Commenting
on the problems Jesus’ prayers, both during his mortal life and on-going
prayers for his people in heaven, and how they are problematic for Trinitarian
theology, David Kemball-Cook, a “Biblical Unitarian” (i.e., a proponent of
Socinian Christology) wrote:
The Trinity
cannot explain Jesus’ prayer
The Trinity doctrine has several problems
with the prayer of Jesus.
1. The doctrine requires Jesus’ prayer to be
to the First Person of the Trinity, ‘the Father’, However Jesus’ prayer was to God, not a ‘First Person’.
2. The Trinity requires Jesus to be both God
and man, a ‘God-man’, who had the personality of the ‘God the Son’, yet also,
because he was a man, could pray validly. But if Jesus had the personality and
memory of a ‘God the Son’ there is no way that his prayer could be anything
more than pretence.
3. The Bible shows Jesus continuing in prayer
after the Ascension and therefore still human, contrary to the doctrine of the
Trinity.
Dealing first with the object of Jesus
prayer, note that Jesus prayed to God as a man does. He addressed God as ‘my
God’ . .. Jesus uses the terms ‘God,’ ‘my God’, ‘Father’, ‘The Father’, ‘my
Father’ quite interchangeably when he talks about God. There is no distinction
between these terms. All refer to God. Jesus never talks as a ‘God the Son’ addressing a ‘God the Father’. When
Jesus talks about ‘the Father’ and ‘my father’, he is referring to God himself, not to a First Person of a
Trinity. For instance compare:
I came forth
from God . . . (John 8:42)
I came forth
from my Father . . . (John 16:28)
I ascend
unto my Father, and your Father: and to my God, and your God (John 20:17)
The trinitarian account of Jesus’ prayer
therefore falls at the first hurdle. If god were a Trinity, Jesus’ prayer would
have to have been to the whole Trinity, not just to the First Person.
Secondly, if Jesus were the Second Person,
his prayers would have to have been from the Second Person to the whole Triune
God, including himself. In other words, Jesus would have been praying to a
triuinity that included himself. Such ‘prayer’, if it can be called prayer,
could not be authentic prayer. Authentic prayer is from man to God, from a human
to a divine object outside himself. If Jesus had the consciousness that he was ‘God
the Son’, even with powers temporarily laid aside, his prayer could not be
authentic. Prayer cannot be between two Persons in the Godhead, even if one of
them is temporarily in the body of a man.
The third problem is that Jesus continues to be a man after the Ascension.
If Jesus had been the ‘God the Son’ incarnate, then upon his Ascension he would
have resumed his rightful place at the right hand of the ‘God the father’, and
taken his glory back again. If so, then he would not then be able to pray to ‘the
Father’, because a Second Person cannot pray to a First Person. Yet Jesus talks
about praying to God after the Ascension. Jesus said:
I will pray
the Father and he shall give you another Comforter (John 14:16)
The reference is clearly to the future, after
the Ascension. Jesus will be interceding to humanity to God after he is
glorified, as scripture indicates.
It is Christ
. . . who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us
(Romans 8:34)
But this
man, because he continueth for ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore
he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing
he ever liveth to make intercession for them. (Hebrews 7:24f)
But this
man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the
right hand of God (Hebrews 10:12)
According to the Trinity doctrine, the Second
Person upon the Ascension puts aside his humanity, takes back his divine
privileges and resumes his seat at the right hand of the First Person. This is
completely foreign to what the Bible describes. Note that the last verse quoted
puts Jesus at the right hand of God
himself, not a ‘First Person’. Furthermore a trinitarian ‘Second Person’ in
heaven could not be the human high priest interceding at the right hand of God.
(David Kemball-Cook, Is God a Trinity [2006],
113-14, italics in original)
Some of the
objections Cook has to the divinity of Jesus and the preservation of his
humanity, while problematic for many Trinitarian formulations of Christology,
are not problems for Latter-day Saint theology—indeed, LDS theology helps
answers rather satisfactorily many of these. For more on this, as well as the
biblical foundations of LDS theology, see:
The Christological Necessity of Universal Pre-Existence
Latter-day Saints have Chosen the True, Biblical Jesus
