Hi Rival, I believe that Jesus is both the first-born of creation, and the first-born from the dead. He is, before the beginning of time, ordained by the one and only God, who is the Father, to be the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, Messiah and saviour of mankind.
Jesus Christ is 200% human, and had neither consciousness nor pre-existence prior to his birth in 6-4BC.
I still need to reply to your previous responses (which I will get around to, although I have limited time this weekend because I'm presently moving to another city and searching for a new apartment) but your post above to
@Rival is interesting.
Based on the combination of a strong denial of the doctrine of Christ's personal pre-existence and nontrinitarianism, I would surmise (please correct me if wrong) that you are likely Christadelphian - or at least Socinian in theology.
Needless to say, I regard your opposition to the idea of Christ's personal pre-existence to be against the New Testament.
A consensus of scholars actually concur that the NT teaches the eternal pre-existence of Jesus i.e. 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, where explicitly the “
Lord Jesus Christ” is posited as the one “
through whom are all things". In the case of NT texts about Jesus, they typically place him as “there” at, and as the divine agent of, the creation of all things. Consider the likes of 1 Corinthians 8:4-6; Hebrews 1:1-2; John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:15-16 and Philippians 2:6-8.
This scholarship (i.e. Hurtado, Ehrman, Bauckham, Fletcher-Louis) has shed a considerable amount of light upon what first century Christians, the ones who produced the gospels and letters, believed about Jesus's divinity.
Basically, the early Christians held that Jesus had personally pre-existed in spirit prior to his birth, existing with the Father before creation and was the Father's 'agent' of creation, the one
through whom the Father created the cosmos:
6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
The above statement is not thought by scholars to have been composed by Paul, rather they believe he was referencing an already well-known creed of the primitive church, which tells us that the earliest Christians had already come to regard Jesus as a pre-existent divine agent of creation co-eternal with God, here incorporating him into the shema.
An established exegetical paradigm can be seen in a number of verses in the New Testament, whereby the sacred author quotes or alludes to something in the Tanakh which originally referred to YHWH, and instead applies it to Jesus.
A great example of this practice is from
Hebrews 1:10-12, which quotes Psalm 102:25-27.
The original text is a hymn addressed to YHWH (Adonai Elohim, the Lord God: "
But you, O Lord [YHWH] are enthroned forever" [verse 12]) but the New Testament writer transposes it directly onto Jesus, and reads it as being about
his eternal role as creator of the universe:
"8 But of the Son he says,
“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
......
10 And,
“In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands;
11 they will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like clothing;
12 like a cloak you will roll them up,
and like clothing they will be changed.
But you are the same,
and your years will never end.”"
and the heavens are the work of your hands;
11 they will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like clothing;
12 like a cloak you will roll them up,
and like clothing they will be changed.
But you are the same,
and your years will never end.”"
(
Hebrews 1: 8-12)
In this way, a passage clearly and indisputably about YHWH (the Lord) in the original Hebrew Psalm, has been applied to Jesus, the incarnation of the 'Wisdom/Word' of God, whom the text describes as having pre-existed with the Father before the creation of the World, in the exact same terms as God (as "
the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature" (
Hebrews 1:3).
Likewise, throughout the text of the Gospel of John, the
en (was God) from the Johannine prologue in the first line of the gospel (i.e. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God), is picked up as
ego eimi in the absolute form without predicate and placed in the mouth of Jesus, such as in phrases like, "
Before Abraham was, I am (
ego eimi)" (
John 8:58) which seems intended to mimic how the LXX alludes to the tetragrammaton: “
I AM' [ego eimi] who comforts you” (Isa. 51:12 LXX), as God's self-referential of His uniqueness.
An interesting parallel verse to consider, from later in John's gospel, when explicating the opening line of the prologue is I think
John 8:58:
(Literally) "Jesus said to them: "Truly, before Abraham came into being (γενέσθαι genesthai), I am (ego eimi)". So they picked up stones to throw at him"
This verse uses different tenses of the exact same terms
genesthai "
came into being / came to be" and
eimi "
am" (
en "was") that are used in the prologue.
In most translations - such as the NRSV and KJV -
genesthai is in this verse is rendered: "
before Abraham was" (in the NIV, "
before Abraham was born") because it is in the past tense (referring to a coming into being
in time at some point in the past).
But Jesus, on the other hand, is never referred to with any tense of the verb
ginomai (except when the prologue says, "the Word became (
egeneto) flesh" for when He entered into time in a mortal body/tabernacle).
In the prologue, the Word isn't described as "In the beginning was (
genesthai) the Word" (which would mean, the Word
came into being in the beginning) but rather "In the beginning was (
en) the Word" using the imperfect past continuous tense of
eimi (am).
Compare with Abraham in this verse: as a creature, a created being who came into existence at some point in time, he is
ginomai/genesthai. The Word incarnate in Jesus, on the other hand, is
eimi/en - that is to say, he impliedly just
is according to the author, an eternally subsisting and pre-existing 'being' that never came into being within time.
The statement by John here is explicitly designed to imitate and allude to classic affirmations of the unique and eternally abiding being of God from the LXX (Septuagint) versions of the Tanakh:
"Before the mountains came into being [genethenai, the passive form of genesthai] and the earth and the world were formed, even from age to age, you are [su ei, the second-person equivalent of ego eimi "I am"]" (Psalm 90:2 [89:2 in the LXX]).
The Greek sentence above is reflective of the exact same grammatical structure as
John 8:58 and relies upon precisely the same verbs in drawing the same contrast between that which was created/came into being in time (thus finite) and that which is uncreated/did not come into being in time but is eternal (the Word, pre-incarnate Jesus).
(continued....)
