Thousand Oaks Baptist Church
Jesus Is Jehovah
JESUS IS JEHOVAH - CHAPTER ONE
SIX PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
JESUS IS JEHOVAH! Why do I say that? I say it because - first of all - the overall philosophy of the Scriptures relates to and demands the Trinitarian concept. Allow me to explain what I mean.
First, there is the matter of love. 1 John 4:8 states: "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." Love is one of the eternal attributes of God. But to say that God is love, or that one of God's eternal attributes is love, has no meaning unless God is at least two Persons. Love, by basic definition, is something one person has for another person. In simple terms, a lover needs someone else to love.
If God were a single Person, then before the universe was made, he could not have been love, because then He would have had no one to love.
To say that God loves is to ascribe an attribute to Him. But to say that God is love is to say that love is an eternal part of His very essence. Therefore, He must always love. And being eternal, He must have always possessed an eternal object of His love.
Furthermore, God's love is perfect love. But perfect love is only possible between equals. You cannot fully satisfy or realize your powers of love by loving a dog or a tree or a stone. And God cannot fully satisfy His infinite love by loving finite man or temporal creatures or the created universe. Being infinite, eternal, and personal, He must have eternally possessed an infinite, eternal, and personal object of His love. And the Bible says that this one is a consubstantial, coeternal, and coequal Son named Jesus, who is the Christ.
Secondly, consider this: In Exodus 3:14, God told Moses that His name is "I AM." This has sometimes been translated, "I am He Who exists forever."
This tells us that God has conscious comprehension of His own eternal nature. As human beings, we become self-conscious only when we distinguish ourselves from what is not ourselves.
If God is only one Person, and has been only one Person, even before creation began, it is difficult (at best) to see how God could be eternally conscious of Himself. In other words, how could God distinguish his own personality in the absence of any other, coeternal personality?
The doctrine of the Trinity indicates that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have - from all eternity - been personally distinct, while one in essence. Thus, they are able to know not only each other, but themselves as well.
By the way, if this particular argument has gone over your head, please take it as proof that - at least for the time being - there are indeed concepts which you cannot grasp until further insight is given. And please consider that the Trinity is just this very type of concept.
Now, the two arguments that I have given you so far really only form what we might call a "whetting of the appetite." They simply show to the uncluttered, logical mind the intellectual superiority of a Trinitarian concept, once that concept has been revealed.
Consider this, too. There is only one living and true God. We do not worship three Gods! At the same time, we don't really come very close to comprehending how that in the unity of the Godhead there can be three Persons in one Substance, power, and eternality.
I can step aside from the realm of Scripture somewhat to the realm of reason based on the Scriptures, and build on what I know of God from the Scriptures. And I can reason that since He is the transcendent God (beyond nature), He is therefore not limited in His being to the physical or mathematical limitations of our little universe. Given this insight, it would quite frankly be possible for God to any number of persons that He might choose, except that there are only three in Scripture who are called God, in this eternal, infinite sense.
But before anyone dismisses the Trinitarian concept, or ridicules it farther, first consider these things:
1. Belief in the Trinity is not contrary to finite, human reason, but beyond it. I suppose we could say that the Trinity is to us as we are to a tree. The tree experiences us as we climb its trunk, swing on its branches, chop it down, and build a king's palace with it. But it has no conception of what is happening. We like to think that we do have some conception of what is happening in our relationship with God, but what we know for sure is only on the basis of His revelation, and then only by faith, whether it is the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, or the fact of our existence and the very possibility of knowing anything!
2. Consider, too, that a God fully understandable to finite intelligence would be unworthy of the title of God. Some have objected to this, saying that if God is so perfect and all-knowing, then He must be able to give us a complete revelation of Himself that even a child can fully understand. But the original argument still stands, for without exception, only the greater can fully encompass the lesser. Can the straight line encompass the circle? Can the geometrically flat surface encompass the solid object? No more can finite, temporal intelligences encompass the infinite, eternal mind of God. But there is a twist, for the Bible does say that we shall know as we are known. The perfect knowledge shall indeed come for those who accept by faith the revelation God has already given.
3. Consider also, that if the Christian doctrine of God and Christ and the Trinity were merely something invented by men with no regard to the Scriptural data, it could without doubt have been formulated so as to give no offense to the Jews or the Muslims or the Unitarians or the Jehovah's Witnesses. But as C.S. Lewis so abruptly says in his book, Beyond Personality:
"We can't compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We're dealing with Fact. Of course, anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about!"
4. And before you dismiss the concept of the unity of the three Persons in the Trinity, consider that unity of being or essence is not necessarily arithmetic!
a. In art, of example, we have aesthetic unity, which consists of a oneness created by the proper and pleasing inclusion and arrangement of many parts. If one part of a picture is missing, it is no longer art; it becomes only the chaos of aimless lines and incomprehensible combinations of colors. In music it is the same: Take away the melody, or a line of harmony, the structure of a delicate counterpoint, the framework of timing or key, and the result may be a wild cacophony of noise. Obviously, unity can be and is more than the number one.
b. In life itself, we find organic unity. The human body is a grand unity of organic complexity. But without the blood, for example, nothing works and death quickly disorganizes that unity.
c. There is the unity of the human race in Adam. We all have a human nature, because we are descended from our first father, Adam; we all have fallen natures, because we all have descended from our fallen first father.
"But in Christ the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father Adam lost!"
There can indeed be unities of essence and yet diversity of personality, of manifestation, of office, and of function. To deny this would be to deny the facts of nature, as well as the fact that nature itself shows the invisible attributes, essence, and character of God - including the Trinity!
Fourth, before I leave the philosophical realm, may I suggest one more long but lively quotation from C.S. Lewis? This is from Mere Christianity:
"One of the creeds says that Christ is the Son of God 'begotten, not created'; and it adds 'begotten by his Father before all worlds.' Will you please get it quite clear that this has nothing to do with the fact that when Christ was born on earth as a man, that man was the son of a virgin? We are not now thinking about the Virgin Birth. We are thinking about something that happened before Nature was created at all, before time began. 'Before all worlds' Christ is begotten, not created. What does it mean?
"We don't use the words begetting or begotten much in modern English, but everyone still knows what they mean. To beget is to become the father of: to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man builds a wireless set - or he may make something more like himself than a wireless set: say, a statue. If he is a clever enough carver he may make a statue that is very like a man indeed. But, of course, it is not a real man; it only looks like one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive.
"Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man."
Inasmuch as Jesus Christ is never said to have been created, but instead begotten (eg., John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9), and begotten by God the Father at that, He must be God, and of the same nature and essence as God the Father!