In the name of the Father Son and of the Holy Spirit Amen.
First of all, let me begin by stating my position. I am a monarchical Trinitarian. I believe in one God the Father, who is the Monarchia, the source of all things including the Son and the Spirit. For this reason, to Him alone properly belongs the name and identity of “God”.
However, being the source of the divine nature does not mean being the only one who possesses the divine nature. Hence why I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, who is True God from True God via the act of generation or what scripture calls Begetting. This means the Son is True God by predication from the One who’s True God by identity.
But there is a nuance here. When the Son is mentioned alongside the Father, the Father takes on the name or identity of “God” and the Son takes on the name or identity of “Lord” (e.g. 1 cor 8:6; Eph 4:4-5). But when He is mentioned alone, He may be called God and Lord by identity and by name (cf. John 20:28 and 2 peter 1:1).
St. Gregory Nazianzus spells this out clearly in ORATION 25:15-16:
Define our piety by teaching the knowledge of: One God, unbegotten, the Father; and One begotten Lord, his Son, referred to as “God” when he is mentioned separately, but “Lord” when he is named together with the Father —the first on account of the [divine] nature, the second on account of the monarchy;
Not only do we find this principle in Nicea 325, the very basic faith of Trinitarianism but I will also seek to prove this from the very scriptures itself.
To understand how the Monarchia works, in Genesis, God has given us a limited and finite analogy.
In Genesis 5:1-2, Adam and Eve are both called Adam, meaning Human: “Male and Female created He them and blessed them and called their name Adam.” This text shows that Eve is Adam, but not by name, lest we mistake her to be the male, but by her nature. The male being Adam by name does take away from the female being Adam by predication. 1 Adam, 2 persons. So scripturally, Adam came out of Adam and Adam married Adam, yet interestingly Adam did not marry himself and yet its still 1 Adam at the same time. How does that work? Because they are a finite image of the infinite God.
Now yes, Adam and Eve are 2 beings because they are separate and distinct existences, they are 2 instantiations of the human nature separated by space time and matter. But an analogy is meant to take us from the lesser to the greater, if Adam and Eve, 2 persons who are separated by space, time and matter can be called 1 Adam by virtue of their union of nature, HOW MUCH MORE the Father and His very own Word, His Son, can be called 1 God when they are not 2 instantiations or separated by time space or matter but are instead intrinsic and inseparable from one another.
And I challenge my opponent, show me where scripture speaks of Adam and Eve as “2 Adams” in the plural. You wont find it because it doesn’t exist, its not scriptural.
And by the way, this is the same God who said “It is not good for Adam to be alone” and “Let us make Adam in Our image after Our likeness.” Why? Because God Himself is not alone since He is multipersonal, hence why He made Adam not alone but also multipersonal.
So Adam is a finite example of the infinite God.
Nonetheless, since me and Oje agree the Son is distinct from the Father, lets move on to scripture where the Son is identified as YHWH.
1 Cor 10:4
Deut 32 = 1 Cor 10
In 1 Cor 10 Paul draws heavily from Deut 32 because Pauls concern here is about idolatry. Intrestingly, my opponent quoted Deut 32 but lets see if it proves his case.
1 Cor 10:20 = Deut 32:17 – “They sacrificed to demons and not to God.“
1 Cor 10:21-22 – “21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons. 22 Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy?” = Deut 32:21 – “They provoked Me YHWH to jealousy“
So notice: Moses says “They sacrificed to demons and not to God.” thereby provoking the Lord to jealousy. Paul said “”They sacrificed to demons and not to God.” thereby provoking the Lord to jealousy. It is clear then from the context that Paul has the same Lord in mind as Deut 32.
However, this is the knockout blow to my opponent, this Lord, whom we ought not to provoke in the context of Deut 32, is the one to who owns the “cup” and who own the “table”. He said “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord or partake of the Lords table.” Who is this One Paul? Just so u dont miss it, the “Cup of the Lord” is only used 1x in the Bible, not of the Father, but of the Son:
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.27 Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 1 Cor 11:26-27
So the one who owns the cup contextually is the Lord Jesus. For a Jew to say that we ought not to provoke the Lord Jesus in the context of idolatry and citing Deut 32 is absolutely blasphemous.
To make matters worse, remember it said “the Table of the Lord.” that appears only 2x in the Bible, in OT: Malachi 1:7, 12. God promises that there would a time when the Gentiles would offer up pure sacrifices to His name because the current priests were defiling “The table the Lord.”
“You offer defiled food on My altar, But say, ‘In what way have we defiled You?’ By saying, ‘The table of the Lord is contemptible.’
