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It's nice when people express different views. I'm unconvinced by yours, you're unconvinced by mine, but we are being respectful. That's the main thing.

Agreed.

I'm not forcing pre-existence. John 17:5 says what it says.

I agree with all of this, my friend -- but where are you distilling the notion that Christ was yearning to see the Father for the FIRST time? That comment of yours in Post #59 was all I was addressing.

Once the gentiles were admitted to the Christian faith, they became monotheists with no need to call the one God ho theos in order to distinguish him from other gods in which they no longer believed.

Good point, Aunty.

Nothing in John 17 says that he would be seeing the Father for the first time. Verse 5 suggests the opposite.

I guarantee you, the first Greek-speaking Christians -- Jewish though they were -- had no qualms whatsoever about referring to Yahweh by theos or ho theos or any of a dozen other monikers. Using the definite article to distinguish the God of Israel from some lesser deity wasn't even on their...

Anthropomorphic references, all of them. The Biblical authors you cite naturally used descriptive concepts they understood. Just as we would expect.

Sorry, references to God's hands are figurative -- without exception.

Are we really discussing what the Jews did and didn't do to refer to God IN GREEK?

I agree with most everything you say here -- except the accusation that I don't adhere to tradition, of course. Oral Tradition and Scripture are indeed both authoritative. (Didn't I already say so?) The trick with the oral tradition is figuring out what it is, in it original and unadulterated...

Sorry, but "God is spirit" (John 4:24). No hands. Don't take everything so literally, my friend! (Next you'll be declaring that "Asahel was as swift of foot as a wild gazelle” (2 Samuel 2:18). Usain Bolt would have had no chance against him!)

Most people use the word "Trinity" to reference three "persons" in one God. Tritheism and Trinitarianism are not considered the same.

Well, not external ones anyway. Mary's ovaries may have played a role. If we compared her DNA to Jesus's, I wonder what we'd find. :rolleyes:

Agree.

It is indeed remarkable and humbling. My inquiry was more philosophical. If spirit "became" (egeneto) flesh, the flesh in question didn't precede that becoming. Quite the opposite. The incarnation wasn't an instance of spirit entering into a pre-existing fetus.

Interesting question: Was the child in existence, even for a moment, BEFORE that entry? If not, then we should understand "The Word became flesh" as fleshy endowment of spirit rather than as spirit infusion of flesh.

Believing something not in Scripture is not denying Scripture. Denying Scripture entails believing something that Scripture explicitly gainsays.

Lusting in one's heart isn't a physical activity either. Though I do think God would have disapproved of the Israelites desiring in their hearts to construct a graven image they might worship -- even if they didn't act on that desire.