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“The fact is the two ideas - preexistence and Virginal birth - cannot be reconciled. A Preexistent person who becomes man reduces himself, if you will, to the state of human embryo; but he is not conceived by action exterior to himself in the womb of a woman. But conception is the point at which...

“Even when you don’t see it, God is working.” - David Jeremiah

“We are not called to proclaim philosophy and metaphysics, but the simple gospel.” - C.H. Spurgeon Now that captures my attention. Maybe that is a reason why the history isn’t taught in churches. But it is the philosophy, and it is the metaphysics, of the early church fathers that produced the...

Why isn’t this history taught in every church? Why isn’t it taught privately in the home? It’s the story of Christianity. It’s how we got where we are. ***

Let’s go back and look at Origen again, with the help of a modern Nicene scholar. “6. Origen’s Helpful Suggestion. It was the many-sided genius of Origen that helped solve the problem. Origen, like Tertullian, was strongly opposed to Monarchianism with its emphasis on monotheism to the...

“Here, I trust, I may be permitted to say, with all due respect for those who differ from me, that the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Christ is, in my opinion, anti-scriptural, and highly dangerous. This doctrine I reject for the following reasons: - 1st. I have not been able to find any...

“Jesus proceeded by eternal generation as the Son of God from the Father in a birth that never took place because it always was.” (Kenneth Wuest, Great Truths To Live By, p. 30) Dr. Wuest was a professor of New Testament Greek at Moody Bible Institute for many years. Eternal generation made...

“The fact that Matthew can speak of Jesus as ‘begotten’ (passive of gennan) in 1:16,20, suggests that for him the conception through the agency of the Holy Spirit is the becoming of God’s Son.” (Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, p. 140) That’s precisely what a Jewish monotheist who...

Thank you for offering me an opportunity to clarify. I believe all that you’ve stated as your belief. I’m in full agreement with every point that you mentioned.

Gabriel says nothing to Joseph and Mary about an Incarnation of the second Person of the Trinity. They were Jewish monotheists. The only God whom they knew and worshipped is the God of the Jews, the Father. Gabriel is telling them how the God of the Jews himself would miraculously...

Rather than focusing on me, I want us to focus in this thread on Luke’s Gospel (and Matthew’s Gospel) and what Gabriel said to Joseph and Mary. The reason Gabriel gives for Jesus being called the Son of God is not the reason which orthodoxy gives for Jesus being called the Son of God / God the...

I’m not interested in debating my belief but I’m open to discussing it. There are few churches like mine anywhere in the world. Orthodoxy has crushed it for 1700 years. My personal faith statement is that I believe in God and I also believe in Jesus of Nazareth. I take it from John 14:1...

“Conception christology and pre-existence christology were two different answers to adoptionism. In the former, God’s creative action in the conception of Jesus (attested negatively by the absence of human fatherhood) begets Jesus as God’s Son. Clearly here divine sonship is not adoptive...

Thanks. I appreciate the effort that you‘ve gone to in order to make certain that I understand your position. I’ve used the same article myself in conversations with trinitarians. It’s a departure from the Jewish monotheism of Israel. It is for that reason that I reject the concept.

I grasp that what you’ve asserted is consistent with trinitarian theology (It’s also consistent with binitarian theology, and with the largest branch of unitarian theology.) Have you grasped that it isn’t consistent with the theology of Jewish monotheism? It’s important that you do. This...

I hadn’t planned to quote A.E. Harvey in this thread but now I think I will. ”In later times the church, no longer perceiving the power and decisiveness of the agent-son-representative model, and having among its members men used to a more philosophical analysis, felt it necessary to go further...

Conception christology is the underpinning of Jewish monotheism. It doesn’t work at all with literal preexistence christology. I’ll soon document this point using trinitarian scholarship. It’s of critical importance for me to keep this uppermost and fixed in your mind. I’m identifying with 1st...

The end result isn’t the same. Jewish monotheism is wholly incompatible with the concept eternal Sonship. It was the key (the Lutheran scholar J.L. Neve calls it his “helpful suggestion” in his A History of Christian Thought) contribution of Origen - eternal generation - which set the stage for...

“In 1:27 Luke tells us twice that Mary was a virgin at the time of the annunciation. This detail is not something that can be explained from the literary pattern of OT annunciations of birth since none of the annunciations cited in Table VIII concerned a woman who was a virgin. A conception by a...