of Christ. In other words, the Gospels are unreliable when Jesus claims to be the Christ in Mt 16:16. Boobyer comes right out and says that Jesus never really claimed this, rather later writers misrepresented and distorted what Jesus originally said. So Boobyer calls Jesus "Christ" in the same way he would call Muhammad a "prophet", but he really denies both are true!
What Boobyer is saying should make even JW's shudder and cringe! He is saying far more than JW's want him to say! Boobyer states that the term 'God' and the term 'Christ' or messiah are equally WRONG! Boobyer doesn't even believe Jesus is the messiah! He doesn't even believe the Bible!
But again, Boobyer, with his faithless views, is the only type of "authority" JW's can find that will say Jesus isn't God!
Boobyer believes the Bible writers were affected by pagan thought and denies the inspiration of Scripture.
Look at the incredible quote below. Boobyer has the nerve to say that 2 Peter 1:4 did not originate in the mind of God via inspiration, but was paganism creeping into the scriptures! Boobyer is a modernist Bible-trasher! There are many plain indications that Boobyer rejects the inspiration of scripture, but here is the most obvious:
"So far accepted was this fashion that an able and cautious New Testament scholar, Professor C. F. D. Moule of Cambridge, has expressed the opinion that even Christians might, in certain senses, have been willing to recognize the deity of the emperor. (The Birth of tie New Testament (1962), pp. 116 f.) That the New Testament writers were not unaffected by these modes of thought and speech appears in the striking words of 2 Peter i. 4, where the readers are told that even they-ordinary Christians would "become partakers of the (or 4 a) divine nature""
Deception Exposed:
It is the height of satanic deception for the Jehovah's Witnesses to remove the phrase: "Jesus himself may not have claimed any of the Christological titles which the Gospels ascribe to him, not even the functional designation 'Christ'" from between the two quotes in Watchtower publication in order to mislead the reader into what the author is actually saying!
Even worse, the Watchtower had to remove that section from a same sentence that Boobyer denies Jesus is both Christ and God!
Full Text:
What I want to say on this subject this evening will fall into two main
divisions. The first will speak of the need for a reappraisal of the
traditional interpretation of New Testament Christology; the second will
deal with evidence requiring special attention in any reappraisal of New
Testament Christology. Section 1: Aloys Grillmeier's valuable book entitled
Christ in Christian Tradition (1965) has an epilogue headed "
Chalcedon--End or Beginning? " Hem this learned Roman Catholic scholar
reminds us that, react as we will to the Christological disputations which
agitated the church from the Council of Nicaea to that of Chalcedon, the
Fathers certainly " intended to preserve the Christ of the Gospels and the
Apostolic Age for the faith of posterity ". Then, however, Grillmeier goes
on to mention a comment by Karl Rahner that Chalcedon was not an end but a
beginning, refers approvingly to Pope John's call to the church at the
Second Ecumenical Vatican Council to speak the language of the modern
world, and finally himself asserts that " the demand for a complete
reappraisal of the Church's belief in Christ right up to the present day is
an urgent one " (p. 494). Some while ago, a high-ranking colleague of mine
in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne assured me that theologians are
always wrong I Be it so, or not, the prevalence of Grillmeier's view among
Catholic and Protestant theologians is evident from the number and nature
of Christological studies produced by New Testament scholars and others in
recent years -an output to which the one whom we commemorate this evening
with honour and gratitude made notable contributions. And if it is asked
why a reappraisal of Christological doctrine is urgent today, I would give
at least four reasons. (1) First, is it not a pressing apologetic and
catechetical need? Put more precisely, do we not find the orthodox doctrine
of the person of Christ a source of much perplexity to inquiring
non-Christians and to many a Christian believer under instruction ? " True
God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father "
and " the selfsame perfect in God-head, the selfsame perfect in manhood,
truly God and truly 9, man thus runs the familiar language of what we call
the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Definition, but how successful are
ministers and clergy in making it intelligible ? not to mention its
baffling elaboration in the Athanasian Creed I Must it no t be conceded
that to many intelligent lay folk it seems sheer mystification? Donald M.
