Who’s the Enemy?
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. John 15:15 ESV
Friends – “What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear; And what a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer.” The opening lyrics of Joseph Scriven’s famous hymn. Like most hymns, we sing the words without considering the message. But the message is crucial because it shapes our beliefs about Jesus and God even if we aren’t aware of the influence. Consider the implications here.
First, Jesus is a friend whose most important benefit to us is carrying away our sins. What does this imply about YHVH? That YHVH doesn’t bear our sins and griefs? That Jesus is a better friend than God? Oh, not quite. You see the next line implies that Jesus is God. That’s why He can bear our sins and we can put all of our burdens on Him. The hymn is thoroughly Trinitarian. Of course, we would expect it to be. But this equivalence between Jesus and God has another implication. Doesn’t it imply that forgiveness (bearing our sins) could not have occurred without Jesus? Doesn’t it imply that Jesus is the quintessential friend? What does that mean for Abraham’s relationship with YHVH. Or Moses’? What does that imply about the Levitical offerings?
Second, according to Jesus himself, the reason we are called friends has nothing to do with being forgiven. We are friends because Jesus has revealed to us the will of the Father. Doesn’t this mean that Jesus is the intermediary? Does it make any sense for Jesus to say, “I have called you friends for all that I have heard from myself I have made known to you”? Doesn’t Jesus suggest that this friendship is based on mutual purpose and shared understanding? If you and I both know the will of the Father, doesn’t that make us compatriots? Is that different from the “friendship” that occurs because you sacrifice yourself for me? Jesus speaks about that occurrence as well, just two verses earlier. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” But doesn’t that assume the friendship is already in place before the sacrifice occurs? Is Jesus a great friend because he sacrifices himself or is that a demonstration of how deep his friendship really is?
Finally, hymns are part of a long tradition. There are plenty of “Jesus only” hymns. It’s interesting that these hymns shift the focus of biblical faith from YHVH to Jesus. In fact, we might ask if a first century Jewish assembly of Messianic believers would have sung hymns to Yeshua. That doesn’t diminish his importance as Messiah and head of the ekklesia. No one else can ever fill that role. But does that mean that YHVH is no longer the center of our worship? Is YHVH the enemy while Jesus is the friend?
Topical Index: Jesus, hymn, Messiah, worship, friend, John 15:15
Sorry skip, i have seen non trintarians elevate Yeshua far beyond just a head of assembly.To even hint that the levitical priesthood is comparable to the Melchizedek priesthood is a slippery slope. Yeshua accomplished far more than just being a head of an assembly.He is not only king but our high priest and head of the body, living temple not made by hands.
I’m not in disagreement. Head of assembly, first fruit of the Kingdom, God’s-elect, Messiah, King of all creation, restorer of God’s purpose, example, instructor, guide, high priest. Yes. But don’t you think claiming he is God is also a slippery slope? Consider what that has meant for the history of the Church, for relations with God’s chosen people, for assumptions about the undeclared paradigm shift of the apostles? I’m afraid there is an equal amount of sliding on that side.
Don’t recall me mentioning he was God in my statement or arguing that pt. Just didn’t think head of assembly really says much.
But head of the assembly of God’s chosen people, the one who represents them all, seems to be to say quite a bit.
And, yes, you didn’t say, “He is God.” See my reply to your other comment.
I don’t think “claiming he is God” has been the problem. I think the arrogance of thinking anyone can confidently declare the definition of what God necessarily is (and is not) is the real problem. The text can be read both ways (and more), and none of them would necessarily be ‘wrong’, or even have to be ‘right’. NONE of us can grasp what God is! That’s not our problem!
I think the problems come with the attempts to apply those definitions, like Skip pointed out in his book. This goes equally for both sides. For example, the office and relationship of Yeshua with His Father gets mangled and obscured and hijacked, even, when you go to apply what BOTH sides think God is (and is not). I find the problems start when you try to apply (force) the text back through the application of what either side is insisting on. I think we would probably be better off thinking that we CAN’T know what God either is or is not.
