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This thread has focus on the question "How, if the Son of God was already God from eternity, could He be deified ? He ALREADY was God from eternity come as a man."
This is a good question which needs to be addressed. And without being side tracked into other issues, I will try my best to explain the basis for saying Christ, though He was God as a man, became deified in resurrection.
@sonship saidTaken from the writings of josephw. I think it is most appropriate, and in your case cannot be repeated too often.
This thread has focus on the question "How, if the Son of God was already God from eternity, could He be deified ? He ALREADY was God from eternity come as a man."
This is a good question which needs to be addressed. And without being side tracked into other issues, I will try my best to explain the basis for saying Christ, though He was God as a man, became deified in resurrection.
All I see in your characterizations is a flushing-out-of-interpretations by the use of a preponderance of excessive words, some of which don't appear in scripture, to the extent that one is drowned into an oblivion of the loss of the ability to think critically about what the scriptures are teaching, especially to the individual student. The Holy Spirit teaches, as do those qualified by God to be pastor teachers.
Yours is an ardent and unrelenting word badgering into submission anyone caught in your sights.
This isn't a private Christian Bible study. This is a public forum, and you're going to be met with equal zeal those, whether Christian or not, that disagree with you.
This is not your seminary, and it is not your classroom. You are not a Dr. of theology. You're just another boob like the rest of us that thinks they know-better-than-thou what we're talking about.
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@sonship saidIf a man was a vegetarian from birth and never stopped being a vegetarian, it would be irrational to claim he 'became' a vegetarian at a later date.
This thread has focus on the question "How, if the Son of God was already God from eternity, could He be deified ? He ALREADY was God from eternity come as a man."
This is a good question which needs to be addressed. And without being side tracked into other issues, I will try my best to explain the basis for saying Christ, though He was God as a man, became deified in resurrection.
You can't have it both ways sonship. If Jesus 'was' God and never stopped being God, you can't claim He was deified after His resurrection as a pretext to your own deification.
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There are two sides to many matters in the world. Like a bird needs two wings to fly. Some things in the Bible also have two paradoxical sides.
God is one.
God is Father - Son - Holy Spirit as three ____[?]_____s.
That is two sides.
There is free will for man.
God's foreknowledge is thought by some to mean predestination.
That is two sides.
Salvation is a free gift in grace.
The overcomers are rewarded as a recompense.
That is also two sides.
God is a God of eternal love whose mercy endures forever.
God is a God of perfect righteouosness who must judge.
That seems to be two sided.
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Sometimes it may take a life time to realize that there are often two sides
to a important aspect of God's economy.
Christian thinkers speak of the economical Trinity.
And they also speak of the essential Trinity.
Two sides.
In eternity Christ was the Son of God. And God sent His only begotten Son. And when Christ rose He was designated the Firstborn Son who was begotten on the day He was resurrected.
The only begotten Son is unique and only one of a kind.
The FIrstborn among many brothers is the First in a series of following
brothers.
The point of this post is that many major revelations in God's words are like a bird with two wings. There are just two sides to the matter.
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You can't have it both ways sonship. If Jesus 'was' God and never stopped being God, you can't claim He was deified after His resurrection as a pretext to your own deification.
I at least admit that the issue discussed here is a good question.
Divegeester says it is not a good question.
I disagree with Divegeester at this point and have to admit that the Darwin venerator Ghost of a Duke does have a good point to highlight the tension.
Some people think we never thought of this.
Some may think that this never crossed Christians minds that taking in all the statements of the New Testament reveal contradictions. I prefer to call some of these paradoxes. And many underestimate the two sides were contemplated deeply for a long time before arriving at acceptance of the apparent paradox.
It is the statements of the Bible all taken together that causes Christians to notice these paradoxes. The way of some is to suppress one side of the matter to highlight the other.
Some of us choose to trust God who has uttered both matters.
The biggest example may be "and the Word was with God and the Word was God." (from John 1:1)
Another example is that no man has seen God at any time, says the Apostle John. Yet he knew quit well that God appeared to Adam; to Abraham; to Jacob; to Moses and the seventy elders at Me. Sinai, and to Isaiah - all in the Hebrew Bible.
The Son of God is eternal God from eternity past.
The Son of God became flesh and brought back that created item deified to the
eternal throne of God.
In incarnation into this creatred flesh, this created man, He was the only begotten Son. In resurrection and glorification He became the FIRST, the Firstborn Son to be followed by many brothers.
@sonship saidThe only two-faced one here is you, sonship.
