FURTHER EVIDENCE THAT JESUS IS GOD

A Reply Against Gary Fakhoury, Anthony Buzzard, and Wade Cox

Revised edition

by Eric V. Snow

Table of Contents

Introduction: Is God Only One Person?.................................... 1

THE OLD TESTAMENT EVIDENCE FOR PLURALITY IN THE GODHEAD RECONSIDERED

Does the Old Testament Uniformly Reveal God to Be One Person?............. 3

Plural Verbs and Participles That Refer to God............................ 5

Genesis 1:26 Remains an Obstacle to Unitarianism.......................... 6

The Plural of Majesty is a Hoax!.......................................... 6

The Two Beings Who Are One Yahweh......................................... 7

Psalms 45:6-7 Implies the Duality of the Godhead.......................... 8

Yahweh Sends Yahweh?...................................................... 9

Yahweh Delivers Israel by Yahweh?......................................... 9

The Shema's Use of "Echad" Supports Binitarianism........................ 10

Moses Maimonides Uses "Yachid" in Creed.................................. 10

How God Is One Yet Is More Than One Person............................... 11

The Old Testament's Theophanies Versus Arianism.......................... 11

When the Messenger of Jehovah Is Jehovah................................. 12

Does "God" Mean "God"?................................................... 13

Forcing the New Testament to Fit a Preconceived Interpretation

of the Old............................................................ 13

Shades of Darrell Conder?................................................ 14

The Dead Sea Scrolls Describe a Divine Messiah........................... 15

THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND HISTORICAL PROBLEMS WITH ARIANISM

Historically, Arianism Based on Pagan Philosophy......................... 16

Will the Real Polytheists Please Stand Up?............................... 17

Was Jesus a Demigod?..................................................... 18

NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL EVIDENCE FOR THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST REEXAMINED

Was Jesus "a god"?....................................................... 19

Does Omitting the Article Before the Word "God" Prove Much?.............. 20

Does Colwell's Rule Apply to John 1:1's Third Clause?.................... 21

Why Would John Omit the Article in John 1:1's Third Clause?.............. 22

Does the Omission of "the" in Greek Prove "God" Changes in Meaning?...... 24

Are the Jews That Dense?................................................. 24

Rationalizing the Throwing of Stones at Jesus............................ 25

Should Doctrine Cause Us To Reject Sharp's Rule When Inconvenient?....... 26

A Doxology Shows "God" Means "God"....................................... 27

The Blood of God......................................................... 28

Jesus Was on the Throne of God........................................... 30

Jesus Was in "the Form of God"........................................... 31

How Do We Know Whether Jesus Eternally Existed?.......................... 33

COUNTER-ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE DEITY OF CHRIST ANALYZED

Psalms 110:1 and Christ Being "Adoni".................................... 34

Did Jesus Deny His Deity?................................................ 36

Jesus Was Worshiped, Revisited........................................... 37

Can Everyone Forgive Sins?............................................... 39

Does God Have to Fit Our Definitional Box?............................... 39

Does The Bible Contradict Itself About Jesus' Nature?.................... 41

Are Men and Women Members of the Same Species?........................... 42

"All the Fullness of Deity" Revisited.................................... 43

The Error of the Eternal Generation of the Son........................... 44

Why "Monogenes" Doesn't Mean the Word Had a Beginning.................... 46

A Son Has the Same Nature as His Father.................................. 46

Do New Testament Authors Identify Jesus as Jehovah?...................... 47

Origen Strikes Again!.................................................... 48

Was Jesus' Pre-existence Literal?........................................ 49

THE THEORY OF ATONEMENT AND THE CHEAPENING OF CHRIST'S SACRIFICE

Must Jesus Be God To Save Us?............................................ 51

The Governmental Theory of Atonement..................................... 52

The Implications for the Atonement in the Story of Zaleucus.............. 52

Doctrines Have to Be Logically Consistent with Each Other................ 53

Conclusion: Should We Accept the Jewish Doctrine of God?................ 54

INTRODUCTION: IS GOD ONLY ONE PERSON?

Recently, in The Journal, several writers have denied Herbert Armstrong's teaching of the divinity of Christ, and have written long articles defending Unitarianism and/or Arianism, such as Sir Anthony Buzzard, Charles Hunting, Wade Cox, and Gary Fakhoury. Using a number of seemingly strong arguments, the last has argued in a three-part series in The Journal that Jesus is not God. However, once it is realized that Fakhoury's superstructure of arguments rests on questionable premises, it all comes tumbling down. The four basic premises are: (1) The Old Testament evidence almost uniformly reveals God to be one Person. (2) The Jews correctly interpreted the Old Testament as for God's nature, but not Jesus' statements concerning His Deity in the New Testament. (3) It's implicitly assumed that God's revelation of His nature in the Bible is fully developed and fundamentally uniform from Genesis to Revelation. Hence, any New Testament evidence that points to Jesus being God or for multiplicity in the Godhead is dismissed by using unusual translations or interpretations of the Greek, taking alternative readings of the textual evidence, or said to be an allegory since it supposedly contradicts the Old Testament. (4) When a text that calls Jesus "God" can't be evaded by any other means, then it's said the word "God" doesn't mean "God" (i.e., the Supreme Being who is omniscient, omnipotent, the author of creation, and all-loving), but has some lesser meaning such as "divine hero" or "an angel." Doctrine ends up dictating to grammar, instead of grammar dictating doctrine. Although some arguments by Buzzard, Hunting, and Cox are dealt with in passing, here below mainly Fakhoury's articles denying the Deity of Christ are examined by further developing each one of these points, which shows that the New Testament when taken straight reveals Jesus to be God.[1]

THE OLD TESTAMENT EVIDENCE FOR PLURALITY IN THE GODHEAD RECONSIDERED

DOES THE OLD TESTAMENT UNIFORMLY REVEAL GOD TO BE ONE PERSON?

