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God and His Son: The New Christology
Kelly P. Gallagher
For 1900 years, the church has wrestled with the “mystery” of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. During the early church councils, “orthodoxy” was established and “heresy” was identified and ruthlessly persecuted and stamped out. Since history is written by the victors, we may have a skewed version of what went on at these councils. The assumption that God was in these councils is just that, an assumption. The councils of Nicea and Constantinople that developed the trinitarian formation accepted today by a vast majority of professing Christians were convened by Constantine and his sons who were nominal Christians and were only concerned with unity of their empires, rather than establishing the truth of God. The few who did not believe in Trinitarianism were excommunicated and branded heretics such as Sabellius, Arius, Appolinarius, Nestorius, Eutyches, Theodore of Mopsuestia and others. What is the truth of the Bible? Does the Bible teach trinitarianism or oneness? Is it possible that both are wrong? This book is an attempt to return to the truth of the scriptures, without regard to councils, decrees of men, popes, denominations, theological seminaries, etc. We must return to the Bible and the Bible alone for our doctrine. The truth is in the middle of trinitarianism and oneness. Both are wrong and both cannot answer the seeming contradictions of scripture concerning the Deity of Christ (which is denied by Arius and the modern day Arians - Jehovah witnesses and unitarians), and yet the fact that Jesus did not know some things (such as the hour and day of his second coming), seemed to grow in wisdom and stature among men, became wisdom and righteousness and became a life-giving spirit.
The Becoming God The biblical answer concerning the nature of Christ and the incarnation is that he is truly God’s son. The error of classic oneness theology is that God’s son is only a body and mind, the flesh. The error of trinitarianism is to make the Word the Son as a second person in the Godhead. John 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 1 Jhn 4:9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. The above verses clearly show that God had a Son. The Son of God is his only begotten Son. Christians are given power to become sons of God by faith in Jesus Christ, but not begotten sons, only adopted sons. By being begotten directly from God, Jesus is God and has the nature of God, yet is distinct from God the Father. However, The Word in John 1:1 is not the Son. The Word is the Father. I Corinthians 8:6 states that God is the Father. If the Word was with God (the Father) and was God (the Father), then it is illogical to say that the Son is the Word. Jesus himself says that he is a child of Wisdom. Mt 11:19 The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children. Since Jesus calls himself the child of wisdom and I Corinthians 1:30 says that He became wisdom from God, then it is necessary to make a distinction between Wisdom and Jesus, the child of Wisdom. You can’t separate God from His Wisdom, even though Proverbs chapter 8 speaks of Wisdom being WITH God in the beginning and has a FEMININE CHARACTER. The Proverbs, Chapter 8 12 I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. 22 The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. 23 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. 24 When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. 25 Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: 26 While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. 27 When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: 28 When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: 29 When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: 30 Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; In the above verses, it seems to say that Wisdom was created or “brought forth” before the creation of the World. The Roman Catholic church teaches that this Wisdom is really the Logos, the Word of God which is the Son, eternally begotten from the Father. In the Latin Vulgate in Psalms 110:3 it says, “before the daystar, like a dew, I was brought forth”. This verse is supposedly speaking of the preexistent Son, who was begotten from all eternity (before the Day Star was created). God said, “let US make man in OUR image”. He was speaking before the creation of Adam. Oneness theologians try to do a two-step around verses like these that show the PLURALITY OF GOD. However, trinitarians make the mistake of assuming that God is three persons. We see that man is made in the image of God. Man is a tripartite being; body, soul and spirit. Man is only one person. What many forget is that Adam was made in the image of God. In the image of God was Adam created, male and female created he (God) them. Eve was IN ADAM at the time of the creation of Adam. Since the wisdom of God was also “brought forth” - so Eve was “brought forth” from the side of Adam. It would be foolish to say that Eve was Adam’s “son” or that she was, as his rib, a separate