Truth Unites - The KEY Point in the Alex O'Connor vs. David Wood Debate (The Divine Council in John 10)

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Ruslan recently hosted a debate between Alex O'Connor and David Wood about whether Jesus claimed to be God. An important point in the debate was Jesus' quotation of Psalm 82 in John 10. In this video Gavin Ortlund offers one possible interpretation of this passage that is consistent with Jesus claiming to be God.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Ruslan recently hosted the Bless God Summit. I got to be there. It was a lot of fun, great conference, really fun to interact with people. There was a debate between David Wood and Alex O'Connor on whether Jesus claimed to be God. I was sitting in the front row, not front row. I was sitting toward the front, taking notes, really enjoying it. Check out the full debate on Ruslan's channel. In the video description, I'll put a link, check it out, and see his channel. Other things I'm sure from the conference will be coming out, so make sure you keep your eyes peeled. A lot of great stuff was there. In this video, I want to address one of the points that came up. Okay, this is maybe the main point. I don't know. Definitely one of the important

ones. In my notes, it is definitely one that was threaded throughout the first several replies and so forth. And that's John 1030, where Jesus says, I and the Father are one. This is a point that David brought up. This is not, and I have no idea how you would ever read the gospel of John like this, let alone anything else, Jesus said, this is not Jesus saying, what? You're misunderstanding. I'm just a regular dude. Again, if this were the only verse in there, maybe you, because given the rest of what we read in the Gospel of John and the rest of the gospels, Jesus is not claiming to be a regular guy.

He's using a legal technicality here that they should be aware of. They're saying, hey, here's what you're claiming. You're claiming to be the son of God. This means you're claiming to be equal to God and so on. And therefore, this is blasphemy. And Jesus' response is, well, really? Well, in the Psalms, in the Psalms, God calls people. Elohim. Therefore, you can't just say calling someone some divine title is blasphemous and deserves

a death sentence. You have to show that the title is not from God, that it's not true, that it's false. Have you done that? No. Okay, you can't kill me. And you can see this in red here on the screen and then in green how the Jewish opponents of Jesus responded and they're saying, we're trying to blast, or we want to stone you for blasphemy because you're claiming to be God. You being a man, make yourself God. But what makes 10.30, the I and the Father are one. So striking is not just the language of oneness, which in and of itself wouldn't be conclusive, but it's the context. Versus 28 and 29, where Jesus is basically saying, I have the same ability to preserve the sheep as the father does.

No one can snatch them out of my hand. No one can snatch them out of his hand. We're one. Now, this is not the first time we get this concern about Jesus claiming to be God in John's Gospel back in Chapter 5. John tells us that the Jewish leaders are already concerned that Jesus appears to be making himself equal with God. But here things really come to a head in chapter 10. Verse 31, they've got the stones in their hands right after he says this. Verse 33, they say, we are going to stone you. And the reason is you're claiming to be God. But so you might look at this and say, well, it's obvious.

Of course Jesus claims to be God. But Alex makes a really interesting point. And that is, look how Jesus responds to their concern. There's one place in the Gospels where Jesus is directly accused of claiming to be God. Do you know where it is? It's in John chapter 10. In John chapter 10, his Jewish opponents come to him and say, if you're the Messiah, tell us plainly. And Jesus responds by saying, I and the father are one.

I'm told by Christians this is a direct Christological claim. Who can claim to be identical to the father except for someone who is God? and there was no confusion about this, the Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him to death for making this claim. Now, how does Jesus respond? Does he agree with them? Or does he correct them? He says, in response to the Jews, is it not written in your law, I have said you are gods? Quoting, as you'll probably realize, the Psalm that I just quoted and explained briefly a moment ago. So directly asked about his Christological status, Jesus to someone, to quote a psalm, which is explicitly talking about beings who are not in fact Yaway and yet are called

gods. Why would he pick that psalm if the message he wanted to convey was that he is in fact in some sense God, that is identical to Yahweh? And this is true that Jesus doesn't say, yeah, you're absolutely right, I'm claiming to be God. That's not the response. Instead, he quotes Psalm 82. Jesus answered them, is it not written in your law? I said you are gods. If he called them gods to whom the word of God came and the scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the father consecrated and sent into the world, you are blaspheming because I said I am the son of God. So how do we understand this? Here's my proposal for this one passage. Limited video. I'm not giving a full debate review. I just want to address this one passage, hoping this is helpful. And this proposal

is in harmony with what David Wood talked about in the debate. He called this a legal technicality, but I want to flesh this out a little more. My proposal is Jesus is using rhetoric to block his opponent's charges, a reasonable thing to do when they've literally got the stones in their hands, and also to expose their inconsistency with their own scriptures, hence the language, your law. But this rhetoric is not inconsistent with his claim to be God. What we have here is an argument from the lesser to the greater. The logic is, if the lesser can do it, then so can the greater. Specifically, if those to whom the word of God came, and read here, can be called gods, then so also him whom the father consecrated and sent into the world in green here can also be called gods

from the lesser to the greater from the red to the green if they can do it i can do it if they can be called gods i can be called god now it does not logically follow from that rhetoric that the red and the green are equivalent that those to whom the word of god came in psalm 82 we'll talk about who they are are God in the exact same sense that him whom the father consecrated and sent into the world is God, okay? Because the whole logic is from the lesser to the greater. Here's a metaphor. Suppose there's a particular room at a school where the students are not allowed to go.

