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I’m currently reading Against The Valentinians by Tertullian.

Luke 12:4-5. When we listen to Jesus and believe what he said, we won’t fear the butterflyman.

I’m not sure that it is. Scientists *gulp * tell us that it’s still expanding. If that’s true, will it always be that way? It might or might not. God could set a boundary on it, perhaps he already has, as he did with the seas. God could also not set any boundary and allow / cause the universe to...

Now we’re back to Jesus saying in his prayer to God that someone - not himself, the one whom he is praying to, the Father - is the only true God. If someone else is also the only true God, I’m satisfied that Jesus would have told us that there is.

No. That would be pantheism. It wasn’t. Thank you for asking about it. Since that thought crossed your mind it may well cross the minds of others, too. This affords me the opportunity to clarify it in advance. Everything that was to be (future) created (brought into being) existed (as an...

Yes, it is. The point is that the early Church believed that the Father alone is God - the Son was, in that case, a highly exalted human person, but not God himself. That’s a very different understanding of subordination, and the Church gradually moved away from it. Origen was instrumental in...

“In the beginning there was the divine word and wisdom. The divine word and wisdom was there with God, and it was what God was. It was there with God, from the beginning. Everything came to be by means of it; nothing that exists came to be without its agency. In it was life, and this life was...

“In the beginning was the plan of Yahweh, and the plan was with Yahweh, and the plan was Yahweh’s. The same plan was in the beginning with Yahweh. All things were done according to it, and without it nothing was done, that was done. In this plan was life, and that life was the light to mankind...

Augustine had a workaround, a solution, for the “somewhat problematic” (to use your characterization) statement made by Jesus which is recorded in John 17:3. “The proper order of the words is, ‘That they may know You and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent, as the only true God.’” (Tractate on...

Never mind. I have more time available now, so I’ll post a couple of translations of the passage myself. “And these things You have hidden in your heart; I know that this was with You.” (NKJV) “But these things you have concealed in your heart; I know that this is with you.” (NET) “Yet these...

Are you afraid of the butterflyman? If so, why?

The early Church was subordinationist, but history documents that it didn’t remain that way. “Origen’s helpful suggestion,” to borrow a phrase from the Lutheran scholar J.L. Neve.

It doesn’t present any problem at all to Jewish monotheists. I’ve also commented to @stunnedbygrace that it needn’t present any problem at all to trinitarians and binitarians. There’s no need for any of us to rush out and burn the Geneva Bible. Or Tyndale’s translation. Or the dozens of others...

Then we won’t agree. You’ll sleep good tonight. So will I. That’s an interesting choice of word. I too think Jesus is God personified. I see in scripture that the Son is subordinate to the Father, his God.

Jesus is the embodiment of all these qualities of the Father. That is why, I suggest, that when we see and hear Jesus we see and hear the Father. Jesus isn’t the Father. Jesus shows us what the Father is like.

We should be able to easily agree on this. I’m often asked by trinitarians and binitarians if agreeing to this means that they must abandon trinitarianism and binitarianism. The answer is no, they don’t.

What is so terribly difficult about the concept that Jesus is the Father’s word incarnate? What is so terribly difficult about the concept that Jesus is the Father’s love incarnate? What is so terribly difficult about the concept that Jesus is the Father’s reason incarnate? What is is so...

Every translation I’ve posted (and I have many more yet to post) captures and conveys the right idea.

And more, which I will go on to show. Yes. When did that happen? At the begetting of the Son in the womb of the virgin.

Jesus isn’t an it. The Father’s word is an it. The Father created by speaking what was in his mind into being. When it (the Father’s word) became flesh, Jesus (he) was begotten, conceived and born. The Father’s Spirit hovered over the waters. The Father’s Spirit hovered over Mary. Creation...