There are two sides to many matters in the world. Like a bird needs two wings to fly. Some things in the Bible also have two paradoxical sides.
God is one.
God is Father - Son - Holy Spirit as three ____[?]_____s.
That is two sides.
There is free will for man.
God's foreknowledge is thought by some to mean predestination.
That is ...[text shortened]... .
God is a God of perfect righteouosness who must judge.
That seems to be two sided.
Jesus was not deified in resurrection; he was glorified, meaning his prior divinity was made manifest. It's right there in the Greek; I explained this in another thread. You, however, distort Scripture to suit your own super-inflated ego.
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When God became a man He clothed Himself in creation.
Man is an item of the creation of the eternal God.
I'm sorry. But the word of God says so.
"And God created man . . . " (Genesis 1:27)]
Not only so.
When God became a man in Jesus Christ He came not as a unfallen man but in
the likeness of a fallen man.
" . . . God, sending His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin . . ."
(Rom. 8:3)
He had no sin. But He came "in the likeness of the flesh of sin."
I take this to mean Jesus came not as the pre-Fall Adam man likeness.
He incarnated into the likeness of the man fallen and transmuted into a sin filled
man. He had not sin. But He came in the likeness of a fallen son of Adam.
1.) He clothed Himself in creation.
2.) He came in the likeness of a fallen man, yet had no sin nature in Him.
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Jesus was not deified in resurrection; he was glorified, meaning his prior divinity was made manifest.
And I think I replied to your post.
I do not say it is altogether wrong that His divinity was manifest.
But the Gospel of John particularly shows that He did not refer to His disciples as BROTHERS until He rose from the dead. That was not their inflated egos. That we the Lord's preference that He had entered into a new status of being the FIRST among many brother Son of God.
Why could He not refer to them as His brothers from incarnation?
John specifies that the closest term He had for the disciples before resurrection
was that they were His friends.
"No one has greater love than this, that one lay down His life for his friends.
You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slavedoes not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all the things which I have heard from My Father I made know to you." (John 15:13-15)
Before His resurrection they were servants and then friends as the most intimate term He had for His disciples. Then came the day of His resurrection and He used the more intimate term "brothers" deliberately.
Mary the woman was the first to witness the raised Jesus. And to her He said -
"Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brothers and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God." (John 20:17)
You see in the eyes of God His resurrection was not only His being begotten Firstborn Son of God but the simultaneous birth of all His brothers.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3)
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@sonship saidThat's just word salad.You can't have it both ways sonship. If Jesus 'was' God and never stopped being God, you can't claim He was deified after His resurrection as a pretext to your own deification.
I at least admit that the issue discussed here is a good question.
Divegeester says it is not a good question.
I disagree with Divegeester at this point and have to ad ...[text shortened]... ion and glorification He became the FIRST, the Firstborn Son to be followed by many brothers.
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Jesus was not deified in resurrection; he was glorified, meaning his prior divinity was made manifest.
You speak as a true believer in Christ.
I hope you believe what you have written and receive the Lord Jesus.
Jesus before His resurrection in John's Gospel used "friends" as the closest most intimate expression of His relationship with His disciples.
At His resurrection He said to Mary to go tell His brothers..
Now, after He has been raised His status as the Only begotten is not
relinquished. But He takes on another status compounded upon this. He is
designated the Firstborn Son of God in resurrection. The Firstborn among many
brothers.
That humanity the God clothed Himself in which was in "the likeness of the flesh of sin" - the form of a fallen man, was uplifted, sanctified, brought into divine sonship as the prototype of the mingling of divinity and uplifted humanity.
No doubt for God to become a man was a gteat honor to humanity.
Emmanuel - "God with us" is an astounding honor for human beings.
But more so their co-regeneration into brothers of the Firstborn Son who has brought this created human nature into God.
In one sense I was born again many years ago in my life on earth.
But in another sense, from the viewpoint of the begetting Father I was born again
before I was born! I was regenerated into the deified humanity at the resurrection
of Jesus when He could not wait to let His brothers know that He was now
their deified Elder Brother.
"Blesswed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope THROUGH THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST FROM THE DEAD." (1 Peter 1:3)
Excuse me for raising my voice. But it is really important.
His resurrection as the Firstborn Son of God was also our birth who are saved into the family of the deified created man made one with God.
So without doing any damage to the truth that Christ was fully God and the perfect man, I believe He uplifted and sanctified that created part to a eternally high level for Himself and His brothers begotten in His resurrection.