Baillie confessed as much years ago in his widely read book God was in
Christ. He remarked, " I am convinced that a great many thoughtful people
who feel them selves drawn to the Gospel in these days are completely
mystified by the doctrine of the Incarnation far more than we theologians
usually realize " (p. 29). (2) Secondly, if some of the thought about the
nature of God now emerging outside and within the Christian churches is
accepted, a restatement of traditional Christology is certainly
necessitated. Quite obviously so, if we entertain the notion of a decease
of the transcendental, personal God of the Bible as pro-pounded by Thomas
Altizer and other exponents of the so-called " death of God " theology ;
but no less definitely so, if we opt for some form of the
Ground-of-our-being theology associated particularly with the names of Paul
Tillich and the Bishop of Woolwich. This theology contends that, though
personal, God in relation to us is not another Person. Yet Jesus certainly
was another person ; then if God is not to be conceived as another Person,
in what sense may Jesus still be confessed as " True God from true God "
and " perfect in Godhead ? The affirmation will require fresh
clarification. (3) Thirdly, for some time Christological studies have been
insisting strongly on the essential genuineness of the humanity of Jesus,
often indicting the main stream of Christological orthodoxy with proneness
to Docetism and Apollinarianism-Docetism being that ancient heresy which
denied the physical reality of Christ's human body, while Apollinarianism
could not allow him a human mind. The trend is obvious in the book just
mentioned, Donald Baillie's God was in Christ; it assumes robuster features
in later writing like that of John Knox and W. N. Pittenger. " Chalcedon ",
says Pittenger, " failed to prevent a modified Apollinarianism from
becoming the orthodoxy of the Middle Ages " (The Word Incarnate (1959), p.
102.) and Knox declares that " at whatever cost in terms of other cherished
*beliefs, the reality and normality of Jesus's manhood must be maintained
". (2 The Humanity and Divinity of Christ (1967), p. 73.) This emphasis
derives in part from the success-however qualified-with which modem New
Testament scholarship has brought us face to face with the historical Jesus
of Nazareth, an achievement the real value of which has in my view been
most unprofitably obscured by those recent theological fashions which have
disclaimed interest in any other Jesus than the kerygmatic Christ of
apostolic witness and have denied that our New Testament sources can yield
up any other. However, be its causes what they may, does not so much
outright insistence as we are hearing today on what Knox calls " the
reality and normality of Jesus' manhood " demand new apologetic efforts of
those who with the Fathers and the ancient credal formularies still affirm
that this historical human Jesus, a prophet from Nazareth, while truly man
was also ontologically " True God from true God " ? The embarrassing edge
of this age-long problem is commonly thought to be turned by the plea that,
despite the implications of some of their language, the Fathers never
intended to identify Jesus with God outright. This is said to be evident
from their use of the Logos Christology and the conception of Jesus as
God's Son. So orthodox Christology in confessing Jesus as truly God is not
asserting that Jesus is God without qualification, or God absolutely. But
will this line of argument do ? May I at least frankly admit that, coming
as it so often does from eminent Christian theologians, I find it quite
extra-ordinary ? For, does it not at once evoke the query, What kind of God
is it, then, who is only God with qualification, who is not God absolutely
? On any legitimate Christian use of terms is any being who is only God
with qualification, and not God absolutely, any longer truly God? (4) 1
pass to a fourth reason for a re-examination of the traditional doctrine of
the person of Christ. There now exists a widespread recognition that early
Christology, and especially New Testament Christology, was an out growth of
the Christian experience of Jesus as Savior--yes, indeed, as eschatological
Savior. That is, in through and around him God was held to be providing
man's full and final deliverance from the world, sin, death, from all
demonic cosmic powers and Satan. To be sure, Jesus's advent was thought to
portend the dissolution of the kingdoms of this world, the end of the
present age and the inbreaking of the kingdom of God. Then in consquence of
his God-appointed role in this stupendous series of eschatological events,
what was his rank ? How must one assess his status in the light of his
redemptive function ? It was from this angle that the first Christians
formed their estimate of Jesus. When, therefore, they assigned him such
honorific titles as Christ, Son of man, Son of God and Lord, these were
ways of saying not that he was God, but that he did God's work. In other
words, such designations originally expressed not so much the nature of
Christ's inner being in relation to the being of God, but rather the
pre-eminence of his soteriological function in God's redemption of mankind.
