Some more thoughts on the interpretative process around The Father Is Greater Than I

LAST TIME RICOEUR was examined here on this blog we established three fundamentals:

1. Hermeneutic task of discerning the apparent and hidden meanings
2. Group persons are real agents, with memory, desires, goals, moral responsibility, etc. Personality is like a culture and vice versa.
3. Hermeneutic understanding of oneself via understanding of other. On this third point I am reminded of the "wildly divergent" (Holmes) attempts of certain Trinitarian theorists to see their own vision of the Trinity as a blueprint for the church. Take John Zizioulas, for instance. He sees the Trinity this way, and yet sees the connections between the Members as fundamentally relational not ontological. What would Ricoeur suggest this reflects about him and his relationships between churches or within churches? Leonardo Boff is adamant: Zizioulas' proposals are far from relational, they are heavy and political:

[T]he trinitarian vision produces a vision of a church that is more communion than hierarchy, more service than power, more circular than pyramidal, more loving embrace than bending the knee before authority. 

(L. Boff, Trinity and Society, (Liberation and Theology, vol. 2), Tunbridge Wells: Burns & Oates, 1998, p154.)

The similarity in the goals between these two Trinitarian theologians seems to illustrate the point well. It would seem that the perception of the church and of God are indeed tightly bound up with who we are as persons and our personal history.

Moving onward today to p. 42 in Conflit des Interprétations, Ricoeur points out a certain insufficiency of the Cartesian "I think therefore I am". What's wrong with it? You have to start somewhere, don't you? The issue, for Ricoeur, is that you don't only start there, you stop there too. It is a deposited truth claim that can neither be verified or deduced: The cogito is not only a truth as vain as it is invincible; we must add, as well, it is like an empty space which has, from all time, been occupied by a false cogito. We have indeed learned from all the exegetic disciplines and from psychoanalysis in particular, that so-called immediate consciousness is first of all "false consciousness"... a philosophy of reflection must be just the opposite of a philosophy of a philosophy of consciousness...textual exegesis of consciousness collides with the initial "misinterpretation" of false consciousness. Moreover, since Schleiermacher, we know that hermeneutics is found wherever there was first misinterpretation. 

This is a long quote, but you'll see why we need all of it, please keep reading:

Thus reflection must be doubly indirect: first, because existence is evinced only in the documents of life, but also because consciousness is first false consciousness, and it is always necessary to rise by means of a corrective critique from misunderstanding to understanding.

Yes, you may have noticed that the translations are pretty good today - I have found an officially translated version of Conflits available here, p. 18, trans. Kathleen Mclaughlin).

I'm hoping readers are beginning to get the picture. Lots has been said in hermeneutics about how readers today might interpret a text (or misinterpret a text), how that interpreted meaning spirals back into a larger conceptual whole that is an integrated part of our being, modifying it, affirming it and preparing the person for the next interaction with that text. But since hermeneutics is associated with the contemporary task of interpreting important texts such as the Bible or the State Laws, it seems to have slipped our notice that this might well be a vital historical phenomenon as well. In fact, from all that we have seen of Ricoeur thus far, I would say it utterly confirms it, especially when we accept with List and Pettit (2011, 162-163) and Copp (1979) that we can correctly deduce "joint control" in a group via a mechanism of "multi-level causality", that the ecumenical decisions made were groupal and in response to opposing groupal misinterpretations.

So what you would do if you were an intelligent-but-stranded Amazonian who dug up an English Bible, somehow taught herself to read through it and read "the Father is greater than I", what a Unitarian might read when she reads "the Father is greater than I", and what a Trinitarian (Triune God Advocate) might read when she reads "the Father is greater than I" are three quite different processes, all of which contain groupal and multi-level components.

Let's take the Amazonian first. She has spent months, maybe years, trying to cypher this enormous book - not because she wants to waste her time, she has plenty of other tasks she would normally be doing to help maintain her tribe as specialised in fishing and preparing the tar needed to make fishing vessels. But time has been thrust upon her, and she is reading out of curiosity that is fed by the dream that she might one day be rescued and returned to her tribe to share her knowledge with her kinfolk. The fact that this extraordinary Jesus character even could have been considered as great as the creator god may simply add to her marvel of this historic man, and she may not gloss over it so quickly.