A fundamental problem the Church of God faces today comes from those who think at some level the Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament (or the Sacred Calendar) is usually correct. Hence, some believe the Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament concerning when Pentecost (Sivan 6) and Passover (Nisan 15) occur is right, even though convincing evidence from the Scriptures shows otherwise. Similarly, Fakhoury (as well as Buzzard and Hunting in their recent article in The Journal) operate from the premise that the uniform Jewish teaching that God is one Person is correct, even when the Old Testament by itself contains evidence that contradicts it. By merely citing a large number of texts that say "God is one," Buzzard and Hunting seem to think that the emotional impact from raw repetition (which uses an assumed definition of "one" as a monolithic singularity) is nearly enough to carry the argument by itself. As for Fakhoury, he makes a false "trilemma" when writing, "Either Jesus was not eternal God made flesh, or the Hebrews did not believe there is only one God being, or their writings are not, in fact, entirely sound guides for faith and doctrine." A fourth option is ignored, namely that the Jews have misinterpreted their own Scriptures, especially because they rejected Jesus as the Messiah and the New Testament as the further revelation of God. Making an analogy to the Sabbath as a doctrine, Fakhoury argues that the traditional Jewish view of God being one couldn't possibly have been changed without controversy in the New Testament. But as such texts as John 20:28 and Matt. 28:9 demonstrate, following His miraculous resurrection from the dead, which had confirmed acts and statements He had made during His ministry implying or affirming His Deity, Jesus' disciples almost instantaneously acceptance of His Deity vaporized their old views that God was one Person. The further clear revelation of God instantly trumped traditional Jewish interpretation of Old Testament Scripture, thus permanently removing all controversy from the primitive, first-century church. Fakhoury also contends that the Old Testament "prophets do declaim on the nature of God and are consistent (and insistent) that there is only one God person/being." Here he merely accepts the Jewish interpretation of the OT. As argued in my previous essay, the definition of "one" the Bible has may not be what we humans think it should be based on our human reasoning. In reality, since the New Testament helps us interpret the Old Testament, and vice versa, we should be wary of following in the footsteps of centuries-old Jewish tradition. This tradition has been influenced by paganism (as Philo and the name of the month "Tammuz" show) and has not had the Holy Spirit to guide its development for, by now, almost two millennia. Let's consider some of the evidence that shows that the Old Testament adumbrates faintly what the New Testament clearly reveals: God is one, but more than one Person is God.

Consider the brilliant insight of evangelical scholar Robert Morey, who applies deductive instead of inductive reasoning to the understanding of Scripture.[2] A priori (before experience), suppose a Unitarian or Arian inspired the writing of the Bible. How would that differ from what a Binitarian (who believes two Beings make up the one God) author would have had placed in the Bible? After opening the Bible and examining its text (i.e., the evidence), whose presuppositions/hypotheses are confirmed? For example, would a strict Unitarian allow the word "elohim," a noun which is translated some 400 times as "gods," to be the main word for "God" in the Hebrew Scriptures?[3] "Elohim," which George Wigram's Englishman's Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance of the Old Testament (p. 79) lists as a masculine plural, appears well over 2000 times as the word for "God." The second most common word for God in the Old Testament is "adonai," "the Lord." The Jews usually read this word aloud in their synagogues in place of "Yahweh" when the Tetragammaton (YHWH) appears in the Old Testament. "Adonai," which appears over 400 times in the Hebrew text, is a plural according to Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (p. 10). When the two most common words for God in the Old Testament are actually plural nouns, does the Old Testament evidence favor the Arians and Unitarians' case as much as they think? By these nouns, probably nearly every page of the Old Testament (besides Esther) bears implicit witness to the multiplicity of the Godhead.

PLURAL VERBS AND PARTICIPLES THAT REFER TO GOD

Further evidence that God implicitly revealed Himself to be more than one Person comes from the cases where plural verbs or participles refer to God. For example, the verb "caused to wander" in Gen. 20:13, which modifies the word "God," is in a plural form in the Hebrew. In Gen. 35:7, which says "God revealed Himself to him [Jacob]," the word "revealed" is in a plural form. The adjective for "Holy" in Josh. 24:19 is in a plural form, so it could be translated "God, the Holy Ones." In Psalms 58:11, David used the plural form of "judges" in reference to God. A crude literal translation into English would be "God who judge on earth." In Job 35:10, the word "Maker" is actually a plural participle in the Hebrew (i.e., "Makers") according to the vowel points. Notice Psalms 149:2: "Let Israel be glad in his Maker." The word "Maker" is in the plural in the Hebrew, which also happens in Isa. 54:5. The word "Creator" in Eccl. 12:1 is actually a masculine plural participle, "Creators," in the Hebrew. Hence, Fakhoury was incorrect to say that "verb tenses where elohim is used for the God of Israel are always in the first person singular, never the first person plural." Rabbi Tzvi Nassi, a lecturer in Hebrew at Oxford University, even says that the "passages are numerous" which lack "grammatical agreement between the subject and predicate."[4]

Clearly, the Old Testament refers to God as both the "Creator" and "Creators," as the "Maker" and "Makers." A Unitarian could accuse a Binitarian of "a mathematical impossibility," of believing the one God is made up of two Persons, yet the Hebrew agrees with the latter's viewpoint by implicitly portraying God as "one," but that "one" is defined in a way that allows for a multiplicity of Beings (re: Gen. 3:22, "like ONE of US.") Because a whole major doctrine might not be fully revealed in one place in Scripture since its bits and pieces may be scattered about within it, Binitarian teaching isn't self-contradictory. The Unitarian view has the burden of explaining away the many pieces that don't fit it, while the Binitarian view embraces the evidence that portrays God as one as well as the evidence favoring more than one Person being God. Hence, contrary to what Fakhoury maintains, the Binitarians aren't "making the exception the rule" or engaging in selective proof-texting, but they are formulating a doctrine that explains ALL of the evidence, anomalous facts to Unitarianism included, not just a good part of it.

