Jesus the Creator (John 1:3)a

© 2019 Tony Garlandb

Trinity (comments in relation to previous session)

  1. “the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1)

  2. One of several critical doctrines which separate Christianity from the other major monotheistic religions: Judaism and Islam (others being original sin, the resurrection)

    1. Judaism rejects

      1. Jacob Neusner on Jesus’ claim to be “Lord of the Sabbath” (Mat. 12:8; Mark 2:28)

        From the perspective of the Torah as I understand it, only God is lord of the Sabbath. . . So I say to the disciple, is it really so that your master, the son of man, is lord of the Sabbath? Then - so I asked before, so I ask again - is your master God? [emphasis mine]1

    2. Islam rejects

      1. Shirk - joining other god’s to God, Qur'an [Surah 4:116]:

        Allah forgiveth not (The sin of) joining other gods with Him; but He forgiveth whom He pleaseth other sins than this: one who joins other gods with Allah, Hath strayed far, far away (from the right).2

      2. Muslim corruption of the verse: “and the Word was GOD’S” [not one Greek manuscript renders it thus]

  3. Misrepresented as multiple gods - this is a “straw man” and not what the trinity entails

    1. Attempting to distill the doctrine of the Trinity to satisfy human logic will always distort the truth.

    2. Walter Martin

      It is also true that the doctrine of the Trinity is not a product of deductive logic or philosophical reasoning. The mind of man would have never conceived of such a doctrine. . . . “No man can fully explain the Trinity, though in every age scholars have propounded theories and advanced hypotheses to explore this mysterious Biblical teaching. But despite the worthy efforts of these scholars, the Trinity is still largely incomprehensible to the mind of man. Perhaps the chief reason for this is that the Trinity is a-logical, or beyond logic. It, therefore, cannot be made subject to human reason or logic. Because of this, opponents of the doctrine argue that the idea of the Trinity must be rejected as untenable. Such thinking, however, makes man's corrupted human reason the sole criterion for determining the truth of divine revelation.” [Walter Martin, Essential Christianity (Santa Anna: Vision House, 1975), 21] cited in [Steve Lewis, “The Doctrine of the Trinity - Part 1”]3

    3. South

      With regard to the Trinity, Shedd quotes from such a sermon by an otherwise unidentified Dr. South: “as he that denies this fundamental article of the Christian religion may lose his soul, so he that much strives to understand it may lose his wits.” [William D Barrick, Inspiration and the Trinity]4

    4. Moberly

      Moberly, . . . declares that “The tensions between time and eternity within trinitarian understanding are part of the mystery of God, where the theologian's task is not to dissolve the tensions but to depict them faithfully. [William D Barrick, Inspiration and the Trinity]5

John 1:3

 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.6

  1. “All things made through Him”

    1. Through is δια [dia] from which we get DIA-METER (through-measurement)

      1. By - the instrument
      2. on behalf of - for the sake of
      3. because of - the participant being the reason or cause

    2. “without Him nothing was made that was made” - in case we missed the point

  2. Jesus as Creator

    1. “World was made through Him” (John 1:10)

    2. “Through whom are all things” (1Cor. 8:6)

    3. “God created all things through Jesus Christ” (Eph. 3:9)

    4. “Through whom also He made the worlds” (Heb. 1:2)

    5. Three titles in relation to creation which can be confusing : 1) beginning; 2) firstborn (related: only-begotten)

      1. “The beginning (ἀρχὴ) of the creation of God” (Rev. 3:14)
        1. Not the first created being — but the first cause behind creation
        2. An idea encountered in the cosmological argumentc - the first cause, deemed to be God, the only “uncaused agent”.
      2. “Firstborn over all creation” (Col. 1:15-18)

        He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.7

        1. πρωτότοκος [prōtotokos] (not μονογενὴς [monogenēs], coming up in John 1:14,18)
          1. different, but related
            1. “born” in firstborn does not mean created
              1. πρωτότοκος [prōtotokos] - birthright, pertaining to the inheritance rights of the firstborn, superior
            2. “begotten” in only begotten does not mean created
              1. μονογενὴς [monogenēs] - unique, only, one of a kind
              2. Isaac - Abraham’s “only begotten” son (Heb. 11:17), but not strictly his only son
        2. firstborn - a position
          1. “Israel is my son, my firstborn” (Ex. 4:22)
            1. From בְּכֹר [beḵōr]

              the first male offspring, the oldest son, with the associative meaning of prominence in the clan and privileges pertaining to clan and inheritance8