The Biblical Unitarian's core tenet, please excuse me Biblical Unitarians reading this and please feel free to correct me below, is that Jesus is not God since only the Father is God, and so when a member of this "tribe" comes across this Jesus statement, the thought flashes through her mind: What more evidence do you need?! She certainly is less likely to gloss over it, it will be actively affirming and feeding the self-knowledge of the reader in a profound way in preparation for subsequent readings. This is a particularly important process of integration of interpretation for the Biblical Unitarian, since, like with many small denominations, they represent a small minority, that sense of identity needs to be more carefully and intentionally hewn. Someone deciding to become a Catholic hardly need consider themselves too deeply with theology or church practice, but a thinly-spread minority group with a non-mainstream reading of the Christian texts, needs to have well-affirmed readers. Notice the potential for emotional reaction. That reaction is in line with the group's marginal status and potential for rejection. It is also a development within the Biblical Unitarian's interpretative matrix precisely because there exists a perceived misinterpretation (or "false consciousness"). Readers do well at this point to remember that we all belong to groups and that we as individuals are simply unable to fully bear the loads of our predecessors.

What about the Trinitarian coming to this passage? Well, I used to be a Triune-God advocate myself, as most readers know, and I also for a short time considered myself a Biblical Unitarian. Now I have run out of theological carparks to park my car, although I hope the Trinitarians might still find some space for me in their basement. My feeling is that Trinitarians probably read the text in the widest variety of ways. As Christians, we are free to read the text slowly, fast, for facts, for deep meditation, reading plans around a topic for a "biblical understanding" on a topic. We might put it to music or commit it to memory. As such, a single text to the human mind becomes a veritable plethora of meaning that cannot be reduced to any simple layer of meaning. It truly does dance and shape our sense of self. But what happens when the Triune God Advocate reads "The Father is Greater than I"? Such an apparently contravening statement to the idea of co-equality in the godhead might seem shocking, but as my exchange here with Sam Fornecker illustrates, there is no "feeling of tension" generated by this text that you might for Triune God Advocates - literally, none (I am still waiting for Sam to pick up the conversation there, I think he has left some of my questions in an unsatisfactory state of suspense). No feeling of tension in the face of such a "clear" text might leave the Unitarian at something of a loss for words. But the bigger interpretation is too deep, too historical, too liturgical, much brought forth in prayer and worship to be swept aside by a verse putting co-equality into question, as if for the first time. Generally speaking, the careful Trinitarian reader will simply keep reading. For any "difficult text", the general advice is almost invariably to "step back" from the text and try to get the bigger picture of what is going on here. However, and I mean no disrespect here, the majority of readers are not highly nuanced "Triune God Advocates". They are simply Christians reading through the popular gospel of John and looking for ways to deepen their faith and sense of connection with God. They may quite simply just keep reading, drinking in the depth of the outplaying of this threefold relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They may be imploring the Holy Spirit to now come powerfully into situation X, Y or Z in this amazing way that Jesus said we would do things, even more, with even more "greatness" than he did.

The Christian apologist, however, has a quite different reading process in mind. Like a great chess-player, he is trying to foresee his imaginary opponents' next moves and is not really in a deep interaction process of his own. Rather he or she is going through his armoury, checking the ammo stores are full, the key citation grenades pins are primed and the lie-guided missiles fully online... that's right, he's a warrior! A great fighter for the Church! I don't even want to probe his or her next steps on this verse. I tend to find some of their efforts a little sickening.

Notice not only the variety of these examples but their huge limitation. There are many, many more contemporary possibilities and nuances today, both individual and denominational (or groupal). Even if such an in-depth study were possible, it would be representative of the interpretative ranges operative today. That is why it is important for us to study the church fathers - and I intend to do some longer excursions on this blog in the future - in order to see how interpretation was operated in both "victorious" (orthodox) groups and, as far as it is possible to ascertain, the "unvictorious" groups.

To return, then, to the insufficiency of cogito, we see a disenfranchised uni-layered reading as both a non-starter and a non-finisher. It is nothing. But interpretation rises or rather arises out of a corrective movement by a victorious group of interpreters over misinterpreting opponents. What gives rise to that "victory"? That's a huge question I shan't attempt here, I simply mention it as it seems to a necessary one to ask in light of today's steps. Nonetheless, it is probably worth noting that the Triune Hub hypothesis suggests that in order for a stable religious bedrock to establish itself, it became increasingly clear as each off-kilter wave of teaching was refuted that this stability required co-centricity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, perhaps even more than the New Testament texts, in order to hold the New Testament texts. Every time the church went through a process of refutation, via apologists such as Irenaeus or Justin Marty, by ensuring the co-centricity of the Father, Son and Spirit, the church herself was constructing her own stability, her own "being" as the hermeneutic circle continued to turn, and so did the "WHOLE".