GENESIS 1:26 REMAINS AN OBSTACLE TO UNITARIANISM

Consider the cases where God uses plural pronouns when speaking, starting with the classic text on the subject: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness'" (Gen. 1:26). Belying the claim that this is a supposed "plural of majesty," the Jews anciently had trouble explaining this text. In the Midrash Rabbah on Genesis, one rabbi made the following comments on it:

Rabbi Samuel bar Naham in the name of Rabbi Jonathan said, that at the time when Moses wrote the Torah, writing a portion of it daily, when he came to this verse which says, 'And Elohim said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.' Moses said, Master of the Universe, why do you give herewith an excuse to the sectarians [i.e., Christians], God answered Moses, You write and whoever wants to err let him err."[5]

Obviously, if this text and those like it could be explained away as the plural of majesty, the rabbi(s) who wrote this passage could have easily disposed of this text's potential problems, since they certainly knew how Hebrew worked.

THE PLURAL OF MAJESTY IS A HOAX!

According to Morey, during the intense nineteenth-century debates between Unitarians and Trinitarians, the plural of majesty was revealed to be a hoax popularized by the famous Jewish scholar Gesenius. Using the plural of majesty to explain this and other passages away commits the fundamental mistake of reading a modern monarchical convention back into Scriptures originally written millennia ago when this form of speech was unknown. As Nassi notes, the plural of majesty was "a thing unknown to Moses and the prophets. Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, David, and all the other kings throughout . . . (the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa) speak in the singular, and not as modern kings in the plural. They do not say we, but I, command; as in Gen. xli. 41; Dan. iii 29; Ezra i. 2, etc." Compounding their error, the Unitarians attempt to explain even the plural word "elohim" away as a form of the plural of majesty, forgetting that the use of the royal "we" is limited to direct discourse and commands, not narratives or descriptions.[6] Given this kind of evidence, citing the authority of Gesenius or Bullinger is simply not persuasive as any kind of real proof that the Hebrew really does use the plural of majesty. The Unitarians and Arians should completely abandon this argument if they can't cite ancient Semitic literature in which kings used the plural of majesty.[7]

Consider the three other cases where the God of Israel used plural pronouns: "Then I [Isaiah] heard the voice of the Lord [Adonai], saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for US?" (Isa. 6:8). "And the Lord [Yahweh] said, 'Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. . . . Come, let US go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech" (Gen. 11:6-7). "Then the Lord [Yahweh] God said, 'Behold, the man has become like ONE of US, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:22). To explain away such anomalous facts of Scripture, the Unitarian has to invent unconvincing ad hoc explanations, such as "the plural of majesty," "the angels were speaking or being spoken to," etc. By contrast, the Binitarian's teaching, which maintains that God is one but more than one being is God, effortlessly glides over such passages while still comfortably fitting the many more places where God uses singular pronouns.

THE TWO BEINGS WHO ARE ONE YAHWEH

In the Old Testament, several texts appear which imply a duality in the Godhead because the mention of one Divine Person is juxtaposed with another's. First, note Genesis 19:24: "The Lord [Jehovah] rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone [sulfur] and fire from the Lord [Jehovah] out of heaven." Here "Jehovah" on earth does something on behalf of "Jehovah" in heaven! Concerning this text, the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546) wrote in his commentary on Genesis: "This mode of speaking greatly irks the Jews and they try in vain to explain it." This text can't be rationalized merely as using repetition for the sake of emphasis, because one Person who is Yahweh is contrasted with another who is also Yahweh since they are in different locations. As Morey remarks, "Just as the heavens cannot be interpreted as a repetition of the earth, neither can the first Yahweh be interpreted as a repetition of the second Yahweh." Furthermore, nowhere in the Pentateuch (which Moses wrote and/or edited) is a name repeated twice, once at the beginning and once at the end, as a literary device.[8] Although usually the one who became Christ was Yahweh as He spoke and acted in the Old Testament, both the Son and the Father can be called "Yahweh." In Ps. 110:1, "Yahweh" is applied to the Father. Since either member of the Godhead can be Yahweh, this disposes of Fakhoury's argument that "theological incoherence" results from saying Jesus is Yahweh. For example, Fakhoury argues that Simeon's addressing the Lord in heaven would be incorrect if "the God of Israel he was praying to was no longer in heaven but lying in his arms?" This kind of question assumes the Arianism that he is trying to prove, since it implicitly denies anyone else is God but one Person, and if Jesus was God and the only one who was God, then who was God in heaven when Jesus was down on earth? The Binitarian is easily rescued from this dilemma: The Father is Yahweh and God also, not just Christ, since the Godhead is dual, not singular.

PSALMS 45:6-7 IMPLIES THE DUALITY OF THE GODHEAD

Psalms 45:6-7 is another place which implies more than one being is God: "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever [cf. Isa. 9:7]; A scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Thy kingdom. Thou has loved righteousness, and hated wickedness; Therefore God, Thy God, has anointed Thee with the oil of joy above Thy fellows." Although evidently starting with a purely human king, when the Psalmist reached this point, he spoke to God Himself, since the king was the Messiah in type. Only if the Psalmist believed the Messiah was both human and divine does this ultimately make any sense. The ancient Jews interpreted this chapter messianically, since at least one Targum paraphrased v. 3 as, "Thy beauty, O King Messiah, is greater than those of the children of men." The various purported alternative translations exist for Ps. 45:6 that attempt to escape the vocative "O God" simply aren't persuasive. (The vocative is a grammatical construction in which the person spoken to is named in a sentence addressed to him or her. For example, if a young girl calls out to her mother, "Mommy, come here!," she has used the vocative). After performing a highly technical grammatical and contextual analysis of this passage's Hebrew, Murray J. Harris concludes: "The traditional rendering, 'Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever,' is not simply readily defensible but remains the most satisfactory solution to the exegetical problems posed by this verse." The RSV's translation, "Your divine throne endures for ever and ever," can't be regarded as an equally likely translation, for the reason Harris notes: "If [Hebrew word for 'throne'] is in fact qualified by two different types of genitive (viz. a pronominal suffix kap denoting possession and an adjectival genitive, [elohim], meaning 'divine'), this is a construction that is probably unparalleled in the OT (see GKC [Gesenius' Hebrew-English Lexicon] [section]128d)."[9] Again, to interpret honestly the word of God, Christians should go with the main or standard meaning of the grammar and syntax except when that would plainly contradict other passage(s). Preconceived doctrines shouldn't dictate to grammar, but grammar should determine doctrines.

