BibleProject - Q+R: Your Questions About Jesus' Identity - God E17

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

Starting point is 00:00:17 and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode. Question and response time. Here we go.

Starting point is 00:00:46 Here we go. Okay, Q and R, let's get into this. We're doing questions from the God series and we'll start with questions that are more to the discussion in the last few episodes. The episodes, which are mainly about God's attributes, about the God's attributes becoming kind of characters and themselves and then talking about the God's attributes, becoming kind of characters in themselves, and then talking about the Son of Man and Jesus. Yes, specifically, yeah, the Son of Man

Starting point is 00:01:10 and the depiction of Jesus's divine identity. Jesus as a part of the divine identity in the gospels. Yeah, so good. All right, first question is from Evan Davis, from, hmm, Suw hmm, Suwani? Suwani? Suwani? Suwani, Georgia?

Starting point is 00:01:29 Suwani, Georgia, Evan. So, sorry. Your question is really good one, though. Hey, John and Tim, this is Evan from Suwani, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. You've talked about the wisdom, glory, word, and spirit of God, and how the biblical offers treat them as Yahweh, but also distinct from Yahweh.. Similarly the angel of Yahweh is also written about in the same way. Turnitarian suggests God is three persons in one essence yet we see these four additional attributes and the angel of Yahweh treated in a similar

Starting point is 00:01:56 manner. So my question is how did the biblical authors treat the father, son, spirit differently that would lead to the Trinitarian viewpoint versus a multifaceted God who is more than just a triune Godhead. Look forward to the answer. Thanks guys. Yeah, Evan, this is a great question. I wanted to let everybody hear it and for John and I to talk about it because it's a good chance for he and I to kind of summarize what we've been talking about in the last few episodes. So you're right. In the flow of the whole conversation, we tracked with the Hebrew Bibles portrait of God's complex unity and specifically the attributes of God. I had the

Starting point is 00:02:36 same kind of instinct. I was like, oh, okay, maybe the Trinity's embedded in the Old Testament in some way. And so there's some one-to-one correlation between all these manifestations of God. So I'm like counting and I'm trying to like, how many attributes. Maybe the word is Jesus and Spirit, to Spirit and the one that's on the throne, the father, the brother.

Starting point is 00:02:57 Spirit, yeah. Jesus gets all these attributes. Okay, so maybe all the attributes are Jesus. But then the angel of Yahweh, what is he, is he? a pre-incarnate Jesus? Correct. So then it's like trying to like put all these puzzle pieces together and create it into some sort of mental map, fell apart.

Starting point is 00:03:14 It did. For me, it does. It does. Yeah. Even in our video, we had to be really careful because we kind of highlighted three complexities in the Old Testament of God's identity. And we weren't trying to map those directly onto Father's Son's Spirit. Because that's my inclination, is just trying to make it into a neat little system.

Starting point is 00:03:33 That's right. And also remember, the Bible didn't drop down static from the heavens all at once. This literature came into existence within a story, within a development. And so we need to respect the Hebrew Bible's portrait of God as distinct and offering its own word and its offering its own word centuries before Jesus comes onto the scene. So it has its own integrity, but it also formed the cultural and intellectual matrix, or soup, out of which Jesus and then the apostles developed this three-part way of talking about God's identity. So maybe here's one attempt at a summary response. What the attributes give us is different biblical

Starting point is 00:04:22 authors talking about different aspects of God's character. So God's wisdom, this is unique especially to the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible, talking about the order and the principle of coherence and meaning in the universe, and that it pervades all reality. And they call this God's wisdom, which is God's wisdom and yet portrayed in the book of Proverbs as a character distinct from God.

Starting point is 00:04:47 When the prophets or Moses have dreams or visions into God's heavenly throne room, what they see is the glory of God, and it's God, and it's glory, and it's to human, what they say is human. And then that human sometimes appears to figures. The angel of y'all. In the form of the angel of Yahweh, often like with Moses and the burning bush, fire, it's like fire. It's like the divine throne appears in the bush. Again, so it's God's

Starting point is 00:05:16 glory, it's God. And yet it's a figure somehow described as distinct from God. Same with God's word and God's name. And when you read the Hebrew Bible, you don't think, oh, these are four all different gods. We actually made this point in the video. There's a moment where John's like, wait, are these three gods? Yeah. No, they're all aspects of the one God, but each attribute is described in literary form as a distinct person of our attribute. What's interesting is the biblical authors and the Hebrew scriptures didn't stop and go,

Starting point is 00:05:48 okay, God looks really complex and he peers like this and he peers like this. Let's add up all the different ways that he seems to appear in his different identities and then talk about him as a multifaceted God. They just say God is one. But then you get to the New Testament and that's what the biblical authors do in a New Testament.

Starting point is 00:06:05 They say, well, God seems to appear like Jesus, and he seems to appear in spirit, and he seems to appear in Father. Those are the three ways that we're experiencing God. So let's actually like ratify it into this like new vocabulary. Kind of. The point is the Hebrew Bible gives us

Starting point is 00:06:21 a picture of God's complex unity. Yeah. He's a complex being who is complex. What else do you say? Yeah. Jesus happens. And Jesus happens. And what he says, in other words, you don't just read the Hebrew Bible and get to the

Starting point is 00:06:36 Trinity. You read the Hebrew Bible, we're going to make a cocktail right now. So what you need is what are the necessary ingredients that lead to a trinitarian concept? You need God to be of such nature that he can be both one thing and another thing, but always one thing. One necessary ingredient is the matrix of ideas about God's identity that you have on the Hebrew Bible. Without that, you wouldn't end up with the trinity. That's a necessary ingredient. Yeah, that's interesting.