See also my post: https://faithandscripture.blogspot.fr/2017/07/hermeneutic-circle-and-asking-better.html

Blog reader question: "the Father is greater than I" - Jesus Christ

Something of a milestone has been reached in the last month - actual interaction on the blog! Some of the questions and comments in the sections underneath each post are really interesting and thought-provoking for me, so thanks, I really do genuinely appreciate the interaction, even if I do wish there was even more. Hopefully that'll come. The best theology is done together.

I put quite a lot of thought into my last post on the hermeneutic circle - indeed, it was probably by far the longest post, I think, that I have ever done on this blog at around 1600 words. But the length fortunately didn't seem to throw off Jonathan B., a French reader in London. Here's his question:

You seem to fault the authors of 2nd Sirmium for their interpretation of "the Father is greater than I", but for what reason exactly? According to you, is it false to say that the Father is greater and the Son subordinate? (let's forget about 4th-century ontology and just stick to the terms greater/subordinate in their 1st-century sense)

Don't you think these legitimate concerns about protecting the religious 'centricity' should not go as far as to prevent us from using plain scriptural vocabulary/notions?

Excellent questions.

First on the impression that I may have left about finding fault in the 2nd Sirmium Creed's insistence that the Son is inferior in greatness to the Father. Not my intention, I am not judging it. I mentioned in my last post that in 2014 I went through a deconstruction process in my faith, which eventually led to the opening of this blog in the Autumn of that year. That was and remains part of my reconstruction process, albeit to a new and more nuanced understanding. On that journey of deconstruction then reconstruction, I won't hide that there have been points where I seriously doubted the ultimate truth behind the biblical worldview we're all so studiously pondering. I associate these times of doubt not with any knock-down atheist arguments, but with the fact that my previous Christian worldview was profoundly called into question, that I myself (without any assistance from anyone else) have dug up and continue to dig up some rather curious paradoxes in my Christian faith, which have nothing or little to do with the Trinity, and also an illness, which can leave me mentally quite drained. The combination of all these factors has led me at various times to not just prefer but need to take the pressure away from my own personal faith, and examine more closely what they believed, by which I in 2015 I meant the first-century (as opposed to the late fourth-century) Christians. That was my 2015 move. My 2016-17 move is to integrate subsequent reflections as helpful hermeneutic interpretations of what preceded them, thus helping us better understand "plain" and "less plain" first century texts (which, let us remember, are not the origin of that Christian hermeneutic circle).

My personal journey, I believe, is not irrelevant (that is obvious anyway if you read Ricoeur - same is true for everyone). My own worldview has been so seriously shaken and deep views changed so quickly that while I don't claim to be neutral, I don't think I can be much more shaken up than I already have been. I have changed my mind several times on some important issues. I have areas of disagreement with everyone I read (including some of my favourite authors like Tuggy, Wright, Hurtado, Crossan and Holmes). My process has led me to be skeptical about a lot of things, including my own opinions. And that is why at this time of my life, I am not asking myself whether I believe that in all his might and glory Jesus Christ might actually be a bit inferior (according to my ideas of what inferiority and superiority might be) to God the Father. What I want to know is historically what these questions you are asking, Jonathan, might have meant then, in the late first century and in light of the decades preceding it. I can't shortcut that, not anymore. It's personally too precarious.

So for the question:  is it false to say that the Father is greater and the Son subordinate?  - I really don't care much what I think about that at this time, although I am delighted that verse is there. What interests me from a first-century perspective is to ask why on Earth would John have Jesus say this? What were his hermeneutic concerns? If you really want a direct point of view on something from me: I don't think Jesus necessarily mouthed those words, the Father is greater than I, in 30 AD. Probably not, in fact. From what I see elsewhere about other interpretations, recollections and reconstructions of the life of Jesus, his custom was as a faithful Jew to regularly attend his local synagogue, spend lots of time in prayer with God (whom he called both "Father" and "God"), do all his miraculous work via the Holy Spirit and in fact be in a symbolic-yet-real and exemplary sense the "son" of Yahweh that Israel had refused - none of the major emphases of Jesus' historic life point to any need to clarify any such ideas of equivalence. 

