"He is Risen From the Dead!"

What a wonderful announcement to hear from the angels! (Matt. 28:7)  Jesus was awakened from the dead, the base meaning of the word εγεις in the Greek.  This one thing is what separates Christianity from all other faiths, the fact that Jesus lives.  The founders of all other religions but for a few recent cults are all dead and can do nobody any good.  This fact is so important that Paul spent the first thirty-four verses of 1Corinthians 15 on this vital difference and why it is so important.  So why don't we have a look at this passage of scripture and what Paul had to say when he outlined the Gospel itself, or the essential doctrine of Christianity:

15:1 But know this yourselves, O Brothers, that the Gospel I declared to you and in which you both received and stand,

15:2  and by which you were saved if you, yourselves, have held on to the word we declared to you, without which you have run in vain.*

Note here that Paul opens up by telling the Christians in Corinth that if they do not have faith in what follows their course is of no use to them, they have run the race in vain to that point.  That is how important what he now informs them is.

15:3 And which I entrusted to you first and which you received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,  15:4 was buried, then raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

This is the first and foremost doctrine of the Christ according to the Apostle, this was the message he took to them and everybody else.  That is, that Jesus, the Christ died for our sins as predicted in the Old Testament and was also raised on the third day from among the dead, again, as predicted in the Old Testament.  This is the first thing and what makes Christianity so different from all other religions.  However, that is not all.  There are other religions which claim their founder either did not die or was raised from the dead.  So how do we know that Jesus was raised while none of the others were.  Well, there is no proof any of the others were raised.  Those faiths cannot put forward any witnesses to the events they claim.  Can Christians?  That is what comes next:

15:5 And that he was seen by Peter then the twelve.  15:6 Thereafter, he was seen by more than 500 brothers on one occasion, the majority of whom are still among us, though, some have died.  15:7 After that he appeared to James and all of the Apostles.  15:8 Then last of all, he appeared to me as if to one born before his time.

That is quite a list of witnesses there though few of the names have made it down to our time.  Note also that Sisters are not mentioned.  That is likely because in the Roman world and, sadly, even among the Jews of the time, a woman's words was not considered of enough worth to establish a matter.  Add them in and the number of eye witnesses to his having been raised only grows.  Many of those, certainly all of the Apostles, except John, died for their insistence that Jesus had risen from the dead.

So in the First Century, when such a matter could have been easily proven false, the presence of so many eye witnesses was something which couldn't just be written off.  So the powers that be chose to persecute and seek to eliminate them instead.  What they didn't succeed at was to eliminate the written testimony of some of those who saw him alive after being put to the death by crucifixion.  So we have that testimony from people who saw him with there own eyes to this day and those who deny the facts are reduced to brushing it off as the myths written by later men.

The rest of the passage is devoted to expounding on why Jesus had to be both killed and resurrected, which is a topic best left for another time.  Suffice to say, more than enough people saw the resurrected Jesus with their own eyes, in Paul's case possibly several years after the fact, and who left their personal testimony it to our day establishes it as a matter of fact.  So we can confidently shout from the rooftops:

He Is Risen!

Jesus Christ Lives!

*  We first thought to go through the whole passage but at 720 words would've run us afoul of quoting from most modern translations because of copyright laws with their 500 word limits..  So we decided to translate the passage ourselves and realized we would only treat that part of the passage which directly related to the point being made this Easter weekend.

Cowell's Rule

Greetings again, my friends:

Today’s post was suggested by something which happened to me this past week.  Among others I do subscribe to a periodical letter which goes out by e-mail from a certain scholar who takes a similar view as mine that we really need to understand the Bible from a Hebraic point of view instead of a Western/Greek view.  He has written a book about the Gospel of John from a Hebraic view.  I noticed, though, that he apparently accepts the common translation used for its first book as authoritative.  So I wrote the author to point out the error to him.

