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The Case for the Deity of Christ

The Case for the Deity of Christ. Part I. Outline. What the Trinity is Not The Trinity Defined The Plurality of God in the Hebrew Bible God’s Appearances as a Man in the Hebrew Bible Conclusion. What the Trinity Is Not. Three gods (Tritheism)

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The Case for the Deity of Christ

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  1. The Case for the Deity of Christ Part I

  2. Outline • What the Trinity is Not • The Trinity Defined • The Plurality of God in the Hebrew Bible • God’s Appearances as a Man in the Hebrew Bible • Conclusion

  3. What the Trinity Is Not • Three gods (Tritheism) • A God with three modes of one and the same being at different times (Modalism; a faulty illustration for the Trinity is: “Water exists in three states: solid, liquid, and gas.”)

  4. The Trinity Defined • Three “Whos” in one “What” • Three persons in one God • The Father is God. • The Son is God. • The Holy Spirit is God.

  5. What is the Trinity? • God is three persons in one nature. • Personhood involves possessing intellect, a will, and feelings—Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology: God and Creation, Vol. 2, 279.

  6. An Illustration of the Trinity • God is similar to a triangle, which is one figure but it possesses three different sides at the same time. • This illustrates how there can be a threeness and a oneness simultaneously.

  7. An Illustration of the Trinity Father God Holy Spirit Son

  8. Who Is Jesus? • There are two “whats” in one “Who.” • Jesus has possessed two natures ever since He came to Earth. • He has a human nature and a divine nature. • Jesus is the God-Man.

  9. Jesus’s Two Natures

  10. Who Is Jesus? Father God Holy Spirit Son Man

  11. The Plurality of God in the Hebrew Bible

  12. “Us” and “Our”

  13. Genesis 1:26 • “Then God (Elohim) said, ‘Let us make Adam in our image, according to our likeness.”

  14. Genesis 3:22 • “Then YHWH God (Elohim) said, ‘See, the Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”

  15. Genesis 11:6-7 • “And YHWH said, ‘Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’”

  16. The “Angel of the LORD” • The Hebrew word for angel means messenger. • It can refer to human or non-human messengers. • Therefore, the phrase can be rendered as “the messenger of the LORD”.

  17. Judges 2:1 • “Now the angel of YHWH went up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, ‘I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you into the land that I had promised to your ancestors. I said, “I will never break my covenant with you.”

  18. Who Brought the Israelites Out of Egypt?

  19. Exodus 3:2-4 • “There the angel of YHWH appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’…

  20. Exodus 3:2-4 • …4When YHWH saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’…

  21. Exodus 3:7-8 • Then YHWH said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians,…

  22. Exodus 3:7-8 • …and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”

  23. Who Had Made a Promise About Land?

  24. Genesis 15:18-21 • “On that day YHWH made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,19the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’”

  25. YHWH Speaks to the “Angel of YHWH”

  26. 1 Chronicles 21:16 • “David looked up and saw the angel of YHWH standing between earth and heaven, and in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell on their faces.”

  27. 1 Chronicles 21:27 • …Then YHWHcommanded the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath.

  28. The “Angel of YHWH” is YHWH • The “angel of YHWH” is distinct from YHWH. • Yet, the “angel of YHWH” is somehow equal to YHWH.

  29. Two Yahwehs

  30. Two Yahwehs • Yahweh is the name of Israel’s God. • The Hebrew Bible specifies that He is one (echad) (Deuteronomy 6:4) and that there is no god besides Him (Isaiah 44:6).

  31. Zechariah 2:8 • “Some difficulty arises with his glory sent me. Most suppose the prophet is meant, but Zech. himself was not sent to the plundering nations, nor does he ever seem to see himself as an actor in history.”—Roger N. Carstensen, “The Book of Zechariah,” in The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971), 505.

  32. Zechariah 2:8-10 • “For thus said the YHWHof hosts after his glory sent me regarding the nations that plundered you: Truly, one who touches you touches the apple of my eye. 9See now, I am going to wave my hand against them,…

  33. Zechariah 2:8-10 Continued • …and they shall become plunder for their own slaves. Then you will know that the YHWH of hosts has sent me. Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! For lo, I will come and dwell in your midst, says YWHW.” 

  34. Zechariah 2:8-10 • Yahweh sends Yahweh to dwell on the earth with humans.

  35. Hebrew Bible Scholar Walter Kaiser Writes: • “Mystery of mysteries, Yahweh is Lord, yet He was also sent.”—Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., The Communicator’s Commentary: Micah-Malachi (21 Volumes) (Waco, Texas: Word, 1992) 21:315.

  36. God’s Appearances As a Man

  37. Genesis 18:1-4 • “The LORD appeared to him (Abraham) by the terebinths of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. 2He looked up and saw three men standing near him…

  38. Genesis 18:1-4 Continued • …When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. 3He said, ‘My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. 4Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.” 

  39. Genesis 32:24-30 • “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’…

  40. Genesis 32:24-30 Continued • …But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ 27So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ 28Then he said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’…

  41. Genesis 32:24-30 Continued • “…29Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’”

  42. Larry W. Hurtado Writes: • “Still earlier than the rabbinic sources, Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 B.C.E.-50 C.E.) exhibits Jewish speculations about the biblical accounts of manifestations of God…

  43. …Philo’s solution was to identify the biblical manifestations of God as the Logos, in one sense genuinely God but really a distinguishable mode (or ‘power’ [dynamis]) of God adapted for human apprehension; the Logos thus represents that of the infinite God which humans as finite creation are capable of perceiving.”—Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (William B. Eerdmans, 2005), 575.

  44. The Holy Spirit

  45. The Spirit of God is a Person • “The spirit of YHWHspeaks through me,His word is upon my tongue.”—2 Samuel 23:1 

  46. Conclusion • The Trinity doctrine is not contradictory. • According to the Hebrew Bible: • There is only one God. • There is, however, a plurality of persons within that one God.

  47. Recommended Books • Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), by Larry W. Hurtado • The Tri-Unity of God is Jewish (Cenveo-Plus Communications, 2005), by John B. Metzger

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