Yet, I don't see John's gospel as a fictional account! In fact, I am kind of wondering if his is the most direct record we have from any of the Twelve even if it were written so late. I suspect that John, in line with his emphatic conclusion in John 20:31, recalled along with his community, the sense of extraordinary divine empowerment and legitimacy of Jesus' messiahship and sonship. I wrote a short post on this two years ago, entitled "Seeing the Father in Jesus", which includes some example verses to this effect. Jesus' messiahship is frankly not a question that many Christians care much about, and this is perhaps also a reflection of how Christological developments unfolded slowly away from Judaism. However, what did not diminish was the status of the texts themselves as canon formation became an increasing concern. And so we have the first-century concern of establishing Jesus' messiahship along with some radical redefinitions of what that fulfillment meant and did not mean. 

So with this controversial statement, which during my rejection period of the Trinity stood as a glaring proof against the validity of the fourth-century emergence of the tri-personal God, it is not as simple to assert: the Bible said it "plainly". If we adopt the critical historical route, which I most certainly want to do, and want to integrate hermeneutics as fully active in the first-century, which I also most certainly want to do, then I have to realise that John's book was, along with the other gospels, a deeply theological and christological work rooted in real-world events and locations, intended to shape and protect (or "preserve") the Johannine community's faith. As a result, I conclude that it is distinctly possible that "Father-eclipsing" was a likely phenomenon as early as the first century in some circles. Amazing, huh?! To answer the question more fully, however, I confess I'd like to know more (perhaps more than is publicly known) about the location in which this gospel was composed, the relationship of the community with its Jewish roots and a good number of other things besides.

So in short: I don't fault Sirmium, I simply am grateful that we have such an explicit, succinct and clear presentation of the paradox that was perceived to threaten a stable and sustainable Trinity. I also think deeper engagement with the hermeneutic circle prevents us from access to "plain scriptural vocabulary/notions", as plain as some might appear to us.

Thanks Jonathan for your question.

A new (very small additional) argument for a Triune Divinity from canonicity

...The second part that is overlooked is early Christianity. Did the early christians think that Jesus was Fully Divine, where that means that Jesus has all the Divine attributes? No they didn't. It's a matter of record that leading mainstream theologians taught that Jesus was not eternal, Jesus does not know as much as the Father, Jesus doesn't have the same kind of power, Jesus isn't good in the same way - his goodness depends on the goodness of God, whereas God has his goodness independently. Who am I talking about? Mainstream theologians in the 100s, and in the 200s and even into the 300s. When they came to a text like: "The Father is greater than I", they just said: yes, see: "greater". They didn't say greater with respect to his human nature but equally great with respect to his divine nature". And when he said he didn't know the day or the hour, they said "yes, only God is omniscient". Jesus isn't omniscient, he says he doesn't know something, you don't want to say he's a liar, right? You just don't find most early Christians saying that Jesus is fully divine. You see them saying things that go very clearly against that. Even after they're speculating about the pre-existent logos, the logos is divine, even after they're calling Jesus "our God", they'll turn right around and say the one True God is the Father, and only he is eternal, only he is perfect in knowledge and so on. And as we have just looked at, this claim that Jesus is fully divine is fully loaded with problematic speculations; it always was.

- Dale Tuggy, 2016, http://trinities.org/blog/podcast-145-tis-mystery-immortal-dies/ at ‘Tis Mystery all - 21st Century Reformation Theological Conference 30/04/2016

For me, originally a die-hard exegesis fan (and the die-hard is not dead yet), this argument is very significant. In my paper Trinitarian Interpretations, I argued that if we are right about the early church Fathers not believing that God was Triune, then we have a problem. One of the solutions I considered, which I have never heard argued, is that the inspired 1st century authors were so inspired that they were literally centuries ahead of their subsequent interpreters. Most people prefer to argue that the earlier (Ehrman would call them "proto-orthodox") theologians, were roughly right, but they were less refined or something like that.