Let's say it's the teacher's lounge. No students allowed in there. One morning the principal is walking into the room and a student says, are you supposed to go in there? And the principal responds, the teachers eat in this room. every morning, and you ask me whether I, the principal, can not, can go in? That is an argument from the lesser to the greater. He's saying, if the teachers can do it, I can do it. I'm the principal. And that's kind of like Jesus saying, if those who receive the word of God can be called gods, surely the specially consecrated and sent one can be called God. So the important point to see from the

metaphor is that using this lesser to greater rhetoric does not mean the principle is the exact same is the teachers. He's not saying, there's no difference between me and the teachers. Rather, that wouldn't logically follow. An argument from the lesser to the greater is powerful precisely because the lesser and greater are not the same. Now, this is especially the case if the gods of Psalm 82 are not human figures but angelic figures, which are sometimes described as divine or as gods, the Hebrew word Elohim in the Old Testament. If you're interested in I have a couple of videos responding to Dan McClellan where I get into these points a little bit. And this is something Michael Heiser has argued, specifically in Psalm 82, which leads him to the following conclusion about Jesus's quotation of this Psalm in 1 in John 10.

Quote, the quotation now reinforces John's exalted Christology rather than being made to mean that Jesus is identifying with other Jews who are mere mortals. By referencing Psalm 82, which is not about human Elohim, Jesus is in effect twaseless. his opponents by claiming to be more than human. Now, even if you disagree with Heiser on Psalm 82 and the angelic interpretation of that, you can still agree, by the way, with this broader point about lesser to greater rhetoric here in John 10. But note what I, if you saw what I underlined there in that quote, that's my underline, not Heiser's. He's claiming that Jesus is further tweaking his opponents, and that does seem to be correct in the broader context. For example, look at the end of this conversation, which I've underlined here, and you can see that Jesus's clarification

and response by means of quoting Psalm 82 is taken in verse 39, and it doesn't reassure his opponents. Rather, they're still trying to arrest him as a result of his further comments in verses, what, 34 to 38, I think, roughly. So they're still, you know, in other words, this only escalates the conflict further. The quotation of Psalm 82 doesn't slow down the concerns of his opponents. If there's a misunderstanding going on here that Jesus is trying to clarify, the misunderstanding persists, their concerns are not allayed. Now, I would grant that what all this amounts to is sort of underdetermined.

Just from John 10, the exact sense in which Jesus is one with the Father is imprecise. I'm not saying John 10 tells us everything we need to know. You don't get the homocean from this one text, okay? but neither is Psalm 82 being quoted by Jesus inconsistent with that. So now let's try to situate John 10 and what's going on here with the broader context of John's gospel to kind of fill out the picture. I think John 21, the final chapter in John's gospel, to be an epilogue, which means that the climactic moment of the whole book is in at the end of John chapter 20, where Jesus is

just straight up called God. and he labels that as faith rather than as blasphemy. So if you combine that with John chapter 1, where you have another explicit identification of Jesus or the Word as God, then you can see this identification of Jesus as God is bookending the gospel. It's right there at the beginning. It's right there at the end. Furthermore, this seems to be a concern that's within the whole drama being worked out in the plot through the middle portions of the Gospel of John, because the whole narrative,

is this escalating conflict with the Jewish leadership as a result of his claims. And, you know, you work through these claims, they are pretty amazing. He's got these various I am claims, the seven I am claims, but you also find statements like this, his statement in John 858, where he's describing his pre-existence before Abraham with the present tense. Now, there's some discussion about this in the debate about, you know, is he quoting from the Septuagint, and maybe there's different language. I can't remember exactly all of that. I'm recording this before I've actually rewatched the debate.

