Tuesday, May 21, 2019

David Kemball-Cook on the Trinity and the Prayers of Jesus


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