Starting point is 00:07:07 Next ingredient, Jesus of Nazareth, on the scene. So can we stop them back up there? As when we say that lands. Yeah. Without the Hebrew scriptures sense of God's complex identity of being able to be distinct and the same. Correct. There's no like logical way.

Starting point is 00:07:27 There's no there's no way your mind as a biblical author is going to get to the idea of Trinity otherwise. I don't know about logical. I'm saying historically. Historically. You put on your historians that how do you get to I'm not even like in the 400s AD and NIC and Creed and this kind of thing. I'm just sorry like in the 400s AD and Nicene Creed and this kind of thing. I'm just sorry, mid 300s AD.

Starting point is 00:07:46 I'm just talking about in the 200s, the apostolic era has done, the New Testament documents are all in existence, and you have the church leaders of the 200s and all fall onward. Reading and talking about God in this three-part way, and what they're doing is imitating the language of the apostles who are themselves developing and imitating the language of Jesus. How do you explain that? Because they already have the framework for how to think about.

Starting point is 00:08:13 Their entire framework for reality and for God's identity didn't just come into existence with Jesus. It comes into existence. They experience Jesus. They experience Jesus. They experience Jesus. And then they can look back at the way God's describing Hebrew Bible. Correct.

Starting point is 00:08:30 And they can say, I see how this works. Correct. That's right. Which is why the gospels are what they are. Every substantial claim about Jesus' identity in the four accounts of the gospels are themselves developments, claims, and quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures. So remember, even just Mark chapter one, we spent a whole episode where he just begins telling you, here's what I think Jesus is. Like it says in Isaiah 40 in Malachi 3, he just assumes

Starting point is 00:08:57 that portrait of God from the Hebrew Bible. So one necessary ingredient. Of the cocktail. It's the cocktail, it's the portrait of God in Hebrew scriptures. But what you also need next ingredient is Jesus' Nazareth happening to human history, doing and saying the things that he's doing. And what he claims about himself in his words and actions is to be the human embodiment of the God of Israel. Okay, that's one piece.

Starting point is 00:09:26 Second piece of the Jesus ingredient is how he talks about himself and God as Father and Son. That's crucial. That's absolutely crucial. And then second is that he pointed forward to another who would come to communicate the Father's Presence and his his own presence in his followers, and this is the one he called Spirit. And so the three-part shape really does come from Jesus and then Pentecost, but both of them presuppose the complex portrait of God in the Hebrew Bible.

Starting point is 00:09:59 You've got the environment in which a complex God makes a, maybe not logical sense, but it makes sense in the terms of the story and the categories that have been given. And then you get Jesus, and Jesus is the one that introduces us to a more specific way to think about that, which is three figures. Specifically for him, it's me and my father. And then the one coming after. And then, yeah, that's right. And then pointing to the one who is to come.

Starting point is 00:10:30 And then the apostles experience a pentacoste. So to answer Evan's question, the reason why New Testament biblical authors kind of come to a three part view of God is because of Jesus and what Jesus taught. That's right, That's right. And the coherence of the idea of me and my father and the spirit as a claim about the Jewish God of Israel, about the God of Israel, whose story is told in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Starting point is 00:10:59 All of that goes together as a necessary set of ingredients. So you don't just get Trinity from the Hebrew Bible, but the way that Jesus is talking about God and the Spirit don't make any sense without the Hebrew Bible. Right. So you need all three things to have happened. So it goes from a multi-faceted, complex God in the Hebrew Scriptures

Starting point is 00:11:20 to a very more specific, three-pronged part whatever you want to use. And the reason of the shift is because of the person Jesus and what he taught. Correct. And then what you see the apostles doing is then taking all of the personified attributes of God from the Hebrew Bible and using that language to describe Jesus, the word, the name, the glory, and the category of the angel of Yahweh. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Thank you, Evan.

Starting point is 00:11:51 Great question. Good clarifying question. Next question is from Lindsay Swan from Bremen, Indiana. Hi, Tim and John. This is Lindsay from Bremen, Indiana. I was wondering, you guys just spoke a little bit about how in the gospel of John, we see all of those threads coming together, such as God's wisdom and glory and the word of God as distinct from Yahweh, but Yahweh. Is there anything like that in the synoptic

Starting point is 00:12:16 gospels? Thank you. Lindsay, your question's a good one. For some reason, I don't know why exactly. I'm sure somebody's thought and wrote about this. Why it is the Gospel of John's claims about Jesus's deity seem more clear to modern readers than the claims made by Matthew and Mark and Luke. So much so that even still in some sections of biblical scholarship, John has talked about as having a quote, high Christology, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke are talked about as having low Christology. Which is a fancy word for a high view of Jesus's God. Yeah, it represents a model from 20th century

Starting point is 00:13:03 biblical scholarship, which is to say, John's the latest of the gospels That therefore the apostles and the early Christians finally had enough time to really Develop the view of Jesus's deity, but if you go to the earlier gospels right the Mark and Luke you'll see they just portray Jesus as a supercharge human So that that whole argument you can still find people Making that argument, but their numbers have dwindled significantly. A large part in what we've been talking about in this podcast series, the more and more that scholarship about

Starting point is 00:13:36 second temple Judaism, the portrait of God, the complex ways that God's deity was talked about by Jews in this period. Once you map all that out, you begin to see that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are equally making claims about Jesus' divine identity, but they're doing it through the medium of narrative. Yeah, John's just more poetic, it seems like. Yeah, general. That's right. In general, John's got a different narrative style than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And he's drawing on a different set of traditions, of eyewitness traditions than Matthew, Mark, and Luke are. When there's some overlap, a lot, actually. But so here's just a few thoughts, things we didn't talk about in the last few episodes