person from Adam. Since God is omnipotent and omnipresent, He can do things beyond Adam. Adam could not separate his body, soul and spirit at his will; but God can. He can send his Spirit, He can send His Word. His wisdom, described in Proverbs 8, has a feminine characteristic “She”. Jesus calls himself the child of Wisdom, a child of the Word. As Jesus must be fully human to be our Redeemer as well as fully divine to be our Savior, then He must have had a human body, human soul and personal spirit like ours. Oneness theology does not address the many verses that talk of Jesus BECOMING and GROWING, yet God cannot GROW OR CHANGE. Trinitarians in effect deny the full deity of Christ by saying that only the Word, the second person of the Trinity became flesh, thus saying that Jesus was not the Father or the Holy Spirit and could not be fully God. 1 Cor 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Jesus is called the last Adam. The last Adam became a quickening spirit, a “life-giving” spirit. Since God has always been life giving, Jesus became God. He was a child of Wisdom, he became Wisdom. He was a child of the Word and He became the Word by the process of the communication of God’s attributes to his begotten spirit. Is God One or three? The answer is that God is One but that he has three “parts” (since God cannot be divided into parts they are three offices) like Adam’s body soul and spirit. I John 5:7 says that there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost and THESE THREE ARE ONE. The new versions delete this verse because it is not found in Greek manuscripts. This verse is more oneness than trinitarian. It simply says that the Father, Word and Holy Ghost are one and in the next verse, links it with Jesus’ blood, water and Spirit. 1 John, Chapter 5 7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. Here are the scriptures that both oneness and trinitarians will have trouble explaining: 1 Corinthians 15 45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. 46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. 47 The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. 48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. 49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Both will explain that Jesus is the Lord from heaven. Oneness theologians will say that it is the Father made flesh; trinitarians will say it is the eternally begotten Word made flesh. But if Jesus is only God made flesh, then how can he become anything. Jesus is the child of the Word (Wisdom), he is the Word/Father/Holy Spirit and He BECAME the Word/Father/Holy Spirit. John 1:18 in the new versions call Jesus “the only begotten God”(NASV) or “God the one and only who sits at the right hand of the Father” (NIV). In a sense, God did beget Himself - He had a spiritual son as well as a physical son. Not two persons, but one. The Father was in Jesus and Jesus was in the Father. Jesus was also in heaven while he was on the earth. (The new versions delete this in John 3:13). The personal Spirit of Christ that is similar to our human spirits became Wisdom and life-giving as he took on the power and attributes of God. He was begotten in time, not in eternity - but his personal spirit was fashioned at the time of the incarnation - before that he was ‘in the bosom of the Father’ as our children are “in us” before they are begotten. Psalms, Chapter 2 7 I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. 8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. 9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. These verses clearly show that the Son of God was begotten in time, on a DAY. Eternity has no days - it is above time. The DAY that Christ is begotten is when he became a man, for God is talking about giving Him an inheritance of the earth and the nations. Oneness theology makes the mistake of calling the Father the Son, where there is a distinction: the Son became the Father, became God. The council of Rome 382 A.D. says this “Anyone who says that the Son, while incarnate on earth was not in heaven with the Father, is a heretic”. The idea of the Logos being a separate person from God the Father came first from Justin Martyr in 150 A.D. Origin invented the idea of the Trinity along with Tertullian. Origin invented the idea of the eternally begotten Son. Both Origin and Tertullian were later excommunicated as heretics. Yet the Roman Catholic church used the trinitarian teaching, born from heretics, Grecian philosophy and Egyptian mystery religion to make an “orthodox” doctrine. The only place in the New Testament that it talks of God having person or persons is Hebrews 1:3 “who being the express image of his person” the word person in Greek is hypostasis - which means the under-girding being of God. At most God is one person, not three. THE HERETICS WERE CLOSER TO THE TRUTH According to the first General council of Constantinople (381 A.D.), Apollinaris understood the mystery of the incarnation is the sense that the eternal Word of God substituted for and replace the highest part of the human composite.1 Apollinaris believed that Jesus had no human soul. To Apollinaris