That is, the earliest interpretation of the person of Christ found in the
New Testament is predominantly not ontological but functional; and Oscar
Cullmann has stoutly maintained that the functional emphasis remained the
dominant one throughout the New Testament. He wrote, " When the New
Testament asks 'Who is Christ ? ' it never means primarily 'What is his
nature?' but 'What is his function ? ' (The Christology of the New
Testament (1959). pp. 3 f.) However, interest in Jesus' personal nature and
speculation about the relation of his inner being to God's being soon arose
in the first Christian communities, and asserts itself in the New Testament
documents, especially in passages like Philippians ii. 5.11 ; Colossians i.
15:20; Hebrews i and ii; and in the Fourth Gospel. Moreover, the three
centuries following the New Testament period saw this concern for an
ontological interpretation of the person of Christ eclipsing and overriding
functional Christology, until the question whether and in what sense Jesus
was God became the dominant issue. Nicene and Chalcedonian Christology was
the credalizing climax of this process, with Jesus ultimately confessed as
" of one substance with the Father ", " perfect in Godhead " as in manhood,
truly God and truly man. And so arises a leading exegetical question,
namely, to what extent is the ontological Christology of the ancient creeds
with their strong affirmation of the deity of Jesus a faithful
credalization of the New Testament evidence? Is it a legitimate and
inevitable development of New Testament Christology, or a distortion of it?
In the light of the knowledge now at the disposal of New Testament
scholarship-knowledge so much greater than that possessed by the
Fathers--does not this Christological problem call for fresh and far more
thoroughgoing elucidation ? Martin Werner, of course, has offered a
solution of it in words both forthright and provocative. The dogma of
Christ's deity, he has said, turned Jesus into another Hellenistic
redeemer- god, and thus was a myth propagated behind which the historical
Jesus completely disappeared! (The Formation of Christian Dogma (1957), p.
298.) Professor H. E. W. Turner has pronounced Werner's book " brilliant,
learned and perverse " (The Pattern of Christian Truth (1954), p. 20) (a
very possible combination of qualities in any erudite scholar!). Yet be
that as it may, the fact has to be faced that New Testament research over,
say, the last thirty or forty years has been leading an increasing number
of reputable New Testament scholars to the conclusion that Jesus himself
may not have claimed any of the Christological titles which the Gospels
ascribe to him, not even the functional designation " Christ ", and
certainly never believed himself to be God. For example, with the words of
Mark x. 19 in mind, H. W. Montefiore has of late remarked that Jesus seems
to have denied explicitly that he was God; (In his essay " Toward a
Christology for Today ", published in Soundings, ed. A. Wier (1962), P.
158.) and R. H. Fuller's exhaustive analysis of the growth of New Testament
Christology brings him to a view of the self-understanding Of Jesus
resembling Bultmann's. Fuller thinks that Jesus under-stood himself as an
eschatological prophet, not in the sense that he defined himself thus
precisely, but that this was " the working concept " of his identity which
guided him throughout his mission. (the Foundations of New Testament
Christology (1956). p. 130.) Now if this is the position to which careful
analysis of the Gospel evidence brings us, what becomes of the claim that
the Christological clauses of the ancient credal formularies are a right
explication of the New Testament witness ? Can you hold together, as many
New Testament scholars seem still to do, the two positions that on the one
hand critical study of the Gospels discloses a Jesus with no consciousness
of being God and making no claim to be God and on the other hand the belief
that Nicene Christology, declaring him " True God of true God " is a right
credalization of the New Testament evidence ? I would at least suggest that
this problem is becoming sufficiently acute today to be in itself a reason
for that " re-appraisal of the Church's belief in Christ right up to the
present day " which, in the quotation made at the outset of this lecture,
A. Grillmeier speaks of as urgent. Section 2: Shall we now move on to our
second main division, which will be a review of the evidence requiring
special attention in any reappraisal of New Testament Christology. In other
words, if in consequence of the advance of New Testament scholarship this
is a day for Christological stocktaking and one which poses the question
whether the traditional formulations of the doctrine of the person of
Christ are in fact scriptural, what aspects of New Testament teaching about
Christ's person require careful re-consideration ? May I say something
about three? They are all familiar to New Testament scholars; they are not
overlooked in Christological apologetics ; but are they apt to be
underrated ? (1) First, there is the rarity of New Testament references to
Jesus as " God " C' theos "). Some nine or ten passages occur in which
Jesus is, or might be, alluded to as " God " (" theos "). Usually cited aV
John i. 1, 18; xx. 28; Romans ix. 5; 2 Thessalonians i. 12; 1 Timothy iii.
