Friday, February 10, 2012

Christ And God, Or Christ is God

In an article written by former Catholic priest Father Beda H. Aboloc, stated that the Word was God and simply because it is the word of God-John 1:1. And this Word from the beginning was manifested and referred to as the Son  (Jesus Christ) in I John 1:1-3; I Timothy 3:16.
In spite of this, the word was always God according to John 20:20; John 17:1-5; Hebrews 1:8-10, and the word continuous forever-Revelation 19:11-13.
In Psalms 90:2 it simply means that the Lord, even from everlasting to everlasting, He is God.
In I Corinthians 8:6 Paul said: ”To them there is but one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. To conclude that Jesus Christ is not God because He has a beginning is wrong.

Former Catholic priest Beda H. Aboloc, stated that the Word was God (Jn 1:1) not in nature but in power.
C.F.D. Moule, in his book, And Idiom Book of New Testament Greek, page 116, stated that when “Theos” Is preceded by the article “o” it indicates that God is being used as a noun. But what can be seen in the existing Greek manuscripts of John 1:1 is that the article “o” is not present before the word “Theos.” This being the case, the word “Theos” is not used as a noun but as an adjective.
Apostle John used the word “Theos” to express the quality of the Word rather than to identify the person. In other words, he employed the word “Theos” to describe the logos as possessing the quality of God and not because the logos is God in state of being.
The equivalent of “Theos” without the article “o” would be the adjective “divine” rather than the noun God used as an adjective in John 1:1. We must bear in mind that most Bible versions were done by people whose mind-set is the belief in the divinity of Christ.
The Moffatt  version of John 1:1 is more scholarly and more accurate: “The Logos existed in the very beginning, the Logos was with God, the Logos was divine.”
The Goodspeed version shows the translator allowing scholarship to rule over pre-conceived ideas by rendering John 1:1, thus: “In the beginning the word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was divine.”
What then is the Word? Apostle John employed the term Word. It is so used only by Apostle John to designate the Son as a kind of intellectual emanation from the Father, in the beginning.
In a footnote of the New American Catholic Edition Douay Confraternity Bible, there is a statement “St. John employs the term Word…and designates the Son as a kind of intellectual emanation from the Father.”
In Ryrie Study Bible, page 1599, this is stated: Word (Greek: logos). Logos means word, thought, concept and expression thereof.” In the New Encyclopedia Britannica Micropaedia, page 302, this is stated: “Logos (Greek: word, reason, or plan).”
All these  terms-intellectual emanation, thought, concept, reason, and plan-are terms that refers to things which are abstract and without substance. It is similar to a blueprint for a building-still a plan but not yet constructed or not yet “made flesh.”
Thus the Word or plan of God to have Christ was “made flesh” only with the birth of Christ. In the words of Apostle Peter, Christ was “verily fore-ordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you” (cf. I Pt. 1:20). Christ’s followers, the true Christians were also chosen before the foundation of the world (cf. Eph. 1:4) but they became flesh only with their appearance on earth when they were born.
John 20:28 is a confession of Thomas which was corrected by Christ in Luke 24:33-39. Here Christ reprimanded His apostles on the “thoughts that arose in their hearts” – like Thomas, they thought Christ became a spirit or “God” as Thomas put it. Christ made them understand that a spirit has no flesh and bones while He, Christ, has them. Thus, Christ made them understand that He (Christ) is not a spirit, not God.
John 17:1-5 all more proves Christ is not God for Christ made a categorical statement that the Father, to whom He was speaking, is the only true God.
Hebrews 1”8-10 in most Bible version shows the Father acknowledging the Son as God but this will contradict Isaiah 44:8; 46:9; 43:10; and John 17:1-3. All these verses state clearly that only the Father is the true God. Again, the mind-set of the translator prevailed over honest scholarship. The correct translations of Hebrews 1:8 are the following:
“…he says of the Son, God is thy throne…” (Moffatt)
But with reference to the Son: God is your throne…” (New World Translation)
“…but with regard to the Son: The throne of thee-God (is) (Interlinear Greek-English New Testament)
Revelation 19:11-13 refers to Christ and not to God-the Word of God, not God.
Psalms 90:2 refers to God, not Christ: And Corinthians 8:6, in full, states: “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” (King James Version).J