I think there are quite a few theologians who believe the conciliar Christologies are basically on track and that this perspective simply takes a very long time to work out (and it is not finished yet, and its various interpretations today are multiple and mutually-incompatible). That might mean that non-triune things are said in the Scriptures, which, if all are to be considered true on a deep level, that you end up with something looking like a form of Trinitarianism. But God set the whole thing up for a huge debate from an obscure beginning in order for it to stand somehow (because it didn't come easily; paradoxically because it was not as blazingly obvious as evangelical apologists like to assume and argue today). That's an argument I'd be more open to: but I think I have another option still. These beliefs about the Triune God began around about the same time the canon was sealed, so to speak. It could be argued that the wrestling and debating going on with regard to canonicity are not independent of the christological wrestling. Had the canon been clearer earlier, then maybe the Triune God perspective would have emerged earlier too. The same church that decided these are the books, is the church that said, this is our Christ.

My position might be considered to drift. It isn't, or hasn't much. I still firmly believe given the lack of clarity and the supreme position of the Scriptures, the close proximity of the church Fathers in terms of chronological interpretive distance, that we have to allow for greater breadth and tolerance and welcome differing views of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. For me, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit remain central to church life, individual faith and the advancing Kingdom of God. And that has always been the case for me.

This is where the Biblical Unitarian communities, I think, also need to be careful. They can be so sceptical of a whiff of a "divine" Christ, that it could be harder for them (I speculate) to worship Jesus, even if they knew it was to the glory of God the Father, as explicitly stated in Philippians 2.

Let the debate roll on!

Worshipping Christ and God the Father, Philippians 2:11 bringing correction in paradoxical places

Charismatic and evangelicals are typically very excited about worshipping Jesus: and that's great! That is precisely what the Bible teaches explicitly that Christians should do. In this post we shall see, however, how both Charismatics and Unitarian expressions of worship can miss one of the most important nuances of early Christianity (and for once I am not dividing first and fourth century beliefs, despite the huge developments in this period).

To the right of this post there are a bunch of keywords: if you click on the keyword "worship", you will realise that this topic is of real interest and concern to me, partly because, I helped lead worship in my local church for about 10 years. These posts, which one day should be integrated into a separate website flagging up the dangerous expressions of modalism in church (I am an antimodalist!), combine worship lyrics, videos and theological analysis of a few of the more recent "offerings". They range from inoffensive to shocking, the worst of which has incredibly even been hailed as the "grandfather" of modern Trinitarian worship (Chris Tomlin's "How Great is our God", see the post here). The problem is that with some of these songs, the notion of worshipping Christ to the glory of his Father is absent. It is like we want to adopt just part of the famous Philippian's poem, or pay lip-service alone to the final lines.

How do non-Trinitarians (or as I am now preferring, non-Triune God advocates, I should post on this soon) respond to the idea that worship is supposed to be for God alone? First it is stated that the word for worship in Greek (proskuneo) has a wider range of meaning than in English, and is applied and expected in the company of human royalty as well as before a god. One Old Testament passage is frequently cited where both Yahweh and the king (David) receive worship from the people (1 Chronicles 29:20  Then David said to the whole assembly, “Praise the LORD your God.” So they all praised the LORD, the God of their fathers; they bowed down, prostrating themselves before the LORD and the king). Because the Hebrew and Greek words also mean physically prostrating, most translations are careful in that instance to use the prostrating option (you can see the proskuneo choices at play in Matthew 2 in the birth of Jesus). Secondly, it is stated that in the book of Revelation in particular, worship for Jesus the lamb of God is actually spiritual, religious or even "divine", but that even in that context, God and Jesus are still carefully distinguished (perhaps in a vein similar to Ephesians 1, where even exalted and enthroned with authority over all creation, Jesus is still distinguished from Jesus' father, who is also Jesus' God. Twice). But is this worship of Christ of the same order as that which was required toward the Old Testament kings of Israel alongside Yahweh?

No.

Paradoxically, like some charismatic songwriters, Non-triune God advocates may also fail to chew sufficiently on the end of the christological poem in Philippians:

T O   T H E   G L O R Y   O F   G O D   T H E   F A T H E R

Agency is a very well documented second-temple Jewish dynamic, including in the inter-testament period, and this continues into the New Testament (e.g. have you ever noticed that in Hebrews Jesus is referred to as God's apostle? Another post needed...) . The point is that sometimes in a desire to stress the distinctions between Jesus and God, non-Triune God advocates can perhaps lose focus of the fact that agency (mediation) works two ways. Jesus does not only mediate God's salvation to mankind, but he mediates worship back to the Father. I don't think the Philippians model is totally representative or normative, in part because you do have the Chronicles model (Christ and God the Father receiving worship alongside) renewed in Revelation.