Since the writer of Hebrews plainly speaks of Jesus in v. 8, this verse's reference clear for any Christian. Consequently, the next verse's context ("Therefore God, Thy God, has anointed Thee") indicates that the Son has a "God" over Him, despite He Himself was called God in the preceding verse! Remember, "Messiah" means "the anointed one," so it's necessary that God the Father would anoint God the Son so He could be the Messiah. Since the Psalmist asserted that the Messiah would be God yet have a God over him, this makes New Testament passages like John 20:17 more understandable: "Jesus said to her [Mary Magdalene] . . . 'I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.'" This Old Testament prophecy shows that although God the Father is over God the Son in authority, still Jesus is God. Here again the Old Testament implies a plurality of Persons in the Godhead, since the God of v. 8 has a "God" over Him in v. 9.

YAHWEH SENDS YAHWEH?

Another passage which implies the Godhead's plurality is Isa. 48:12-16: "Listen to Me, O Jacob, even Israel whom I called; I am He, I am the first, I am also the last. . . . And now the Lord God [Yahweh] has sent Me, and His Spirit." God is plainly the speaker in this section of Scripture, so the context indicates that God is the "Me" of v. 16. Yet, this "Me" is sent by Yahweh, i.e., the Father. (As noted above, the Father is clearly called "Yahweh" in Ps. 110:1). To evade this verse's implications, a Unitarian may unconvincingly assert that (suddenly!) Isaiah is speaking in verse 16. But there's little evidence that someone besides Jehovah is speaking, and nowhere else does Isaiah suddenly insert himself into some passage where God speaks and then exit.[10] Verse 17 shows that God is still speaking, "Thus says the Lord [Jehovah] . . ." Furthermore, neither the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament) nor the Targums (Aramaic paraphrases/translations of the OT made by the Jews) place a break in verse 16. Hence, only by holding a preconceived notion about God being a solitary Person could someone insist Isaiah spoke instead of God in v. 16.

YAHWEH DELIVERS ISRAEL BY YAHWEH?

Another problematic Old Testament text for Unitarians and Arians is Hosea 1:7: "But I will have compassion on the house of Judah and deliver them by the Lord [Yahweh] their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses, or horsemen." Here God is speaking ("I," as the preceding verses show), yet He suddenly seems to refer to Himself in the third Person, saying "Yahweh" will deliver them, as if "Yahweh" were not the one speaking. As Morey pungently explains, "If I as the first person promise to something for you as the second person through a third person, am I not implying that I am not the same as the third person? If grammar means anything, the answer is, 'Yes.'"[11] Although these four passages (Gen. 19:24; Ps. 45:6-7; Isa. 48:12-16; Hosea 1:7) don't directly assert the multiplicity of the Godhead as John 1:1 does, their indirect evidence for God being "elohim" and not just "el" requires of the Unitarians some fancy footwork to evade.

THE SHEMA'S USE OF "ECHAD" SUPPORTS BINITARIANISM

The central Old Testament text thrust forth as proof that God is one Person is the Shema, which begins with Deut. 6:4. This passage, which every good Jew has memorized by heart in Hebrew, reads: "Hear, O Israel! The Lord [Jehovah] is our God, the Lord [Jehovah] is one." Of course, some dispute surrounds the exact translation into English, although the traditional Jewish interpretation agrees with the NASB translation cited above. One of the RSV's marginal translations is, "The Lord is our God, the Lord alone." (Since John Wheeler, a Living Church of God laymember who can read Hebrew, believes the accents point to the passage meaning, "the Eternal is one," this meaning is analyzed here). Drawing again upon Morey's insight about applying deductive reasoning to interpreting Scripture, let's examine the word translated "one" above. It happens to be that nine different Hebrew words are translated "one," but several of these are only applied to man or woman, so they can't plausibly refer to God. Of the words for "one" that can be applied to God, one of them, "yachid" (#3173) means absolute, indivisible unity, while the other candidate is "echad" (#259), which can mean a composite unity, of more than one entity put together and regarded as "one," although it more frequently refers to a singular unity as well. For example, a husband and wife became "echad" when joined together in sexual union (Gen. 2:24). So, a priori, if Moses applied "yachid" to God in Deut. 6:4, that would seriously damage the Binitarian position. But if "echad" describes God's unity, that would corroborate it, since it teaches that God is two Persons yet one God, i.e., a composite unity. Since "echad" is the word actually used to describe God's oneness in Deut. 6:4, this passage actually supports the Binitarian position better than the Unitarian position. For Unitarians to wield the Shema successfully against Binitarianism, "yachid" should appear here, not "echad."

MOSES MAIMONIDES USES "YACHID" IN CREED

Further evidence that "echad" doesn't quite capture accurately the strict monotheism of Judaism comes from the word Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), the greatest medieval Jewish philosopher, chose when drawing up thirteen principles or articles of faith, which were still taught to Jews centuries later. For the second point, which proclaims God's oneness, he used not "echad," from the Shema, but "yachid"! Obviously, the word "echad" lacked the philosophical precision necessary to teach that God is one Person only. What the second point of Maimonides' creed underscores is the traditional Jewish conception of indivisible unity of God, which requires the word "yachid" for its exact expression: "I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, blessed be his name, is a Unity, and that there is no unity in any manner like unto his, and that he alone is our God, who was, is, and will be."[12] What was good enough for Moses wasn't good enough for a medieval Jewish philosopher nearly three millennia later! Far from inflicting a knockout blow against Binitarianism, the Shema's use of the word "echad" instead of "yachid" actually supports it better than Unitarianism!