Many Trinitarians think of God “as one substance”, BUT, so do the Unitarians! (Hmm). What do both of them then do to that relationship? We could start there and just keep going.
The real problem with arguments is that they both have to agree to a common premise. In this case, the premise, of course, is that both have to agree on a common definition of what God is and is not, and right there the problems start (and never end). What hubris!
I agree. The issue is NOT THE TEXT. It never has been. The text is merely EVIDENCE interpreted by the PARADIGM. It is the paradigm that matters since the evidence is malleable. Even in hard science, this is true (cf. Thomas Kuhn). So we should be debating the paradigms, not the evidence. But most of the time we get trapped in proof-texting our own point of view rather than asking “Where did that idea come from?”
On the other hand, the claim that God is so far beyond us that we really can’t know anything about Him is also suspect. No one (sane, at least) claims to know ALL about God, but if we really know NOTHING about Him, then, hey, let’s quit talking. Mysticism is that sort of answer, until the mystic opens his mouth.
Of course. BUT, isn’t it highly suspect when you have a multi-millenia going-nowhere situation that totally and completely depends upon a mutual substrate that is NOT being questioned? Neither side is questioning their COMMON paradigm!
Sorry. Didn’t get this one. Please try again.
We sign onto the argument without examining the common premises. Shouldn’t we be suspicious that the argument is not resolving because it has erected a straw man?
Let’s start with the “God is one (in substance)”, shall we?
The very same shift is made in modern “worship” songs. “It’s all about Jesus.” God is an afterthought.
John, this is a familiar thought of mine. Bringing it up is tantamount to heresy, it seems. :/
Skip, Then how should we process statements like the one Thomas made when he proclaimed to Yeshua,”My Lord and My God“. Yeshua did not correct him or say, Thomas, you are only half right. What am I not getting?
This particular verse is again subject to various paradigms for interpretation. Since we can’t go back as ask Yeshua or Thomas what they meant, we rely on our point of view to derive the meaning of the statement, but the meaning is already a function of what we THINK the answer should be. So, if we are looking from an orthodox Jewish paradigm, then Thomas is expressing the words as a first-century Jew in a culture where men are treated as divine based on their exemplary “super-human” accomplishments, but Thomas, as a Jew, is NOT expressing an ontological equivalence between YHVH and Yeshua. Of course, we could also defer to “rabbinic” views claiming a two-person divinity. Or we could go the route of Athanasius and argue that Thomas is a Trinitarian. ALL the argues can marshall textual forces. None is overwhelmingly compelling (thus, they all still exist). It all comes down to the paradigm, which most of us hold for non-logical reasons.
Skip: I think you are totally on the mark with this. I always found it interesting that this declaration of Thomas, arguably one of the most important Trinitarian support pillars, somehow escaped commentary by Matthew, Mark and Luke… they don’t even mention the interchange at all… and two, Matthew and Peter (likely advised Mark) are even standing in the room when this interchange occurred. Also what was the reaction of the other disciples to this declaration by Thomas? There is no indication in the gospel of John that there was any response by the others who had supposedly just been handed a remarkable insight into deity. Even two verses later John sums up his gospel with a declaration that Jesus is the Messiah, that is his focus throughout the gospel narrative. Thayer makes two interesting comments about Theos. I guess it all comes down to paradigms in play.
-Θεός is used of whatever can in any respect be likened to God, or resembles him in any way: Hebraistically, equivalent to God’s representative or vicegerent,
– Whether Christ is called God must be determined from John 1:1; John 20:28; 1 John 5:20; Romans 9:5; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:8f, etc.; the matter is still in dispute among theologians.
Yep. Paradigm. Period. I sort of smiled when I read your post today, Skip. Yep! All of that is exactly what I’ve been brainwashed to believe!!! Catholic family + “Bible-based” churches… UNTIL YOU (and other brave folks!) CHALLENGED ME TO THINK!!! Thank you again and again, Dear Brother.
Hope today finds you and your family well.
Yep. Been there, done that Daria. Agree. Never going back.