How odd that both these interpretive lenses might stumble on Philippians 2:11, when they disagree so fiercely on what the rest of it means.

Oh yes, one final thing. A rather arrogant site here (Canadian - not usually known for being arrogant, but there you go) defending the doctrine of the Triune God points out that antiTrinitarians (God help them) are silly, blind etc to miss that the poem Paul cites clearly paraphrases a passage in Isaiah 43:23-24, where it is to Yahweh that everyone must bow and every tongue confess allegiance. Not only that, but Paul himself brings that passage back up again in Romans 14:9-12 and applies it to the Father. So this OT passage for Paul, it is claimed, is applied to both the Father and the Son. That is correct, but it can still fail to integrate fully Jesus' two-way mediation and inherited name (Hebrews 1). The Father is always in the picture.

Happy trinitarian worshipping!

Throwing Thomas some trinitarian credit... [updated]

Today I am providing the next part of my new sub-chapter into explicit references of Jesus being called "God".

John 20:28 – My Lord and my God!

John 20:28 brings us to what is probably the most explicit attribution to Jesus of the title “God” in the whole New Testament. Furthermore, and unlike in John 1:1, the definite article preceding "God" is also significantly present (ho Theos). The context of this famous declaration is that Jesus has now been raised and most of his disciples had seen him and been “breathed on” by him – but not Thomas. Like some other disciples, Thomas has doubts. Jesus subsequently confronts him and commands him to stop doubting and believe. Thomas’ response is “My Lord and my God” (and to worship – it is not clear if he actually takes up Jesus on his invitation to touch his wounds, but presumably not according to this account).

In this immediate context of doubt about God’s resurrection of Jesus and the disciples’ own empowerment through Jesus’ breathing in v22-23, why might Thomas say “My Lord and my God” to Jesus? Of course it is possible that despite the multiple distinctions within John’s gospel between Jesus and his Father God, that Thomas supernaturally glimpsed something of a totally different level to John, which concerned Jesus’ very nature (or natures). Maybe – because of the explicit wording we have to be open to it, or it might also be argued to work nicely in tandem with the prologue (the God-Word became flesh). However, since good Trinitarian theology is about big-picture reality of the life of God, there are some other contextual considerations that should be integrated into the exegetical analysis before developing theology from such a rare and apparently explicit statement.

The first consideration is to properly account for the author’s perspective. Although Thomas is “speaking” here, John is also speaking throughout. It is not likely therefore that Thomas will have a different insight to Jesus’ identity to that which John now holds 60 years later around A.D. 90. Within this very same chapter, Thomas’ statement is framed by two significant facts. Firstly, when the raised Jesus addresses Mary Magdalene, he freely and inclusively talks to her of his (and your) Father being his (and your) God (20:17) – so here John has another explicit and quite different statement about Jesus, that he and Mary share the same Father and God (see 7.3 God is the God of Jesus/Jesus has a God/Jesus is the servant of God). Secondly, the purpose of the book itself is plainly stated (20:31) so that, concerning Jesus’ identity, John earnestly wants to convince his readers of Jesus’ identity claim. This claim, which is demonstrably not in Cappadocian terms, states simply: the Messiah and the Son of God. For John, the Father is always in view and never confused with the Son. So why on earth might both “Lord” and “God” seemingly be attributed to the one Jesus here in John 20:28?

A minor second consideration is a hidden distinction in the Greek, which emphasises the third point I will develop below. It would have been possible for Thomas to simply state: “the Lord and God of me!” Yet, he does not do that. What he actually says in the Greek is: “the Lord of me and the God of me!”

