Undoing the Tanakh

To Titus, my true son in a common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.  Titus 1:4  NASB

Christ Jesus our savior – Wait a minute!  Didn’t we just look at the first three verses and conclude that God alone is the savior of His people?  Isn’t that what Paul said when he wrote “according to the commandment of God our Savior” in the previous line?  Doesn’t this imply that God and Christ Jesus are the same being?  How can God be our Savior and Christ Jesus be our savior and they not be the same?

Notice that all these terms are Greek genitives.

In Koiné Greek, the genitive case ending has potential to express the widest range of meanings of all the various case endings. The genitive case ending can express possession, description, kinship, apposition, separation, the subject of a verbal idea, the object of a verbal idea, and others. Often, a specific word with a genitive case ending may seem to fit into more than one category. In these cases, the final determination of the meaning must be based upon context.[1]

So, we have two entities (God the Father and Christ Jesus our savior) that somehow express a relationship whether of description, kinship, subject or object of a verb, or possession (one belongs to the other).  Since all the words are genitives, the relationship must be between these genitives and the two nominatives “grace” and “peace.”  Perhaps this is the clue we need.  Paul’s wording suggests that God the Father and Christ Jesus our savior belong to the ideas of grace and peace.  The genitive relationship is not between God and the Christ but rather between the two of them as a unit and the experience of grace and peace.

We should also note that this phrase is unusual for Paul.  Typically his wording is “God the Father and our Lord Christ Jesus,” not “our savior.”  In all these typical greetings, the genitive cases dominate, once again suggesting that the unit (God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ) are essentially tied to (belong to) the ideas of grace, mercy, peace, and love.  For Paul, these crucial spiritual conditions do not exist without the relationship to God and the Messiah.

But this doesn’t answer our Trinitarian question.  Yes, Paul writes “Christ Jesus our savior” only once, but once is enough to cause reflection.  The ambiguity created by Paul’s typical phrasing might be resolved if we had a clear declaration from him about the soteriological role of Yeshua.   Fortunately, we do.  In 1 Timothy 2:5 Paul writes, “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,” (NASB).  It could hardly be clearer than this.  There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and man, ánthrōpos, the human being, Yeshua HaMashiach.  In this verse in Titus, could Paul be thinking of the whole process as one unit, that is, “God Father Messiah Savior” rather than assigning a specific role to each?  Since he never uses this phrase in any other letter, perhaps he’s rolling the entire soteriological event in one designation without contradicting the clear message of the Tanakh.  The Messiah plays a role in salvation, no doubt, but that role is derivative, that is, the true power of forgiveness rests with the Father who authorizes the son to execute it.  Perhaps that’s why Paul, in this one instance, expresses the relationship in this way.  Too bad we can’t ask him.

Topical Index: our savior, Titus 1:4

[1]https://ugg.readthedocs.io/en/latest/case_genitive.html#:~:text=In%20Koiné%20Greek%2C%20the%20genitive,express%20other%20meanings%20as%20well.