Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
And that is what I have been doing. The descriptions given would point to three that have a unity that we cannot comprehend. But it would seem that you (and Lee, and a few others before him) are determined to fill in the gaps beyond what the descriptions provide.
I do not disagree that the terms have been used for hundreds of years. But I notice that when someone manages to use a word that is more like what Lee used, it is presumed that they mean what Lee meant. But I find nothing that makes that true.
And the trend continues. When the portions from the Gill article said things like "hypostatic[al] union" either you or Evangelical swept in to further define that by saying that it meant that the three could not be so separate as for the Father to not be present at the crucifixion as a participant on the cross, not just observing. But there is nothing that makes that so. Nothing found in the scripture. No matter how one we are, if either of us goes out at rush hour and is run over by a truck, the other does not even know it happened until told. We do not feel the pain.
Of course I admit that on a good day we may have not arrived at the oneness that Jesus prayed about. But if he felt the need to pray about it, it should be something that we expect to happen at a point in which prayer for it is important. If it is only about the age to come, then why pray. It will come to be. So if it is for this age, then oneness is not likely something that extreme no matter what term you want o use to label it.
Why do we insist that the oneness of the Godhead be such that they are "simply" each other. That is what Lee would say. That is why he pushed that misreading of 1 Cor. 15:45 to declare that Christ became the Holy Spirit. He was going where the scripture did not go. Not even in that particular verse. The accounts in the scripture provide a rational understanding of "if you've seen me you've seen the Father" without declaring that the Son is simply the Father. (And I have already pointed those out so I will not bother again. If you really want to feign ignorance, ask.)
As I said before, when I take the preponderance of the evidence, I find that there are three that have a unity that is greater than man can achieve. And that unity is not transient or temporal. It is constant and forever. But it does not reach so far as to deny the separation of the three. It would seem that while they are equally capable, they also tend to have their roles to "play." God the Father is not the one who was to come to earth as a man, live, die, and resurrect. That was the Son. And the primary interface with man after the ascension of the Son was through the Spirit. There is nothing in that to deny any of them a part in anything. But the part they take is not forced on them because of hypostatic union, or essence, or some other intrinsic element. That is not supported by any of the verses that I see, including the ones that you and/or Evangelical have brought out for consideration.
Instead, I notice that each verse says something in a context and you or EVG are determined to deny the context and force it into permanent service in all cases and all situations. Your paradigm for how to read the Bible is excessively rigid with regard to words. And Lee pushed that kind of thinking. If there is a word, he would find the first mention, determine its meaning in that place (and in some cases, tell a story to cause it to mean something it really didn't mean) and then declare that it must mean the same thing everywhere it is found.
That is a trap for the ignorant. The only question is whether Lee was truly that ignorant or just his followers.
As for the quotation from John 17, that is not the way all translations read. I will not try to defend one over another except to say that it must not be so certain as to the meaning or they would agree.
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Perhaps you have not thought this through enough to its logical end, to realize that the belief you hold is in error.
If Christ lost his divine nature on the cross then only a man died on the cross. Consider the implications of such a doctrine in regards to eternal salvation and Christ's once for all sacrifice for all mankind. Rather than believing that just a perfect man died on the cross, we believe that a perfect God-man died on the cross. The humanity and the divinity together accomplished salvation for all eternity - it was not an act of humanity alone, or of God alone, but of both the human and divine.
Now we could say that the Father could leave Christ and Christ still retain His divinity on the cross (but it still seems like a step towards Nestorianism to me). But this is not possible, because Christ's divinity came from its divine source - the Father and the Holy Spirit. Christ's Father was divinity and His mother was humanity. Take away the Father and it takes away from Christ's divinity.