With this in mind, let us move on to the final and most important consideration of John’s purpose here: spurring disciples to know God the Father in Christ. When we zoom in on just this passage for doctrinal purposes, Thomas’ character (and belief) development within John’s gospel are often sadly lost. For in addition to the primary goal of revealing Jesus’ identity as God’s Messiah and Son, John is also desperate for people to respond to the revelation he is chronicling, and truly believe this dual (and to a less emphasised extent, triple) reality. It seems impossible that this dual reality could be an incredible revelation of Christ’s two natures! The dual reality is seeing both Christ and God-the-Father-in-Christ. Believing (and its antithesis, doubting) are key themes for him, so in encouraging late first century disciples in their belief, tracking Thomas’ spiritual journey would have made a lot of sense. Just look at how Jesus immediately responds to Thomas in the following verse: “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”. So to understand Thomas’ “belief development”, we need to go back six chapters to chapter 14, where both Thomas and Philip question Jesus about belief. Belief is to be in God and in his Son (14:1), you cannot short-circuit Jesus to the Father (14:6), and the Father is present in the Son. If you see the Son then your desire to see the Father is satisfied, not because the Father is the Son, but because the Father is in the Son. You cannot have one without the other. This is the journey that John is so keen to show his disciples and readers later on. Zoom forward three chapters to John 17:3, and Jesus prays this: Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Jesus and the Father are to be known, both of them. For Thomas as-yet without the Holy Spirit, that means knowing (and believing in) the still-present Jesus and, through that Jesus, knowing their common Father.

In light of these three considerations, it therefore seems quite possible to me that in 20:28, Thomas finally understands that the Father, who in first century parlance is the one who is properly called “God” in the genitive sense, that this Father is indeed in the Son (John 14:10). Thomas might well then state “the Lord of me (a title in the possessive form that is never attributed to God in the Bible but always to human authorities[6]) and the God of me” (specifically stating belief of the Father’s presence, truly and astoundingly in Jesus).

It is somewhat ironical that the traditional interpretations, which have pushed for simple divinity interpretations, have frequently failed to identify and develop the deeper trinitarian and Johannine themes here of the Father in the Son. 18^th century commentaries such as Matthew Henry (We must believe his deity—that he is God; not a man made God, but God made man, as this evangelist had laid down his thesis at first, ch. 1:1[7]) have provided a normative precedent away from vertical contextualisation in this case. Much later that century, British bishop Brooke F. Westcott, unsurprisingly[8], was more careful with the text, despite his failure to specifically join the dots to the Father’s indwelling presence through his Holy Spirit (my emphasis):

The discipline of self-questioning, followed by the revelation of tender compassion and divine knowledge, enabled St. Thomas to rise to the loftiest view of the Lord given in the Gospels ….

The record of this confession therefore forms the appropriate close to his narrative; and the words which follow show that the Lord accepted the declaration of His divinity as the true expression of faith. He never speaks of Himself directly as God (comp. v. 18), but the aim of His revelation was to lead men to see God in him.[9]

Perhaps Westcott was inspired by Augustine who also is close but strangely un-trinitarian here:

[Thomas] saw and touched the man, and [then] acknowledged the God whom he neither saw nor touched.[10]

Adolf Schlatter, however, was able to make a full connection (my emphasis):

“The Word is God,” 1:1. The knowing of Jesus is then attained when it is seen that “he is in the Father and the Father is in him,” 14:10. Through his single word “my” [Thomas’s] knowledge remains not just knowledge but becomes faith.[11]

In final conclusion on Thomas, while it must obviously be concluded that he does address Jesus as “God”, it is frankly disappointingly and decidedly untrinitarian to isolate this passage from its overarching witness of the Father in his Son, the Christ. Jesus himself states emphatically throughout this same gospel:

But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.”

Then they asked him, “Where is your father?”

“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus replied. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” [12]

“The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone”.[13]

And finally, when Philip and Thomas ply Jesus with questions on precisely this topic:

Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority.[14]

---

[1] For now I can say this: despite general historical shifts in understanding what is going on with “Word” (logos), “God” (ho theos and theos) and “Become” (egeneto), that Christians having access to this passage or its precursor, have always believed that God’s eternal divine word was incarnated in (or into) Jesus (as a Christian I also have made the choice to believe that). This leaves incarnation Christology still very open as my chapter above on the church fathers demonstrates. It is precisely the interpretative options that I must still articulate and align with John’s overarching themes and goals.

[2] You will recall that there is a penalty system in place for texts where the strength of their suggestiveness or dissuasiveness is weakened according to a number of defined causes (see p. 51). This category is concerned more than any other by the penalty system as we shall now briefly see before we zoom into two of the most crucial of all blue texts in the entire New Testament canon, and which are certainly not to be penalised: John 20:28 and Hebrews 1:8-9.

[3] Of course, we are assuredly not positing a traditional evangelical view of first century Jewish monotheism that excludes other real gods within Yahweh’s divine council (please refer to the Monotheism entry in chapter 2 if needed; also see ).

