khanpadawan | trinities 202 - Gregory of Nazianzus vs Noah Worcester on subordinationist texts @khanpadawan | Uploaded November 2017 | Updated October 2024, 13 hours ago.
trinities.org/blog/podcast-202-gregory-of-nazianzus-vs-noah-worcester-on-subordinationist-texts Many readers have thought that especially in the fourth gospel, Jesus is presented as God himself, or as “fully divine” or as possessing a “divine nature,” any of which would imply that he is the uncreated creator, all-knowing and all-powerful (and these independently of any other), immune to temptation or death, ultimate in authority, and not in any sense “under” any other, the ultimate source of all other good things.
But especially in the gospel according to John, Jesus explicitly says that his authority, teaching, and power come from God, from the God who sent him and who works with him and through him and testifies to him, his God and our God, the Father. Don’t such statements plainly imply that Jesus is not God himself, but that he is someone else, and is dependent on God for his mission, authority, wisdom, and power? And if Jesus were the God of Abraham and Moses, he wouldn’t have any “Father” or any god over him, right? But Jesus in the fourth gospel explicitly claims to have both!
In this episode, you’ll hear contrasting approaches to reading such texts. First, ancient catholic bishop, rhetorician, and polemical theologian St. Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390) from his famous “theological orations,” given just before what would come to be called the second “ecumenical” church council. In short, he asserts that it is rather obvious that the above subordinationist-sounding texts should be understood as having to do with Jesus’s “human nature” only.
In contrast, early American theologian Noah Worcester (d. 1837) argues that because of the ordinary use of pronouns, we ought to take such claims as having to do with Jesus’s whole person, and that asserting him to be talking (without any hint of it) only of one of his parts (natures) would make Jesus a deceiver. He also notes that the author of this gospel is constantly at pains to correct the reader’s potential misunderstandings of Jesus’s sayings. Why then, if John means to assert that Jesus is God, does he not qualify or explain so many sayings in his gospel which would lead the reader to think that Jesus is a lesser being than God who is dependent on him?
Moreover, what if the shoe were on the other foot? What if Jesus were always presented as asserting his own absolute independence of any other, with no one over him – and the unitarians said that he was only speaking of the power of God within him, and not of his human self, the one in whom that power operated? If such unitarians would merely be evading the obvious force of such texts, why are not trinitarians, in the actual case, merely evading the force of the many clear subordinationist texts?
In this episode you’ll hear the entirety of Worcester’s 1827 tract “The Doctrine of Pronouns Applied to Christ’s Testimony of Himself.” For your listening pleasure, I’ve slightly modernized his language.
Links for this episode @ trinities.org/blog/podcast-202-gregory-of-nazianzus-vs-noah-worcester-on-subordinationist-texts
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, One God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Williams & Wickham
16 American Unitarian Tracts
God and his Son: the logic of the New Testament
podcast 184 – Where did Jesus say “I am God, worship me”?
podcast 183 – Challenge Unmet
podcast 166 – Alvan Lamson’s On the Doctrine of Two Natures in Jesus Christ – Part 2
podcast 165 – Alvan Lamson’s On the Doctrine of Two Natures in Jesus Christ – Part 1
podcast 156 – Dr. J.R. Daniel Kirk on A Man Attested by God – Part 2
podcast 155 – Dr. J.R. Daniel Kirk on A Man Attested by God – Part 1
podcast 146 – Jesus as an Exemplar of Faith in the New Testament
podcast 145 – ‘Tis Mystery All: the Immortal dies!
podcast 124 – a challenge to “Jesus is God” apologists
podcast 116 – George R. Noyes’s Explanation of Isaiah 9:6 and John 1:1
podcast 86 – Kermit Zarley on distinguishing Jesus and God
podcast 70 – The one God and his Son according to John
podcast 66 – Before Abraham was… what?
podcast 63 – Thomas Belsham and other scholars on John 8:58
podcast 62 – Dr. Dustin Smith on the preexistence of Jesus in the gospel of John
podcast 61 – Dr. Dustin Smith on preexistence in ancient Jewish thought
podcast 22 – a cure for odium theologicum
podcast 16 – How is Jesus “the one Lord”?
podcast 15 – Are Paul’s “one God” and “one Lord” one and the same?
podcast 14 – One God, One Lord, Two Interpretations
This week’s thinking music is “Space (Full)” by Andy G. Cohen.
freemusicarchive.org/music/Andy_G_Cohen/MUL__DIV_1198/Andy_G_Cohen_-_MULDIV_-_06_-_Space_Full
trinities.org/blog/podcast-202-gregory-of-nazianzus-vs-noah-worcester-on-subordinationist-texts Many readers have thought that especially in the fourth gospel, Jesus is presented as God himself, or as “fully divine” or as possessing a “divine nature,” any of which would imply that he is the uncreated creator, all-knowing and all-powerful (and these independently of any other), immune to temptation or death, ultimate in authority, and not in any sense “under” any other, the ultimate source of all other good things.