Starting point is 00:14:17 between John and I. So we did talk about how Mark opens his gospel quoting Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3, which are promises of Yahweh's personal return design to bring about a new Exodus and save his people, bring, restore the Promised Land, that kind of thing. So Yahweh's coming, awaiting for Yahweh to come, and then he introduces Jesus. And he introduces Jesus being baptized and addressed by the one on the throne, the Father, baptized and addressed by the one on the throne, the Father, addressing the beloved son and communicating love from the Father to the Son in the person of the Spirit. So again, it's not just that, oh, that's a foreshadowing of the three-part shape of God. So remember the Gospels, even though the events they are recounting come from the foundation, from the early 30s,

Starting point is 00:15:05 AD, the books themselves come from decades later after lots of reflection about the significance of that event. That three-part portrait of God is placed at the beginning of Mark for a very intentional reason, and it's there in Matthew and it's there in Luke 2. So all three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have a three-part portrait of the God of Israel returning. To begin their gospels, that's not a low Christology, a low view of Jesus. It's a very highly developed claim about Jesus

Starting point is 00:15:38 and it's an early one. You have other ones in the synoptic gospels, one that I like to point to is in Matthew chapter 12 where Jesus calls himself one Greater than the temple It's a controversy from when he heals on the Sabbath Calls himself one greater than the temple. Yeah, it's a high view of yourself. Whatever it means Yeah, totally. Yeah, one greater than the temple because the temple

Starting point is 00:16:03 Yeah, I mean the symbolized God's presence amidst Israel. Yeah, that's right. It was an architectural incarnation. And actually, if you look at the second temple Jewish descriptions of the veil of the temple, what you find is language used, it's very similar to the incarnation, language in the New Testament. It's really in phyllo and in Josephus, they talk about the temple being this embodiment of the divine space, but in other words, if the high priest goes in, normally to offer incense or to change the bread of the presence or something,

Starting point is 00:16:42 what are they seeing? Well, what they don't see is the holy of holies, but they see a curtain woven with cherubim and may of all of these special materials. And so Jews developed ways of talking about that curtain as this physical embodiment of the holy of holies on the other side is fascinating. So the crust of the divine. Yeah, so the crust.

Starting point is 00:17:07 Oh, you mean like a loaf of bread? Yeah. Just like that outer layer. Yeah, and it's fat. But it's what you see. That's what you see. And it's the outer aspect of the real thing. It's not another thing.

Starting point is 00:17:21 It's the real thing. It's it. That's it. But it's the part you can see. Yeah, so the temple was talked about as a kind of incarnation It's not another thing. It's the real thing. It's it. That's it. But it's the part you can see. Yeah. So the temple was talked about as a kind of incarnation of God's glory, which is why when you get to the Gospel of John, he says things like the word became human and tabernacle,

Starting point is 00:17:36 Demanga, and we saw his glory. Right. And if you read the verse, it doesn't say tabernacle, it usually says it's the world. Oh, it's a 12. Yeah, that's right. But it's the verb for, it's a verb. It's taking tabernacle. And turning it into a verb. Turning it into a verb. You tend to, it's tented among us.

Starting point is 00:17:50 But you have the same idea at work in Matthew, just in a different way when Jesus says something like I am greater than the temple. Just a last one too, because this is really interesting. This was a scholar named Simon Gather Cole, who actually has an excellent book I want to recommend called The Pre-existent Sun, recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So, it's a whole book about this very question of, once you have eyes to see how Second Temple Jews talked about God's identity, and you read them in light of that context, All kinds of things pop in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Starting point is 00:18:27 But before the Dead Sea Scrolls came and revolutionized our portrait of Second Temple Judaism, it was just we didn't really have eyes to notice these things that are sitting right in front of us in the hospitals. One of them, for example, is a parallel passage. There's a teaching of Jesus if you set Luke's version alongside Matthew's version of the same exact saying So fascinating. So it's Luke 1149. This is the Battle of the Banquets section of Luke So he's having a meal with a bunch of Torah teachers and Pharisees and he's talking about how they're morally bankrupt And you know whitewash tombs. It's good dinner conversation. Yeah, he's insulting about how they're morally bankrupt. And you know, whitewash tombs. It's good dinner conversation. Yeah, he's insulting the dinner host.

Starting point is 00:19:09 So what he says, Luke 11 verse 47, woe to you for you build the tombs of the prophets, but it was your fathers who killed them. So your witnesses and you approve the deeds of your fathers because it was they who killed them and you build their tombs. It's true. Even today, you can go they who killed them and you build their tombs. It's true. Even today, you can go around Israel, Palestine, and find tombs of dedicated, different

Starting point is 00:19:31 prophets from this era. And they were honored and venerated and so on. Even though during the day, they were ignored and dismissed. Correct. So then, Luke 1149, for this reason, also, the wisdom of God said, I will send to them prophets and apostles. Some of them they will kill and some they will persecute so that the blood of all the prophets, since the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation.

Starting point is 00:19:58 So this is a trope of Jesus's prophetic, he's putting on his prophetic mantle here. Okay. It's very similar to the prophet Jeremiah or the Prophet Zechariah. And they can now look back on decades of Israel's leaders rejecting the Prophet sent to them. And it's all heading towards Babylonian exile. And so Jesus depicts God's wisdom, speaking here. The wisdom of God speaks. Yeah, NIV says God in his wisdom said.

