Even after his resurrection and exaltation, Jesus is dependent upon the Father for his eschatological life (all biblical texts are from the NRSV):
The death he died, he died to sin,
once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God (ζη τω θεω). (Rom 6:10)
For he was crucified in weakness,
but lives by the power of God (αλλα ζη εκ δυναμεως θεου). For we are weak in
him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God (ἀλλὰ ζήσομεν
σὺν αὐτῷ ἐκ δυνάμεως θεοῦ εἰς ὑμᾶς). (2 Cor 13:4)
Compare the following which speaks of Jesus still being
subordinate to the Father:
So let no one boast about human
leaders. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the
world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, and you
belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God (1 Cor 3:21-23)
But I would have you know, that
the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the
head of Christ is God (κεφαλὴ δὲ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὁ θεός). (1 Cor 11:3)
Such subordination will continue after the millennium:
For as all die in Adam, so all
will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first
fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when
he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler
and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his
enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For "God
has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says,
"All things are put in subjection," it is plain that this does not
include the one who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are
subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who
put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Cor
15:22-28)
With respect to John 5:18, as Jerome Neyrey notes, contrary to the
popular misreading of this text,
the proper statement should be:
“God makes Jesus equal to himself.” (see
this post for more)
Also, a few verses later, we read
For just as the Father has life in
himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.
This is a strong biblical refutation of Trinitarian
Christologies, as it shows that Jesus does not, of himself, have life, but such
is granted (εδωκεν, third person indicative aorist active of διδωμι ["to
give"]) it from the Father--that is, as with his glory (cf. Heb
1:3), the life Christ has does not originate from
Himself but has the Father as its origins. This is further evidence that the
Christology of the New Testament is that of subordinationism, a christological
theme that permeates even books that are often cited as having a
"high" Christology (cf. Heb
3:1).
D. Charles Pyle, in his excellent book, I Have Said Ye
are Gods, wrote the following about biblical texts that explicitly teach
the Father being the efficient cause of Christ’s existence:
Latter-day revelation states the
following about the Lord Jesus Christ and, also, the premortal existence of
mankind:
And now, verily I say unto you, I
was in the beginning with the Father, and am the Firstborn; And all those
who are begotten through me are partakers of the glory of the same, and are the
church of the Firstborn. Ye were also in the beginning with the Father;
. . . (Doctrine and Covenants 93:21-23 [italics emphasis mine])
Evangelicals, on hearing it, will
attack this scripture as invalid because of its very explicit statement that Jesus
is the firstborn. They are fond of stating that Christ has been a
self-existing, uncreated being from all eternity and, that he thus accordingly
cannot have a beginning as an organized intelligence. But does the Bible really
teach any such thing as that? It turns out that the Bible actually does
not. We find Jesus informing his disciples of the following: “As the living
Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he
shall live by me” (John 6:57). The key phrase in this text is “and I live by
the Father.” The Greek text underlying that phrase is καγω ζω δια τον πατερα. What is very significant about
this phrase is its theological import. The Greek word δια is with the accusative of person and is in the accusative case.
What the word in that situation indicates, in the text of the Gospel of John,
is the sense of “because.” It is here essentially denotes “the efficient cause”
(A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature,
2nd Edition, 181b [emphasis mine]). In other words, the Father
herein is stated by Jesus himself to be the efficient cause of the life of
Jesus. And if Jesus had an efficient cause, he had to have had some sort
of beginning as an intelligent entity. There is no other way around that, in
this author’s opinion. Jesus himself taught it! A scholarly theological text
averts the following about this:
Cause or Ground.
The two principle non-local meanings of dia are “by means of”, “through”,
(Lat. Per) and “on account of”, “because of” (Lat. ob and propter).
The interrelation of these two senses is evident from the fact that dia with
the acc[usative]. may occasionally denote the efficient cause (e.g., Jn. 6:57a,
the Father is the source of the Son’s life, as in Jn. 5:26 . . .) (Colin Brown,
ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, four
vols. [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House 1986], 3:1183 [brackets mine;
italics in original]).
Do the critics even realize what
this scripture means for their theologies? Essentially, scholars have admitted
that the Father himself is the source or efficient cause of the life that the
Son possesses! Do critics of the Church even realize the import of this
admission? What it means simply is this: Jesus, in this verse of scripture,
plainly states that the Father is the efficient cause, or the originating
source, of the Son’s life. Thus, his life’s existence as an organized being is
contingent upon the Father’s giving him life. But if Jesus really were a
self-existent, non-organized (and hence non-contingent) Being, the Father would
not possibly have been the efficient cause of his life, as Jesus himself said
the Father is. There is only one conclusion that can be reached (if a person
does not maneuver about and so attempt to explain away the plain meaning of
this passage), and that is that Jesus’ very life and existence as an organized
being is contingent and dependent upon the Father! Thus the Latter-day Saint
view of the Son as the firstborn spirit Son of God also is quite well
vindicated by this verse, and thus makes clear that his life and deity also are
derived from the Father. He did not possess it of himself before the
Father gave it to him.
Yet another passage of scripture
that is of a great deal of interest in this light in that famous Messianic
passage from the book of Micah, which reads:
But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though
thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall
he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have
been from of old, from everlasting. (Micah 5:2 [italics in original])
The King James Version of the
Bible does not really get the meaning of the Hebrew fully across to the reader
but some translations do so better than others. In this passage, the key phrase
if וּמוֹצָאֹתָ֥יו מִקֶּ֖דֶם מִימֵ֥י עוֹלָֽם, a phrase that more literally may
be translated like so: “And his origins are from ancient time, from the days of
time immemorial.” Now the word that is translated as “origins” may also refer
to birth, family, descent, and so forth. But again, there is that reference to
the origin of the Messiah. Many will reject this difficult meaning of “origins”
to try to put Jesus’ existence into eternity. Other translators will try hard
to avoid that understanding entirely by translating the word as “doings,”
and even try to use some other meaning. Anything to avoid the above
meaning! But we now have three passages (Micah 5:2; John 5:26; 6:57)
that refer to origins and the Father as the efficient cause of Christ’s
life.
Another passage that needs a
mention here is that found at Hebrews 3:2. A number of translations will translate
the key word there as “appointed” rather than literally. Having seen the above,
one might understand why that might be the case. The more literal meaning is “made.”
Various editions of the King James Version admit to this meaning in a footnote
but there are editions that do not. Literally understood, we could understand this
passage as being yet another reference to the origin of Jesus Christ as an
organized intelligence, being the one “who was faithful to him that made
him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house.” (And that makes
four). (D. Charles Pyle, I
Have Said Ye are Gods: Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of
Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New
Testament Texts (Revised and Supplemented) [North Charleston,
N.C.: CreateSpace, 2018], 355-58, emphasis in original)
Further Reading
Latter-day
Saints Have Chosen the True Biblical Jesus
The use of αρχη for Jesus in Colossians 1:18 (cf. Revelation 3:14)
