I am not really sure if you were arguing for me or against. You stated correctly that the Word is speaking of Jesus and we Christians all agree. You said he is God manifested in the flesh and this again is correct but then you say he is simply the appearance of God as if he was not real or some shadow of the living God, and that does not fit with scripture.
I am not arguing for or against you. I am just stating what I believe, which is the same as what you believe although there are some differences.
Christians believe that Jesus was God incarnated in the flesh and I believe that Jesus was God manifested in the flesh. The difference is that incarnated means Jesus literally became God, and manifested means that Jesus perfectly manifested all of Gods attributes, so Jesus was a mirror image of God.
Jesus Christ is God who was manifested in the flesh but the essence of God did not become flesh.
1 Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
Being
manifested in the flesh is not the same as being
incarnated in the flesh. The excerpt below from a longer article explains the
difference between a Manifestation of God and an incarnation of God.
“The Christian equivalent to the Bahá'í concept of Manifestation is the concept of
incarnation. The word to incarnate means 'to embody in flesh or 'to assume, or exist in, a bodily (esp. a human) form (
Oxford English Dictionary). From a Bahá'í point of view, the important question regarding the subject of incarnation is, what does Jesus incarnate? Bahá'ís can certainly say that Jesus incarnated Gods attributes, in the sense that in Jesus, Gods attributes were perfectly reflected and expressed.
[4] The Bahá'í scriptures, however, reject the belief that the ineffable essence of the Divinity was ever perfectly and completely contained in a single human body, because the Bahá'í scriptures emphasize the omnipresence and transcendence of the essence of God…..
One can argue that Bahá'u'lláh is asserting that
epistemologically the Manifestations are God, for they are the perfect embodiment of all we can know about God; but
ontologically they are not God, for they are not identical with God's essence. Perhaps this is the meaning of the words attributed to Jesus in the gospel of John: 'If you had known me, you would have known my Father also' (
John 14:7) and 'he who has seen me has seen the Father (
John 14:9)…..
The New Testament, similarly, contains statements where Jesus describes Himself as God, and others where He makes a distinction between Himself and God. For example, 'I and the Father are One (
John 10:30); and 'the Father is in me, and I am in the Father (John 1038); but on the other hand, 'the Father is greater than I (
John 14:28); and 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone (
Mark 10:18;
Luke 18:19). These statements do not contradict, but are complementary if one assumes they assert an epistemological oneness with God, but an ontological separateness from the Unknowable Essence.”
Jesus Christ in the Bahá'í Writings
Matthew 1:23 He is Emanuel, God with us, not a shadow, or appearance but God who took on flesh and became a man. Now he is fully man, and from eternity is God the only Begotten SON, MEANING HE IS NOW THE FIRSTBORN OF ALL CREATION, REPLACING ADAM, who failed to keep the commandments of God and brought sin to all mankind. God needed a man to bring about a new race. A new creation. He became man and thru the Son delivered us from our sins. Jesus is the Last Adam who has redeemed a people for himself that all who would believe in HIM, HE gives them the right to become Children of God. Only God can do that.
Philippians 2:6-8
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Jesus is Fully man, he limited himself to do this while on earth, he laid aside his omnipotence for a time, and subjected himself to taking on the form of a man, and became the perfect example for all mankind in his relationship to the father, which by the way I did not say he is the Father, as the Father is not the Son, it is beyond our understadning but that is what true faith is. Believing in what the Word says though we don't understand. This will happen in time, but for now we simply take God for his word. You spoke of many scriptures that absolutley speak of Jesus and the Father being two distinct beings, but yet Isaiah says
Isaiah 43:11 You are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you may consider and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, and after Me none will come. 11
I, yes I, am the LORD, and there is no Savior but me.
So there seem to be many contradictions unless you understand that Jesus and the Father are TRULY ONE GOD. This again is a divine mystery that will not be fully understood on this side of eternity.
You can use scriptures to try to prove whatever you want to prove by picking and choosing what supports your views.
Then I can find other scriptures that support my views, and this can go on endlessly. I prefer to share my views and you can share yours and then we can see what our views have in common.
The Son, who is in eternal relation to the Father and Spirit, did not have to humble himself and choose to assume a human nature because the Son of God had BOTH a human nature and a divine nature. That means that God conferred upon Jesus a spiritual nature that ordinary humans do not possess. God assigned a twofold nature upon Jesus, the physical, pertaining to the world of matter, and the spiritual nature, which is born of the substance of God Himself. You can call that His divine nature.
I will leave you with this passage that explains the twofold nature of Jesus.
“Unto this subtle, this mysterious and ethereal Being He hath assigned a twofold nature; the physical, pertaining to the world of matter, and the spiritual, which is born of the substance of God Himself. He hath, moreover, conferred upon Him a double station. The first station, which is related to His innermost reality, representeth Him as One Whose voice is the voice of God Himself. To this testifieth the tradition: “Manifold and mysterious is My relationship with God. I am He, Himself, and He is I, Myself, except that I am that I am, and He is that He is.” …. The second station is the human station, exemplified by the following verses: “I am but a man like you.” “Say, praise be to my Lord! Am I more than a man, an apostle?”