16; Titus ii. 13; Hebrews i. 8f. ; 2 Peter i. I and I John v. 20. Two or
three of these, how-ever, are highly dubious, and, of the remainder,
varying degrees of textual or exegetical uncertainty attach to all save
one, which is Thomas's adoring acclaim of the risen Jesus in John xx. 28 as
" My Lord and my God I " Distinguishing this passage from the others,
Vincent Taylor-a moderately conservative scholar on Christological
problems-speaks of it as " the one clear ascription of Deity to Christ "
(Theological Investigations (1961), pp. 135 ff.) in the New Testament. But
let me give another view. Karl Rahner, the eminent Roman Catholic
theologian, considers that there are reliable applications of " theos " to
Christ in six texts (Romans ix. 5 f. ; John i. 1, 18, xx. 28 ; I John v. 20
; and Titus ii. 13). Rahner, however, immediately goes on to say that in
none of these instances is "theos" used in such a manner as to identify
Jesus with him who elsewhere in the New Testament figures as "ho Theos",
that is, the Supreme God. (In the article " Does the New Testament Call
Jesus God? ", Expository Times, lxxiii, No. 4 (January 1962). p. 118.) Now
obviously the very few New Testament passages-possibly only one-which
without question call Jesus " God " outright do not exhaust the linguistic
evidence. Notwith-standing, and in comparison with the frequency with which
this form of Christological confession is still required in the Christian
churches, is not its rarity in the New Testament most surprising ? Would
it, in fact, be unfair to press the point with the following query ? If the
New Testament writers believed it vital that the faithful should confess
Jesus as " God ", is the almost complete absence of just this form of
confession in the New Testament explicable ? (2) A second consideration
when re-examining New Testament Christology must certainly be the
background of the divinizing Christological language of the New
Testament-that is, the background of all that New Testament Christological
language which in one way and another speaks of Jesus as though he were a
divine being and which sometimes seems to be saying that he was God. And
how rich, how far-reaching, yes, How worshipful much of this language is!