Paradigm consideration: What if this is not a propositional statement, but an exclamation by Thomas who is seeing with his own eyes the opposite of what he chose to believe: Yeshua resurrected? As David Stern notes in his JNT commentary, “This is important for Jewish readers for whom the declaration, ‘Yeshua is God’, is unpalatable.”
We make such exclamations all the time when something surprises or astounds us, e.g. “Oh, my God!” or “Goodness gracious!” (which may be a euphemism). How astounded Thomas must have been! “My master! (and as he turned his eyes heavenward in the awareness of how great YHVH was, how Tanakh was fulfilled before him in the resurrected Yeshua, who had conquered death) My God!”
Thanks for sharing this, Leslee! I have not seen that idea, but it certainly could have some merit. It gives a very different view of things.
Leslee, an interesting way to read it. Thanks.
This is how I interpreted the text some years ago when examining this verse. Thanks for the reminder.
Thought this too, for the first time, just before reading this interpretation. After all, who raised Yeshua from the dead? He, himself? I was miraculously healed, but that didn’t make ME God!
Thank you Skip, HSB and Leslee Simler for addressing my question. The insights you each gave really helped answer my question. I really love and am so grateful for this forum.
Maybe some of the problem is when you think of the word God ( elohim) you immediately attach the attributes omniscient, sovereignty, and omnipresence in all cases. Psalm 82 and Yeshua’s comment in John10:34 and many others do not state it that way.There is only one YHWH ELOHIM who has these attributes, i fully agree but elohim is used of people, spiritual entities good and bad.
Ah-Haw, again Pogo is right, ‘We have meet the enemy and he is us” ( and our paradigm’s). When will we learn? Probably never,or until Christ returns, Shalom
That which does not unite us, divides us and Lord only knows we have more divisions than agreement. Which paradigm do I prefer, you prefer? I know which one caused much more heartache, pain and agony than the other. Which one do you choose?
I have just finished reading Jonathan Sacks, Radical Then, Radical Now and a better book than this I cannot recommend to any Christian (or Jew) to consider his perspective on Judaism today and yesterday.
Great book. The theme of Esau is critically important.
Deut. 5:7 reads, “You shall have no other gods ___________”? “Besides” Me? “Before” Me”? “In My Presence”? “Against My face”? What is the correct scriptural phrase here?
Is having any another other gods prohibited or is it a matter of how one relates to other gods in relation to the One who commands us according to Deut. 5:7?
Who is saying this command? The Father? YHVH? Pre-incarnate Yeshua the Messiah? The Word who was with God, who was God, who became flesh? The Creator (and who was the Creator – the Father, the Son, both?)?
But also, cannot “Jesus” AND “God” be a friend even if “Jesus” is not “God”? Can’t one have a “friend in Jesus”, and carry everything to to “God” in prayer, without saying they are the same?
And lastly, don’t Jews have intermediaries, like the rabbis whose pictures they sometimes have on their walls and regarding who they say, “May his name be blessed forever”? And many Jews have accepted Yeshua as Messiah despite those preaching Yeshua being Trinitarians, and they keep Torah.
Regarding John 20:28, the interpretation of it may not be 100% straightforward, but I think it important to point out that some of the views expressed above can be shown to be faulty.
Without even looking at the Greek, the view that there are two subjects in Thomas’ exclamation (My Lord; My God) is dubious. In this context we have a back and forth exchange between Jesus and Thomas. Jesus first addresses Thomas in v. 27, then in v. 28 the narrator states verbatim, And Thomas answered and said to him [Jesus]… (see NASB, KJB, Young’s). In better English this would be, In response, Thomas said to him [Jesus]…. Thomas is directly addressing Yeshua and Yeshua only, by the narrator’s wording. This, in conjunction with the kai (and) between “My Lord” and “My God”, with no other break by the narrator and/or Thomas (such as: then Thomas turned to the heavens and exclaimed, “My God!”), renders such a reading even more doubtful. On the positive side, at least this position seems to understand the presence of the article (ho) before “God” (theos) to be a reference to the God of the Tanakh. Which leads me to…
The construction of Thomas’ confession is:
ho kyrios mou kai ho theos mou
[the] lord my and [the] god my
My Lord and my God.
