Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am
not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I
ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. (John
20:17)
John 20:17
is set after Jesus' resurrection and super-exaltation. I mention this as many Trinitarians claim that Jesus emptied himself
(not in the sense of setting aside his divine attributes and abilities, but did
not choose to use them at times) while in mortality and only returned to his
former glory afterwards (see John 17;5; cf. Phil 2:5-11). I mention this as many Trinitarians try to explain
some difficult texts by making such an appeal. Notwithstanding, in this
passage, not only does Jesus have a "Father" (unobjectionable to
Trinitarians and non-Trinitarians alike [lest perhaps some Modalists]) but that
he also has a God. Furthermore, Jesus states that God the Father is His God
just as the Father is the God of believers! So we have a text here, like Hebrews
1:8-9 (on this text, see Latter-day
Saints have Chosen the True, Biblical Jesus) where the exalted Jesus has a
God above him. This is not mere "functional subordination" to the
Son, but a numerical distinction between Jesus and, not his Father merely, but
"God."
Hippolytus (170-235),
referencing John 20:17 and 1 Cor 15:20-28 (another strongly anti-Trinitarian
text), while calling Jesus “Lord of All,” in the same text, says that the
Father is Lord of Jesus:
If, therefore, all things are put under Him with
the exception of Him who put them under Him, He is Lord of all, and the Father
is Lord of Him, that in all there might be manifested one God, to whom all
things are made subject together with Christ, to whom the Father hath made all
things subject, with the exception of Himself. And this, indeed, is said by
Christ Himself, as when in the Gospel He confessed Him to be His Father and His
God. For He speaks thus: “I go to my Father and your Father, and to my God and
your God. (Against the Heresy of One Noetus,
6 [ANF 5:226])
Latter-day
Saint theology allows for this and makes sense of it, but Trinitarians have to
engage in all types of dodges and eisegesis to overcome the implications of
this text. Don't take my word for it. Here is what one Trinitarian wrote on
this issue:
Remember the maxim: Difference in function does not indicate
inferiority of nature. Here the Father is described as Jesus’s “God.” Since
this is so, Jesus must be some inferior being, and therefore, John 20:28 can’t
mean that it so obviously says (Another element of the argument is that if
Jesus says the Father is the “God” of the disciples, then He himself could not
likewise be their God, as Thomas would confess. Yet, this again assumes what it means to prove: Unitarianism,
the idea that both the Father and the
Son could not, simultaneously, be “God” to the disciples). Note how one writer
has expressed it:
Such a confession, as
in the case of Thomas, is qualified
not only by the context (John 20:17), but also by the whole of Scripture. The
use of later Chalcedonian christology does not come into play in verses such as
john 20:17, either. Here, Jesus, in the same state Thomas addressed him, says
that the Father is his God, again differentiation between the two in terms of theos, as well as acknowledging the
Father’s superiority over him, as his God. (Gregory Stafford, Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 205)
And just here we see the circularity of the
arguments of those who deny the deity of Christ: why can’t Thomas mean what he
said? Because, of course, the Father is different
from the Son. I was the Son who
became Incarnate, and since the Son, as the perfect man, acknowledged the
Father as His God, He, himself, can’t be fully deity. The argument assumes that
God could not enter into human form.
Why? Well, what would the God-man be like? If one of the divine persons entered
into human flesh, how would such a divine person act? Would He be an atheist?
Would He refuse to acknowledge those divine persons who had not entered into human existence? Of
course not. Yet when we see the Lord Jesus doing exactly what we would expect
the Incarnate Son to do, we find this being used as an argument against His
deity! So those who put forward such arguments have already made up their
minds. They are not deriving their beliefs from
the Scriptures but are forcing those beliefs onto Scriptures. Thomas’s confession is in perfect harmony with the
fact that the Incarnate Son spoke of the Father as His God. As long as one
recognizes that the word “God” can refer to the Father, to the Son, to the
Spirit, or to all three persons at once, the asserted contradiction is seen to
be nothing more than a circular argument designed to avoid having to make the
same confession that Thomas made lone ago. (James R. White, The Forgotten Trinity: Recovering the Heart
of Christian Belief [2d ed; Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House, 2019], 68-69)