To these first Christians, Jesus bore God's image, was in the form of God,
the effulgence of God's glory, the stamp of God's very being. He had been
raised far above all angels, was the firstborn of all creation, the alpha
and omega, a heavenly high priest, the man from heaven, the wisdom of God,
God's Logos (or Word) which was with God at the beginning and his agent in
creation. And when it came to personal titles, his were the highest they
could bestow: they proclaimed him as the Christ, the Son of man, the Son of
God, Lord and on occasion even as God I One cannot but be moved with wonder
at this glorification, but this should not suppress the question, What does
such language really mean ? May I here interject a somewhat irreverent
story? I was once conducting a Sunday service in a Baptist Church. Sitting
in the minister's vestry with the deacons in their appointed places on the
right hand and on the left, I was waiting to enter the church. The order of
service had been given me, but not the title of the anthem. The door opened
a little, the organist put his face around it, looked only at me and simply
said, " Come, Holy Ghost I " When I replied that it was not yet the hour
for worship the gravity of the deacons collapsed I Thus by means of a
digression into levity we happen upon a reminder of a serious linguistic
point : wrenched from their right context, words can convey wrong
meanings--words which in their right setting gave the title of the anthem
became grotesque when apparently transferred to me I Related to the
exposition of the Christology of the New Testament, what then does this
caveat imply ? The point, of course, is that if what the New Testament says
about the person of Jesus is to be understood aright, it must be read not
in accord with our linguistic English usage in the 1960's, but in the
setting of the categories of thought and the linguistic idiom of its day,
that is, in the context of the thought and speech of that first century
Jewish and Hellenistic environment to which the New Testament documents
belong. Obviously, a few brief words cannot adequately show the
interpretative consequences of doing this, when the relevant field of study
is so far-ranging. The main considerations, however, are well enough known
and appear in the commentaries, text-books and works of reference, together
with mention of the original sources of information. Some of the specially
important facts are these. The Greek world drew no sharp line of division
between the human and the divine, and readily divinized human
beings--outstanding people such as distinguished philosophers, soldiers or
kings might be called " son of God ", " lord " and even " God ". For
instance, the Seleucid king Antiocbus IV whose policy provoked the
Maccabaean revolt, had himself styled " theos " (God) on his coinage, and
the Roman emperor Domitian, a contemporary of some of the New Testament
writers, affected the honour of being " Lord and God ". So far accepted was
this fashion that an able and cautious New Testament scholar, Professor C.
F. D. Moule of Cambridge, has expressed the opinion that even Christians
might, in certain senses, have been willing to recognize the deity of the
emperor. (The Birth of tie New Testament (1962), pp. 116 f.) That the New
Testament writers were not unaffected by these modes of thought and speech
appears in the striking words of 2 Peter i. 4, where the readers are told
that even they-ordinary Christians would "become partakers of the (or 4 a)
divine nature " ; and that the consequences Of Christian salvation would
indeed be deification (in whatever sense) is said here and thereby the
Christian Fathers. Athanasius's statement is often quoted; speaking of
Jesus, he remarked: He was humanized, that we might be deified." (On the
Incarnation, 54 (vol. iii, Library of Christian Classics, p. 107).) Then,
too, notwithstanding its fervently sustained insistence upon monotheism,
upon the belief that the only true God was the transcendental God of the
Jewish Scriptures, Judaism, the cradle of Christianity, sometimes went
surprisingly far in applying divinizing terms to angels, to the
personalized concepts of Wisdom and the Logos and even to men. Angels could
carry the designations " son of God ", " lord " and even " god "-the Qumran
documents have brought further evidence of this. Jewish writing about
Wisdom, the Logos and the Torah (the Law of Moses) contains close parallels
to the New Testament description of Jesus as God's image, the effulgence of
God's glory, his firstborn, God's agent in the creation of the world and so
on. Philo could speak of the Logos as a " second God ". In honorific
references to men, Hellenistic Judaism was be-ginning to speak of
outstanding Old Testament characters as divine (" theioi "); a righteous
man could be a " son of God " -and a passage can be cited in which Philo
alludes to Moses as 46 theos " (god). (Cf. F. Hahn, Christologische
Hoheitstitel (1963) pp. 294 f.) But, to be sure, already in the Old
Testament, Israel's king as God's anointed finds mention as son of God ",
and one or two passages occur in which the noun god " is actually used of
men. Psalm xlv. 6 f. provides a significant example, because here the
greater and lesser senses of the substantive " God " appear side by side,
namely, " God " in the usual sense of the supreme God Of Israel and " god "
denoting the person of Israel's king. Furthermore, this same passage
appears in Hebrews i. 8 f. as a testimonium. related to Christ, where it is
" god" in its lesser connotation in the original which, following the usual
translation of the passage, is apparently related to Jesus Christ. This
short and fragmentary survey of linguistic background material must end.
