Peter

One could go on interminably selecting evidence for Jesus as a divine being, and you would come back and say no - that merely shows Jesus was a divine agent.

In stating this you seem to acknowledge that there is Biblical support for my interpretation of Jesus’ role.

You choose one way based on the fact that, according to you, only God could die for our sins. You have yet to show me where the Bible says this.

I base mine on the conviction that three is not one, that a being is either mortal or immortal, able to be tempted or not, all powerful and all knowing or limited, and that Jesus and God are separated by these two categories.

The biblical testimony for me is overwhelming - all born of Adam participate in Adam’s sin.

Could you please give me some examples of texts which clearly substantiate this. Isn’t it sinning that makes us sinners? Surely all that Jesus would need in order to be sinless is not to sin. That being the case he would have no need for atonement.

 In addition, it is indicative of the depths of sin’s power that only God could provide in Himself, through the Son, a solution to sin’s power. 

I wonder- Is it a prerequisite of the gospel that we make sin out to be as powerful as we possibly can? Surely the problem with sin presented by the scriptures is that it’s an outrage to God and has had such devastating effects on the entire created order. Isn’t that enough? Does it also have to bring the wrath of God down on someone who hasn’t done anything wrong yet?

 All the other questions which you raise concerning the relationship of the Son to the Father on the cross can be answered fairly simply.

I wonder, could I press you further to actually do this? How could God forsake God, yet still be one God? How can the immortal God die? Would he not then cease to be immortal?

 …this leads you to the contradictory phrase ‘unique normality’ to describe Jesus. 

I was actually quoting from JAT Robinson in ‘the human face of God’, where he makes some points very similar to those I have set out in this discussion. The word normal is not used in the sense of common or everyday, but rather normative with God’s standard for mankind and prefigurative of the humanity of the age to come. It is by virtue of the rest of us sinning and coming short of it that Jesus is unique by comparison.

 Link between Philippians 2:5-11. and Isaiah 45:23. 

In honouring and submitting to God’s man, God is honoured and served. When the people heard and followed Moses they heard and followed Yahweh. So too David and other godly leaders. Consider the following striking example:

“And David said to all the congregation, Now bless Yahweh your God. And all the congregation blessed Yahweh God of their fathers, and bowed down their heads, and worshipped Yahweh, and the king” (I Chronicles 29:20).

See also my post to Phil, below, on this point.

 Colossians 1:15-20. 

The ‘all things’ created through Jesus are specified in the immediate context. Not the heavens and earth of the Genesis creation, but thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers that are in the present heavens and earth. These all describe positions of governmental authority. This text says much the same thing as Ephesians 1:20-23.

Yahweh had no intermediary in the Genesis creation, for he says “I am Yahweh that makes all things; that stretches out the heavens alone; that spreads abroad the earth by myself” (Isaiah 44:24)

 There is the use of the word Kyrios, with its echoes of the substitute use for YHWH in the OT.

I refer to my comments on this in my critique of NT Wright’s ‘One Lord, One People’.

 There is Paul’s use of the phrase Son of God both in its traditional Jewish meaning and as a technical term when combined with ‘father’ implying divinity. 

The Bible presents us with God the Father and Jesus the Son of God. The title Father describes God. The title Son describes a man’s relationship to God.

Though the creeds employ the title ‘God the Son’, this is found nowhere in the Bible. Neither is the equivalent ‘The Father of God’, though the Roman church is rigorous enough in its incarnation theology to describe Mary as the ‘Mother of God’. These phrases would indeed attribute divinity to the Son.

To quote Colin Brown as I did at the end of my  ‘Before Abraham was…’ article:

“Indeed, to be a ‘Son of God’ one has to be a being who is not God!”

More on this as well in my message to Phil below.