          2. “The highest of the kings of the earth” (Ps. 89:27)
          3. “When He [God, the Father] . . . brings the firstborn into the world” (Heb. 1:6)
          4. “The firstborn from the dead” (Rev. 1:5)

  3. BioLogosd

    1. View literal creationists as being akin to flat earthers (an embarrassment to the gospel)

    2. Theistic evolution (God used evolution over long ages) - maintain it is compatible with Bible

      1. Order of Appearance (long-age)

        1. Sun/stars existed before earth; 2. Sun is earth's first light; 3. First life = marine organisms; 4. Reptiles predate birds; 5. Land mammals predate whales; 6. Disease/death precede man.9

      2. Order of appearance (Bible)

        1. Earth created before sun/stars; 2. Light on earth before sun; 3. First life = land plants; 4. Birds predate land reptiles; 5. Whales predate land mammals; 6. Disease/death result from man's sin.10

      3. Day-Age Theory
        1. Day as a thousand years (2Pe. 3:8)?

          But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.11
          "

        2. Day-age theory does not account for age of Adam (Gen. 5:3-5)

  4. Big Bang cosmology - supposedly “objective science” vs. “faith”

    1. Miracles violate known physical laws - cannot be studied, repeated

    2. Three miracles required by the commonly-taught cosmology

      1. #1 - quantum fluctuation in a vacuum produced the big bang
        1. But a vacuum is not nothing - where did the vacuum come from. Plus nobody has any idea what a “quantum fluctuation” in a vacuum is.
        2. Violates 1st law (conservation of matter and energy) : creation of “something” from “nothing”
      2. #2 inflation - violates speed of light
      3. #3 chemical evolution, life from non-life (a biological law)
        1. Darwin - on the origin of life

          In the final chapter of the first edition of Origin (1859), Darwin wrote: I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form into which life was first breathed. That is hardly an endorsement of the spontaneous origin of life. . . . he inserted this final sentence into every subsequent edition of Origin: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. It is clear that Darwin believed in unguided evolution, but it is not clear that he believed in chemical evolution. . . . Then, in 1871 (the year he published The Descent of Man, in which he clearly spells out man’s evolutionary relation to lower life forms for the first time), he dived headlong into the controversy: . . . if (and Oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a proteine [sic] compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes . . . Thus, even Darwin, father of modern evolutionary theory, halted between two opinions on the most important topic of all—how did life begin? [Jonathan Sarfati, The Origin of Life]12

    3. Big-bang cosmology is not scientific (not even science) - It is every bit as faith-based as Creation, except it lacks historical documentation

      Sun Sep 15 18:37:40 2019

      SpiritAndTruth.org Scan Code      e

Endnotes:

1.Ref-0137, 87-88.
2.Ref-0136, Surah 4:116
3.Ref-0785, Volume 12 Num. 35 March 2008, 31:48, p. 31
4.Ref-0164, 24/2 (Fall 2013), 179-197, p. 179
5.Ref-0164, 24/2 (Fall 2013), 179-197, p. 179
6.NKJV, John 1:3
7.NKJV, Col. 1:15-18
8.Ref-0618, #1147
9.Ref-0232, 141
10.Ref-0232, 141
11.2Pe. 3:8, NKJV
12.Ref-1370, loc. 1903-1921

Sources:

NKJVUnless indicated otherwise, all Scripture references are from the New King James Version, copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Ref-0136Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Meaning Of The Holy Qur'an (MD: Amana Publications, 2001).
Ref-0137Jacob Neusner, A Rabbi Talks With Jesus (Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993).
Ref-0164Richard L. Mayhue, ed., The Master's Seminary Journal (Sun Valley, CA: Master's Seminary). [www.mastersem.edu].
Ref-0232Jonathan Sarfati, Refuting Compromise (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2004). ISBN:0-89051-411-9f.
Ref-0618James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament), electronic ed. (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).
Ref-0785Journal of Dispensational Theology, Fort Worth, TX: Tyndale Theological Seminary. [www.tyndale.edu].
Ref-1370Robert Carter, ed., Evolution's Achilles' Heels (Powder Springs, GA: Creation Ministries International, 2014). ISBN:978-1-921643-82-8g.

Links Mentioned Above
a - See https://spiritandtruth.org/teaching/John_by_Tony_Garland/002_John_1_1-3/index.htm.
b - See https://spiritandtruth.org/id/tg.htm.
c - See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument.
d - See http://www.biologos.org.
e - See https://spiritandtruth.org.
f - See https://spiritandtruth.org/id/isbn.htm?0-89051-411-9.
g - See https://spiritandtruth.org/id/isbn.htm?978-1-921643-82-8.