John Thomas (1805-1871), the founding pioneer of the Christadelphian movement, wrote the following in his book, Phanerosis (1869) which Latter-day Saints will find intriguing:
[Per 1 Cor 8:6] The source or
foundation of power is the universe is one. It is a unit. Therefore, everything
which exists is ex autou, out of Him. Hence the Creator did not “make
all things out of nothing”. This is the teaching of theology, the “orthodox
theology” of the Old Man of the Flesh; and which leads many of his children to
affirm that “matter is God”, understanding by matter that which is
cognizable by the five senses. Hence the sun, the moon, and the stars and all
the things they can see, taste, feel, smell, and hear upon earth, are God. They
confound that which “is of Him” with the “Him” out of whom all things proceed.
ON the other hand, other children of the Old Man affirm that “God is
immaterial”; by which they mean that He is not matter, or substance, or body;
but an inconceivable something they call “spirit”, an incorporeal,
unsubstantial, immaterial spirit, which is as near to nothing as words can
express. Nothing making all things out of nothing is the Old Man’s
theology concerning God and the fountain of all things, reduced to its simplest
terms. But the Scripture declares that pneuma ho Theos esti, literally, The
Spirit is the Theos. I say simply theos, because we shall yet have
to ascertain the New Testament sense of Theos. SPIRIT, then, is the Theos
commonly called God. But more than this, this Spirit is the Father; that is,
the One, ex autou, out of whom are all things. This appears from what is
affirmed of “Spirit” and of “Father”. Jesus says in John 5:31, “The Father
raises up the dead and quickeneth”, or makes the grave-emergent dead incorruptibly
living: and in chap. 6:63, he says “It is the Spirit that quickeneth”, or makes
alive. The Father and the Spirit are, therefore, the same; nevertheless, the
word “spirit” is often used in other senses. It is the FATHER-SPIRIT that Paul refers
to in 1 Tim 6:16, whom no man hath seen in His unveiled splendour. Veiled in
flesh, “The Vail of the Covering” (Exod. 35:12): he that discerned him
who spoke to Philip, “saw the Father” (John 14:9; 12:45). But, veiled or
unveiled, the Father-spirit is substantial. Speaking of the Unveiled
Father-Spirit, Paul says, in Heb. 1:2, 3, that the Son is the Character of
His Hypotasis, character tēs hypostaseōs autou, rendered
in the common version, “express image of his person”. The Son is the character
or exact representation, and the Father is the hypostasis. In
reference to the former, the Father says, in Zech. 3:9, “Upon One Stone there
shall be Seven Eyes; behold, I will engrave the graving thereof (that is, of
the stone), saith He who shall be hosts”. The graving engraved on the
stone is termed, in Greek, character, an impress wrought into a
substance after some archetype or pattern. This archetype is the hypostasis,
so that hypostasis is the basis or foundation or character;
wherefore the same apostle in Col. 1:15, styles the character engraved the
IMAGE of Theos the Invisible (eikon tou Theou tou aoratou).
Seth was the image of
Adam, and Adam, the image of Elohim (Gen. 1:26; 5:3). Like Seth, Jesus
was an image of Adam, but only in relation to flesh. Adam the First was image
of Elohim, and this was in relation to bodily form. Body and form were the
hypostasis of Adam and Seth; that is, they were the basis or foundation
of the images so named. Where body and form do not exist, there can be no
image; therefore, where image is predicated of hypostasis, that
hypostasis must have both body and form. The Father-Spirit, unveiled, is, then,
a bodily form; and as all things are “out of Him”, he is the focal
centre of the universe, from which irradiates whatever exists.
The Father-Spirit is
embodied power. Paternal power implies offspring or children, children or SONS
OF POWER. Son-power is also embodied power. It is power emanating from the
Father, corporealized in one or a multitude, but never separated or detached
from the focal centre. The Son-power is, therefore, the Father-power, multitudinously
expressed, manifested through many bodies. (John Thomas, Phanerosis and
Other Writings [Birmingham: The Christadelphian, 1954], 25-27)
Further Reading