[4] Titus is harder for me to assume this because I cannot apply the same criterion of consistency to a book that might be the only text we have by its author. If that were true and it were written in a later and more christologically developed situation, then the assumption of distinction is a considerably weaker option. Earliest manuscript is Papyrus 32, dated late 2^nd century.

[5] Fortunately, this variation is footnoted by the NIV, which alerts readers to the shakiness of this evidence

[6] James 3:9 does not really present an exception to the rule given its textual variations, which are not always footnoted in modern translations. Given the biblical evidence, the variant “our God and Father” should be preferred.

[7] M. Henry, Exposition of the Old and New Testament, Vol. 3,  p. 707, London: Joseph Ogle Robinson, 1708.

[8] Unsurprising given his biblical and ground-breaking credentials in New Testament textual criticism.

[9] B. F. Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John, p. 297, London: John Murray, 1894.

[10] Augustine, John, 121:5, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 1 7:438, Philip Schaff, T. & T. Clark, 1896-1900. One could legitimately pose the question of compatibility between Augustine’s statement here and the ecumenical and unshakable doctrinal stance of both Catholic and Orthodox theology, that Mary is the Mother of God (431 Council of Ephesus): if Jesus could only be touched and seen according to his human nature, which is presumably true, then how could Mary be considered to have mothered him according to his divine nature? A staunch defender of Augustinian theology might posit that Augustine was simply stating that Thomas had not previously “seen” the Father in Jesus until this revelatory moment, but then why this tense and not “whom he had neither seen nor touched”? Of course the issue of physical contact with the risen Lord is not entirely resolved, with some early ambiguity around the physical contact may have been heightened through a tradition expressed by Ignatius in the early 2^nd century which does categorically affirm this although the source of that tradition is now lost to us. See R. Brown, The Virginal Conception & Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, p. 88 fn.150, Paulist Press, 1973. Brown does not, however, indicate why Matthew 28:9 was not relevant to him.

[11] Adolf Schlatter, Johannes, p. 362, Evangel. Verlag-Anst., 1954, cited by Frederick D. Bruner The Gospel of John: A Commentary, p. 1183, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2012 (Bruner cites page 362, which appears to be from a translation, not the original).

[12] John 8:16-19

[13] John 8:29

[14] John 14:9-10, obviously my own emphasis.

Seeing the Father in Jesus?

A good friend of mine shed some light on my questions over the direction the charismatic church is taking their understanding of the divine. We were speaking of pain and suffering, and the apparent silence of God in the face of all that causes our vision to cloud, are hopes to fade and our purpose die. My friend comes from a tradition where God's fatherhood is more central, but he wondered if our Jesus obsession (please understand this in the right way) is related to the pain of unanswered prayer. How can a good father be so silent and distant?

And yet the only way we are related to Jesus is through God's decision to adopt us as Jesus' brothers and sisters. It is an amazing honour, but without the Father we get nowhere. Jesus knew it. I would encourage anyone to listen carefully and savour his words:

Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. (John 8:42, NIV)

But what about seeing the Father in Jesus? This was precisely John and Philip's challenge from Jesus in John 14:5-11 that Thomas can be seen to finally understand when he sees his risen Lord in John 20:28 (my Lord and my God, c.f. John 20:17). One of the saddest things we note in the modern church is so many people unable to grow to maturity because they have not experienced good fatherhood and motherhood in their lives. The solution to this problem is not just about instigating discipleship relationships where we identify "spiritual Mums and Dads" (I am not a huge fan of this language), but to return to our Heavenly Father, the one Jesus cared so much to have us restored to.

None of this really answers the title I threw over this post about "seeing" the Father in Jesus. The New Testament teaches us that Jesus is the perfect image (or "inscription") of God - that is to say the Father, without Jesus being the Father. Can we say he carries a perfect "resemblance" when it comes to character and purpose? Certainly, I would say, the NT authors wanted us to understand the dual focus here:

Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me.

So when we fail to see answers to prayer, it remains difficult for our faith - but especially for our understanding of God the Father as our providing father. We should recognise it and factor this in to our thoughts and prayers. We should also be careful not to do what I very nearly did in this same paragraph and talk of "understanding God as Father". That is like describing a person by their name. Father in that sense is too generic, too much like a theme or an idea or a facet. Would you not agree?