this seemed necessary to ensure the unity of Christ and his absolute freedom from sin. Apollinaris was close to the truth; he did not wan’t to deny the unity of God and the deity of Christ. The error here is simple: Christ must have had a human soul ( not divine) because if not, he could not be tempted to sin. God cannot be tempted to sin. Since many at this time equated the spiritual soul of man as the human spirit, Apollinaris may have tried to replace the human spirit of Christ with the Logos. The error here is that the Logos cannot become life giving, it is already life giving. Another problem with this is that if Jesus did not have a personal spirit, he was only God in a lifeless body, and really denies the humanity of Jesus. Apollinaris was very close to the truth, but he was influenced by the accepted (but false) notion that the Word was eternally begotten of the Father and a separate person. Nestorius was influenced by this teaching also and he heroically, but in error tried to understand the incarnation with this faulty base. According to Roman Catholicism, Nestorious believed, “that a complete human nature, as faith affirms in Christ, necessarily implies a human person. Christ, therefore, was a human person to whom the divine person of the Word of God was united.” 2 According to Nestorius, Christ, not the Word of God, died on the cross. Also, the controversy with Nestorius is when he denied Mary the title, “Mother of God” and only called her “Mother of Christ”. Cyril of Alexandria, Egypt had it out for Nestorius. Nestorious never was given the opportunity to defend or explain his beliefs. His writings were burned and today the few books about his writings are out of print. Luther believed that Nestorius never said that Christ was two persons. He only denied that God died or the Word died on the cross (it is impossible for God to die) and that it was only the human flesh that died. The error of classic trinitarianism is that it leads to the error that the flesh of Christ is life giving: “If anyone does not confess that the flesh of the Lord is life-giving and that it is the flesh of the Word of God himself who is from the Father, but (regards it) as the flesh of another than him, united with him in dignity or possessing only divine indwelling, and if he does not confess that it is life-giving, as we have said, because it has become the flesh of the Word himself who has the power to enliven all things, anathema sit.” 3 This teaching, that the FLESH of Christ is life-giving of itself (the flesh of Christ must then be God) is very Roman Catholic because it underpins the doctrine of the Eucharist being the life giving flesh of Christ. This is not biblical. The personal spirit of Christ BECAME life-giving, not his flesh. Eutyches believed that the divinity of Christ and the humanity merged on being united into one theandric nature. The human nature became absorbed into the divine nature and there remained only one nature with the result that Christ’s humanity was not consubstantial (of the same nature./substance) as ours. His views were condemned at the synod of Constantinople in 448 A.D. The council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. supposedly destroyed the heresies of Eutyches and Nestorius and made a balance between the Christology of the schools of Antioch and Alexandria. Just as confusing as the idea that God is one God with three persons, so the Chalcedon formulation of Christ calls him one person with two natures: “We confess that one and the same Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son, must be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion or change, without division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis. He is not split or divided into two persons, but he is one and the same Only-begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as formerly the prophets and later the Lord Jesus Christ himself have taught us about him and as been handed down to us by the Symbol of the Fathers.” 4 Did Christ have one or two natures? If taking on a real flesh body and human soul means a human nature, then yes, he had two natures. However, the Bible never says that he had a human nature or substance, but that he “took of the flesh of Abraham.” The only place in the Bible that it talks of Christ having a nature is ONE DIVINE NATURE. 2 Pet 1:4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. Heb 2:16 For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Nestorius taught that Jesus received the title of God as a honor or a favor only, according to Roman Catholics. 