So “the table” is said to be YHWH’s because that’s the alter, where they offer up pure sacrifices as an act of worship to Him. But notice Paul took that language verbatim “table of YHWH” “trapeza kyriou” and applied it Christ and the Eucharist. Remember 1 Cor 10:20 “They sacrificed to demons and not to God”? In Malachi 1, it says the Gentiles will offer up pure sacrifices on the “Table of YHWH” “trapeza kyriou” and Paul said that Kyriou is the Lord Jesus and that “kyriou” is a translation of the Divine Name. The Table of the Eucharist belongs to the Lord YHWH Jesus because that where we offer up pure sacrifices as an act of worship to Him fulfilling Malachi 1.
So when Paul says: “the Lords table” and “Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy?”, this is language drawn directly from Deut 32 and Malachi 1 where that Lord is said to be YHWH, but Paul applies it verbatim to Christ, all in the same context of saying “flee from idolatry.”
And in case u didn’t get it, Paul makes this even more clear in verse 9:
nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; – 1 Cor 10:9
I know there’s a textual variant here which says “Lord” but this isn’t an issue since I have proven from the context that the Lord is Jesus anyway. The Lord whom they tempted in Num 21 is the Lord Jesus.
In verse 1, Paul said:
1 cor 10:1 Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud…
References Deut 32:12 where YHWH alone led the Israelites in the wilderness. This is a reference to Exodus 13-14 where YHWH in the Cloud was there accompanying the Israelites. Well, in Exodus 14 actually it says it was the Angel of the Lord who led them, and in Exodus 23:21-22, it says if this Angel:
21 Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him (Deut 32), for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him (Mal 1).
Both of those are applied to Christ in the NT and the Angel of the Lord in the OT.
This Cloud imagery is important because the text goes on to say:
1 Cor 10:4 – and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.
This is absolutely destructive for my opponent. Why? Because I have been stressing the backdrop of Deut 32. Do we find this in there, yes absolutely, 5 TIMES:
4He is the Rock, His work is perfect;
For all His ways are justice,
A God of truth and without injustice;
Righteous and upright is He.
So the Rock who followed and accompanied the Israelites in the Cloud in Deuteronomy 32 was YHWH but Paul says that that Rock was Christ. He basically just said YHWH was Christ.
I don’t have time to get into this now but Psalm 78 is a rewording of Deut 32. And Paul knows this but in 1 Cor 10:1-4 , he parallels the structure of Psalm 78.
Psalm: Marvellous things He did in the sight of their fathers…
(Paul: I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers)
Psalm: He divided the sea and caused them to pass through;
(Paul: all passed through the sea,)
Psalm: also He led them with the cloud,
(Paul: they were all under the cloud)
Psalm: And gave them drink
(Paul: and all drank the same spiritual drink)
Psalm: rained down manna on them to eat
(Paul: all ate the same spiritual food)
Psalm: Then they remembered that God was their rock,
(Paul: and that Rock was Christ)
Can it be any more obvious that Paul knows his Bible and intentionally puts Christ where God alone belongs, making them one and the same.
And I pray he goes to typology in verse 6 and 11 as if that’s gonna help him. Because if he does so, its gonna be his burial. All its gonna show is he doesn’t know the difference between a metaphor and a type and how the NT identifies typologies.
The Big question here is however: what Rock followed them? If he says the physical rock of Exo 17 and Num 20, I will show that not only is this not biblical but in fact contradicts it. The only other option is YHWH as the Rock followed them hence his explicit context of Deut 32 and Psalm 78. Therefore Jesus must be YHWH. So according to Paul, the unitarians are the idolaters, not us. Thats how u do exegesis oje, context and harmonization.
Hebrews 1:2
has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the ages; – Hebrews 1:2
I want everyone to focus on that specific phrase, “through whom also He made the ages”. The word for ages is the word “aion” and it basically means “a period of time”. The Bible says “this age” began when Jesus was born. The next age to begin after that one, is not His unaliving or His resurrection, but “the age to come” is His 2nd coming. This is what the Bible means when it speaks of “this age and the age to come”: here is one verse among many: Matthew 13:38-40
38 The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. 39 The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. 40 Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age.
So when will this “present evil age” as Paul calls it in Gal 1:4 when will it end? When all evil is destroyed at Jesus’ 2nd coming.
The question here is “which ages did the Father create through Christ?” If my opponent starts counting from Jesus’ birth, because that’s when he believes Jesus began to exist, that’s only 1 age accounted for. But Hebrews says “ages”, so what’s the other age? You cannot appeal to “the age to come” as I know you will, because its in the name, its “to come” meaning it hasn’t yet began. And I pray u appeal to prolepsis because its gonna show you don’t know how to deal with context.
1 Cor 8:6
First of all, we must understand that Paul is a Jew. He has no New Testament. Only Old Testament. And everything He writes, he does so with the OT language always in the back of His mind. With that said, here is the quickest way to make my argument:
in the Old Testament, does the word “God” always apply to YHWH? the obvious answer is no as oje has said because God has different definitions depending on the context hence why its applied to humans and angels alike. But Oje, you spoke about exclusivity. So, let’s add an exclusive term like “one” or “only” so that now its “One God”, does that always apply to YHWH? The answer is absolutely because the word “one” restricts the meaning of the word “God” to its highest possible definition, hence Monotheism.
