Jesus' Words Only

Trinity Q&A #1 How Jesus has glory before world began, and Father is only true God in Jn 17:3, 5.

Jul 25, 2022

Video Description

John 17:3 says:

1. “…, he said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee: ... 3 And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God…..” (Jn 17:1-3 KJV)

I mentioned this in video, and someone commented back to me to read John 17:5. It reads:

5 “And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” (John 17:5 KJV.)

Trinity Issues Ep. 1: How Should We Understand Jesus had glory before the world began in Jn 17:5? But Father is still the “only true God” in Jn 17:3?

Three Answers: [1] Bi-deity; [2] Arius / Paul’s view; [3] glory in prospect / God’s predestined view (A. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not A Trinitarian.)

The question presented here: Does John 17:5 Prove Jesus is God because Jesus implies He is pre-existent? Or Was Jesus speaking of predestination – what God saw in Prospect?

But actually at best John 17:5 -- "glory before the world was" only proves if taken literally, and not “in prospect,” then Jesus could be a Pre-Existing Being who was begotten at the point before the ‘world’ was created, and Jn 17:3 still is true – the Father is the only true God. This is Paul’s view – which Arius’ defended at Nicea.

Paul represents Arius' solution - a “pre-existent” Jesus which is neither compatible with Trinitarianism nor Unitarianism: that Jesus was the highest created being (Col. 1:15, ASV) who was not God (1 Corinthians 15:27-28) but had some “equality” with God prior to birth. Paul said when Jesus came to earth He emptied himself of an “equality” with God. Phil. 2:6 2:7. However, at some point that apparently was the point of crucifixion, Jesus was indwelled by the Father. Paul wrote: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” (2 Cor. 5:19 YLT). See also Col. 1:19 "because in him it did please all the fulness [of God] to tabernacle [i.e., dwell]." Cf. NIV: "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him." See also "God in Christ" in Ephesians 4.32 & 1 Thessalonians 2.14

Let's also look at a full quote of 1 Cor. 8:6

"yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live" (NIV). 1 Tim. 2:5 ("there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.")

Christian scholar Grudem explains whose views Arius defended at Nicea in 325 AD: “support for the Arian view was found in Colossians 1:15.” (Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Zondervan, 1994) at 243.)

Lange explains the Arians held, precisely as Paul teaches in Col. 1:15-16, that “Christ is a creature of the Father, though existing before the world,” which interpretation was revived later by “Socinians, Unitarians and Rationalists.” (J.P. Lange, Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Scribner, 1871) Vol. 3 at 447.)

“Paul's Christ is not God, he is God's first creation, and there is no room for the trinitarian formula of the Athanasian Creed nor for its doctrine that the Son was ‘not made, nor created, but begotten.’” (Schonfield, Those Incredible Christians (1968) at 249.)

The difficulty in accepting Arius-Paul's view is it conflicts with Isaiah 46:

“I am the LORD who made everything, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth unassisted;” (Isaiah 44:24 DSS)

So let's look again at Jn 17:1-3: 1. “…, he said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee: ... 3 And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God…..”

How clear are the literal words?

Irenaeus - 150 years after Christ - had the essence of John 17:1-3 in mind:

"For the Church, although dispersed throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and from their disciples the faith in one God, the Father Almighty . . . and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit." (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).

Tertullian destroyed what emerged as trinity doctrine -- totally unlike what he intended as a trinty -- when he said that you cannot have God being both a father and a son at the same time:

“I bid you also observe, that on my side I advance the passage where the Father said to the Son, 'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee.' If you want me to believe Him to be both the Father and the Son [i.e., simultaneously two persons but each is God] show me some other passage where it is declared, 'The Lord said unto Himself, I am my own Son , to-day have I begotten myself;' or again, 'Before the morning did I beget myself;' and ....Why, moreover, could God the Lord of all things, have hesitated to speak thus of Himself, if the fact had been so?” (Tertullian, Latin Christianity (Scaff ed.) Ch. XI.

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