HOW GOD IS ONE YET IS MORE THAN ONE PERSON

In an argument that echoes one made almost a century ago by the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Charles Taze Russell, Fakhoury argues that the Binitarian conception of God is self-contradictory: "One plus 1 doesn't equal 1 any more than 1 plus 1 equals 1."[13] This problem's solution is really surprisingly simple: God is one, by the Bible's definition of "one," but this describes a composite unity, not a singular unity. Herbert Armstrong's explanation was that the Father and the Son were separate Persons/Beings (which a literal reading of the heavenly scenes in Revelation supports) while they still composed one Family. (True, Scripture never says, "God is a family." But since it describes the Godhead's members using the terms "Father" and "Son," and refers to Christians as "Sons of God," it's sensible to deduce from this evidence that God is a Family). When Jesus said, "My Father and I are one," He used the neuter, not masculine, word for "one." Had He used the masculine word, it would have implied the Father and Son were the same identical Person. But as shown by the reaction of those hearing Him proclaim His unity with the Father, the neuter implied that "I and the Father are one and the same entity by nature and essence." Similarly, a husband and wife are separate persons, yet they are one in sexual union. There's only one true church (i.e., a spiritual organization), but there are many members of it (I Cor. 12:20). We should define and use the word "one," as the Bible does, not as human, philosophical speculations say it should be used. As the growth of Islam may indicate, perhaps many humanly find a God who is one Person/one Being a simpler, "cleaner," easier concept to accept. But what is simple isn't necessarily what is true or Scriptural. The straightforward teaching of Scripture is that the Father and Son are one in essence, substance, and purpose, but are separate Persons, which John 10:30 in its context supports.

THE OLD TESTAMENT'S THEOPHANIES VERSUS ARIANISM

Scripture affirms that nobody has ever seen God the Father (John 5:37): "You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form." Similarly, John 1:18 reads, "No man has seen God at any time." The context indicates both times that God the Father was meant, not "God" generally speaking. Fakhoury uses a creatively narrow definition of "seen" to avoid the consequences of John 1:18 for Arianism, but this falls before the greater detail of John 5:37. After all, John 1:18 speaks broadly, and says nothing about restricting its application to God's face or His glory. Why does this matter? Because the Old Testament repeatedly describes God appearing in a human form before men, mankind plainly saw God. And if the Father wasn't the One seen, then Jesus, God the Son, had to be the One seen. For example, Jacob wrestled with God, not just any average "angel" (which means "messenger" in both the Greek and Hebrew), as Gen. 32:24-30 and Hosea 12:4-6 show. Trying to explain this away by saying the word "God" doesn't mean "God" falls before the reality that "elohim" wasn't used in patriarchal times for the angels in the Bible. God appeared another time to Jacob as well: Gen. 35:1, 3, 7, 9, 13-13. A most remarkable theophany occurred when Abraham talked one-on-one to Yahweh in Gen. 18, as shown especially by verses 1, 22, 33. The elders of Israel saw God according to Ex. 24:9-11: "Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself. Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they beheld ['stared at'] God, and they ate and drank." Notice that Moses still did see God (Ex. 33:18-33; 34:5-8), for although "you cannot see My face" (God's full glory) He did promise, "you shall see My back." In Hebrew thinking, "face" was used as a synonym for "glory" because at that time the Jews believed the essential character of a person could be seen in his face (Prov. 7:13; 21:29; Eccl. 8:1). Furthermore, note that John 5:37 says God's voice has never been heard, yet obviously God's voice was heard in the Old Testament, such as when the Ten Commandments were proclaimed to Israel at Sinai (Deut. 5:4-5, 22-31; Ex. 20:1). Clearly, it couldn't have been the Father who spoke at Sinai.

WHEN THE MESSENGER OF JEHOVAH IS JEHOVAH!

Another set of theophanies arises as the "angel of the Lord" becomes "the Lord" Himself! It must be remembered that the words translated "angel" in both the Hebrew and Greek both really mean just "messenger." Therefore, they don't have to refer to a created spirit being (Heb. 1:7). Hagar spoke to the "angel" of Jehovah in Gen. 16:7-14, who she identifies as God Himself in v. 13. When Abraham nearly sacrificed his son Isaac (Gen. 22:9-14), the "Angel" implied He was Jehovah by saying in v. 12, "I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me." So if Isaac had died, he would have been sacrificed to this "Angel." Nowhere does Scripture command sacrifices to be made to any (created) angel, so this Messenger had to be the Eternal Himself. During the burning bush incident in Ex. 3:1-15, the "Angel" (i.e., Messenger) of Jehovah in v. 2 becomes Jehovah Himself in v. 4. When Balaam insisted on going to see Balak to get dishonest gain and his donkey spoke miraculously, the passage interchangeably uses the terms "Messenger of Yahweh" and "Yahweh"! (See Num. 22:21-35). Fakhoury attempts to explain away the striking theophany in Judges 6:3-22 involving Samson's father Manoah and his wife by saying they only saw an angel whose acts they attributed to God as his authority. This interpretation dodges the text's intended meaning, because seeing a created "angel" would not be life-threatening, but seeing the Messenger of Yahweh who was Yahweh would be life-threatening. This interpretation reads additional thoughts into the text in order to make it compatible with Arianism, instead of taking it straightforwardly. Even more problematically for Unitarianism and Arianism, the mere fact that the Old Testament elides the "Messenger of Jehovah" into "Jehovah" implies by itself that more than one Being is called Jehovah! One (Jesus) is the messenger, or "spokesman," to humanity for the other (the Father).

DOES "GOD" MEAN "GOD"?

