Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of Man

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Checkpoint
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Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of Man

Post #1

Post by Checkpoint »

I am starting this thread as a result of an exchange on another thread.

I now repost one of my posts to show what that was, and I invite anyone to join this discussion and debate the issue raised.

onewithhim wrote:
Just a question, to get your opinion on this: What do you believe that Jesus was doing before he came to the earth as Jesus of Nazareth?
My reply was
You will not like my answer, but as you say, it is an opinion.

Nothing.

For I believe Jesus then only existed in the mind and purpose of God, as expressed to His countless angels.

That is, as the Logos, as "that which" was "the Logos of life", 1 John 1:1-2.

I expect to get corrected on this forum, of course!

Yet I have drawn this conclusion only since arriving here, largely in response to a post or two of another, plus my own research and meditation.
onewithhim answered
I know you don't want to argue about this, so I don't intend to. I just want to ask one more question to understand where you stand in all this. Do I understand that you don't accept Jesus' claims to have been in existence in heaven before coming to Earth? Claims:

John 3:13
" 3:31
" 6:38
" 17:5
I then posted this:
A fair and understandable question, with relevant verses.

What I don't accept is your reading of them as saying "Jesus' claims to have been in existence in heaven before coming to Earth".

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Re: Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of M

Post #2

Post by 2timothy316 »

Checkpoint wrote:
What I don't accept is your reading of them as saying "Jesus' claims to have been in existence in heaven before coming to Earth".
Then what did Jesus mean in John 6:38, "for I have come down from heaven to do, not my own will, but the will of him who sent me."

What do you accept?

Please avoid answers like, 'I don't know' and 'anything but that'.
Last edited by 2timothy316 on Mon Aug 28, 2017 9:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of M

Post #3

Post by JehovahsWitness »

[Replying to post 1 by Checkpoint]

So you don't believe Jesus (The Word) existed as an independent autonoumous individual before the was born on earth?

Do you believe the angels existed before Jesus came to earth? DidSatan the Devil exist before Jesus was born as a human?
INDEX: More bible based ANSWERS
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 81#p826681


"For if we live, we live to Jehovah, and if we die, we die to Jehovah. So both if we live and if we die, we belong to Jehovah" -
Romans 14:8

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Re: Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of M

Post #4

Post by marco »

2timothy316 wrote:
Checkpoint wrote:
What I don't accept is your reading of them as saying "Jesus' claims to have been in existence in heaven before coming to Earth".
Then what did Jesus mean in John 6:38, "for I have come down from heaven to do, not my own will, but the will of him who sent me."

What do you accept?
He didn't "come down". Either we accept that Jesus is a man of his time who subscribes to the idea heaven is in the sky, literally, or we accept he is speaking metaphorically. That leaves an entire ocean of interpretation open to us.

When he said: "Verily, before Abraham was, I am", we can accept this is nonsensically literal, even though we have dismissed vine, path, bread, shepherd as literal or we can understand him to mean he's got a bigger message than Abraham, and his message comes before anything Abraham said, since his message was received from God.

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Re: Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of M

Post #5

Post by myth-one.com »

Checkpoint wrote: I am starting this thread as a result of an exchange on another thread.

I now repost one of my posts to show what that was, and I invite anyone to join this discussion and debate the issue raised.

onewithhim wrote:
Just a question, to get your opinion on this: What do you believe that Jesus was doing before he came to the earth as Jesus of Nazareth?
My reply was
You will not like my answer, but as you say, it is an opinion.

Nothing.

For I believe Jesus then only existed in the mind and purpose of God, as expressed to His countless angels.

That is, as the Logos, as "that which" was "the Logos of life", 1 John 1:1-2.

I expect to get corrected on this forum, of course!

Yet I have drawn this conclusion only since arriving here, largely in response to a post or two of another, plus my own research and meditation.
onewithhim answered
I know you don't want to argue about this, so I don't intend to. I just want to ask one more question to understand where you stand in all this. Do I understand that you don't accept Jesus' claims to have been in existence in heaven before coming to Earth? Claims:

John 3:13
" 3:31
" 6:38
" 17:5
I then posted this:
A fair and understandable question, with relevant verses.

What I don't accept is your reading of them as saying "Jesus' claims to have been in existence in heaven before coming to Earth".
Jesus was a man, and thus had a beginning and an end.

This is "how" Jesus was "made":
John 1:14 New American Standard Bible (NASB) wrote:And the Word became flesh, and [a]dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

That was the beginning of Jesus -- His birth in Bethlehem into the physical world.

If Jesus was a man as the Bible states, then His life was measureable from physical birth till His second physical death, and He does nothing prior to His birth nor after that final death. I say "second" death because Jesus was resurrected and ascended to heaven about 40 days after His resurrection.

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, so it gets very confusing when we speak of "Jesus" being in heaven:

John 14:3 wrote:If I (Jesus speaking) go and prepare a place for you, I (The Word) will come again and receive you to Myself (The Word), that where I (The Word) am, there you may be also.