Possibly, however, enough has been said to indicate that the New Testament
writers spoke of Jesus in an environment in which terminology which we
should reckon appropriate only when referring to a truly divine being could
be used of angels and indeed of human beings. In that first-century world,
you could maintain that certain humans were in origin associated with the
heavenly sphere; you could attribute to them a measure of ontological
affinity with God's nature; you could honour them with such titles as "'
son of God ", ' Lord "--yes, even " god " ; and you could do all this
without any intention of investing those so honoured with the same divine
status as that of the highest God. I have already stated that this
background, linguistic evidence has by no means been overlooked: it is too
well known. Yet in expositions of the meaning of the Christological
language of the New Testament along traditional lines, has it so far been
accorded its due weight ? (3) The third and last of the three
considerations treated in this lecture as deserving of close attention in
any reappraisal of New Testament Christology is what may surely be
described as the sustained subordinationism of New Testament Christology.
That is to say, is it not a fact that right through the New Testament the
reader again and again encounters material which, implicitly or explicitly,
represents Jesus as of lesser rank than God ? And is it not of special
significance that this position is maintained, even where the New Testament
is speaking of the person and functions of the celestial Christ active in
heaven after his resurrection and exaltation ? Whatever happened at that
first Christian Easter, the earliest Christians were convinced that God had
raised Jesus from death, and had translated him to the highest heaven,
where God him-self was believed to dwell. Further, in and from his heavenly
dwelling-place the erstwhile terrestrial Jesus, now a celestial being, was
continuing his redemptive function and would go on doing so until its
consummation. In consequence, the resurrection event was a decisive turning
point in the growth of New Testament Christology. Recent research has
stressed this. Barnabas Lindars, for example, wrote of his recent book, New
Testament Apologetic, published in I% I : " . . . this study shows that the
resurrection of Jesus is the primary factor in the formation of Christian
dogma. The Messianic titles are applied to him as a consequence of this
fact, and defended by appeal to it (p. 29). This judgement is sound, and
implies that a careful consideration of the New Testament accounts of the
post-resurrection life and activity of the celestial Christ is essential,
if a true elucidation of New Testament Christology is to be achieved. May
we, then, look into a few significant points ? Noteworthy first of all is
the fact that, in his post-resurrection heavenly life, Jesus is portrayed
as retaining a personal individuality every bit as distinct and separate
from the person of God as was his in his life on earth as the terrestrial
Jesus. Along-side God and compared with God, he appears, indeed, as yet
another heavenly being in God's heavenly court, just as the angels
were-though as God's Son, he stands in a different category, and ranks far
above them. , Small wonder, then, that angel Christology was a prominent
strand of early Christological thought, as Martin Werner has emphasized and
other scholars have recognized. (Werner, op. cit. pp. 120-41. Cf. too,
Grillmeier, op. cit. pp. 52-62) Werner further argued that in calling Jesus
" Lord Kyrios "), Paul and the early church meant that Jesus " was a nigh
heavenly being of an angelic kind ", the designation " Lord being a
particular instance of the designation and invocation of angels as " lords
" (" kyrioi 99) in late Judaism. (Werner, op. cit. P. 124) But whatever is
to be said for or against the validity of angel Christology, the
distinctness and separateness of Christ's heavenly person in his celestial
life and activity from the person of God in heaven is plain enough. We are
told that he sits at God's right hand; Stephen at his martyrdom is said to
have seen him standing there (Acts vii. 56) ; and ultimately, of course,
men on earth are to see him again as a person quite distinct from God when,
with his holy angels, he returns triumphantly from heaven at his parousia,
that is, at his second advent. Indeed, so completely and consistently is
his individual separateness from God maintained that if the New Testament
writers did consider him fully God, and if for the sake of the argument the
New Testament references to the Holy Spirit are left on one side, would not
the resultant conception of God be a form of ditheism ? I do not see how
this conclusion can be avoided. What, however, is said of his life and
functions as the celestial Christ neither means nor implies that in divine
status he stands on a par with God himself and is fully God. On the
contrary, in the New Testament picture of his heavenly person and ministry
we behold a figure both separate from and subordinate to God. We learn that
he confesses or denies men before God (Matt. x. 23 f. ; Luke xii. 8) he
intercedes with God on our behalf and as heavenly paraclete pleads our
cause with the Father (Rom. viii. 34 ; Heb. vii. 25 ix. 24 ; I John ii. 1)
; he is the mediator between men and God 0 Tim. ii. 5) ; and in Hebrews
there is the familiar description of his heavenly ministrations as a high
priest who is faithful to God, who has learned obedience to the God who
appointed him, who offers prayers and supplications to God and can in fact
address the Father God as his God (i. 9; X. 7). And how will it be at the
end, when, with his outstanding work as celestial Christ accomplished, he
re-appears in his parousia glory? St. Paul is quite explicit about it. The
apostle writes that after that victorious event, and when Christ has put
all remaining enemies beneath his feet, then will he hand over complete
dominion to God-to quote from the relevant passage in the New English Bible
translation : " . . . when all things are thus subject to him, then the Son
himself will also be made subordinate to God ... and thus God will be all
in all (I Cor. xv. 28). In many another place, and apart from allusions to
the celestial work of Christ, this New Testament stress on Jesus'
subordination to God recurs. How strong it is, for example, in the Fourth
Gospel--the very document which contains the two most certain references to
Jesus as God in the whole New Testament ! Yet in this gospel not only is it
Jesus as the Son rather than as God who is in the foreground, but he is
also a Son who explicitly declares " the Father is greater than I " (xiv.