His answer was to send me a PDF copy of the article from a scholarly journal from 1933 where Dr. Colwell outlined what has come to be known as Colwell’s Rule, a rule of Greek grammar often pointed to by people who are not current on matters of Greek Grammar to justify a misleading translation for John 1.1c.  The purpose of this post is to try and examine the issue and where the scholarship on the matter is right now as well as other evidence.

The Background

John 1:1 is a key scripture because it is often the very first verse cited by apologist for the Trinity doctrine as proof for the trinity.  Most translations since the beginning of vernacular translations in the Protestant Era translate it almost word for word like this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

It seems straightforward enough, doesn’t it?  And this is the standard translation used by the translators of the Bible for the most part to this day.  However, as the printing press made books so much cheaper and affordable to the masses they began to acquire New Testaments in the koine Greek they were passed down in along with Greek Grammar books, lexicons, and shortly after concordances.  As that happened some problems regarding how the translators handled various texts of the bible began to emerge.  Top of the list was John 1:1. Why?

Εν αρχη ην ο λογος και ο λογος ην προς τον θεον, και θεος ην ο λογος.

In beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the God, and god was the Word.

That is John 1:1 according to all the ancient Greek manuscripts I’ve been able to get pictures, facsimiles or whatever of, they all read the same.  I’ve also added a word for word translation without the benefit of English word order.  My capitalization, or lack thereof, is deliberate by reason of Greek grammar.  The first thing to note is that both the “Word” and the first occurrence of “God” are capitalized and the second occurrence of “god” is not.  There is a reason for that.

First of all, Koine Greek preserves some Hebraisms in the Greek such as an interesting device when referring to the God of the Bible in the case of a word which could be cause confusion of adding the definite article, the word the in English to the word.  So we often find sprinkled throughout the Old Testament the word god with the definite article added to it to make it clear that it is talking about the God, Jehovah of Israel.  In practice because the indefinite article would be awkward in the English we simply capitalize the word God because it serves as a proper noun, a name. 

The same construction occurs in the New Testament and the general practice in those instances is the same.  We see that in the first instance of the word God in John 1:1 and the Word on all instances, but it is lacking in the second occurrence of the word god.  If we followed general practice, we should spell the last occurrence of god with the g in lower case since it is referring to a generic god instead of the God.  The meaning of the Greek as written becomes clearer if we insert what the ancient Greek language didn’t have to indicate the indefinite or generic, the indefinite article, thus translating the final clause as “and the Word was a god.”  In order for the verse to read as most often translated the Greek definite article has to be with the second occurrence of the word god, it’s as simple as that.  Colwell’s rule is all about that problem.

Colwell’s Rule

In 1933 a Greek scholar named Ernest Cadmen Colwell published the article A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament in a journal of the time in which he outlined a rule which essentially puts the definite article into the text of John 1:1 as being understood even though it doesn’t appear there.  To quote the scholar DonaldHartley of Southeastern Bible College, who quotes Colwell himself, the rule basically says that “Definite predicate nouns which precede the verb usually lack the article.”  In other words, in copulative clauses the definite article can be understood in the case of predicate nouns which precede the verb.  That’s what we find in the case of John 1:1. For sixty years that rule stood as holy writ for justifying the common translation of the final clause of John 1:1 in a Trinitarian manner.

Colwell’s Rule Reexamined

In time a scholar named Phillip Harner put the rule to the test and reexamined Colwell’s methodology, which he found weak.  As a result, he published the article “Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1,” which found the application of Colwell’s rule to John 1:1 flawed.  In its stead he proposed that the second god in the verse should be understood as qualitative, functioning more or less as an adjective.  That would mean the clause should be translated along the lines of “and the Word was godlike.”  However, translators generally avoid that one and instead either stand by the old, or as in several cases recently, translate it as “and the Word was Divine” capitalizing the word divine to once again make an association which isn’t in the Greek.

The point is that these guys would rather swallow razor blades than admit that the verse isn’t the Trinitarian mainstay it is used as.  For many years mainstream theologians have condemned the Jehovah’s Witnesses for translating the clause in their New World Translation as “and the Word was a god,” thus removing any support for the Trinity doctrine in the verse.  To admit in the slightest that translation is the correct one for the clause is a career killer so they keep on seeking to justify anything but that.  So right now the current scholarly stand is that the word there is qualitative, much like the similar construction in 1 John 4:8 “God is love.” 

Conclusion

In speaking of the “last days,” Daniel the prophet was told that “But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” (Dan. 12:4, ESV) We believe this was a prophecy of what happened starting in the 1800s, when knowledge became so widely available, cheaply available along with an education.  Back then those in the high school grades were often expected to learn at least the basics to biblical Greek as well as Latin.  That increase in knowledge led to the wonderful standard of living we enjoy today made possible by advancing technology.

That very increase in knowledge made a very big problem for nominal religious leaders in Christendom because now the masses ad access to the bible in its original languages as well as various aids which could help anyone who wanted to understand what it’s message was better.  One of those problems was the discovery that the bible didn’t really teach in John 1:1 that Jesus is God almighty in the flesh.  In 1933 Dr. Colwell published what seemed to be the perfect answer to the problem, a way to insert the definite article into the text where it didn’t appear in the first place and solve the problem by making the text say what nominal Christians leaders say it says.

However, recent scholars have reexamined the rule and have tossed it aside altogether in respects to John 1:1 as a misuse of the rule.  Instead they propose in its place to assert the passage speaks qualitatively.  Okay, as long as we keep in mind that being divine, or godlike is not the same as being God himself in a triune relationship we have no trouble with seeing it that way.  But the bottom line is to realize that even with that nuance the verse does not say what it is often alleged to say.  John consciously separated the Word, Jesus, from God as a separate being with godlike qualities.

Until next time!

The Essential Doctrine of the Christ

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

(Rom 3:23; ESV)

What is the essential doctrine of the Christian faith?  We get different answers to that question depending on who we talk to.  However we propose to use the Bible to demonstrate to our readers’ satisfaction that the Ransom sacrifice of Christ Jesus and the companion teaching of the Restitution of mankind to its lost estate are the essential and central teaching of God’s word and the Gospel.  This is what was foremost in the minds of the Apostles and others as they wrote the books of the New Testament as we will see as we progress in this short consideration of this very important subject.  We will by no means treat this subject comprehensively as there are too many verses and passages to include in the short amount of space we have.  However, I will mention a book which does at the end.

To find out why mankind ended up in the fix it is in we have to go back to the beginning, to the first book in the bible, Genesis.  In the first chapters we are told That God created the heavens and the earth; and then we are told how God spent seven “days,” or more precisely “eras,” preparing the earth for human habitation (Gen. 1).  Towards the end of chapter one and through chapter two of Genesis we are told that to people were created, married, and placed in a garden which provided for all of their needs.  But in chapter three, something happens.  First the woman, Eve, then her husband, Adam, are tempted and break the only law given them by God, the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, as Paul explained to the Roman Christians:  “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom 5:12).  That, in a nutshell, is why we are in the sorry condition we’re in with sin and death.

The essential doctrine of Christianity is that God didn’t leave us in that condition and did something about it. Paul carried the thought forward for us, “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” (Rom 5:18-19).  So the answer was to provide a ransom for mankind, because of one man’s disobedience and sin we all die, but God reversed the situation through the obedience of one man, Jesus Christ (vs. 17).

To understand how that works it is important to understand a very important principle of God’s justice, and it is why Paul emphasized the thought of one man bringing in death and the other life.  That principle is exact equivalency of the punishment fitting the crime.  According to the law:

And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death. And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast. And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again. And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it: and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.

(Lev 24:17-21)

This is the famous “an eye for an eye” law.  And the principle here stated is that exactly what was done must be recompensed exactly.  That was why Paul stated in the earlier cited passage from Romans, “For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19).  So what was lost had to be provided for a ransom.

So what was lost?  What was lost was the perfect life of the first man.  He was created perfect and had the prospect of eternal life before him and every human who has ever lived came from him, including Eve, who was made from his rib.   All of us, with the exception of Jesus, received life from him through all the males who preceded us.  That is how life is passed on, from the male to the female.  So, from God’s standpoint all of us were still in Adam’s loins when he sinned, so all of us received the sentence which was pronounced on him before the conception of his first child.  Jesus gave up his perfect life in order to ransom mankind back from death.  That fact is directly stated in three places, twice by Jesus and once by Paul, though the same thing is presented elsewhere in other terms in God’s word:

Mat_20:28  Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

Mar_10:45  For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

1Ti_2:6  Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

That is why a Trinitarian god-man couldn’t provide the ransom necessary.  What was required was a perfect man, a man who existed on the same level of existence as Adam, and we in him, did before his act of disobedience changed everything for us.

But did Jesus live and die to give said ransom?  That is a legitimate question since scholars, some of them nominally Christian and teaching in seminaries, don’t believe it happened, that it was all a myth.  But Paul expounded on the fact of Jesus’ sacrifice and that message to the Corinthians reassures us of the fact of the Christian message.  So, with what we’ve written so far in mind, let’s go through his message:

Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; (1Co 15:1)

So Paul state’s right up front that he is about to declare the Gospel, the essential doctrine of Christianity:

By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: (1Co 15:2-4)

So he states plainly that Jesus died according to the scripture, that is what I wrote about from the law, which is only part, and he rose on the third day after his death, which was also prophesied in scripture (Matt. 12:38-40, where Jesus predicts this using Jonah).  Then Paul goes on to prove what he says:

And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. (1Co 15:5-9)

That is quite a list of people who saw the resurrected Jesus and includes one which is only alluded to in the Gospels without giving any details (Lk. 24:34).  Paul then spends two verses on a personal side note before giving one of the most profound refutations for the notions that Jesus was not resurrected and why it was necessary that he was:

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. (1Co 15:12-23)

So there it is, the Essential Doctrine of Christianity.  In a nutshell it is that Adam sinned and was condemned and all of us along with him by virtue of our being in him.  And Jesus was born as a perfect human to provide a ransom for all by ransoming Adam, along with all of his offspring by virtue of the same reasons as the fall, by giving up that life on behalf of us all.  That he did so, along with his resurrection, which was witnessed to by upwards of over five hundred people.  Thus we have a guarantee that he not only was successful, but that all the dead will be resurrected and all given the opportunity of eternal life, each in his own place.

The book I mentioned which does comprehensively treat the subject is The At-One-Ment Between God and Man, and can be purchased here.

By way of disclosure I'm just a Brother in Christ to the folks I linked to and know some of them.  That is the site where I purchase most of my personal literature.

I Believe the Bible

Last June marked the end of our fortieth year as a baptized Christian.  We gave our heart and everything and gave up this world’s ambitions in consecration to our God out of love for what a wonderful God he really is two years earlier, but because our mother did not permit it our baptism waited two years until we reached the age of majority, 18 years.  One bit of reflection on that time of loving devotion to God is that, even though for thirty of those years we fellowshipped with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, those years can be summed up by four words, “I believe the Bible.”

Although our understanding of that book and its teachings were so imperfect for so many years of that time, what God’s word says was first and foremost for me, which made us a thorn in the side of the elders in most of the congregations we were in.  For all of these forty years there have been no creeds for us, only God’s word, because we believe the Bible.

Because we believe the bible we’ve been called a cultist because we don’t believe in or preach “the essential doctrine of Christianity,” the Trinity Doctrine.  But, really, where in God’s Word are we told that the Trinity doctrine is the essential doctrine of Christianity?  For forty years we’ve studied the bible from stem to stern, including in its original languages and we find no statement to that effect anywhere to be found.  What we do find are plain statements from Christ’s own mouth to the effect that “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to My God and your God,”  “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God’” and more (John 20:17; Revelation 3:14).  In fact, we find no indication of a trinity in God’s word.  Theologians rely on taking verses out of context and some really imaginative reasoning to “prove” their “essential doctrine.”  Even some of them through the years have admitted that a plain and objective reading of God’s word just doesn’t lead one to the conclusion that there is a trinity.  Now why would they say that?

The Old Testament

Throughout the Old Testament one concept reigns supreme, that there is no God in the sense we commonly use the word but one.  The “Shema” to Israel bears a powerful witness to that fact: “Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah: and thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deut. 6:4-5; ASV).  That statement is unambiguous and even names the God who is alone in that category.  There can be no misunderstanding of that verse when not read through the lens of so called “theology.”

The bible does call others “god,” or “god’s,” including men (Ex. 7:1; Ps. 82:6) and it acknowledges many times the existence of other gods, inventions of men or demons, false gods in other words (Deu. 6:14, 2 Chron. 13:8,9  and much more).  In the case of men the word, “god” is used of officials as well as the word “lord” as the essential meaning of the word to the Hebrews is encapsulate in the early written form of the word El, a bull and a shepherds staff conveying the idea of a powerful leader.  But the bottom line is simple, and consistent, throughout the Old Testament, “But Jehovah is the true God; he is the living God, and an everlasting King: at his wrath the earth trembleth, and the nations are not able to abide his indignation” (Jer. 10:10).  There is only one True God.

The New Testament

But Trinitarians point out that the Trinity is a revelation from the New Testament.  But we contend that the Old Testament picture of a single, all powerful God whole and complete in and of himself holds true throughout the New Testament.  We’ve already pointed to several plain statements from our Savior Jesus Christ on the matter.  But there is more.

When questioned about what the greatest commandment in the law was, Jesus quoted from the Shema, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Mat 22:36-37).  Thus, Jesus established himself as an observant Jew, whose views on the Unitarian nature of God were consistent with the Old Testament and his fellow Jews.  Nowhere do we find him asserting a Trinitarian viewpoint on God.  In fact, he called himself the “son of God” (John 5:25, 11:4), a fact acknowledged by the Leaders of the Jews themselves (Matt 27:43).  The one time the Jewish leaders tried to twist his words around to have him saying that he was himself God, Jesus hastened to correct the false impression they were trying to make (John 10: 30, 34-36).  Taken together with the statements of his earlier it is plain that he never asserted a Trinitarian relationship or even equivalence with God.

Demons acknowledged him as the son of God, as did their master, the devil, in a backhanded kind of way (Matt. 8:29; 4:3,6), and they should know.  During his first advent his disciples called him the son of God many times (Mk. 1:1; John 11:27).  And even the Angel Gabriel so identified him to Mary before his conception (Lk. 1:26,35).  The Apostle Paul called him that at Romans 1:4; 2 Cor. 1:19; Eph. 4:13 and many other times in many variations on that theme.  So we find it witnessed to that he was God’s son instead of God himself throughout the New Testament.  Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians makes a very plain statement to the subordination of Jesus Christ to his God, that he is in no way an equal (1 Cor. 15:24-28).  And these are no obscure verses; they are many and plain so that the testimony of the scriptures is plain if we do not go at them with any preconceptions.

That testimony is so plain that the Arian view of God and his son not only predates the Arian controversy, but persisted down through the ages with men and women going to often horrible deaths rather than deny the bible’s clear testimony in the matter.  Michael Servetus was one such man who was chained naked to a stake roasted alive for hours at the order of John Calvin because he refused to recant his denial of the Trinity Doctrine in favor of Arianism.  An entire people were “excommunicated” for their Arianism, the Goths and Visigoths.  They are much maligned in history for their beliefs, though evidence of their tolerant nature towards Trinitarians has come to light in recent times.

So I believe the bible.  We believe it whether our investigation of its teachings agree with what is held by the wider Christian community or not.  When it doesn’t, we must follow the evidence wherever it leads, because we believe the bible.