Starting point is 00:20:28 Oh, yeah, it doesn't say that. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, what? Yeah, it's the wisdom. There's not even a footnote there. Yeah, he's Sophia Tuthu. The wisdom of God says,

Starting point is 00:20:43 okay, it's like you're reading the book of Proverbs right now. Except you're reading the book of Proverbs, and it's like you're reading Jeremiah, that's right, and it's Jesus claiming to know what God's wisdom speaks. Okay, so that's Luke 11. So what's so fascinating is if you turn to Matthew's parallel of this, 23 verse 34, Jesus again, he's laying

Starting point is 00:21:08 into the Pharisees and he says, therefore behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you'll kill and crucify. Some of them you'll be in your synagogues and persecute from city to city so that upon you may fall all of the righteous blood shed on earth. So in Luke's version, Jesus says, the wisdom of God says, I'm going to send. So there Jesus is privy to God's wisdom. Here Jesus just says, I'm sending. So Jesus here Matthew's version is putting himself in the place of Yahweh's wisdom.

Starting point is 00:21:46 So kind of two explanations for this one is that Jesus said both things, or that the gospel writers are like, I think I know what Jesus was talking about, so they changed his words in one of the versions. Yeah, and then the question is, that's right, did Matthew take a earlier version of a saying. Yeah. In which Jesus said the wisdom of God is sending prophets. And Matthew is wanting to make clear his narrative claim about Jesus throughout the whole work. And so he has. He is the wisdom of God. Jesus saying, I am sending you. Yeah. So the point is between these two God's lines, that's a bit of a treasure hunt. so you find the Oh yeah, the Christology, high Christology and the good synoptic God's blood.

Starting point is 00:22:29 Oh, well all I'm saying is just forget about comparing them, just look at each of the stories in their own. In one, Jesus is privy to God's divine wisdom and purposes for ordering history. That's true. And in Matthew, Jesus is straight up in the role of Yahweh sending prophets to Israel. Either one of those is a high narrative claim. I'm just overloading you. But these are just such cool examples. We didn't have time to talk about them. Here's another one. This is in Luke chapter

Starting point is 00:22:59 13, which is also in the travel section of Luke. And it's a famous saying where Jesus is moving towards Jerusalem, and he says, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem. The city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her. How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood other her wings, under her wings, but you would not have it. So here Jesus is depicting himself as lamenting over Jerusalem for rejecting all the messengers including himself.

Starting point is 00:23:36 But then look at how often I've wanted to gather your children together. Yeah. Is Jesus saying that? Is Jesus saying that. There's Jesus saying that. So if you read Isaiah 40 to 66, any of the Restoration texts in Jeremiah or Ezekiel, the re-gathering of the exiles to the New Jerusalem, it's always Yahweh. Just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,

Starting point is 00:24:00 under the wings in the Book of Psalms, in the shadow of your wings, the refuge, coming under the wings, the major motif in the book of Psalms, in the shadow of your wings, the refuge, coming under the wings, the major motif in the book of Psalms, under the divine wings of Yahweh. And here Jesus is depicting himself. I mean, you get the point here. I do get the point. So I guess my question then would be, if I were to sit down with Matthew, Marker Luke,

Starting point is 00:24:23 and ask them, hey guys, why were you being so subtle about Jesus' identity with Yahweh? What would they say to me? Would they say, like, oh yeah, we were being subtly caught on. Or would they be like, what? We were being as plain as we knew how to do it. Like, because it seemed really subtle from my perspective. Yeah, that's right.

Starting point is 00:24:46 So I assume it's subtle, they're being subtle. But is there something where they're just like, no, like from their perspective, that's just as plain as day, kind of way to do it? I wouldn't say a subtle. I would replace subtle with, I was about to say indirect, but I mean, you talk about a culture that has no Twitter

Starting point is 00:25:05 TV. It's media is hearing and singing the Hebrew scriptures from the earliest childhood stories. To hear Jesus say, how long I've wanted to gather Israel together under my wings, that's not subtle at all. That's very blatant. It's not subtle at all. Yeah, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that's very blatant, that's a very blainted claim. Right.

Starting point is 00:25:28 Just like Jesus, forgiving someone sins, where Jesus sang from now on to Caiaphas, you will see the sun and the moon. It feels subtle to me because I'm not as familiar with the scriptures. Yeah, that's right. And so, the irony is what, really, what we're advertising is our ignorance, this cultural tradition. Oh yeah, I mean, I didn't grow up. I'm not saying this about you personally. I'm saying this about.

Starting point is 00:25:51 I'm taking it personally. Oh, sorry, I'm getting very animated. I'm getting here. But I just, I can now see, I do this too. We all do it. We equate our ignorance for ignorance of the biblical It's interesting or our lack of subtlety so it'd be like we impose on the biblical If I came to my son's room and I sang him the nursery rhyme Uncle Twinkle a little star and I replaced the word star with Paxton. I was like Twinkle Twinkle little Paxton

Starting point is 00:26:19 Yeah, yeah, there you go. He would be like oh, I get what you're doing. Yeah, you're saying I'm a star I'm saying I'm a special star. But if he had no idea what that nursery I'm like. Yes, yes. And then I had deconstructed form later. Yeah. He'd be like, why are you being so subtle? Yeah, that's right.

Starting point is 00:26:33 Yeah, in a thousand years, nobody sings that anymore. Yeah, and they're like, why did John sing it to us? That's right. And some archaeologists will dig up a children's book from the room into the middle. Look, oh, look, this was a song that everybody sang. That's it. Okay.