But especially in the gospel according to John, Jesus explicitly says that his authority, teaching, and power come from God, from the God who sent him and who works with him and through him and testifies to him, his God and our God, the Father. Don’t such statements plainly imply that Jesus is not God himself, but that he is someone else, and is dependent on God for his mission, authority, wisdom, and power? And if Jesus were the God of Abraham and Moses, he wouldn’t have any “Father” or any god over him, right? But Jesus in the fourth gospel explicitly claims to have both!
In this episode, you’ll hear contrasting approaches to reading such texts. First, ancient catholic bishop, rhetorician, and polemical theologian St. Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390) from his famous “theological orations,” given just before what would come to be called the second “ecumenical” church council. In short, he asserts that it is rather obvious that the above subordinationist-sounding texts should be understood as having to do with Jesus’s “human nature” only.
In contrast, early American theologian Noah Worcester (d. 1837) argues that because of the ordinary use of pronouns, we ought to take such claims as having to do with Jesus’s whole person, and that asserting him to be talking (without any hint of it) only of one of his parts (natures) would make Jesus a deceiver. He also notes that the author of this gospel is constantly at pains to correct the reader’s potential misunderstandings of Jesus’s sayings. Why then, if John means to assert that Jesus is God, does he not qualify or explain so many sayings in his gospel which would lead the reader to think that Jesus is a lesser being than God who is dependent on him?
Moreover, what if the shoe were on the other foot? What if Jesus were always presented as asserting his own absolute independence of any other, with no one over him – and the unitarians said that he was only speaking of the power of God within him, and not of his human self, the one in whom that power operated? If such unitarians would merely be evading the obvious force of such texts, why are not trinitarians, in the actual case, merely evading the force of the many clear subordinationist texts?
In this episode you’ll hear the entirety of Worcester’s 1827 tract “The Doctrine of Pronouns Applied to Christ’s Testimony of Himself.” For your listening pleasure, I’ve slightly modernized his language.
Links for this episode @ trinities.org/blog/podcast-202-gregory-of-nazianzus-vs-noah-worcester-on-subordinationist-texts
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, One God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Williams & Wickham
16 American Unitarian Tracts
God and his Son: the logic of the New Testament
podcast 184 – Where did Jesus say “I am God, worship me”?
podcast 183 – Challenge Unmet
podcast 166 – Alvan Lamson’s On the Doctrine of Two Natures in Jesus Christ – Part 2
podcast 165 – Alvan Lamson’s On the Doctrine of Two Natures in Jesus Christ – Part 1
podcast 156 – Dr. J.R. Daniel Kirk on A Man Attested by God – Part 2
podcast 155 – Dr. J.R. Daniel Kirk on A Man Attested by God – Part 1
podcast 146 – Jesus as an Exemplar of Faith in the New Testament
podcast 145 – ‘Tis Mystery All: the Immortal dies!
podcast 124 – a challenge to “Jesus is God” apologists
podcast 116 – George R. Noyes’s Explanation of Isaiah 9:6 and John 1:1
podcast 86 – Kermit Zarley on distinguishing Jesus and God
podcast 70 – The one God and his Son according to John
podcast 66 – Before Abraham was… what?
podcast 63 – Thomas Belsham and other scholars on John 8:58
podcast 62 – Dr. Dustin Smith on the preexistence of Jesus in the gospel of John
podcast 61 – Dr. Dustin Smith on preexistence in ancient Jewish thought
podcast 22 – a cure for odium theologicum
podcast 16 – How is Jesus “the one Lord”?
podcast 15 – Are Paul’s “one God” and “one Lord” one and the same?
podcast 14 – One God, One Lord, Two Interpretations
This week’s thinking music is “Space (Full)” by Andy G. Cohen.
freemusicarchive.org/music/Andy_G_Cohen/MUL__DIV_1198/Andy_G_Cohen_-_MULDIV_-_06_-_Space_Full
