No, I do not have a reading comprehension problem. That Jesus made Himself equal with God by calling God His own Father is the estimation of the author of the gospel of John under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
That is not how it is written...that is why I said that you had problems understanding it.
No, we did not come up with that term because we were losing a debate. The hypostatic union simply means that the Deity of Christ is unified with His humanity in the Person of Jesus Christ.
Ok let me help you out with this....do I have to get on your side of the debate to make it clear...
hypostatic union is a Christological term.....the phrase does not appear in the Bible, but in effect accurate in accordance with the Ecumenical Councils. The most basic explanation for the hypostatic union is Jesus Christ being both fully God and fully man. He is both perfectly divine and perfectly human, having two complete and distinct natures at once. Which equates to man trying to understand God....which is ok as long as it is kept in the context that man does not have the mental or sensory capacities to comprehend any of that....in other words, easier said than understood.
There are a few camps of thought here and I am not going to go over all of them.
The nature of Christ.....Christology. This was a heated debate that eventually made its way to the Ecumenical Councils. What is the nature of Christ? Was He man or a God? Was He man that was made a God? Between God the Father and God the Son who is senior? Why does the character and heart of God the Father and God the Son seem so different. Was Christ a prophet or a God?
Lots of debates that were going on during the time of the Apostles and it all lead up to the Ecumenical Councils. So much information on this I could make it a book.....Christ's ministry starts off kind of rocky, controversies right out of gate. Yahweh impregnated a woman that was betrothed. Now most people are going to think of that like engaged, but in the Mosaic Law and the Jewish culture it is much more than that....And the whole scenario develops some problems.
1..According to Mosaic Law impregnating a woman that was betrothed to another man is adultery. This was a big controversy.
2..The Jews had issues with it because in Pagan mythology it was common for gods to impregnate human females, so the Jews saw this as a Pagan motif trying to infiltrate Judaism. Like we see here on this forum....people believed that angels did not impregnate women and the Jews did not believe God would impregnate a woman.
3..God having relations with a woman was sacrilege to them....even in Christian beliefs this is offensive. So in Christianity this event is left undescribed. Happened somehow....but anything but sex. The belief that sexuality is dirty, nasty, and sinful shows up early in Christianity. So much so that the normal process of Christ's conception and delivery would not be tolerated. Eventually the Church develops a belief that Christ's conception nor His birth had anything to do with the genitals and Miriam was a perpetual virgin.
4..The Jews also had issues with this because they believed that the Messiah would be a fully human warlord king that would take down their oppressors and place them in power over the whole world and they would teach and enforce the Mosaic Law on the world. So this scenario is completely contrary to their understanding of the Messiah or the messianic age that they had been praying and hoping for and believing in for 700 years.
5..And of course inviting the Pagans (Gentiles) into this was sacrilegious to them.
6..In Judaism Elijah is senior to the Messiah.
7..Because of this they were expecting Elijah to return in a fiery chariot to introduce the Messiah in a public way to the nation of Israel.
8..In the Jewish culture if a man showed no interest in women and was not married by the age of 30...it would be assumed that he was homosexual....a disgrace to his family....and it would be sacrilegious for him to assume a position as a religious leader. Of course from the Christian perspective this was something that was normal in this new sect because some of the Apostles were not married either. But the Jews were not ok with this. They were not ok with a man born of a woman being the Son of God. They were not ok with a man-God, that walked among them. They believed a God had to separate Himself from humanity. And they were definitely not ok with a homosexual man-God.
9..To the Jews all of this seemed all to human....in as much as a human conspiracy.
10..Judaism was and is an extremely male dominate religion. No female religious leaders, but there were females in Christ ministry that knew Christ was a God....females that financed His ministry. Miriam, Yeshua's mother knew He was a God....first hand. Messiah more or less means "anointed one" only women anointed Christ. But the Apostles could not use them for examples of proof because the female status in Judaism was like children....they should be seen but not heard.
So why all this about the Jews and the scenarios? The Apostles were Jews and they had to deal with all of this.
So the Apostles started out kind of like behind the eight ball. They started out having to prove that Yeshua is a God. The Son of God but they have to redefine what a son is....in a culture that believes that a son has to be conceived through sex, the Apostles were put in the precarious position of defining a new term. Trying to promote the fact that Yeshua was the real Son of God without being the "real Son" of God.
To make this point as they moved through the New Testament and in effect over compensate, they write that God the Father had given God the Son all authority. They place Him as the Creator God. That He existed before His conception. But according to Yeshua.... Yahweh is His God and His Father. But that is not how the Apostles promote this and by the time the Apostles get done in their attempt to prove Yeshua was a God....nothing is left for God the Father....He is demoted and more or less a janitor with a broom sweeping the halls of Heaven.
But there were a lot of people that do not agree with this and some that believed that Yeshua was not a God....but a prophet. They disagreed on who is senior...Yeshua or Yahweh? The have issues with the seemingly different characters of Yeshua and Yahweh. They disagreed on the nature of the God-man. These disagreements divide Christianity and continue on to the Ecumenical Councils and were debated there among the Christian Bishops.
They could not come to an agreement. Enter Emperor Constantine and he insisted that Christianity be of one belief and would more or less kill any other belief. The Catholic religion has always been about...one belief and the belief that there should only be one belief. So Constantine demanded they come up with a solution......The solution that won out was the doctrine of the Trinity that stated the one God formula. Three persons in one God and it was enforced upon pain of death. Under this doctrine all arguments were made irrielvant....no differences between God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit...
Unfortunately this doctrine caused more questions than it answered....but it did stop the arguments in any official forum. But it set up kind of a conundrum. If the one God formula was true, no action or event could be contributed to any one of them....and Yeshua, and Yahweh, and the Holy Spirit were all nailed on the cross.
So as far as your debate that the Bible indicates that Yeshua is God Almighty and the Creator God....you are correct.
Still there are people that do not believe that and disagree with the Bible....of course they are not going to admit it...that is funny.
But to be honest I too disagree with the Bible on this point. I believe....
Yahweh, God the Father, Supreme God, God Almighty, Creator of heaven, the cosmos, and earth and Adam and Eve.
Yeshua, the real Son of God, a full fledged God, Messiah, and Savior of humanity.
Holy Spirit the unnamed God, a full fledged God, teacher, guide, nourcherer, strengthener, giver of the Christian conscience.
All separate Gods that form a Godhead and sit on three thrones. Separate presence, separate minds, separate wills, separate characters.
I believe that Yeshua is the real and true Son of Yahweh....conceived the normal way.
So that should give you something to think about!