28), or 11 1 can of myself do nothing ... I seek not mine own will, but the
will of him that sent me " (v. 30)---even the will of Jesus, be it noted,
is one will and the will of God another. The Fourth Gospel contains more in
a similar vein, so when it comes to the exposition of the prologue's
statement that Jesus as the Logos was 44 theos" ("God") or Thomas's
exclamation in chapter twenty, " My Lord and my God I ", J. M. Creed was
entirely right in the statement, " Even the Prologue of St. John, which
comes nearest to the Nicene doctrine, must be read in the light of the
pronounced subordinationism of the Gospel as a whole ". (The Divinity of
Jesus Christ Tontana edn.), PP. 122 f.) The situation is similar when one
turns to the exposition of the Christology of St. Paul. Whatever is made of
the details of important Christological passages like Philippians ii. 5-11
or Colossians i. 15-20, they have ultimately to be understood in the light
of Paul's overall Christological position. This position is clearly
expressed in the passage used just now which speaks of Christ eventually
handing over sovereignty to God that God may be all in all 0 Cor. xv. 28)..
It comes out again with unequivocal clarity in the words of 1 Corinthians
xi. 3-- the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the
man; and the head of Christ is God." This discussion must now draw to a
close, but with what kind of conclusion? My reading of the facts must
inevitably be limited and liable to error. Rightly or wrongly, however, I
can but think that the main weight of the evidence is on the side of those
who conclude, as does H. W. Montefiore, that " a Christology which is
expressed in terms of functional and personal relationship rather than in
ontological categories means a return to the biblical perspective.
(Soundings. p. 159) That is, in expounding and proclaiming the significance
of Jesus Christ, the New Testament writers were moved primarily not by
intellectual curiosity about the nature of Christ's person and his relation
to the divine being of God, though this interest is some-times apparent.
They were gripped mostly by the extent to which Jesus was in God's service,
executed God's redemptive work and on God's authority. If, therefore, on
occasion they went so far as to refer to Jesus as " God ", this was meant
as an expression of his soteriological significance-his God-given place in
the unfolding of God's plan of eschatological salvation. In so speaking,
they were not assigning Jesus equality of status with God, and certainly
did not intend to say that ontologically he was truly God. They meant that
he was God functionally. In terms drawn from I Corinthians viii. 6, just as
they knew of lords many, but of only one true Lord, namely, Jesus Christ,
so, too, were they aware of gods many, yet of only one who was truly God,
and he the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. To him above all was
the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever. (John Rylands
Library, Vol 50, (1967-68) p 247-261, Jesus As " Theos " In The New
Testament, The Manson Memorial Lecture delivered in the university of
Manchester, G. H. Boobyer, B.D., D. Theol., by Visiting Professor Of
Theology In The University College Of Rhodesia)
Go To Alphabetical Index Of Deceptive Quotes
Written By Steve Rudd, Used by permission at: www.bible.ca
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