Starting point is 00:26:48 I think the gospel authors are being way more clear than we would like to think. However, they are also doing it through a narrative medium, which is different than writing a doctrinal handbook. Yeah, it's different than Greek, like, it's a critic method or something. Sure. Yeah. But there's so many Christian traditions or traditions that spun off of Christianity

Starting point is 00:27:08 that will debate Jesus' idea. Oh, divine identity. Sure. And so, yeah, that's right. The amount of what I see as subtlety allows for that. That's true. That's true. However, I mean, really, just the first two centuries,

Starting point is 00:27:24 the moment the church becomes majority non-Jewish, people lose any living relationships with messianic Jews who were raised on the scriptural tradition, that you can watch the trend happen. In terms of those severe under readings, or misreadings of some Hebrew scriptures and of Jesus' divine identity, is mapped precisely onto the distance from Jewish modes of reading and writing and thinking. Is that maybe one reason why the word Trinity and the whole way to talk about theologically became, it almost became like a crutch in a way, I don't know if I want to say that way, but like, if you didn't have this Hebrew way of talking and think about it and those categories, then you need to like replace it with a category that hits you. That's right.

Starting point is 00:28:13 Basically, we're trying to go, but you don't have to rely on this tradition. Yeah. And so you're going to start using vocabulary and stuff that's new. Yeah. And that's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. No. And I actually, I'll say here, I know I'm out of my league, and I just have a lot more learning to do on the way the Trinitarian doctrine developed in the post-apostolic era, and on towards Nicaea and beyond. So I'm just not going to say. I don't know as much about that.

Starting point is 00:28:42 But it does seem clear to me that what that tradition of Orthodox, Trinitarian, portrait of God, what people are doing, protecting and honoring that in those early centuries, they can see it in the scriptures. Yeah, they're seeing what we're talking about. What we're talking about, they're seeing and protecting and honoring, but they're now using the language of later developed Greek and other cultural categories, which is fine. What else can we do, but process what we know and light of the categories that we have,

Starting point is 00:29:11 but we also have to surrender our categories to come back to the Hebrew scriptures and to the New Testament. Cool. Alright, let's move on. Yep. Alright, this next question is from Chris. I think I pronounced your name on Dra day. That's my guess, from Orange County, California.

Starting point is 00:29:26 Hi, John and Tim. This is Chris from Orange County, California. And my question is, if the idea of the Trinity is based on a commonly held view by the Hebrews of a complex God, then why were the Jews in Luke 22 and John 10 so incensed by Jesus' claim to be the Son of God, and why is that a common objection by Jesus today? Thank you. Yeah, good question, Chris. What John and I are not saying is that you just read the Hebrew scriptures and you get the Trinity.

Starting point is 00:29:53 It's a necessary ingredient in the cocktail, a portrait of God's complex unity. Right. But it doesn't get you to the Trinity, what you still need. It doesn't necessitate the Trinity. It doesn't necessarily land you with the Trinity. That's right. What you need is another ingredient,

Starting point is 00:30:08 namely Jesus. Jesus. Saying and doing the thing that you need. Necessitates the Trinity. That's right. But the Hebrew scripture is creates the environment that allows for the Trinity. And the Hebrew scriptures do point forward,

Starting point is 00:30:20 especially, again, the book of Daniel 7's crystallization, the way it's summarizing the whole theology of the Old Testament about the need for a human who's completely unified with God so that he shares and embodies God's rule. I mean, that's Daniel 7. So, well, ask me in a few more years, what's about this more, right now, my way of saying is you're just like footsteps from the incarnation with Daniel 7. You're not far from the kingdom.

Starting point is 00:30:49 Yeah. And so what irritated people, apparently, was not Jesus talking about that idea. It was claiming that he was that one. Right. And then specifically, that he was that one, but what he was doing was working in a way that was unexpected. In a way that was unexpected, outside of all the main institutions.

Starting point is 00:31:11 Yeah. He would go to the temple, but he would critique its leaders. Right. He would teach the new messianic, new covenant Torah. It was a way of peace and non-violence. Yeah, that embraced Israel's enemies and so on. It was more about that he was the one making that claim. It made people angry, not that he believed that there was a divine human that they were waiting for. But there is a sense of that a little bit when he uses the like ego and me before he ran was I am.

Starting point is 00:31:41 Yeah, it wasn't one of the responses like. Yeah, they picked up stones to stone him. Yeah, and one of the sources was like, how how can this guy we know his mother and father is correct? Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right So they were kind of like a human can't also be God we know this guy was born. Oh, I understand right? This isn't a man, but again, they're not arguing about the category of a human Holy unified with God. That's not the debate they're having in those passages of John.

Starting point is 00:32:07 Just whether or not it was a theory. It's that Jesus of Nazareth is making that claim about himself. That's what. Really? Because it seems like in that narrative, they are held up. Yeah, you being, John 6,

Starting point is 00:32:18 you being a human, make yourself out to be God. Yeah. That's right. I've got two categories, human and God. That's right. You make yourself out to be God. And you're making yourself out to be God. Yeah. That's right. I've got two categories. Human and God. That's right. You make yourself out to be God. And you're making yourself out to be God.

Starting point is 00:32:28 Yeah. In Daniel 7, God is the one who declares who is the son of man to be a human. Oh, you think that's what they're saying. They're saying, you can't do it. God needs to do it for you. Yeah. Remember, that was our conversation in Daniel. It's because Nebuchadnezzar in the narrative of Daniel.

Starting point is 00:32:41 Nebuchadnezzar is the one elevating himself to the divine image to be Divine rule over the nations and he lifts up his heart. He lifts himself up to the heavens So that's Babylon and Daniel 7 is about the top lane of the beast of Babylon and God Elevating the one whom he chooses. So that's what they're saying there is like you're elevating yourself Yeah, you're making this claim about yourself. That's what they're being tripped up on. I think so. If you follow the logic of that chapter, yeah.