Let’s do the same with the term “Lord”…
cf. Deut 6:4; Zech 14:9; Deut 4:35 and 39; 1 Kgs 8:60; Neh 9:6; Isaiah 45:5 and 6; Isaiah 45:18 – God and Lord with exclusive terms is YHWH alone.
Jude 1:4-5
I will also point out that there is a textual variant here. But again, I dont care which textual variant my opponent will appeal to since either of them prove Jesus is still inescapably YHWH. So I will lay out both variants because I don’t know which variant my opponent holds as authoritative:
τον μόνον δεσπότην και κύριον ημών ιησουν χριστον 4 – Alexandrian Text
The only Master and Lord of us Jesus Christτὸν μόνον δεσπότην Θεόν, καὶ κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν4 – Majority Text
The only Master, God, and Lord of us Jesus Christ
If he goes with the Alexandrian Text, Jesus is your only master and Lord, which is undoubtedly blasphemous to say of a creature in light of the Old Testament.
But he’s more likely to go with the Majority Text, but not only can it
(1) be shown that this would then apply the 3 nouns to Christ as the World English Bible or the Young’s Literal Translation puts it “our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
(2) even if he rejects that, which he must, and asserts the KJV reading “our only Master God and our Lord Jesus Christ.” making it 2 persons here: the Father as the only Master God (despotes) and Jesus as Lord (kyrios), I will simply appeal to the context in the very next verse where the Lord (kyrios), not Master (despotes), delivers the Israelites out of Egypt, which in verse 4 was none other than Christ distinct from the Master who is the Father. The question then will be “Which Lord in the Old Testament saved the Israelites if not YHWH.”
Isaiah 63:1-6
Oje quoted Isaiah 63 as if it proves his case. He conveniently missed Isaiah 63:1-6, Isaiah sees One figure with a garment covered in the blood of His enemies. In verse 1, Isaiah asks “Who is this, this One who is glorious in His apparel?” and the figure answers “I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” The figure expects you to know Him by the time you get to Isaiah 63, particularly Isaiah 45:19-21, this should automatically click. This is undoubtedly YHWH. But what does YHWH, whom Isaiah sees visibly, say:
3 “I have trodden the winepress alone,
The law of excluded middle forces “Alone” in this context to either mean:
(1) agency
(2)no agency
Oje would put Isaiah 44:24 (YHWH alone stretches out the heavens) in the no agency category
Oje would put other passages like Psalm 72:18 (YHWH alone does wonders) in the agency category since Moses also did wonders.
Let’s see into which category Isaiah 63 falls in. Here’s the context:
3 “I have trodden the winepress alone,
And from the peoples no one was with Me.
5 I looked, but there was no one to help,
And I wondered
That there was no one to uphold;
Therefore My own arm brought salvation for Me;
So notice how God did this “alone”; “no one was with Me”; “no one to help”; “there was no one to uphold” so His own Arm had to do it.
What more could YHWH possibly say to convince you there is no agency. If Isaiah 44:24 is good enough for my opponent to conclude that Jesus cannot be YHWH since YHWH said He was alone and by Himself, how much Isaiah 63 which stresses the language even more than Isaiah 44:24? Why the inconsistency?
If my opponent still somehow appeals to agency, God makes it even more irrefutably clear when He says there was “no one to help”. To help YHWH is used one other time in Judges 5:23 where Sisera, an enemy of YHWH ran to a specific town and the people did not unalive Sisera hence they “did not come to the help of YHWH,” meaning they failed to act as His agents to carry out His will. The next verse, in Judges 5:24, mentions Jael, who does come to help YHWH by putting a tent peg through Siseras skull. Thus “helping YHWH” literally means to act as His agent. Even the Quran understands this language when it says the disciples of Jesus came to Allahs help in 4:47. So if my opponent doesn’t understand this but Muhammad does, you have some serious issues with your exegesis.
So when YHWH says “I looked but there was no one to help.” He is literally saying “I looked but there was no agent” yet even in light of this, my opponent will still appeal to agency because he knows if he is consistent, he has to leave his Unitarianism. Why? Because this is fulfilled in Revelation 19:13-15 by the Lord Jesus
He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. 15 Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
John here alludes to 4 Old Testament passages as being fulfilled by Jesus, one of those is Isaiah 63. The visible YHWH who treads the winepress alone with no creaturely agent is Jesus Himself.
So here’s the big question oje, in this passage, there are only 3 groups described:
- YHWH – the visible warrior who’s robe is dipped in blood from the winepress.
- The peoples – God’s enemies.
- The redeemed – God’s people.
So oje, in which category does Jesus fall into according to the New Testament? The only consistent answer to this is YHWH Himself.