There are two type of beings, natural and spiritual, and there are two worlds, the physical and the spiritual.

Man cannot understand the spiritual world, so we cannot comprehend how the immortal Word became a mortal Jesus. Something immortal cannot die, so how can The Word become mortal? We have no words to describe that!


If God

"Jesus" and "The Word" have become synonymous.








John 1:1 wrote:The Deity of Jesus Christ ] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

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Re: Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of M

Post #6

Post by Checkpoint »

2timothy316 wrote:
Checkpoint wrote:
What I don't accept is your reading of them as saying "Jesus' claims to have been in existence in heaven before coming to Earth".
Then what did Jesus mean in John 6:38, "for I have come down from heaven to do, not my own will, but the will of him who sent me."

What do you accept?

Please avoid answers like, 'I don't know' and 'anything but that'.
I accept that he is from heaven and of heaven.

Sent by God, as planned by Him before the creation, and thus that Logos was made flesh as Jesus.

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Re: Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of M

Post #7

Post by Checkpoint »

JehovahsWitness wrote: [Replying to post 1 by Checkpoint]
So you don't believe Jesus (The Word) existed as an independent autonoumous individual before the was born on earth?
That is correct, I no longer believe that.

Just as I don't believe Wisdom in Proverbs 8 was or is a literal person, I don't believe the Logos was a person as per your description.
Do you believe the angels existed before Jesus came to earth? DidSatan the Devil exist before Jesus was born as a human?
Perhaps.

I have not investigated those matters so do not hold firmly to any position on them.

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Re: Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of M

Post #8

Post by liamconnor »

[Replying to post 1 by Checkpoint]

The question requires clarification. Is the question, what systematic theology about Jesus' preexistence can be composed taking notes from the N.T.? Or is the N.T. itself only one other opinion? If the latter, then everything is speculative.


As far as what the N.T. says, we can derive from it some clear philosophy, chiefly from John:

There is no "Jesus" before the Incarnation. There is the Logos, or 2nd P of the Trinity, also, the Son.

There is also the Word Incarnate, the logos united with a human organism, the latter of which has parents who named it Jesus. This does not occur after the 2nd P of the Trinity, as the 2nd P exists eternally, irrelevant to time.

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Re: Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of M

Post #9

Post by Checkpoint »

liamconnor wrote: [Replying to post 1 by Checkpoint]
The question requires clarification. Is the question, what systematic theology about Jesus' preexistence can be composed taking notes from the N.T.? Or is the N.T. itself only one other opinion? If the latter, then everything is speculative.
This thread is not intended to be about any "systematic theology", as such, or about what it, or anyone, claims from OT texts.
As far as what the N.T. says, we can derive from it some clear philosophy, chiefly from John:

There is no "Jesus" before the Incarnation. There is the Logos, or 2nd P of the Trinity, also, the Son.
Your explanation here of John's Logos echoes a form of systematic theology and assumes that position, which I find unproven and untenable.
There is also the Word Incarnate, the logos united with a human organism, the latter of which has parents who named it Jesus. This does not occur after the 2nd P of the Trinity, as the 2nd P exists eternally, irrelevant to time.
The Logos was not "united with" anything or anyone.

Instead, the Logos "became" flesh.

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Re: Jesus Christ before becoming the Son of God and Son of M

Post #10

Post by onewithhim »

marco wrote:
2timothy316 wrote:
Checkpoint wrote:
What I don't accept is your reading of them as saying "Jesus' claims to have been in existence in heaven before coming to Earth".
Then what did Jesus mean in John 6:38, "for I have come down from heaven to do, not my own will, but the will of him who sent me."

What do you accept?
He didn't "come down". Either we accept that Jesus is a man of his time who subscribes to the idea heaven is in the sky, literally, or we accept he is speaking metaphorically. That leaves an entire ocean of interpretation open to us.

When he said: "Verily, before Abraham was, I am", we can accept this is nonsensically literal, even though we have dismissed vine, path, bread, shepherd as literal or we can understand him to mean he's got a bigger message than Abraham, and his message comes before anything Abraham said, since his message was received from God.
We can say he "came down," because there is Biblical and historical evidence that Jesus, who claimed to be God's Son, actually existed as a man on the earth. So he had to have "come down"---if what he said in the Gospels is to be taken as fact. There is no "ocean of interpretation" open to us there, as there is, say, concerning Revelation 21:1-3, which is considered to be metaphorical.

Jesus did not say, "Before Abraham was I am." That is terrible sentence structure and would not have been written that way by John or translated that way by honest translators. It abandons the rules of grammar for translating Greek to English, and yet those rules are followed at every other place that "ego eimi" appears. Such as at John 9:9, just a few verses after 8:58, where the blind man uses the exact same phrase. If Jesus is God for saying "ego eimi," then so is the blind man!

Anyway, Jesus claimed to have come to earth from heaven, and he is said to have created everything in the universe with his Father. That is what he was doing before coming to the earth, as well as interacting with mankind as Jehovah's spokesperson.

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