Starting point is 00:33:12 Yeah, so what you're saying is it wouldn't have been scandalous to a first century Jewish person to think about God in human form. It's right there and they're Bible. They're expecting it in some sense. Yeah, at least many were somewhere. There was diversity About what people were expecting. Yeah, there wasn't like one strain of Judaism that everyone. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. Exactly. Yep. Yeah. Thanks Chris. All right. Yeah, Andrew White from Dresden, Andrew White from down the street Hi, Tim and John my name is Andrew. I'm from Gresham, Oregon. I have a question regarding Jesus as God. In the beginning of the Gospel of John, I've heard Jehovah's Witnesses say that

Starting point is 00:33:53 the Church has always misunderstood that reference to the word being God, and that it truly is saying that the word was a God. With all the talk we've had about the various Elohim, I'm wondering if there's some credence to that, or if it really truly is still saying that the word was God proper. Thanks, guys. Yes, this is a question really about the opening sentence of the Gospel of John. Yeah. And John. I'm familiar with this debate. Are you? Yeah. Yeah, actually a lot of people are.

Starting point is 00:34:27 I think because of... Because there's such a clear verse to go to to talk about Jesus' deity, the word was with God and the word was God. And then you have to sit in that tension. And if you have a Jehovah Witness friend, they will show you their translation, which says the word was with God and the word was a God. And then they will say, that's the actual way to translate this.

Starting point is 00:34:49 Yeah, that's right. And then because I don't really know Greek, you're kind of like, all right, let's agree to disagree. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, totally. There's a technical Greek thing going on here. So I'll just read in Greek word order, and God was the word.

Starting point is 00:35:04 That's the word order. So in English, we have to do, and the word was God order and God was the word. That's the word order. So in English we have to do and the word was God. And God was the word. So this... Because it sounds like Yoda's talking. Yeah, that's exactly right. So the word God in Greek, it is true, doesn't have the Greek word the in front of it.

Starting point is 00:35:19 Mainly this is debate about how the word the works in Greek. Yeah. This whole translation issue about the word was God or the word was a God. And I've scanned every Greek grammar, not even grammar is written by Christians, but like classical Greek grammars. And every commentator on John, nobody translates this as the word was a God. There's a very clear Greek kind of like grammar construction for how you build sentences, they're called predicate sentences.

Starting point is 00:35:51 Yeah, okay. It's a predicate now. We have two nouns linked by the word was predicate. John was sick. Sick is the predicate. I am predicating something about John. Oh man, I hate grammar. I know. I've come to love it.

Starting point is 00:36:06 But I used to feel like- I need to do like a whole series of explainers on grammar just so I can like finally Interpolize it. Yeah, yeah. So here's a we don't need to have this debate. If somebody wants to nerd out I know I felt like that's where this was going to like just take my word for it because Because I like none of that was like, okay, I can see how you're just like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, every scholarly tool that I can find written by a follower of Jesus and not written by followers of Jesus, just like the classical Greek tools, all affirm the translation and the word was God.

Starting point is 00:36:39 So you're saying that the Jehovah Witness, it's an incorrect translation. Their tradition of translating that stands alone. Yes. It's going against the rules of standard Greek grammar to translate John I and the word was a God. So I haven't done exhaustive research, but I have read the work of people who have done exhaustive research. But if you're having a conversation with a Jehovah Witness you can't just say like my, this guy Tim,

Starting point is 00:37:06 or I've heard of, of course you can say that. It's a predicate. I've got something or other. Blast, De Bruyner, Frank's classical Greek grammar. No, no, you don't have that. I just want to know how you just say it. How do you have an intelligent conversation about them? Oh, you just, man, God bless you, you know, I disagree.

Starting point is 00:37:24 And have a great day. Okay, here's a good question, Brandon, Christianson. Hey Tim and John, this is Brandon from Provo, Utah. In previous podcasts, you talked about how Prostromified wisdom and Jesus himself are tied to Yahweh's transcendent nature by means of creation and exaltation imagery. What does it mean for Jesus to grant the one that conquers

Starting point is 00:37:46 in Revelation 3 to sit with Jesus on his throne just as he conquered and sat with his father on his throne? Is this part of what Jesus was praying for in John 17? Thanks for all you do, love y'all. Yeah, wonderful question. So this is really cool, actually. So in the seven letters to the seven churches,

Starting point is 00:38:06 at the beginning of the book of Revelation, John writes, short letters, actually he's a mouthpiece of Jesus. And Jesus is speaking these, if you have a red letter Bible, the seven letters are on red, because it's the risen Jesus addressing the seven early Christian communities. And he addresses each community. He gives them like

Starting point is 00:38:26 a their midterm report. How you doing? How you doing? Yeah. From many, he's got some like encouraging things to say. And for others, he's got some areas for improvement. Yeah. Or he offers poor grades. But for everyone, each of the seven, he ends with a line that says, but to the one who overcomes, to the one who conquers, it's the word, oh, it's our, it's a verb, it's a verb, a Nikao, but it's where we get the brand Nike. Oh, really? Nika. Nika is Vickery. Yeah, victory, conquering. That's cool. So to the one who conquers, just one who overcomes. This is itself keyed off of a use of this word by Jesus in the Gospel of John, where it's right before he gets arrested.

Starting point is 00:39:14 I remember talking about this in the day of the Lord, I think. Oh, yes, right. Because it's his conquering is giving up his life. He overcomes the world. In the upper room discourse in John, he says, you know, like my piece I give to you, you'll have many tribulations and so on. But he says, but be of good hope. I have overcome the world. And he marches out of the room. I'm Nike the world.

