The Son
1 Corinthians 8:6: yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
Content
- Vocabulary.
- Ministry of angels.
- Topics.
Vocabulary
- adoptionism. A doctrine which denies that Christ is begotten. It holds that Jesus was a mere man, although blameless, and that his adoption as God's (adopted) Son occurred post-resurrection.
- antichrist. There are several identifying characteristics of the antichrist.
- anti-Gospel. The Trinity doctrine destroys the message of the true gospel.
- atonement. Explores the typology of atonement and the "dual atonement" belief.
- begotten. Something is begotten when it's been generated by procreation—in other words, it's been fathered. A somewhat old fashioned adjective, begotten is the past participle of the verb beget, which means to father or produce as offspring.
- eternal Sonship. The doctrine of eternal Sonship is a self-contradiction as explained by Adam Clarke in his commentary on Luke 1:35.
- eternal generation. The doctrine of eternal generation is a trinitarian invention to explain away the self-contradictory aspect of the doctrine of eternal Sonship.
- faith of Jesus. Not the "faith in Jesus" but the "faith of Jesus." Most Bible translations incorrectly translate this phrase wherever it is found. These versions include: Romans 3:22; Galatians 2:16, 20; Galatians 3:22; Ephesians 3:12; Philippians 3:9; and Revelation 14:12.
- gospel. What is the gospel? The Trinity doctrine destroys the message of the gospel and can rightly be called the anti-Gospel.
- hilasterion. The meaning of propitiation and the mercy seat.
- incarnation. The doctrine of the incarnation—the standard orthodox account of the incarnation of Jesus—is the belief that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. This doctrine was developed in the fifth century (AD 451) in response to several (supposed) heretical teachings and to reaffirm the established trinitarian views regarding the Son of God.
- Melchizedek. In typological language, Jesus became "a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 6:20).
- monogenes. The Greek word, monogenēs (μονογενής) has been traditionally translated to mean "only (child)" or "only begotten" (e.g. KJV, ASV, AMP, GNV, NASB1995, NKJV, WYC, and YLT). However, in recent times Greek scholars have been translating monogenēs to mean "one of a kind" or "unique" or similar wording when referring to the Son (e.g. ESV, GNT, ISV, TLB, MSG, NASB, NET, NIV, NLT, NRSV, RSV, and WEB). Is this yet another example of translation bias?
- second death. What is the second death and did Jesus go through the second death at the cross?
- session of Christ. [work-in-progress] The term "session" is an archaic noun meaning "sitting" and refers to Jesus Christ seated at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven. This doctrine raises questions about its beginning, duration and whether it's a metaphor.
- sin offering.
- sinful, sinfulness, sinless, and sinlessness. EGW held "rigid adherence to dictionary definitions" concerning these words (see The Word was Made Flesh). According to her usage, Christ was born in the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8:3) yet manifested sinlessness (i.e. he was "blameless"). Man is both born sinful and is in a state of sinfulness, yet can manifest sinlessness through God's help. Only God (the Father) is sinless, in the sense that God cannot sin.
- Son of God. Is Jesus the "Son of God" or is he the trinitarian "God the Son"? Is there a distinction and does it matter?
- Son of man (Wikipedia). Jesus referred to himself as the "Son of man." Thus, the Bible declares Jesus to be both the Son of God and of man.
- Anointed and anointing.
- justification.
- Dual natures of Christ (divine and human) in one person. In their union each nature preserves its distinct attributes. Thus, there are two wills in Christ, divine and human, and they never conflict. That is, the theological battle between monothelitism (one will) and dyothelitism (two wills). The Catholic Church subscribes to the dyothelitic view.
Scripture
Ministry of angels
Christ's miracles. They were carried out by the power of God through the ministration of the angels.
- DA 143.1: The angels of God are ever passing from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth. The miracles of Christ for the afflicted and suffering were wrought by the power of God through the ministration of the angels. And it is through Christ, by the ministration of His heavenly messengers, that every blessing comes from God to us. In taking upon Himself humanity, our Saviour unites His interests with those of the fallen sons and daughters of Adam, while through His divinity He grasps the throne of God. And thus Christ is the medium of communication of men with God, and of God with men.
Topics
Topics (general)
- The Resurrection of Jesus. Did the Father raise Jesus from the dead, or was it the Son's own power?
- Christ's begottens. The term "begotten" is used of Christ on many occasions: (1) As the Son of God before Creation, (2) at Christ's birth and baptism, and (3) at his resurrection.
- Atonement Theories. Seven atonement theories are explored.
- Ha-Yachid—The Unique Messiah.
- Jesus' God. The Father is the God of Jesus: in his incarnation, after the resurrection, and in Heaven after glorification.
- Matthew 27:46: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
- John 20:17: ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’
- Ephesians 1:3: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
- Revelation 3:12: The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.
