Salutations in the new Testament

[Timmy]

Speaking of limiting God, http://www.apostolicfriendsforum.com...ad.php?t=26605.

[mfblume]

Originally Posted by Timmy

Who says God can't be two (or three) persons? Who's limiting God?

That is a response from not actually getting the point.

Who would stop to think God might be THREE PERSONS after reading the bible without limiting His nature to that of a human being? That is the only reason anyone would do that. Yes, God could do anything, even manifest as THREE PERSONS, outside the premise of someone basing their perspective of Him on human limitations. But the bible does not say He did that. Nothing in the bible demands that we believe that the way it is promoted. The scriptural record allows for, to say the least, for so much more than that--and by MORE I mean beyond such foolish limitations. We base our views on th scriptural record. We are directed to believe and not believe according to the confines of how the Bible relates Him. Or, I could say, we are not to limit Him where the bible does not limit Him.

Why don't you (Onesies and Trinnies) just agree that God isn't a person at all, not three persons and not one person?

He is a person, though!

Heb 1:3 KJV Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

[jfrog]

Originally Posted by votivesoul

There is a small group of brothers (myself as one) at my church that uses such verbiage, either in greeting, or when we say good bye.

It's not all the time, or done arrogantly, as if to sound spiritual, but because we recognize these forms of address as Biblical, and so, seek to emulate them.

Thank you. So does anyone outside your small group of brothers that you know of actually ever make mention of God and Jesus ever in any way similiar to how the new testament passages I point out speak of God and Jesus?

[jfrog]

Originally Posted by SRM

Can you imagine the jaw drops from the congregation if the Pastor greets the congregation the same way Paul greets the churches?..

I know right? They would run him out of the church for being trinny.

[jfrog]

Originally Posted by Michael The Disciple

The Oneness doctrine that Jesus is the only God is quite secure. But Oneness Christology often does not mirror things written by the Apostles, like the salutations. At least not the ones Im familiar with.

Exactly! Oneness Christology as currently taught in most mainstream oneness churches limits people from using many of the phrases found in the salutations I quoted.

I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing that Prax is trying to turn the issue into us talking in everyday language as if we were writing a letter and he's totally missing the point. The point is not to mimic every degree of those saluatations at all times, but by and large oneness believers are not going to ever say certain phrases found in them, primarily the God and Jesus phrases. That's a problem.

Oneness preachers won't greet the church from the platform with those phrases. When they pray from the pulpit or over dinner they will make not thank God and his son Jesus Christ for anything. But Paul did. It's biblical.

Somethings wrong with a persons Christianity when they refuse to use biblical phrases or anything like those biblical phrases because their theological beliefs make those phrases sound foreign and "trinitarian"

[votivesoul]

Originally Posted by jfrog

Thank you. So does anyone outside your small group of brothers that you know of actually ever make mention of God and Jesus ever in any way similiar to how the new testament passages I point out speak of God and Jesus?

If there are, I've not met them. God and Jesus are seamless, interchangeable terms to most that I've met. But then again, I don't spend a lot of my limited free time outside of my "small group".

[jfrog]

Originally Posted by DaveC519

Hello jfrog,

In what way are Oneness beliefs "biblically amiss" by not employing the same language? Thanks.

If I am wrong then let's give thanks to God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ and let's serve the living and true God and wait for his Son, Jesus, from heaven, whom he raised from the dead!!!

Or are you not comfortable with the way I said that? Are you sure it doesn't make you uneasy? Be honest!

[jfrog]

Originally Posted by votivesoul

If there are, I've not met them. God and Jesus are seamless, interchangeable terms to most that I've met. But then again, I don't spend a lot of my limited free time outside of my "small group".

Your thoughts on this are mine as well. Those people clearly miss the biblical distinctions between Jesus and his Father and it's pity.

[jfrog]

Originally Posted by mfblume

That is a response from not actually getting the point.

Who would stop to think God might be THREE PERSONS after reading the bible without limiting His nature to that of a human being? That is the only reason anyone would do that. Yes, God could do anything, even manifest as THREE PERSONS, outside the premise of someone basing their perspective of Him on human limitations. But the bible does not say He did that. Nothing in the bible demands that we believe that the way it is promoted. The scriptural record allows for, to say the least, for so much more than that--and by MORE I mean beyond such foolish limitations. We base our views on th scriptural record. We are directed to believe and not believe according to the confines of how the Bible relates Him. Or, I could say, we are not to limit Him where the bible does not limit Him.


He is a person, though!

Heb 1:3 KJV Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

The word "person" has many definitions. It may be fair to refer to God using one definition of person and not another. So when you say he is a single person he may very well be by the definition of person that you are using but if I was to pick definition 2 or 3 from that same dictionary we may find that God is actually 2 or 3 persons according to that definition. And maybe by definition 4 or 5 God wouldn't qualify as a person at all.

[votivesoul]

"Person" in Hebrews 1:3 is not a good translation.

The Greek word is hupostasis (from whence we get the term Hypostatic Union). It means the concrete substance of a thing, that which make something what it is. This isn't really the best way to define person.

So, Hebrews 1:3 would be better understood the following way:

(Referring to Jesus) Who being the effulgence of God's splendor, and the exact representation of God's substance (or the physical icon on earth of what God is in Heaven)...

This is born out by the Greek word always used to refer to Jesus as the "Son" of God. The word for Son is huios (sometimes spelled iuos). It means bearing the resemblance of another some "thing", so much so, that no discernible differences between the two exist.

Jesus and the Father are one. Christ represents and acts as the Father's agent and ambassador on earth, bearing the very image of His God, so much so, that no discernible differences between them exist.

He that has seen Jesus has seen the Father. But guess what? None of us have ever literally seen Jesus, have we? So I guess none of us have ever seen the Father, then, either.

Not so! The Greek verb to see, as in John 14:9, while it can literally mean to see, is better understood as meaning, especially in the case of John 14:9, as to "experience", from the Greek word horao, to see with the mind, i.e. perceive, to become acquainted with through experience.

John 14:9 then reads "...He that has experienced me has experienced the Father..."

By coming to faith in the Son, we automatically get a relationship with the Father, because the Father is unknowable apart from the Son (See, for example, Matthew 11:27).

And only the Son can reveal the Father (from apokalupto, to uncover, open up that which has been veiled, disclose, etc.).

So it's not a revelation that the man Christ Jesus is the Father. That is a conflation. Rather, it's that Christ Jesus, as the only one who can reveal and declare or exegete the Father (see John 1:18), is therefore the only means whereby one may come to the Father, because the Father was in Him to the fullest extent of His, that is, the Father's being (Colossians 1:19), so much so, that the Father literally emanated out from within the Son of Man (hence the term "brightness" or effulgence in Hebrews 1:3), as seen, for example, on the Mount of Transfiguration and also in the vision John had of Christ in Revelation 1, where the ascended Christ, the Son of Man (Acts 7:56) sits at the right hand of God (Mark 14:62), and as the High Priest of our faith, ever lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25).