Starting point is 00:39:37 And yes, I've Nike the world. And he marches out of the room and gets arrested and executed. That's the way he overcomes. That's overcoming Jesus style. That wouldn't make a good nekiat, actually. Right. So in each of the seven letters, Jesus makes promises to the overcomers, to the conquerors. And it's precisely by those who imitate. And this is introducing a whole book of Revelation is now the followers of the Lamb conquer

Starting point is 00:40:03 by imitating the Lamb by sacrificially suffering to bear witness to Jesus. So there's seven rewards given to the conquerors and some of them are really outstanding. Like for example, this is actually in chapter two to the church in Thayatira in verse 26. To the one who overcomes and keeps my deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and as vessels of the potter that are broken to pieces. So that's a long quotation of Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is Yahweh, speaking to the King from the line of David, whom he's appointed to rule over the nations

Starting point is 00:40:48 It's the messianic rule over the nations from Psalm 2 He's given to the church and what he's doing is Saying the rule that my father has given to me mm-hmm You are going to participate in that. Yeah, this is Psalm 8. Yeah, this is let them rule Mm-hmm and fill the earth. This is our vocational design. This is Daniel 7. It's humans elevated to sharing God's divine rule. But here it's through Jesus. Jesus now embodies the divine rule of the nations and to be in the Messiah in Christ means to what's true of him is not true of me. So that's chapter 2, and then Brandon you drew attention to the one Revelation 3 verse 21.

Starting point is 00:41:35 To the one who overcomes, I will grant him to sit down with me on my throne, so that just as I conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. Yeah. So it's a real similar thing here. Yeah, it's cool. And then it seems like this is this whole idea is where Paul gets the construct of Jesus, where his body, right? Yeah, that's right. Like there's this unification. Correct. Yeah. And that his rule is now our rule. And his suffering is our suffering. Yeah. And his conquering is our conquered. That's right. Or his rule is now our rule and his suffering is our suffering and his conquering is our conquered. That's right. Or his sonship is our is our sonship. We are now sons the children of God. That's right. That's where the Trinity starts to get really mysterious.

Starting point is 00:42:18 Right? I think it's weird. Yeah. Three distinct entities being one. Yes. And now you're called to also be one with it That's right. Yeah, well, we haven't gotten there in our conversation on the God conversation Oh, that's what we will and we wanted to end the God video with that. Yes, the whole point is that Human within the biblical story humanity is invited to participate in the divine community of love But certainly where John is going with that theme in the gospel of John the letters of John and then even if the revelations by a different John This is the same idea coming out here So we've talked about this before in different contexts. This is how second Peter begins

Starting point is 00:43:02 Becoming partakers participators in the divine nature. Paul calls it being conformed to the image of the sun. It's becoming like God. It's becoming, is sharing in God's life. Yeah, it's Eden. It's new creation. It's eternal. Resurrection and new creation and eternal life.

Starting point is 00:43:23 It's where the, whatto-full story is about. Is restoring humans to unity within the love of God. That's amazing. But you're right, even in Revelation 3, you can see those ideas peaking out. Yeah. There too. This question is from Joel Seymour, from South Carolina.

Starting point is 00:43:40 Hello, my name is Joel from South Carolina. While you guys were discussing the different attributes of God, it reminded me of how love is often described in the New Testament, specifically in 1 John 4 verses 7 and 8, where in 7 it says that love is from God, while in verse 8 it says that God is love. So I was wondering whether or not love is considered to be a part of these attributes that are separate from God while at the same time being a part of God. Thank you guys so much for all that you do. Yeah, this is such a great little poetic set of lines from first John. They work in English

Starting point is 00:44:15 just as beautifully as in Greek. Be loved ones. Got the toy. Be loved ones, let us love one another. For love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God for God is love. It's just roles. Beautiful. It is. I think Joel, you're just trying to attention to the fact that there's this phrase,

Starting point is 00:44:43 love is from God, and then the next line, Oh, yeah, God is love. Yeah. Now, it doesn't say love is God. I think that would mean a different thing in English. Interesting. And it would mean a different thing in Greek. But anyone who loves his born of God. Correct. That's right. So God's essence is love. I don't remember if we've talked about this beforehand, but even that sentence is incomprehensible apart from divine plurality. Mm, right. Because love requires another. Love requires another.

Starting point is 00:45:11 So to say that God is love is to inherently talk about God as a unified community of some kind. Well, at least before he created anything. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and this John's, the same John, who passed on to us the saying of Jesus that said before the foundation of the world, you've left me. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:45:31 So the Father and Son have been loving each other through the Spirit. Eternal community of love. Eternal community of love. It was the phrase that you've been using, which is a beautiful trinitarian kind of realization. That's right. And these verses from 1 John chapter 4 that we just read are incomprehensible apart from that understanding of God. Even though the word trinity is not used in 1 John, the concept is not, yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:46:01 All that word is doing is putting language to this divine, unified plurality of father, son, and spirit that is all through the apostolic writings. And love, love is totally... I mean, this is one of the things where, from some people, from some generations, this will sound like an American hippie from the 60s or something. It's God's love, man. Ah, but this is why in the next line, he says, this is what a follower of Jesus means by love. 1 John 4 verse 9. By this means the love of God was revealed among us, that God sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him.

Starting point is 00:46:43 It's love is sacrificial. Particularly this act is sacrificial. Particularly this act of sacrificial love, the embodiment of God's own life and love would become human and die on our behalf as an act of divine love. In a Christian mental dictionary of words, the word love should be defined by this sentence right here. This is what love is and all of my experiences of love should be compared against this. Yeah, it's high bar.