In the LXX there is frequent use of kyrios (which is the standard translation for YHWH) and theos (Elohim). We find a combination of the two in YHWH Elohāy translated as Kyrie, ho theos mou = “Lord, My God”. Note that the final three words are identical to the latter part of Thomas’ confession. Kyrie is the vocative form of kyrios. The vocative case is used as an expression of direct address, as a substitute for the name of a person (in English, “Mr. President”, e.g.), an example in the LXX found in all the occurrences of “son of man” in Ezekiel (huie anthrōpou instead of the nominative huios anthrōpou). So, rather than addressing Ezekiel by his name, the vocative form of “son of man” is used, i.e., it stands as a substitute for his name (it’s like saying “human!” instead of “Ezekiel!” here). A similar idea applies to Kyrie here.
A construction similar to the confession above is found in Revelation 4:11:
ho kyrios kai ho theos hēmōn
[the] lord and [the] God our
Our Lord and God
This is addressed to “the one who sits on the throne” (4:9, 10), aka “Lord God Almighty” (4:8). I think this should be seen as correlative—not that Yeshua is the same exact Entity as in 4:11, since a distinction is made in Revelation 5:13, e.g.: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb…”.
As to the remark made about Thayer’s comments under Θεος, I think it points to his intellectual honesty. In any case, from my perspective, I find the grammatical and contextual arguments compellingly favoring Yeshua’s unqualified Deity in John 20:28. And I’m not dissuaded by an a priori ‘first century Jews could not affirm such a stance’ position. I think we must begin by thoroughly analyzing the text before imposing any sort of external beliefs or historical evidence upon it—as opposed to potentially looking for any sort of grammatical or contextual less-than-100%-certainty to discard a particular view. Your mileage may vary.
Regarding the fact that Thomas’ confession is absent in the Synoptic Gospels, my response is that we also do not find the most stupendous miracle of all—raising Lazarus from the dead—in the Synoptics. We also do not find the Upper Room discourse, Yeshua’s words about the paraclete, the Holy Spirit, in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Nor do we find the birth narrative in John. Each book has its own function, and each is an integral part of the whole.
Craig, Thomas saw something before him that answered his doubts. Yeshua repeatedly declared that He had come to “show the Father”. Thomas had directly asked Him right before the crucifixion to show the Father, and Yeshua looked at him and said, in effect, “I am standing right in front of you, and yet you cannot see the Father?”. I think that exchange bore fruit in the upper room. Thomas ‘got it’. In the risen Christ he saw everything that he had been blinded to before. I think he saw the Father in the Son, finally. He saw that we could address the Father directly through the Son as the Son revealed the Father directly to us. If They are One, then we can freely treat them as One. I think Thomas finally got what that must mean.
Thank you for your faithfulness to the text. That keeps us free to focus on what it is trying to tell us.
Yes, and this also likely ties to John 17:5 in which Jesus requests to be glorified with the glory he enjoyed with the Father “before the kosmos was”. If so, Thomas saw this glory and recognized this glory in Christ.
I didn’t finish my thoughts regarding the vocative case. In the NT it’s not unusual to use what’s called the articular (with article) nominative of address in place of where we may expect the vocative. Matthew 27:46 is an example (ho theos mou in place of the expected vocative thee mou = “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!”). Thus, ho kurios mou in John 20:28 is likely in place of the vocative kyrie, which would make it more equative with the Kyrie, ho theos mou found in the LXX.
Coincidentally, Dr. David Alan Black, Professor of NT Greek has a humorous cartoon of Abraham and Isaac regarding the use of the vocative [and see the Wikipedia entry for clarification on the vocative case, if needed] included in his Wednesday, May 16 entry. See the “p.s.” which precedes it for explanation:
daveblackonline dot com/blog.htm
Trying but can’t find it. Can you give a better link? Which year?
It’s the current year, 2018, so just scroll down a bit further from his main page.
Ok, too funny.