After arguing John 1 is an allegory, Fakhoury runs up against (evidently) the most insurmountable obstacle of all to a Unitarian or Arian--John 20:28: "Thomas answered and said to Him, 'My Lord and my God!'" Since this text cannot be dismissed as a textual error, as a mistranslation, as omitting the word "the" before the word "God," or as an allegory, when all else has failed, the last weapon in the Arian/Unitarian arsenal has to be unsheathed: "Jesus is clear in this Gospel that theos--god--can have a much broader meaning and application than only to refer to the one eternal God, which we normally mean when we use the word." That is, the word "God" doesn't mean "God." Of course, a similar argument is deployed against Ps. 45:6-7 and Isa. 9:6, by saying "elohim" and "el" had broader meanings than just Yahweh, the God of Israel.[14] Here the presuppositions of the interpreter become all-controlling: Is a preconceived definition of God being "One" (as in one Person) determining how the Hebrew and Greek should be translated or interpreted? Hence, the main or general meaning of the Biblical languages' grammar and syntax is overturned in the name of a doctrine developed from certain texts only. When the doctrine that God is only one Person encounters trouble with certain texts (i.e., potential falsification), the Unitarian/Arian replies that the word "God" suddenly loses its standard meaning in order to save his doctrine. As noted above, since Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and John's angel were so quick to correct those who misidentified them as gods or worthy of worship, how can we accept plausibly Fakhoury's explanation that Christ blithely accepted without rebuke Thomas' would-be blasphemy that He was his Lord and his God? In the context of Jesus' stunning victory of life over death, Thomas' testimony can't be credibly watered-down to some weaker definition of "God," especially when a weak idea of divinity was fundamentally alien to the Jewish monotheistic mind-set about the true God.

FORCING THE NEW TESTAMENT TO FIT A PRECONCEIVED INTERPRETATION OF THE OLD

After unveiling this kind of argument, one has to ask, "What kind of Scriptural texts would be necessary to falsify Unitarianism in favor of another version of monotheism?" Such ad hoc, stop-gap "explanations" could be endlessly devised to neutralize any problematic texts confronting it. This word game only becomes plausible to its users and readers when assuming one belief above all: The Old Testament evidence overwhelmingly favors God being One Person. Therefore, the New Testament evidence that keeps seeming to say otherwise (John 1:1,14; 5:18; 8:58-59; 10:30-33; 20:28; Titus 2:13; Rom. 9:5; Heb. 1:3,6,8-9; I John 5:20; II Pet. 1:1; Rev. 1:8; I Cor. 10:4,9; Eph. 3:9; I Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16-17; Mark 2:7-10; Matt. 14:33; 28:9; I Tim. 3:16; etc., etc., etc.) has to be constantly bent to fit a preconceived view of the Old Testament. (Of course, as explained above, the Old Testament evidence is hardly as one-sided as the Unitarians make out, but let's neglect that point for now). The Unitarian/Arian error resembles that of, but goes in the opposite of direction of, Brinsmead's Verdict articles against Sabbatarianism. Brinsmead basically argued that the Epistles interpret the Gospels' meaning, and the New Testament interprets the Old Testament, instead of having a mutually interactive process of each helping to explain the other continually. Likewise, but conversely, the Unitarian approach upholds a particular interpretation of the Old Testament, the Jewish view that God is one Person only. It then proceeds to force any conflicting New Testament evidence to fit its Procrustean bed by any means necessary. In turn, this approach to the hermeneutics (systematic interpretation) of Scripture denies progressive revelation by implicitly assuming that if a given doctrine is taught in Scripture, it is revealed equally clearly throughout the Word of God. But suppose that God, for whatever mysterious purposes of His own, left the multiplicity of the Godhead shrouded in the Old Testament (cf. I Cor. 13:12), but made it clear in the New. If a Unitarian exalts the Old Testament far above the New for the nature of God, thinks no progressive revelation exists on this issue, employs texts that lack the clarity commonly thought (such as Deut. 6:4's use of "echad" for "one"), reads a preconceived definition of "one" into them (i.e., as one Person), assumes the Jews couldn't be wrong when interpreting their own Holy Word, and uses every ad hoc "explanation" conceivable to evade New Testament texts that falsify his doctrine, self-deception can be the only end for this kind of hermeneutics.

SHADES OF DARRELL CONDER?

One of the most problematic features of Fakhoury's scholarship is revealed by his essay's footnotes to John Hick's The Myth of God Incarnate, a standard mainline liberal Protestant work. Hick's work, like many other liberal Protestant works, relies on the discredited Werde-Boussett-Reitzenstein thesis.[15] Briefly summarized, it claims that first-century Christianity was a pagan mystery religion (like Mithraism) proclaiming yet another dying savior-god (here, Jesus of Nazareth) for gentiles to embrace, but clothed with Jewish and Old Testament conceptions that obscured the underlying Hellenistic reality. As this interpretation of Christianity became popular in the early twentieth century among liberal scholars, it affected their interpretation of the New Testament. Before coming into vogue, the nineteenth-century liberal Protestants who attacked Trinitarianism in the name of Unitarianism labored long and hard to prove the Bible didn't teach the Deity of Christ. Even to this day, Jehovah's Witnesses still use the same arguments that these scholars devised over a century ago. But, with the rise of the Werde-Boussett-Reitzenstein thesis, liberal scholarship switched gears. Instead of denying that the New Testament taught that Jesus was God, they readily admitted this, in order to find evidence that Jesus was just another "dying savior-god." Hence, by tying Biblical Christianity's core belief to Rome's pagan mystery religions, the liberals unearthed a seemingly powerful argument to bury Biblical Christianity with. Now, clearly, Fakhoury totally denies the claims of the Werde-Boussett-Reitzenstein thesis, which presently directly menaces the Church of God in the form of Darrell Conder's Mystery Babylon and the Ten Lost Tribes in the End Times.[16] But this idea that the word "God" shouldn't be taken to mean "God," but rather has some lesser, weaker meaning like "divine hero," etc., plainly has its intellectual roots in the Werde-Boussett-Reitzenstein thesis, which John Hick's work, among many other liberal works, certainly relies upon.[17] Since this well of scholarship is so clearly spiritually poisoned, whatever concepts we draw from it should be drunk with the utmost caution. The mere fact that the Hebrew meaning for the words "el" and "elohim" in a very few cases does not refer to the Almighty God or a pagan deity doesn't mean we are free to read the "weak" definition into any texts referring to Christ whenever they can't be "explained away" otherwise. The main, standard meaning should be assumed to apply, unless otherwise proven, especially when Scripture won't allow a "watered-down" definition of "God" to be applied to the one true God in any shape or form.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS DESCRIBE A DIVINE MESSIAH

