Alleged Sources for the Incarnation, part 8.

A fourth post regarding the Christology of John the Apostle. How did he view the status and authority of Jesus Christ? Did he actually see Jesus…as God Almighty?

Using Samuel Barrett’s 1825 list of 100 unitarian verses in the New Testament, and picking out the verses by John the Apostle…we come to:

16. Because the Father is called the God of Christ as he is the God of Christians. “Jesus saith unto her, ….Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and your God,” John 20:17.

Was this then…meant exclusively as…the ONLY God of the Jews, for Jesus? For the unitarian, yes it does, but are they accurate and true? In saying specifically that ONLY the Father is God?

By the Shema Principle, yes. By John’s own red-letter saying of Jesus, yes. This is eternal life, that they know you, the ONLY true God, and that they also know Christ Jesus whom You (the ONLY True God) hath sent.

Both being Jewish and under the Law in a Karaite or general sense, both are UNDER the Ten Commands and the Shema primarily. When Jesus relates the new Word of Life, it is obvious to me that he does not include himself INTRINSIC to the Shema Command, but rather ADDED-TO the Shema Command. How could it be otherwise? The Shema Command LIMITS God…to the Father, as Jesus called Him. Notice I used the word “HIM” to mean, exclusively “H(h)im.” The singularity of the pronoun suffices. “No other one…but Him,” said by the scribe in Mk 12, and affirmed by the Christ.

The problematic passage for the unitarian is this chapter in John however. Thomas apparently calls Jesus “my Lord and my God.” Online, the usual unitarian interpretation here is…that Thomas is not addressing Jesus as…both. He initially addresses Jesus, but then adds the second referent, God, in address. My view however is that Thomas is speaking Aramaic, and calling Jesus an ELOHIM (as well as "L(l)ord,") which addresses also the supernaturality of what he saw and touched. The wound is significant here. Jesus had DIED from the wound, or at least in conjunction with it. He LIVED by the grace and power of his God, which puts him EXACTLY in place of…an elohim resurrected by his God. This is one of the few instances in my view…of human elohim…on earth. The Transfiguration on the Mount was…Elijah and Moses, seen in vision or in a literal presence. Here however, was Jesus…RESURRECTED and brought back to life, which suddenly was, the revelation and direct result of…Thomas seeing JESUS AS the identification of this apparition next to him. Please consider that he did not formerly even know this. That it was…Jesus at all.

In conventional translations, ALL “elohim” whether rendered by term or concept…are translated THEOS in the Greek and then…G(g)od in the English. This is then, a translational gloss. Thus the Text is rendered cohesive, and John the Apostle is seen cohesively as…an Abrahamic Monotheist. Who RENDERED Thomas himself, as also the same.

Please also consider that by now Thomas had gotten the lesson in Jn 10, OF ELOHIM. Jesus in Jn 10 was STATING he was an elohim, just like the “gods” of Psalm 82. Thomas had heard this, and assimilated it as much as he knew how to. But when he saw and touched…the APPARITION, he knew then, not only was this Jesus himself, but Jesus ALIVE AND WELL. MEANING he was an elohim, about to go back to his own Father and God, in heaven.