Topics (Adventist-related)
- The Early Adventist "Arian" perspective on Sonship. In one sentence, the early SDA "Arian" view was that: The Son of God was brought forth (i.e. "begotten") from the Father before Creation and Time, and is of the same substance as the Father; therefore, eternal and divine.
- Desire of Ages - "Paradigm Shift"?. Trinitarian SDAs allege that EGW made a "paradigm shift" in Desire of Ages with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity. They usually quote DA 530.3, "In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived," and DA 671.2, "The mighty agency of the third person of the Godhead." What did EGW really mean with these statements?
- The Temptations of Jesus. Could God sin? Duration 5:43. The full sermon: The Gospel vs The Trinity. Duration 1:04:33.
Appendix
Notes
- How did Jesus pronounce his own name? Evidence from 1st Century Inscriptions. Duration 13:50.
- Thoughts from Abarim-publications:
- Logos is everything. Belief in the Logos does not regard the Logos as the object of this belief, but rather the environment in which the believing is done. The Logos is not the god on the pedestal in the inner sanctum of the temple, but the Logos is the temple (and see Matthew 23:16-17, Isaiah 2:2, Revelation 21:22). What then is on the pedestal in the inner sanctum of the temple of the Logos? The object of belief in the Logos is everything; all of it, the whole of created reality plus its Creator (Ephesians 1:10, Colossians 2:3, 1 Corinthians 13:7, 2 Timothy 2:7 — also compare Exodus 29:43-46 with Ezekiel 43:7, Zechariah 2:10, Matthew 1:23 and John 2:19-22, and with Ephesians 2:18-22 and 1 Peter 2:5).
- Completeness (or Perfection). Both the Logos and the unified whole of creation are defined by completeness (or perfection, if you will, and thus freedom), and completeness never comprises greater and lesser parts but always mutual support and mutual confirmation of all constituting elements (John 13:34, 1 John 4:8, Romans 13:8). It's like a complicated machine: its most important element is its completeness. When it's not complete, its most important part is the one that is missing (Matthew 18:12, Luke 15:32).
- Salvation by Creed. The Bible is like a filter that we continuously run our mind through, so as to continuously filter it from all the nonsense we pick up while living our lives. A creed is like a filter's bypass. All filters have a by-pass so that we can clean the filter without disrupting the process, but when we continuously run the process with the bypass open, the process will certainly grind to a halt. Likewise, there is no such thing as Salvation By Creed. Confessing with our mouth that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9) does not speak of repeating the same creed over and over, but rather that all our speaking must always add up to a demonstrated and continued confession that Jesus is Lord.
- There is no such thing as Salvation By Creed! The religious Jew recites the Shema, the Catholic teh Apostle's Creed (which is basically a declaration of a belief in the Trinity), and Adventists probably the Gold Rule. However, while it might be a good start for children, the spiritually mature have to do better. They need to move on from drinking milk to eating solid food.
- Compression. That's not to say that the Bible can't be compressed, because it obviously can: the entire imaginative cosmos of mankind is summarized by the Bible (John 21:25), the Bible by the Torah (1 Corinthians 10:2), the Torah by the Ten Commandments, the Ten by the Two (Matthew 22:36-40), and the Two by the One (Matthew 7:12). But the dogmas of religions do violence to the living complexity of Bible, and turn it into something it is not.
- Light and darkness. Darkness is not the opposite of light but the absence of it (and certainly not the presence of something else). Light is substantial, comes in colors, carries information, propels into action and gives warmth, life, reason and love. Darkness has none of those qualities. Light forms chemical bonds and light breaks chemical bonds; darkness does neither. Light forms conclusions and breaks conclusions; darkness does neither. Human reality is monopolar, centered on a source of light and radiating out into a darkness where things only happen because of light and never because of darkness.
- Living things absorb light. When an object absorbs light, its molecules will use this energy to fuel their independent jostling and jolting. But when a living cell absorbs light, its molecules will work together to convert the energy into a chemical compound (typically sugars) that safely stores the energy for later use. Objects get hot and can't help radiating their captured heat, whereas living things don't get hot but store their captured energy.
- Soul and spirit. One's soul sums up one's private qualities and one's spirit sums up one's communal qualities. A mental being, a mind, is able to work together with other minds to store light (observations, considerations) without getting extremely excited and ultimately burned (causing the forced disintegration of social bonds). And just like a soul is an emergent property of molecules working together, so a spirit is an emergent property of souls working together.
- What photosynthesis and glucose is to the biosphere, language is to the mental sphere. What light is to the biosphere, God's word is to the soul sphere. As we feed on food to sustain life, we must feed on spiritual food (God's word) to sustain spiritual life. As we gain energy from physical food, we gain divine energy from spiritual food.
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