Hence, when Fakhoury cites Brown, Driver & Briggs or Gesenius as using a "weak" definition of "God" for Isa. 9:6, it's quite possible standard liberal or anti-Christian prejudices influence their choices for what definition of "el" was meant in this text. After all, in the broad, cosmopolitan Hellenistic/Roman ancient world, if Jesus was a pagan savior-god like Attis or Mithras, then calling him a "mighty hero" would make perfect sense, even if it (on some level) mistakenly reads a pagan Greek idea back into the Hebrew Scriptures. But nowadays, what upsets the liberal applecart are the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries that shows that the Qumran sect believed the coming Messiah would be not just the son of God, but God as well. Consider this amazing excerpt from a text found in Cave #4:

He will be great over the earth . . . all will worship him. . . . He shall be called great and he will be designated by his name. He will be called "Son of God" and they will call Him "Son of the Most High". . . . His kingdom will be an eternal kingdom [cf. Isa. 9:7 and Luke 1:32-33, 35], and all His paths in truth and uprightness. . . . The sword shall cease from the land and all the provinces shall pay him homage. He is a great God of gods [cf. Dan. 2:47]. . . . His kingdom will be an eternal kingdom, and none of the abysses of the earth shall prevail against it.[18]

Clearly, the word "God" in the term "a great God of gods" can't be downgraded to "divine hero." Furthermore, this writing destroys liberal scholarship's claims about Jewish monotheism having no idea that the Messiah was divine, which shows it wasn't a pagan idea that Paul and/or the early Catholic Church Fathers imported into early Christianity. Hence, if ancient Judaism was willing to call the Messiah "a great God of gods," Fakhoury's claim that "we see that in no case do the Hebrew Scriptures teach that the Messiah would be God" becomes exceedingly implausible.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND HISTORICAL PROBLEMS WITH ARIANISM

HISTORICALLY, ARIANISM BASED ON PAGAN PHILOSOPHY

Historically, one of the major reasons why Arius (260-336 A.D.) denied that the Son had eternally co-existed with the Father was because he applied Plato's concept of the indivisible monas to God the Father as he interpreted Scripture. Plato also considered the attributes of the indivisible Monas, or First Cause, to be incommunicable, meaning they couldn't be shared with any other entity outside of itself. Following this logic, Arius denied the Son had the attributes of the Father, such as eternity and omniscience. He placed the Son (whom he labeled the "duas," another Platonic term) between the created world and God as a kind of demigod, who was neither fully God nor only man. Arius' concept of Jesus clearly is similar to Plato's portrayal of the Demiurge in his dialog the Timaeus. The Demiurge is the semi-divine actual creator of the material universe, but his attributes were finite, not infinite. It has to be remembered that Arius was part of the same syncretistic Alexandrine school of theologians that the influential yet borderline heterodox Catholic Father Origen (c. 185-254 A.D.) was in. Undeniably, Origen's thought was heavily influenced by pagan philosophy (especially neo-Platonism) in ways even Catholics later denounced. For example, like the Hindus and Mormons, he believed in the soul's pre-existence, which the last section of Plato's Republic also contains. He believed in the eternal cycles of the creation and destruction of future worlds, that Satan would ultimately repent, and even the eternal existence of spiritual intellects/beings who weren't God.[19] Given this pagan philosophical background, Arianism clearly wasn't the majority viewpoint, despite Wade Cox's claims to the contrary. In such early post-New Testament writings by the early apostolic Catholic Church Fathers Clement and Ignatius (an emphatic Sunday-keeper executed by Rome c. 110 A.D.), Jesus is undeniably called God. The traditional Christians who inserted interpolations into the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha plainly believed Jesus was God as well. The mere fact Arius' contentions produced such an enormous uproar shows that he was attacking an established consensus in the Sunday-keeping church about Jesus being God. Thanks to the discovery of manuscripts of Arius' own writings, it's now clear that pagan philosophy influenced his interpretations of Scripture. Instead of being a reassertion of strict Judaic monotheism, Arianism was even more paganized and Hellenistic than Trinitarian theology. As Gonzalez correctly notes:

The Hellenizing tendency of Arianism was constantly manifested in the course of the controversy, when its leaders repeatedly appealed to the arguments drawn from philosophical speculation, while the Nicene theologians--and especially Athanasius [the leading defender of the Nicene creed], as will be seen in the following chapter--usually took Christian soteriology [salvation theology] as their point of departure. . . . Therefore, the result of the controversy is not, as has sometimes been claimed, the victory of a Hellenized Christianity over another more primitive and Judaic understanding of the faith, but the setting of a limit, by a moderately Hellenized Christianity, to the exaggerated influence of philosophical speculation on Christian theology.[20]

The historical evidence shows that Arians can't claim that their doctrine originated in Scripture alone.[21]

WILL THE REAL POLYTHEISTS PLEASE STAND UP?