5 This, if true, is an error and really denies the deity of Christ. However, the flesh of Christ is not God, this is blasphemy. It was God MADE FLESH. The word Made is ginomai, (to cause to be) - not that God was transmuted into flesh, for then God would change. The Catholic Church is forced to call Jesus a liar when he said he did not know the day of his own second coming: “If anyone says that the one Jesus Christ who is both true Son of God and true Son of man did not know the future or the day of the Last Judgment and that he could know only as much as the divinity, dwelling in him as in another, revealed to him, anathema sit.” 6 They also call him a liar when He said, “My Father doeth the works” “If anyone says that the Word of God who performed miracles was someone other than the Christ who suffered, or that God the Word was with the Christ born of a woman or was in him as one in another, but [does] not [confess] one and the same our Lord Jesus Christ the Word of God incarnate and made man, to whom belong the miracles and the sufferings which he has voluntarily endured in the flesh, anathema sit.” 7 - 2nd council of Chalcedon 553 A.D. Theodore of Mopsuestia was the teacher of Nestorius and this council condemned his teaching that Christ and God the Word were not the same thing: “If anyone defends the impious Theodore of Mopsuestia who said that God the Word is one while Christ is another... furthermore, the same impious Theodore has said that the union of God the Word with Christ is similar to that of a man and wife, of which the apostle says: “the two shall be in one flesh” [Eph 5:31]…He also said, as regards the confession of Thomas after the resurrection, when having touched the hands and the side of Christ he said, “My Lord and my God” [Jn 20:28] that it was not addressed to Christ by Thomas, but that, struck by the miracle of the resurrection, Thomas praised god who had raised Christ.” 8 The errors of Theodore and Nestorius is to deny that Jesus was God if the above statement is true. The Roman Catholic church’s definition of Trinity has a problem: Who is the Father of Jesus Christ, the Father or the Holy Spirit?: “Yet we must not believe that the Holy Spirit is the Father of the Son because Mary conceived by the overshadowing of the same Holy Spirit, lest we should seem to affirm that the Son has two fathers - which is certainly impious to say.” - 11th council of Toledo 9 We can see the problem of trying to divide the Father and the Holy Spirit into two persons, for the Holy Spirit indeed was the Father of Jesus Christ. The only answer is that the Father is the Holy Spirit and the Word. (I John 5:7) Also, the classic Roman Catholic trinity causes problems such as this: “By asserting that there are two natures in the Son, we do not however, set up two persons in him, lest - which God forbid - the Trinity should seem to become a quaternity. For God the Word did not take the person of a man but his nature; he took the temporal substance of the flesh into the eternal person of the divinity.” 10 The illogic is this: When God has Word/Father/Spirit, these are three person. When God becomes flesh and has a human nature, these are NOT two persons, but one. According to Catholic teaching, Nestorious believed that Mary was not the Mother of God; only the Mother of Christ. There are in Christ, he said, two natures and two persons, one divine and one human. Thus, the man Christ is not God, but a very holy man who is the bearer of God. The incarnation, therefore, does not mean that God the Son became man really but only that the Divine Logos resided in Jesus in the same way that God dwells in the just. According to Nestorius the human activities of Jesus (birth, suffering, death) may be asserted of the Man-Christ only; the divine activities (creation, omnipotence, eternity) may be asserted of the God-Logos only. The Catholic church teaches that, “Jesus is not a human person; he is a divine Person who has taken himself a human nature.” 11 The problem with Catholic understanding that Jesus is the Logos, the second person of the Trinity is this: In John 8:58 Jesus says, “I tell you most solemnly, before Abraham ever was, I am.” If his human part is speaking then he is lying! For his flesh did not exist before Abraham was. His divine nature alone is speaking. Catholic teaching says that monophysitism (mono - one, phusis - nature, one nature) is wrong because: “The monophysite doctrine of unification and fusion contradicts the absolute immutability of God. In fact, it means a denial of the true humanity of Jesus. We have already seen that such a denial logicaly leads to a denial of the Church, the sacraments and our redemption from sin.” 12 This is true, if the ASSUMPTION that Jesus is the second person of the trinity is true. However, a better understanding is this; Jesus has the Word/Father/Holy Sprit in Him; also, his personal begotten/divine spirit and his human flesh and soul. (not necessarily human in nature) God didn’t change, even though he begot a son. Jesus never changed, although He was begotten and assumed a body and soul. If Jesus had to be exactly like us to redeem us ( in every way), then He would have to be a sinner and have a sinful nature. I contend that the human nature is sinful and therefore Christ did not have a human nature, but simply a human soul and body, without sin. He was a man and enough of a man to redeem us and enough of God to redeem us, this is the mystery of the incarnation. The Godhead is NOT A MYSTERY. He is one. The Holy One of Israel is also the Savior and Redeemer. Jesus is called the Holy One by devils, they knew he was God in the flesh. Isaiah 41:14 Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah 43:3 For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Isaiah 43:14 Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships. Isaiah 43:15 I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King. Isaiah 47:4 As for our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel. Mark 1:24 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. Acts 2:27 Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Acts 3:14 But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; 1 Jhn 2:20 But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. Monophysitism denied that Jesus has a human mind and will. We do not deny this, but deny that he had a human nature. It is illogical to have one person and two natures. This implies that Jesus was schizophrenic. Classic oneness theology has problems with verses such as this: “But when the fullness of time had come God sent his Son made of a woman” Gal. 4:4. God sent his son in the form of a man made of woman. Jesus was made of Mary and the flesh of Abraham. Jesus denies that she is his mother in Matt 12. Also, Melchizedek in Hebrews 7 had “neither father or mother, nor beginning of days.” In a real sense, then, Jesus also has no father - he is begotten of God, but really is God the Father, not God the Son. Because God is really not a person, but one hypostasis (Hebrews 1:3) Jesus is not two persons, but one. Jesus is the exact image of God’s being/hypostasis, being in the form of God (Phil 2:6,7). Notice that He is IN the form (morphe-visible aspect) of God, not that he is the form of God. He was in God before he became the form (morphe) of man. This shows his preexistence in the Father/Word/Holy Spirit and yet proves that He is not the second person of the Trinity, but begotten of God and became God. The Catholics have trouble with this verse, Matthew 27:46 - “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” If Jesus is the Logos, second person of the Trinity, then this verse seems to say that there is a division in the Trinity or in the two natures of Christ at the cross. Here is the jesuitical answer of the Catholics: “St. Thomas Acquinas and other theologians explain in in the sense that the Father withdrew certain aspects of his protection of Jesus, but not that the Logos abandoned Jesus. Here Jesus experiences the depths of human suffering and anguish, but he is and remains the Son of God.” 13 This is nonsense! The Father is the Logos. The Father cannot withdraw and the Logos remain! This violates the simplicity law of biblical hermeneutics. Choose the interpretation that does not require twisting the scriptures - the answer is this. The Father/Logos did withdraw from Christ - fully in his human mind/soul and body and partially in his personal spirit. Remember that the personal spirit of Christ, which became wisdom and life-giving, descended to hell by himself. The First Epistle of Peter, Chapter 3 19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; 20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. 21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: 22 Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him. We can see that classic Roman Catholic trinitarianism is wrong and born of heretics Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Origen. It is gnostically influenced and is antichrist in that it denies the full deity of Christ, saying that he is only one person in a three person Godhead. The new Christology, which is really the old Christology of the Bible, apart from creeds, councils and philosophies of man and only based on the Word of God, not part of it, is the truth that answers all the questions that the scripture raises. Jesus was a child of the Wisdom/Word of God, he became the Wisdom/Word of God by the communication of God’s attributes and he had the fulness of God, the undividable Father/Word/Holy Spirit in Him directly united with him and making his personal spirit both wisdom made flesh (I Cor 1:30) and life-giving (I Cor 15:45). Roman Catholicism blasphemously divide God in Christ and in effect create a double idolatry: 1)The are not worshipping the Father or the Holy Spirit when they worship Jesus and 2)they make his flesh life-giving and hence worship the Eucharist which is supposedly his flesh made bread: “Only the second divine Person became man; he is also called the Son of God or the Word or the Logos. Stated negatively, this means that the Father and the Holy Spirit were not incarnated.” 14 Will you believe the testimony of men, or God: 1 Tim 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. Col 2:9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. 1. The Christian Faith, J. Neuner S.J/ J. Dupuis, S.J. Alba House, N.Y. 1996, p. 194 2. Ibid, pp. 195-196 3. Ibid, p. 199 (11th anathema of Cyril against Nestorious) 4. Ibid, p. 203 5. Ibid, p. 205 6. Ibid, p. 206 7. Ibid, p. 208 8. Ibid, pp. 211-212 9. Ibid, p.219 10. Ibid, p 220 11th council of Toledo 11. Fundamentals of Catholicism vol.2, Kenneth Baker, S.J. Ignatius Press, San Fransisco 1983., pp.217-218 12. Ibid, p. 221-222 13. Ibid, p.227 14. Ibid, p. 233
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