So, you know, granted, look into all that and don't hear what I'm not saying here. I'm not trying to be overly ambitious. Whatever the specific wording here, it is in the present tense. I am Greek words, Ego Emi, and it does seem strange that he would describe his pre-existence before Abraham in that way. The more grammatical way to put it that you'd expect would be before Abraham was, I was. and so and if someone wants to say that the phrase i am isn't regarded as significant in john's gospel then why does it cause people to fall down in jesus's arrest in john 186 there does seem to be

something going on here so the point i'm trying to make is this all helps us this background context in the gospel of john helps us interpret john 10 in light of the rest of the book because in other words it'd be one thing if the quotation of psalm 82 caused a de yes escalation so that you have this mounting concern of the Jewish leadership that Jesus is claiming to be God throughout John 1 through 9 and into chapter 10, like John 518 told us, you know, the Jewish leaders are concerned. He's like, hey, he's calling himself God. He's making himself equal with God. But then Jesus quotes Psalm 82, and that diffuses the situation so that from John 11 forward, the misunderstanding has been clarified and the concern at least stays the same

or decreases. But that's not what happens. Actually, it keeps escalating. We saw that with their desire to arrest him here in verse 39, but also the very next thing that happens in John's gospel is the raising of Lazarus from the dead in John 11. When this is reported to the Pharisees, it causes them to make plans to kill him so that Jesus can no longer walk around openly because the Jewish leadership gives an order that if anyone knows where he is, they have to tell him so that they can arrest him. So the point is, the immediate aftermath of this event in John 10 is just further escalation of the same concern and the same conflict. So it doesn't seem like the effect of Jesus's quotation of Psalm 82 was to dial it back a notch and say, oh, you know, lots of people can be called gods and this kind of thing.

What about verse 38? Here Jesus references the works that he's doing, and then he says, the Father is in me, and I am in the Father. People will often bring up things. People, I'm not thinking of Alex right now, but in various conversations I've had, people, especially with Unitarians, they will bring up things that are not at odds with the Trinity, but maybe just have different language than we speak in terms of systematic theology as though they were at odds with the Trinity. And here I would just observe being God and being in God are not contradictory. This is the doctrine of paracoresis,

which means mutual indwelling or interpenetration. This is one verse used to describe this idea that the father of the son, the spirit, mutually indwell one another. That's a part of the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. Now, it's true that Jesus prays that we would be in the father and the son in John 17.

But the thing is, it doesn't follow that we're in the father and the son, in the exact same way that they are in each other. This language of union or participation can be used in different senses, and again, you have to look at the context to see what it exactly means. And I thought David made a good point in the debate that, you know, if you just look throughout John 17, Jesus' relationship to the Father, has some similarities to ours, but there's definitely some differences, too, like in verse 5, when he speaks about the glory that he had with the Father before the world was created. So what does all this leave us with? I would just say from John

10 consistently with elsewhere in the Gospels, it sure sounds like we have a lot of data that indicate Jesus claimed to be God in a unique sense. Granted, the data that we get is kind of variegated and rough, so if you just hone out on one thing, it can be ambiguous. But if you look at it all together, I think F.F. Bruce's summary of John 10 is essentially correct. His words were unambiguous while he subordinated himself to God as the son to the father, yet he claimed to be one with the father, placing himself on the other side of the chasm that separated God from man, the creator from the creature. Final thought is just to ask, what if that's true?

You know, I completely understand what it's like to have questions and doubts and at times you're looking at this and you might just say, I'm not sure it's unclear. For the person who's watching this video who's 50-50. It's not a bad question to ask, well, what if? What's at stake either way? What if this man who has done so much to change the world for good? Jesus of Nazareth, Nazareth, was actually God incarnate. I think the evidence that he claimed to be such is pretty good. And once you get that far, then it seems to me, C.S. Lewis's old argument, the Lord Lyre lunatic trilemma is back on the table because the big question is, is it a legend, which is the fourth possibility we have to consider? But if he did claim to be God, then it is tough to make sense of,

how could someone say that and merely be wrong? I mean, certainly the level of malice that would, I have a whole video on the Lord liar lunatic legend, Lord liar lunatic trilema. Think of the level of malice. It would be if he said, if you give your life for me and for the gospel, you'll gain 100-fold as much, and he knows that that's not true. You know, the liar option doesn't seem very plausible. I think the only, the more plausible, but still not very plausible, other option would be lunatic. But then you just ask, the most influential human being in all of history, arguably, was crazy, or was, had so, if not technical lunacy, had so little self-understanding that he thought he was the bread of life, the resurrection

and the life, he thought he came from heaven, he thought he was divine, and he was just wrong. That also is at least not an easy option. This is why I still think the old Lord, liar, lunatic, legend, dilemma, not dilemma, what's the four? I can't remember the right term when it's four. Tetralemma? Maybe that's it. I still think that's a good argument. And if nothing else, it just forces us all to come to an interpretation. of this question, which I think is perhaps the most important question we can ask in all of life.

Who was Jesus? This amazing person who's revolutionized the world. Who was he? It seems to me like he claimed to be God. It seems to me like the best way to make sense of that is maybe he actually was God. So much more to say about all this, but hopefully that helps a little bit or at least offers one option under the table for John 10.