As noted above, Arianism in its original form placed Jesus as a semi-divine creature, as not-quite-God, yet not only a man either. The question Robert Bowman raised, borrowed to serve as a subheading above, concerns why Arianism is not true monotheism. If Jesus is a "Mighty God" (Isa. 9:6) and "a god" (John 1:1, NWT), but not a false pagan god, Arianism has two Gods. The Father is a "big" God, and the Son is a little "god," and so 1 + 1 = 2![22] The Binitarian avoids this problem by asserting the Father and Son are both fully God, and that They make up the one true God. But an Arian can't do this, since he has to assert that Jesus is not God, yet he won't deny the texts that show Jesus' status ranks far above any other created beings, thus leaving Jesus in limbo as a kind of demigod. To an Arian, Jesus has to be considered a true "god," but not the true Almighty God (the Father), thus making for an effective polytheism. Wade Cox reflects this, since his position amounts to a type of polytheism, or at least henotheism (a religion in which only one God is worshipped, but which asserts that other gods exist): "Now, unless Moses, the psalmists, Christ, John and Paul were complete liars, there must be multiple elohim. This fact we also know from Hebrew texts, where elohim is a generic plural term. These beings were not the one true God. . . . It also appears beyond dispute that the terms elohim, yahovah, and adonai are plural and apply to multiple beings who are not the one true God and who are also described as angels." Ironically, even Fakhoury gives in to this historic tendency of Arianism by suggesting that if Jesus was the creator and preexisted, "He could conceivably have been a divine person included in the 'us' of Genesis 1:26 and elsewhere." Here a fundamental challenge has to be issued to all Arians: Either Jesus is part of the one true God, or He isn't. If you wish to be a strict monotheist who insists God is one Person, you can't have Jesus haphazardly floating around in status between a God being and a mere man only. God is one, not one and a half. If Jesus spoke the words, "Let Us make man in Our image according to Our likeness," He is 100% God since the Hebrew text says "elohim," since the Creator, a defining attribute of God, said these words. One can't parse "elohim" here to mean at the same time both the True God, the Creator, and other non- or semi-divine being(s), especially when the angels are never asserted in Scripture to be the creators of the universe. Either adopt the Binitarian view, which assimilates the Father and Son together into one God in two Persons, or become a Unitarian who totally rejects Jesus as being divine by reasoning that God is one because He is only one Person. If indeed, "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One!," it can't be Jesus sometimes is "God" and sometimes isn't, if the Father is the only one true God.

WAS JESUS A DEMIGOD?

Historically, one of the major reasons why Arianism lost to Trinitarianism in the decades following the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) was because it turned Jesus into a demigod, as Gonzalez explains:

But one could also see in the inner nature of Arianism one of the main causes of its defeat. Arianism can be interpreted as an attempt to introduce within Christianity the custom of worshiping beings which, while not being the absolute God himself, were divine in a relative sense. The general Christian conscience reacted strongly against this limited understanding of the Savior's divinity, as was clearly seen every time the Arians expressed their doctrine in its extreme fashion. . . . Besides, the Arian intent of producing such a paganized Christianity by allowing the worship of a being that was not quite God himself had strong competition in popular piety that was already beginning to follow the custom--no less pagan, but certainly less detrimental to the divinity of Christ than Arianism--of rendering to the saints a type of worship similar to that which antiquity offered to demigods.[23]

Contrary to Wade Cox's claims that Arianism (a term he opposes) was the original faith of the church, in fact "the destruction of the faith by the Greeks and Romans" would have come even faster had the paganized theology of Arius been accepted by the Sunday-keeping church. The first public record of Arius' teachings implies its dissident nature, since it arose when he objected to a sermon by Bishop Alexander of Alexandria that stressed the coeternity of the Father and the Son in 318 A.D. Since Arius was reacting against orthodoxy, it shows orthodoxy existed before Arianism did. Bishop Alexander's letter to Alexander of Thessalonica confirms this, for in it he complained that Arius was "attacking the orthodox faith," was denouncing "every apostolic doctrine," and was denying "the deity of the Savior."[24]

THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL EVIDENCE FOR THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST REEXAMINED

WAS JESUS "a god"?

By citing George Eldon Ladd, Fakhoury refers to an argument that has been the main way Jehovah's Witnesses have sought to explain away John 1:1. (To refute this superficially plausible interpretation of the Greek unfortunately involves a great deal of explanation which some readers may wish to skip over). They claim that the Word is a lesser being than the Father because the word "the" (the article) is omitted from before the word "God." Hence, their New World Translation reads, "and the Word was a god." Ladd's claim that "God is more than the Word" is fatally wounded by this objection: It turns Jesus into a demigod who isn't quite God Almighty, but who isn't just an average man either, an issue already covered thoroughly above. Since God is one, not sometimes one, sometimes one and a half, applying a "weak" definition of "God" to the one true God conflicts with the rest of Scripture, so it must be rejected. Although admitting for purely grammatical reasons the third clause of John 1:1 could be translated, "the Word was a god," Harris explains the insufferable objection to this translation:

But the theological context, viz., John's monotheism, makes this rendering of 1:1c impossible, for if a monotheist were speaking of the Deity he himself reverenced, the singular ["theos"] could only be applied to the Supreme Being, not to an inferior divine being or emanation as if ["theos"] were simply generic. That is, in reference to his own beliefs, a monotheist could not speak of ["theoi," gods] nor could he use ["theos"] in the singular (when giving any type of personal description) of any being other than the one true God whom he worshipped.

Although he says "a god" is a correct translation in Acts 28:6, this is because the NT here reports what the pagan Maltans called Paul for surviving a poisonous snake's bite.[25] Hence, the Arians' middle-of-the-road position is not acceptable: Either Jesus is fully 100% God by origin, or else He is only a man.

DOES OMITTING THE ARTICLE BEFORE THE WORD "GOD" PROVE MUCH?

Does the omission of the article (in English, the words "the," "a," or "an") in the third clause of John 1:1 really prove all that much? As Harris notes, "From three converging lines of evidence it becomes abundantly clear that in NT usage ["the God"] and ["God"] are often interchangeable." For example, when Paul writes, "For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:11), it would be absurd to translate "theos" here as "a god." The genitive form (meaning, a form of the word "God" that changes its ending because the word for "of" is built into its ending), "theou," could be translated "of a god" whenever it appears for it to be consistent with the Jehovah's Witnesses' rendering of John 1:1. Yet, with some examination (John 1:6, 12, 13; Romans 1:7, 17; Matthew 5:9; 6:24; Luke 1:35, 78), this argument is exposed as the purest poppycock.[26] Harris draws particular attention to Romans 1:21, which refers to "the God" before mentioning "God" without the article. Note the immediately preceding verse as well, which draws attention to God's divine essence and attributes (or qualities) as being revealed by the natural world He created: