For by him were all things created (John 1:1-14)

Okay, so I let this blog go for nearly a decade. I've been busy with a lot of stuff, and I've been working through a lot of personal issues, and if I'm honest with myself, I'm probably not in a place in my life where I have much time for blogging, but I really feel that this is a useful spiritual and intellectual exercise for me. So I'm going to try and carve out time for this again. I'll pick up where I left off, in the Gospels.

The SAB seems to have been reorganized in some way since the last time I saw it. This may be a fairly recent change, as I see on their blog that they switched over to being database-driven. It looks good, but may take some getting used to.

John 1 opens up with a heck of a first verse. There's a lot going on here. The most obvious thing to most readers is that John is calling back to the beginning of Genesis, as this verse sounds a lot like the first verse there. The less obvious thing to a modern reader is the significance of "the Word." There is a twofold significance to this. To the Jewish reader, this would suggest perhaps an embodiment of the Word of God, i.e. the Bible. To the Greek reader, this would suggest the philosophical idea of the organizing principle that shaped the known universe, above all men and gods. In any case, as the SAB notes, Christians believe that the Word is Jesus. This is mainly because in verse 14, it says, "the Word was made flesh," which seems a clear allusion to Jesus's incarnation.

Was Jesus God? I'm going to argue "Yes", so I'll only deal with the items from the "No" section. On the subject of Jesus being tempted, there's a simple answer, but it brings up other questions; Jesus had at various times been offered things that would be considered a temptation, but there was never any chance he was going to give in. This always makes me wonder why the devil would even bother to try, because surely he would know he was wasting his time, right? Jesus never denied that he was God; none of the given verses are saying that. There is definitely some confusion due to the nature of the Trinity: the Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, but they are separate persons and not equal, while still paradoxically all being the same, singular God. The fact that the Father forsook Jesus on the cross is actually a great mystery to me as to how it's possible, but apparently it happened. In most of these verses, the intended meaning when Jesus and "God" are mentioned as two separate persons is that by "God" they are referring to the Father. This should clear up the apparent confusion over 1 Corinthians 11:3, which is simply saying Jesus is subject to the authority of the Father.

Who created heaven and earth? Since, as I said above, both Jesus and the Father are God, both of them did. Trinitarianism: one God, three persons. Most of the time there's no need to differentiate.

What was Jesus H. Christ's real name? This is an easy one: all of them, and probably a few more that were missed. All three persons of the Trinity are known by multiple names throughout Scripture; some of these are not so much names as titles, but it's not an important distinction. A lot of Christians believe that "the angel of the Lord" in the Old Testament is also a reference to a preincarnate Jesus. Jehovah's Witnesses believe the Archangel Michael is also Jesus, which, given how many names Jesus has, I wouldn't rule out as a possibility.

How many sons does God have? This is definitely a confusing question, and I believe that the reason it's confusing is that the terms "son of God" and "children of God" are used rather freely throughout the Bible for a number of different reasons. First of all, note that the verses about Jesus refer to him as the only begotten son of God. While this term is usually used to refer to someone who is the biological offspring of someone, and it seems unlikely that the Bible is making the claim that there is anything biological about God the Father, nonetheless there is an indication that the relationship between Jesus and the Father is unique. With the exception of perhaps Adam, when the Bible refers to a human being as a child of God, the intended meaning is akin to adoption; God is making a person into his child because of the relationship between them. When the Bible refers to Israel as God's son, it's talking about the special relationship that God has to the nation of Israel (and Ephraim in Jeremiah 31:9 is just another name for Israel that was sometimes used to differentiate it from the kingdom of Judah). There seems to be an occasional reference to the angels as being "the sons of God", although this only happens in the book of Job for whatever reason.

Are we all God's children? Really, this is pretty similar to the last question. I'm going to say "no" but it needs some explanation, obviously. All of the verses in the "Yes" section are addressing either Jews or Christians. I would definitely say that all observant Jews and committed Christians are children of God, but there may be others outside of those categories. I take issue with the claim that "Jews that don't love Jesus are children of the devil." There is something specific going on at the point in time that Jesus says that verse, in that the people he was talking to were eyewitnesses of his ministry, yet denied him. I don't believe that this means every Jew that doesn't believe in Jesus is a "child of the devil"; certainly there is room for honest doubt.