Starting point is 00:47:11 All right. There's only one more Jesus question. It's from Michael Stalkup in Bangkok, Thailand. Whoa. Hey, John and Tim, my name is Michael Stalkup and I'm a missionary in Bangkok, Thailand. My question's about the identity formation of Jesus. When I was younger, I figured that since Jesus was God,

Starting point is 00:47:29 he was aware of that his whole life. But when I see things like Jesus as a boy asking questions in the temple, or Luke saying that Jesus grew in wisdom, it seems to me that Jesus didn't start out with this inherent self-awareness of being God, but went through a process learning about God, and even his own identity as the Messiah, through the scriptures and the Holy Spirit. So what does the Bible show us about Jesus' process of understanding his own identity?

Starting point is 00:47:56 Thanks, guys. So my understanding is that it's only in Luke that we get this perspective, this glimpse of Jesus as a boy growing and learning. Yeah, he has a sense that the temple is connected to his identity. Yeah, and he sticks around. He calls it my father's house. Yeah. He has some sort of self-awareness to that one.

Starting point is 00:48:16 Yes, he's going on there. Yeah, even as a little boy. Yep. But it's not like he had all the answers. I don't know. The story doesn't say. What the story says is from age 12, he had a budding awareness of his close relationship

Starting point is 00:48:31 to the God of Israel. And so all we can do, it's a great question, Michael, and what we have is what are in the text before us. And that's all we can affirm or say. And it's interesting to speculate. You can speculate is the titles and the information given to Mary about the one to whom she would give birth. You know, because she's got, if you look at the poetry she sings in the Gospel of Luke

Starting point is 00:48:53 about what her son will be in do, what the divine messenger, what the angelic messenger says to her, it's a new Moses, new prophet. He's going to bring God's salvation, God's present. So how much did she pass on to him? How much did she talk with him about? Or did she just, as Luke says, treasure that in her heart? And she led Jesus, discover his own, go on his own journey of self-discovery. I love thinking about it. It is an interesting thought experiment. Especially when you just think of the development of the human brain, right?

Starting point is 00:49:25 Yeah. Because when you're like an infant, totally. Like, I don't know how they know this, but there's a time in the development of human brain when you realize you are another. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Like before that time. Individuation.

Starting point is 00:49:38 Yeah. And I don't know when it happened when I'm on this topic. But all of a sudden you realize like, well, like, I'm a person. Yeah. That's different than you. That's right. That clicks in at some point. So before then, you're self-awareness was zero.

Starting point is 00:49:51 And Jesus went through that phase. Unless he didn't, which I don't know, out works. But anyways. I know, I think it's important to affirm that he did. If he was fully human. If he was fully human. It's a claim that he is really a human, he means anything. It means that his brain underwent development. It's really uncomfortable to talk about Jesus as fully human. It's a claim that he is really a human, he means anything, it means that his brain

Starting point is 00:50:06 underwent development. It's really uncomfortable to talk about Jesus as fully human. I've noticed. Even though we've been talking for years. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. It does seem like the baptism and the wilderness

Starting point is 00:50:18 experience were important moments. If not of Jesus working out his identity, at least some sense of his vocation, with purpose, or that this is the moment, this is when it begins. Something happening there, out in the Jordan and then in the wilderness. But the windows that we get from the sayings of Jesus, it comes from the apostles' memorization of his teachings and so on, and so they don't give us that information. So it's something I trust that we'll be able to ask him about one day. Maybe fun conversation.

Starting point is 00:50:55 Yeah. Maybe it would be like me and he's like, I don't remember what it was like before. Well, you got to wonder. You got to wonder. It's like, ask got a wonder. You got a wonder. That's Mary. Yeah. Thanks for all those questions.

Starting point is 00:51:09 Tim, did you know there was, we have like 150 questions, or something like that. I knew there's a lot. I know there's a lot. And so we apologize if we didn't get to everyone's question. Although what I try and do is read through and notice the themes, repeated themes. The main ones. Any question that is the one that I choose is usually because there's been three or four or more that are the same question in different words. So you guys ask great questions.

Starting point is 00:51:35 Yeah, thank you. We love talking about them. They make us think and we're grateful to have the chance to respond. Yep, and next week we'll get back in and talk about. Yeah, we're the final stretch of the God series. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to stay in the New Testament into the writings of John and Paul,

Starting point is 00:51:52 yep. Exploring Jesus's divine identity. It's the most ambitious conversation we've ever had. Actually, in the middle of that, we got a special little podcast launching the, yeah. The, it would launching the week after Thanksgiving Week in for Americans, or is it the week of Thanksgiving Week? It's something like that.

Starting point is 00:52:14 But anyways, it's a special interview episode. Yes, with... So you keep it a secret? Yeah, let's keep it a secret. Alright. But I was at Fear and Trambling. We interviewed one of my great theological heroes. Yeah, it was awesome. You'll enjoy that everybody.

Starting point is 00:52:28 All right, the Bible project is a nonprofit in Portland, Oregon. We make videos primarily. It's the main thing we do, although this podcast has become a big part of what we do. And it's all for free. It's on thebibelproject.com. You can also find out on a YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash, it's the Bible project. There's a lot of other stuff going on. We're translating this into other languages. We're starting to think of curriculum for organizations to use around this content. We've got a whole classroom initiative you'll hear more about next year.

Starting point is 00:53:03 It's all exciting and it's all free because of the generous support of people at you. So thanks for listening and thanks for being part of this with us. Hi, this is John Tamata from Baragata Guam. Hey, this is Scott. And I'm his sister, Jody. We're from Nova Scotia, Canada. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. The Bible project is crowdfunded by people like us, and you can find free videos, study it, and more at TheBibleProject.com.

Starting point is 00:53:31 Thanks. you

BibleProject - Q+R: Your Questions About Jesus' Identity - God E17

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